The ‘F— Joe Biden’ Horseshoe
The ‘F— Joe Biden’ Horseshoe
Plus: Trump’s latest monumental abortion-policy rake step.
Big news out of Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis just signed a ban on the manufacture and distribution of lab-grown meat: “Global elites want to control our behavior and push a diet of petri dish meat and bugs on Americans,” the governor tweeted. “Florida is saying no.”
Has any other governor ever delivered so many victories for people so online they have never seen the sun? Happy Thursday.
Grasp the Nettle, Joe!
Forget for a minute about all the campus drama at Columbia and UCLA. I mean, hard as it is for us coastal types to believe, there is more to America than New York and Los Angeles. So let’s talk for a minute about what happened Wednesday in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The University of Alabama, too, has its campus demonstrators. They don’t seem as numerous as those at Columbia or UCLA. But, as we learn from the University of Alabama’s student paper, the Crimson White, there was a decent sized demonstration on campus Wednesday, with pro-Palestinian protestors and counter-protestors, some pro-Israel, some pro-Trump. Both sides were pretty vehement, shouting slogans and waving signs, each trying to drown the other out with their chants and songs. But the protest and counter-protest “remained peaceful throughout its entirety,” everyone dispersed, and no one was arrested. The worst thing that happened seems to have been that some of the cheers were intemperate, some of the jeers descended into slurs, and some of what was said, according to the student paper, included “derisive comments.”
But there was one more thing. The most striking moment—which you can see in a video posted to social media by Crimson White editor Maven Navarro—was when, late Wednesday afternoon, the protesters and counter-protesters reached across the aisle and built bridges and found common ground. In a fleeting moment of agreement and common purpose, the two sides joined together in a chant.
The chant? “Fuck Joe Biden.”
The editors of The Crimson White preface their fine story with the following note: “This story contains usage of profanities some readers may find offensive.” I don’t think you’d find that in the student papers at Columbia or UCLA.
But offended or not, one has to acknowledge that the chant isn’t the most uplifting example of Americans coming together in a positive spirit of harmonious unity that one could imagine.
One might even say, if one wishes Joe Biden well, that it’s kind of a problem when the only thing both sides of the political spectrum agree on is they don’t like you.
But isn’t it also kind of an opportunity?
There are two things you can do when you’re in the center of some controversy, and that particular center doesn’t seem to be holding. You can decide, Yikes, this isn’t the place to make a bold stand, I hope this all blows over soon, and I don’t need to prominently jump into the middle of this kind of craziness. All I’ll do is offend even more people.
This seems basically the Biden Administration’s calculation in the case of the campus protests.
Or you can say, OK, I embrace my situation. I’ll grasp the nettle that’s been thrust into my hand. I’ll make a virtue of necessity. I’ll explain that the center is the right place to be. I’ll make the case against craziness and illiberalism on the left, and against bigotry and authoritarianism on the right.
The latter path can be tricky. The middle of the road is a dangerous place. Jim Hightower, the lefty and populist (and witty and charming) Democrat from Texas, liked to say, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.”1
But some armadillos survive. (I’m told by friends in Texas.) And if you can’t get out of the road and you’re in the middle of it anyway, isn't it better to take action rather than crouch down and hope the oncoming traffic doesn’t crush you?
So I’m skeptical of the Biden Administration’s political strategy on the question of the campus protests—not the peaceful ones like the one in Tuscaloosa, but the violent and semi-militarized ones at Columbia and elsewhere, discussed by Mona Charen in her piece on the website today.
It’s nice that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says more or less the right thing, defending the right of Americans to protest while condemning violent tactics, intimidation, and antisemitism. But the silence of the president makes it all seem more like a defensive crouch.
Wouldn’t Biden be better off speaking up and making his case personally, and repeatedly? Wouldn’t he be better off to explain, in speeches and interviews, that he stands with the silent democratic (with a small “d”) majority of college students, and more broadly for the anti-violence, anti-mob, anti-bigotry, tolerant and decent and civil majority of citizens? Shouldn’t he seize the moment and grasp the nettle?
Campus extremists on the left and MAGA extremists on the right disapprove of Joe Biden. Can’t that be used as an opportunity to make the case to the majority of voters for Joe Biden?
—William Kristol
Trump’s ‘Monitoring Pregnancies’ Rake Step
For weeks now, Donald Trump and his allies have been flattering themselves that they’ve got this “Republicans are getting killed on abortion” thing figured out. Sure, the issue has proven a winning one for Democrats pretty much at every level since Dobbs v. Jackson came down back in 2022. But all Trump needs to do is insist the issue is settled at the federal level, that abortion policy is back in the hands of the states where it should be, and he can get back to pummeling Joe Biden on more comfortable ground like inflation and the border.
Well, turns out that strategy’s not quite idiotproof. In his recent interview with Time magazine, Trump was at such great pains to insist he has no goals for federal abortion policy that he seemed to endorse a far, far more intrusive abortion policing regime than has been suggested by any anti-abortion lawmakers at any level. HuffPost sums up the moment:
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said states with abortion bans should be free to monitor pregnant women to make sure they don’t terminate their pregnancies, suggesting that would be in line with his newfound position of leaving abortion rights up to the states.
“I think they might do that,” Trump said in a Time magazine interview published Tuesday, when asked if he thinks states with abortion bans should track women who are pregnant. “Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states,” he said. “Look, Roe v. Wade was all about bringing it back to the states.”
It was a classic, time-tested Trump interview move: Answer whatever question his interviewer’s asking with a quick, thoughtless “well, yeah, maybe,” then move on to the point he wanted to make: in this case, that he deserves credit for appointing the judges that overturned Roe v. Wade, and that now the federal government should stay out of things.
“States will decide if they’re comfortable or not prosecuting women for getting abortions after the ban,” interviewer Eric Cortellessa asked. “But are you comfortable with it?”
“The states are going to say,” Trump replied. “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.”
It’s worth noting that the hypotheticals Trump is saying “yeah, sure, you bet” to far outstrip the wildest dreams of the most zealous pro-life activists. The vast majority of anti-abortion laws now on the books in red states target abortion providers, not women seeking abortions, for criminal penalties if they violate the law. (One exception: Nevada, where abortion remains legal until 24 weeks, but where a woman who takes drugs to terminate her pregnancy after 24 weeks without “advice of a physician” acting to preserve her life or health can be charged with manslaughter—a law that was perfectly compatible with Roe v. Wade.)
And “monitoring pregnancies” is another universe entirely. No Republicans are trying to do anything of the sort in any state; that Cortellessa asked it at all was simply an edge-case attempt to feel out the contours of Trump’s current thinking on abortion. For Trump to reply “I think they might do that” was a world-historical rake step. It bears repeating: This is the strategy he’s decided will protect him from political pain over abortion policy.
—Andrew Egger
Catching up . . .
Police at UCLA use stun grenades, breach barricades; 90 arrested at Dartmouth: Washington Post
New York demonstrations spread after mass arrests: Politico
Fed chair projects optimism despite stubborn inflation: Wall Street Journal
Stormy Daniel’s lawyer to return to stand in Trump criminal trial: New York Times
Inside Trump’s stunning flip-flop on early voting: Axios
House GOP, 13 Dems rebuke Biden on immigration: Politico
House passes GOP antisemitism bill amid college unrest: ABC News
Judge rejects John Eastman bid to retain law practice while fighting disbarment: Politico
Quick Hits
1. ‘More like the MAGA crowd than they know’
The campus-protests piece we alluded to above from Mona Charen (Columbia University Class of ’79!) is well worth your time:
These students are supposedly the cream of the crop in higher education, and yet they demonstrate no nuance, no appreciation of the complexities of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and a shocking willingness to mouth the Hamas line. The slogan “From the river to the sea” implies that Israel will cease to exist. They chant “There is only one solution—intifada revolution!” When the students smashed the windows and occupied Hamilton Hall on April 30, they dropped a banner reading “Intifada” from a window. The intifadas featured random attacks against Israeli civilians—on buses, at pizza parlors, at restaurants. When Jewish students hear “Globalize the intifada!” they are right to assume a threat against Jews everywhere . . .
Students at American universities ought to care about authoritarianism. They ought to show some humility about what they don’t know and some fairness in the way they evaluate complex conflicts. They ought to prize democratic systems, freedom, the rule of law, human rights, and human dignity. Something has gone very wrong when they think in absolutist categories—oppressor/oppressed, victim/victimizer, white/people of color—instead of the equal worth of every person. They are more like the MAGA crowd than they know.
2. ‘I don’t feel like I really got my body back until now’
The New York Times has a great new interview up with Brittney Griner, the WNBA star who became the center of an international incident after she was detained flying home from Russia with vape cartridges in her luggage and imprisoned on trumped-up charges of drug trafficking. She was finally released last year after 10 months in Russia—in a prisoner swap that also freed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout—and struggled with the shocks of trying to step back into her old life:
When, after 10 months in Russia, she was finally released, she jumped back into playing, thinking the routine and familiarity would ground her back in herself and her life. But the transition was rocky. All last season, she was plagued by injuries and insecurities. The confidence of being one of the W.N.B.A.’s most powerful “bigs” had evaporated. It got so bad that she took a midseason leave. “I don’t feel like I really got my body back until right now,” she told me in Phoenix. “When I look back at the videos, it’s cringe. The season, any pictures from last year — I don’t want to see it or look at it.” She had a lot of self-doubt and didn’t think she could do it. “Maybe I should stop. Maybe I’ll never be the same player that I was before. Maybe this was the big rift in my career, where it’s like, I’m never going to get to that top.”
The next day, Griner loped into a conference room above the court, wearing team-branded workout clothes and an elegant chain, dimples prominent in her wide grin. Her teeth were perfect — her first big purchase after going pro. She was gracious and kind, offering to retrieve drinks from the team fridge, making sure everyone around her was comfortable, taking her seat last. “I actually feel like my old self,” she told me. “I’m moving like my old self. But still, in the back of my head, there’s a nagging ‘What if?’ You know, what if it doesn’t go the way you want it to?”
Cheap Shots
Correction (May 2, 2024, 6:45 p.m. EDT): As originally published, this newsletter referred to “the late Jim Hightower”—although Hightower is still, unlike the fabled armadillo, alive and kicking. The text of this web version has been corrected.
I see the word "horseshoe" only in the title, but assume it means the political ideology model that Jonathan V. Last wrote about recently. It's certainly a much more accurate representation than the "left-right" model, because it shows the extreme left and right approaching each other, not moving further apart.
"Campus extremists on the left and MAGA extremists on the right disapprove of Joe Biden. Can’t that be used as an opportunity to make the case to the majority of voters for Joe Biden?"
Yes, but to whom? Meaning how many voters are left who still can't, or refuse to understand that the only hope for saving the country (and that too is not guaranteed) is to vote for Biden. Not just against Trump, e.g. by staying home or voting for that anti-vax kook. I had to look up the phrase "grasp the nettle" and found that it's exactly what I have been doing for 52 years every time I step in a voting booth. This year will be no different. There are a million people I'd rather vote for than Biden. But 8 billion I'd rather vote for than Trump.