As if Froomkin has forgotten that the NYT, the WaPo, and most of the MSM spent years breathlessly chasing a conspiracy theory so wacky, it would have gotten them laughed out of the 1962-era John Birch Society.
Cue up images of Birchers wearing Very Stiff Suits, smirking at one another and making the "will you get a load of these guys?" gestures.
I also find it rich that the same people who insist that Trump is senile are the same people who insist that he is About To Take Over The World. The man is so incompetent, he could not get a Team R Congress to repeal Obamacare.
It’s not Trump I fear, he is definitely very incompetent. I fear the people he could enable. They’ve all had four years to learn how to stroke his ego and butter him up. There are anti-abortion/anti-IVF groups whose leaders have said they know Trump probably doesn’t really care about their causes but they know he would sign a national ban into law.
He’s the chaos candidate and I while he can’t simply enact Project 2025 by himself, it’s a massive gamble and I don’t blame people for feeling worried about the worst case scenario.
I think this is right but more to do with the uniqueness of the circumstances rather than what each respective team is doing. When Biden's frailties became too obvious to cover up, the Dems had to switch gears and went with someone who is not only a terrible candidate but also has publicly espoused every zany progressive idea of the past 5-10 years which she now has to try and backtrack from since none of them are remotely popular with the electorate at large.
You know I'm a never-Trumper but how do you quantify "Team R has done a much better job"? Trump favorability has gone nowhere and the Harris campaign has really moved the needle.
I have noted that the Democrat are a well-coordinated and agreeable group of comrades that can drag a crappy candidate to the finish line for a win. While the Republicans are a feckless and disorganized internally fighting group of factions that require Trump to drag their asses to the finish line to win.
The only reason that the Republicans look good now is that they have resigned to supporting Trump as they have discovered that nobody like the neocons. The only reason that the Democrats are not able to drag Harris to the finish line is that the Democrat performance in office and their ideas being pushed suck more than their candidates.
I say this with all due respect but this is part of the problem. The hyperbole is just too much. First of all, the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total Republican demolition of the Democrats is the abortion topic. The Republicans are completely on their heels on this topic. It has cost them winnable elections over the last 4 years.
The Roe v Wade overturning is just another maddening case of misinformation. They kicked the decision to the states. In 10 years at the most, abortion will be completely legal in all 50 states. Red states will have more restrictions and the timeline could be shorter in some states than in others but eventually it will be legal everywhere. The majority of the country wants it legal and they will eventually get their way. I live in one of the reddest states in the country and can promise you that if it was put to a vote, abortion will be legal.
I agree with you fully, abortion is popular and I think there is a level of hysteria surrounding Trump. I was more speaking to the fear of the unknown, which is powerful and I find it frustrating that some people who believe themselves to be so tuned in snub their nose at an understandable fear to exert how intellectually superior they are. But let’s not ignore real issues, like two potentially three seats on the SCOTUS.
also, abortion was decided and it was already legal. People have died and been seriously harmed since it was kicked back to the states, doctors are leaving red states in droves (Idaho has lost 20% of their OB/GYNs since their ban was enacted, they aren’t coming back). I’m sorry, but I find that far more maddening than people worrying about the unlikely case that a national ban could be enacted. It’s unacceptable that it even got to this point and anyone who isn’t livid about it really lacks a sense of proportion in my mind.
Did you read the article or just the headline? This is why people don't trust the media. I read that article. The article said that they lost 55% of their high risk pregnancy doctors leaving them with only 5. That means they lost 6. These are extreme outlier cases.
20% just picked up and moved to another state? Does that make sense to you? The source was Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative. What the hell is that? How do they even know that?
Do you know how hard is to build a practice, build a patient base? Then you just walk away from that? Put a for sale in your yard and move to another state? Come on.
Seems pretty clear that the law has been pretty disastrous for obstetrical care in Idaho, your protestations about the difficulty of find a new practice notwithstanding.
“ Idaho is digging itself into a workforce hole that will take many years, if not decades, to fill. But before we can stabilize the environment and move forward, we have to stop digging. And we need more clarity in our laws to help with that,” said Susie Pouliot Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association.”
“ Dr. Sara Thomson, a Boise OB-GYN who represented the Idaho section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said at the Capitol presentation some OB-GYNs she knows have left because of the “moral conflict” they experience while treating patients. And more are thinking about leaving if Idaho’s laws don’t change, she said.
“Many of us have had a crisis of conscience about what to do. Feeling both deeply committed to our patients, but also concerned about what this means for us personally and for our own families,” Thomson said. “The threat of incarceration for five years for patient care is a heavy burden. And being told that no physician in our state has been prosecuted — yet — or that a case of medical necessity is unlikely to be prosecuted, is not adequately reassuring.””
“ Idaho is seeing the expansion of “obstetric deserts,” where “pregnant mothers may need to travel long distances either for prenatal care or for the delivery of their baby,” said Idaho Hospital Association CEO Brian Whitlock.”
“ But Idaho hospitals have seen twice or sometimes three times the number of OB-GYN vacancies than they usually had, Whitlock said. Idaho hospitals, meanwhile, are seeing a third or half as many OB-GYNs applying to jobs, he said.”
I think your fears are unfounded given the actual threats to Americans are things like economic collapse and nuclear war. Everything else is really twaddle and subject to the majority interests.
Democrats will ram unpopular policies down everyone's throats. Republicans including Trump will not. This has to do with what Haidt observed that Republicans tend to operate with a more diverse set of moral filters. Democrats can justify every action over claims of harm and care as their only moral consideration.
Just name a policy or action that Trump has taken or proposed that is not a majority view.
Just because Trump wasn’t literally caught taking a briefcase full of cash from Putin doesn’t mean he was innocent. He flirted with a dictator, and encouraged him to interfere with an election, publicly and privately, and continues his quiet alliance with Putin to this day. All of this was more than enough to be a major scandal before the bar of bad actions was raised so high that it wouldn’t count unless there was a literal pee tape published.
Donald Trump and his spawn are grifters. No joke. The man was behind the operation of "Trump University", to name but one recent example.
That does not make the russiagate conspiracy theory true any more than it means that Trump must have been behind the murder of Mickey Mouse.
In fact, if Putin had half the intelligence that russiagate conspiracy theorists routinely ascribe to him, he'd have enough sense to pick a patsy with less obvious and public baggage. Putin certainly wouldn't let said patsy do bonehead things, nickel and dime crap like pay porn stars out of campaign funds or give the foreign policy establishment the vapors by calling for rapprochement with Russia.
Instead, he'd pick a flunky that looks and talks too good to be true, charming and devoted wife and 2.43 well-scrubbed and seemingly well-adjusted kids. He'd pick a flunky that says all the right things on the campaign trail, one that doesn't set a million internet Russia experts, volunteer FBI agents, amateur spy hunters and MSM talking heads frothing at the mouth with crackpot conspiracy theories.
Putin would also pick a candidate who reserves his true passions for ten-year old Polynesians of either sex. Not some doofus so without shame that he couldn't even be blackmailed by pu$$ygate, because everyone already knows, that's just how Trump rolls.
Of course, if Putin had as much sense as God gave my youngest kitten, he'd make sure that his puppet was well prepared and had a whole list of appointees, all carefully vetted and prepared and compromised in advance. Not the clownshow that was the Trump transition. Not the Keystone Kops omnishambles that has been a hallmark of Trump administration staffing from Day One.
And lastly, once Putin carefully slipped his stooge into power, he'd quietly make sure that his stooge undertook policies that favor Russia. Not policies identical to those of a meaner, more reckless, more dysfunctional version of a Dubya administration.
Again, to believe the russiagate conspiracy theory, you have to believe that Putin has superpowers bordering on the occult. At the same time, you have to believe that Putin has no idea how to use these superpowers.
There are people who believe that Trump is a literal paid Kremlin stooge. I’m not one of them. I think he accepted and encouraged political gifts from Putin and, since, has always treated Putin as an ally.
Evidence? Hell, when Trump took office, the transition team literally had to call the general Kremlin switchboard, as they had no contacts in the Russian government.
I just do not see how the Obama/Biden years can be described in any way that makes this so: "the Democrats are a feckless center-right party." Well, feckless, yes. But to be center-right must make the far left, far, far away from anything resembling center.
It really isn't too different than R's saying that the party is just RINO's and secretly trying to do the Dems bidding. Which you hear all the time on the red side of the internet.
Yep. It's typically bullshit in both directions. Combine that with the fact that Freddie sees almost everything through economic eyes first when it comes to "left" vs. "right" and economically, one can certainly argue that the Democratic *party* is center-right, at least under Clinton, and arguably under Obama (Obamacare being more an exception than a rule).
But once you bring cultural issues into it, there doesn't appear to be much argument for them being center-right.
Obamacare was The Heritage Foundation's plan for fixing healthcare. By the time it came into the national spotlight the right had moved further right, that doesn't mean that it wasn't originally a conservative plan.
The fact that Republicans haven't been able to come up with any alternatives to Obamacare that actually address the healthcare system, while as a leftist I can think of more than a few, is further proof of this.
That's quite fair. Originally, it was loosely based on Republican Mitt Romney's plan from Massachusetts, as I understand it, and there was a whole lot of sops thrown to the various drug and insurance companies in it. I think it's fair to call it corporate liberalism, which is pretty descriptive of Obama.
It's the same shit from people who expect too much.
"Why doesn't the ACA have a public option???" Because they didn't have the votes.
"Why didn't they do anything about climate change?" Because they didn't have the votes and the courts struck down the clean power plan.
"Why didn't they do more stimulus???" Because they didn't have the votes.
Obama was a legitimate lefty but dealt with an absolutely obstructionist congress after his first 2 years. If he could have made congress carry out his will we'd have some pretty progressive policies in place right now.
Legitimate leftists don't allow torture to go unpunished, or at the very least would attempt to reform the system, and they also don't allow Wall St. to get away with wrecking the economic prospects of a generation (millennials). Also they don't greatly expand the use of drone warfare.
"didn't have the votes" because of the rotating villain strategy. First is was Joe Lieberman, then Manchin and Sinema sent out to flummox the will of the people. And if they can't find enough senators to be villains, there is always the parliamentarian to fall back on.
Nope, I'm not having it. The Dems have maxed out their credit limit on promises. Until they deliver something other than another war or some wokie bullshit, I'm doe with them.
I don't understand your perspective. Are you saying they are making these people oppose their agenda? It's happening organically. The democratic party isn't bullying them into voting no. That would be ridiculous.
And just under Biden they've passed a huge stimulus package, the first every climate bill in US history, and a large infrastructure bill. That's a productive presidency.
And under Obama they passed the largest health care reform in 50 years.
What has the GOP done in that time? Nothing but tax cuts.
Classic move to deflect to the Republicans when discussing the problems with the Democrats. I'm not talking about the GOP right now, so let's stay on topic.
The majority of Americans want Medicare for All, but the monied interests do not. Cue Joe Loserman to be the rotating villain to erase the veto proof majority in the Senate to derail the public option. So no, Obama care was not any sort of "health care reform," it was an insurance bailout scheme.
As for the "stimulus package" you may recall that originally there was the infrastructure provisions (big money to corporate donors) and the build back better provisions (direct aid to normal people with things like child care for working parents). Remember the Dems genius move to split the bills, knowing that the Republicans would vote to pass the corporate welfare heavy infrastructure bill and then Manchin and Sinema would refuse to joint Build Back Better and allow it to die.
And don't get me started on abortion rights, where the Dems had 8 fucking months to codify roe while they controlled the White House and both houses of congress. They could not even be bothered to codify Roe during the lame duck session between the election and the Republicans taking over the house.
The votes weren't there because the Dems did not want them to be there. Until they deliver on what they are always "fighting for" I'm not voting for them, period. Got it, Jack?
I'm sorry this is totally ridiculous. Your perspective is that moderates don't actually exist, but are manufactured by the party? Those bills didn't pass because moderates shot them down. That's it. It's simple. They couldn't get the votes. Your weird conspiracy about democrats intentionally creating bills to piss off moderates is just that, a conspiracy. When you have 50 senate seats everyone needs to be on board. They weren't. That's it.
Lord Almighty. Medicare for All is the moderate position since most of the electorate favors it. But then again, you're the type who always has a ready excuse to defend the Dems no matter what. I've already schooled you with the facts, which you haven't addressed. You just sputter out the same vapid talking points.
"Though I suspect, sadly, that therapy might not be too constructive for many of them. Because I’m willing to bet that they want their therapists to be Big Mommy too."
And from 2010, no less...back in the good ol days! The Sonntag 'valuables' part put me over the edge....had to wipe away the snot from laughing so hard.
It's victimhood culture. People grew up being told that they were the victims of [insert -ism], whether personal or systematic. Can't settle conflicts on their own.
Oh how I wish the Democratic party was actually center-left, instead of being dominated by progressives on both economic and social issues in the post-Obama era.
It's incredible how much of a standout Obama was relative to the other post-Clinton presidential candidates. It amazes me that politicians rise to the very top while being not very good at some of the core competencies of being a politician--like speaking at length to convince people to vote for you.
Obama would have killed it on Rogan talking sports.
Trump is an immensely flawed candidate in terms of running a professional campaign as well, but he can at least put on a show.
I'd love it if Bill Clinton were running, with Matt Yglesias as his policy advisor, but I think Freddie would probably call them "center-right."
The current Dem party has college educated professionals and government employees as its essential client, with tech and finance multimillionaires and trust fund kids as their funding class. They're willing to enact some large giveaways as long as they include the middle class (often the upper middle class) and they love college style demonstrative progressivism, but to a Marxist like Freddie, they have to look like pretty weak tea. I'd call them functionally center-left, but left of neoliberals like Yglesias.
If a Marxist considers all capitalists to be on the right, regardless of views on redistribution, then that just makes it pointless for a Marxist to engage with non-Marxists using “left/right” labels.
Is Bernie a man of the right? Elizabeth Warren?
What defines the center here in theoretical or empirical terms?
"You have to have a political plan to defeat him, an appeal to make ordinary, distracted, low-information voters prefer your agenda, and 21st century Democrats still don’t know what that plan looks like."
What on earth makes you thinkt hat the average frsutrated Team D apparatchik wants anything to do with icky flyover people or their concerns? Many are fat and have bad taste.
Rather, the normies should vote Team D, because Team D obviously are just Better, More Virtuous, More Enlightened and Educated People and they have the totebags to prove it! (That also is why the PMC see their status as the hegemonic class as being entirely nautral and just. Because they deserve it.)
I haven't fully fleshed out my thoughts on this, but I don't think it's a coincidence that Marxist philosophy, as filtered through our political and media elite, has moved from class-based to race-based. The "elite" has always had to suppress the urge to hold the lower classes in contempt, at least in some part because open class contempt is a betrayal of their professed political philosophies. But moving from class to race made it not only acceptable, but virtuous, to finally unleash their pent-up contempt for the lower class.
I have written about this before - if Marx taught nothing else, he taught that everything is downstream of technology (which sets the limits on what is possible) and economics (which sets the limits on what options are available).
That said, to paraphrase Chris Hedges, today's elites will display a touching sensitivity to all manner of racial, gender, etc. issues. They will not readily discuss economic class.
One viewpoint that I've been dragged to, kicking and screaming over the past eight years is that Team D is, for the most part, right. Seeing the depths to which Team R has sunk to has been a real eye-opener. Team R really does have a higher percentage of terrible people in it, and a higher percentage of those who stand by and enable terrible people. One reason Team D holds different views than Team R is that Team D is better educated, so their views are correct, while Team R is full of buffoonish conspiracy theorists who are wrong about everything.
Right now Team R is trying to elect someone who has explicitly promised to destroy or weaken the institutions that make America a great country. While they do this, they insist that it is neccessary to "save" the country from a candidate with bog-standard centrist views and policies. That is both stupid and evil. Hillary Clinton was right about them, back on 9/9/16.
This brings to mind the chilling question that Anton Chiguhr asked Carson Wells in “No Country for Old Men”: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
Anyway, it's been Team D that has been pushing for censorship. To "save democracy ", of course.
I'm not sure what you mean by that statement about the rule. Following the rule of "people who lose elections should leave office" seems like it has been a good thing so far, bad stuff happened after Trump broke it. America isn't perfect right now, it never is, but having a more rule-abiding and lawful president for the past four years has been an improvement. The rule-breaking that Trump did made things worse, not better.
Censorship has always been a "both sides" thing, even before Trump. There are definitely some attempts by Democrats to censor "misinformation," but Trump has threatened to do similar things when he attains power, like revoking the broadcasts licenses of networks that are critical of him. There has also been a concerted effort by Republicans to both censor pornography, and to classify any discussion of sexuality that they disagree with as pornography.
Ask yourself how we got to this place, other than "Team D Good. Team R bad".
Even if Trump were to order censorship (he didn't from 2016-2020), he has no institutional support and would get nowhere. Sort of like how the Pentagon simply ignored orders from Trumpt hat they didn't like. Team D, on the other hand, has plenty of institutional support.
You are minimizing the GOP’s power by waving away their terrible actions. That’s been a deliberate framing on the right to both censor others and complain about censorship.
Sounds like more "Team D Good - Team R Bad" framing, especially as you are so vague on what "terrible acts" were committed and how any Team R president would get any such actions effectuated.
I find these “heterodox” commentary spaces frustrated because too many people just excuse everything Trump does and don’t think that they are just biased.
Albert Einstein supposedly said something like 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result". That describes the current Democratic party. Trump is charged with a crime: no impact on the polls. Trump is charged with more crimes: no impact on the polls. Trump is convicted: you see where I'm going.
Maybe, just maybe, what matters to voters right now is the high price of groceries and rent. Why not talk to them about that? Instead the Democrats seem to think that if they just keep yelling the same thing ("Nazi", "fascist") over and over again that even if it didn't work the first or third or twentieth time that maybe the 100th time it will finally get through. And if that doesn't work? Let's go for 500.
Guess what though? Banging your head against a wall doesn't accomplish anything other than giving you brain damage.
Make no mistake, the Democrats are losing the election. A large part of that is their inability to talk to voters about the issues that matter to voters. Instead they focus on the issues that matter to Democrats. Why? I'm not the only person to posit that they are living in an extraordinary bubble that leaves them unable to empathize or communicate with most of the country.
The scope and reach of American criminal law is such that an aggressive prosecutor can always find a reason to go after anyone, especially anyone involved in higher leverl business or politics.
"Yes, the charges were ok as a technical legal matter, however, if they were actually enforced that way, you'd have to throw half of NYC im prison."
That's sort of my point. This is entriely intentional. There is always a pretect to attack anyone that people of influence and authority want attacked, and it is entirely legal.
This also keeps anyone from rocking the boat too much.
Yeah, it’s why I shut off my ears when anyone talks about how we are, “undermining the rule of law.” Exaggerating RE valuations to support collateralized bank loans is literally the job of tens of thousands of people
You have to examine the nature of Trump's crimes and convictions. On Judge Merchan's 34 felonies. OK, misdemeanors can get rolled up into felonies if they're done in aid of a felony. Fine by me. But Trump was never convicted of the supporting felony. Judge Merchan didn't even name the exact felony, he offered three possible felonies from which the jurors could choose to think were the supporting felonies required to turn the accounting errors into felonies. Then Judge Merchan said the jurors don't need to have 100% concurrence for a conviction. Um, that's blatantly un American to not require 100% of the jury pool for a conviction.
It would be like if you got a speeding ticket, went to Traffic Court and the judge upgraded it to a felony because he then accused you of fleeing a crime ... without needing a conviction of the supporting crime to roll your speeding ticket into a felony.
So maybe you want to live in a country where any judge can roll a misdemeanor into a felony on the judges accusation alone ... not me.
"But Trump was never convicted of the supporting felony."
Absolutely. Whenever I'm debating somebody about those criminal charges I always ask them one simple question: why wasn't Trump charged with that second crime?
It has always been the case that a prosecutor can say something like:
"The accused kidnapped the victim, killed her in some fashion, perhaps with a weapon such as the gun we have shown he possessed or the rat poison we have shown he purchased, then buried her in his back yard. This was murder."
And then some jurors can vote "guilty" because they're pretty sure he killed the victim with a gun, and some because they think it was rat poison, and some because they have no idea how exactly he did it but they're sure he did it somehow. And among the 12 jurors their may be 12 different opinions as to the accused's actual motive. And that's fine.
The jurors must be unanimous that he committed the crime (and on what crime he committed). They are not required (nor have they have been required, nor would it be reasonable to require them) to agree on the *details* of the crime.
> Um, that's blatantly un American to not require 100% of the jury pool for a conviction.
100% of the jury pool agreed that Trump was guilty of the crime he was accused of. That is, they were convinced that Trump took the actions he did in support of a felony. There is no reason (or precedent, or requirement) that they need to agree on which felony it was.
> It would be like if you got a speeding ticket, went to Traffic Court and the judge upgraded it to a felony because he then accused you of fleeing a crime ... without needing a conviction of the supporting crime to roll your speeding ticket into a felony.
If the prosecutor can convince a jury that you were fleeing a crime, then that's... perfectly fair? It has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, it has to be a jury of your peers, the jury has to be unanimous, all the protections of criminal trials must apply, obviously. But ultimately the principle is that if a jury unanimously finds you guilty of the elements of an offence, then you're guilty and must suffer the punishment.
There is no "the jury said I murdered someone but they got the murder weapon wrong so I go free" defence in American law. Nor, I would argue, should there be.
But Trump wasn't convicted of the underlying felony. The jury wasn't trying Trump on the underlying felony. AND the underlying felony was out of that court's jurisdiction. Judge Merchan blocked the defense from bringing as a witness, the man who wrote the law Judge Merchan was accusing Trump of violating.
Its one thing for you to be tried in court with jurisdiction of law A for a crime A. Its another thing for you to be tried in a court with jurisdiction of law B, on charge B but being accused of crime A where court B doesn't have jurisdiction for law A. Which is what happened.
I think you're drawing a bad comparison between George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Bush was a terrible president, no doubt, but he recognized the rule of law, and saw himself primarily as a civil servant. (He was a terrible example of a civil servant, but leave that to the side for now.) Donald Trump is contemptuous of democracy, views the law as something for other people to obey, associates proudly with criminals, is a felon himself, sneers at public service as the occupation of suckers and losers, and would watch this nation burn to the ground as long as he got to loot the ashes.
This is what people mean when they say Trump is not normal. I think they are right.
All of that is granted, but even so I think W. was the worst presidency of my lifetime. (Born in the early '80s.)
The website First Things ran a piece recently tracing the history of American institutions twisting the rule of law and dismantling institutional neutrality, and although the groundwork for it was laid with Nixon and certain tools developed by the Clinton administration, in their telling it really ramped up under Dubya. Spying, wiretaps, turning the tools of the intelligence against citizens. And above all, the weaponization of global finance, used to suppress anything the leaders of Western countries didn't like – e.g. Trudeau freezing the assets of people donating to the trucker protest. Bush not only damaged America, his administration helped build totalitarian tools that are weilded the world over. Democrats talking about maybe shredding the 1st amendment to fight "disinformation" is a direct descendent of the new norms W. helped put in place.
And none of that even touches on Iraq and WMDs
The worst contribution Trump made is coarsening the culture around politics. He may be an idiot and a wannabe despot, but he only cares about making himself feel big. He's too short-sighted. I don't believe anything else he did during his (first?) term has proved as wide-reaching.
Maybe, but it's the capstone of the development of the Imperial Presidency, which started under FDR, and got completely out of control under Truman (who didn't understand the implications of what he was doing), and really accelerated under Nixon and Reagan. Clinton, IMO was actually a small step back as Congress actually took some real power after the 1994 election. The 9/11 came and Cheney and his "unitary theory" put the whole thing together. Trump v. US was just legal confirmation of a situation that already existed de facto.
Bush enabled the military, the intelligence agencies, and the billionaires. He caused the Great Recession by his unwillingness to control Wall Street. He invaded countries at the behest of special interests. He destroyed education. He signed the Patriot Act and created DHS. He allowed banks to steal 7 million homes.
In short GWB hurt American and the world a lot more than Trump ever would or could. Obama was just as bad as GWB in many ways.
Stop pretending these people are good or honorable. Every president since at least Bush 41 has hurt the country and the world.
Trump doesn't follow the gentleman's agreements that have defined politics for centuries. He doesn't care about the polite fictions, he doesn't owe favors to any power brokers, and he doesn't care about the party, or his fellow Rs, or getting re-elected. Which, to the electorate, makes him free of bullshit.
If by "gentleman's agreements" you mean "rule of law", then I certainly agree. He's certainly full of bullshit, whatever the electorate thinks.
(It's interesting to note that Trump has yet to win the national vote, BTW. Maybe next week will see something different, but for now, he's just not that popular a guy.)
His success is a shame to the establishment, and a disgrace to the country, that we are so divided and isolated that 1/3 f the country can't come up with anything better than a reality TV guy mouthing tired reactionary tropes for a leader. Because honestly, what else do we have? Populism seems to be the future when all other forms of community have died off.
There is some truth to this. Trump may be weak, stupid and easily manipulated, but he is on some level a principal and not an agent. Every other president within living memory has been more of an agent than a principal.
Bush recognized the rule of law? Excuse me?! You must be referring to something other than the warrantless surveillance, the torture, the extraordinary rendition, etc etc.
10 years ago I subscribed and paid for newspapers in NY, Washington D.C., Boston, Tampa, Miami and St. Petersburg. After 2016 they all became one paper with nearly identical editorial pages, fewer book reviews and less and less local coverage. Thank goodness Substack emerged.
Freddie, what do you think of the Yglesias-type point that the most important piece of context for the 2024 election is that virtually every single incumbent political party in Europe and North America, whether left or right, has gotten trounced recently?
America is fantastically rich and minimum wage workers in the US earn more than middle class people in major G7 economies. Exactly how much better do you think we can make things?
The U.S. isn't even in the top 20 for minimum wage. And that's without a national healthcare system. Which not only virtually every other "1st World" country has, but would also make America's rating much worse if factored into the formula.
It would be more accurate to say America's fantastically rich are fantastically rich compared to other G7 economies.
And if you’ve ever needed to access the system here, you’ll find that it is expensive and unavailable in many areas of the country. In our rural county, there are NO primary care providers taking new patients. Appointments for first line specialties like cardiology and endocrinology (diabetes and other metabolic diseases) are 3-5 months out.
The types of care that people start needing on a routine basis starting around age 60 are completely swamped. In some cases that’s probably not a big deal—if you wait 6 months for a hip or knee replacement it’s not going to kill you, but delays in care for conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc. are going to result in people getting sicker and needing more expensive interventions once they do get care.
If you keel over in the street yes, you’ll be seen immediately, but that is also true in Canada.
In the US everyone gets healthcare immediately, but its in dispute who covers it. In Canada no one gets healthcare immediately, but there's no dispute over who covers it.
I saw a guy on a six month wait list for a gall bladder surgery. He ended up paying for it to be done in Alaska.
Not every country has a situation where homelessness is a huge problem, a medical crisis can bankrupt you, and lead pipes can't be remediated. Hell, we weren't like that only a few decades ago. 1960s American went to the moon, it's not entirely clear to me that we can. Don't bother throwing a bunch of stats at me, they don't change the underlying reality and many of them measure things that don't matter.
I am reasonably confident that if we spent 200 billion per year (3% of the current federal budget) for 4 years straight on going to the moon, we would be able to do a decent job of it even in today's much-more-regulated-than-the-1960s environment.
And yes, you can argue that you should be using constant inflation-adjusted dollars, not fractions of the budget, but it sort of speaks to prioritization and focus: going to the moon was a thing that was _wanted_ on the federal level and then people made it happen.
That's sort of the point, federal revenue is much greater, borrowing is astronomically higher and yet the budget is so shot through with waste and corruption there's no money for such a thing. We meant to the moon for about $318 Billion dollars in todays money, having to do a lot of the.design and engineering from scratch. In 2016 the Pentagon buried a study that showed it was wasting $125 Billion a year in unnecessary bureaucracy alone. That doesn't.incluse things like the littoral combat ship ($11 Billion for basically nothing), nor the enormous waste in the rest of the government. So there's a ton of money that should be there that just isn't for no particular reason (not to.mention uncollected taxes due to hamstringing the IRS).
Also, even if we had the money, this country has a fraction of the industrial base it did back then so costs would be probably higher.
Strange thing: Trump actually has a record as President. Forget that fan favorite "he incited an insurrection on Jan 6!!!" Ignore his bombastic, off-the-cuff speechifying, which is what FdB and everyone else seems to react to. What exactly during his first term did he actually do that was so very heinous, policy-wise? I lived through those years. No one was sent to camps. Contra Whoopi, interracial marriages were not SWATted. Nuclear missiles were not launched. Newspaper editors were not rounded up and sent to Guantanamo. What did he, you know, do? Wouldn't that be more, you know, relevant to an assessment of what a second Trump term might look like?
And really FdB, divisive? Really? You have been rather good at fearlessly pointing out the self-evident (that's not a dig, you really have, where others on the left cower and quake), except the self-evident truth that the modern progressive left's raison d'etre is to sow social discord and division, to threaten their ideological opponents (I mean, Keith Olbermann?). Hillary said deplorables. Obama said bitter clingers. Yet Trump is divisive?
Martin Gurri wrote that Trump's rhetoric was off the charts but his actual governance was staid and pedestrian. As proof look at how many of his policies were continued by Biden after he took over. Now even Harris is saying that she wants to continue building the border wall.
I would posit that his rhetoric HAD to be off the charts, as that would be the only way someone could break past the wall of false information being spread about him and his plans.
"What exactly during his first term did he actually do that was so very heinous, policy-wise?"
As the many super conservative generals and cabinet members who have said the dude is, in fact, fascistic and dangerous. Have you read any of their accounts? Trump wanted to do criminal, heinous things; sane people stopped him.
He wanted to launch missiles into Mexico. He wanted to arrest and round up political enemies, and fired people when they wouldn't do it. He wanted to send troops into the streets, and fired generals when they wouldn't do it. He wanted to have protestors and immigrants shot in the legs.
These aren't the fever dreams of pearl-clutching DNC operatives––they are first-hand reports from people who would have been thrilled to have a hard-right, charismatic Trump bringing to voters into the Republican party. But they were sorry to report that the dude was bat-shit crazy and put the US and many other countries at serious risk.
Just for starters: Baker and Glasser, The Divider. Almost all of their sources inside the Trump administration are either on the record or have since gone public. It documents the missiles he ordered into Mexico, the desire to shoot protestors and immigrants in the legs, the order to send troops into US cities, the orders to arrest Biden, Clinton, and others––and much, much more.
Ah. So the newspapers changed the quotes then? Or maybe they really said a lot of nice things about Trump, the but quotes were merely edited very unfairly?
Good god. In the US, neither cops nor troops are allowed to shoot either demonstrators or rioters, unless a life is directly at risk. Fourth Amendment.
I guess y'all are post-Constitution now, at least as long as its Trump who calls the shots.
There are countless other first-hand reports from Trump cabinet members who describe the weekly or daily efforts to pull him back from bizarre or criminal acts. The whole Project 2025 is to ensure no one is hired in a second Trump term who will thwart him in anything he wants to do.
So we agree troops or police shouldn't shoot people in the legs, then? Well, that's something.
Biden's dumb remark was proposing an alternative to cops using a "shoot to kill" policy with criminal suspects; Trump wanted to shoot migrants in the legs to "slow them down" and wanted to shoot US protestors in the legs to stop protests that he thought made him "look weak."
If J6 is the best argument that the opposition can muster that Trump tried to steal an election I should let you know right now that I consider that nonsense.
What makes you think I would defend any craziness on the part of any administration? I'm certainly happy to point out the failure of the current regime with regard to the border, or their contribution to domestic inflation.
What makes you think I would defend any craziness on the part of any administration? I'm certainly happy to point out the failure of the current regime with regard to the border, or their contribution to domestic inflation.
The border is a serious issue; too bad Republicans won't work with Democrats to authorize many more border officials to process applicants as per US law. But the havoc you refer to has been fused to countless lies and obfuscations (they're eating the cats). To me it is self-evident that Biden-Harris administration looks better than the Trump administration overall (including on the economy). Especially when we have Republican "obstructionists" like Kelly, Esper, and Mattis to thank for stopping a lot of heinous actions.
Biden/Harris didn't reverse fundamental rights for women––something that a lot of folks see as a much greater "havoc" than illegal immigration.
Neither Biden nor Harris has made breaking the law their favorite past time like Trump has (steal documents and lie about it under oath, call up election officials and demand they "find" you votes, etc. etc.)
And, no, I don't see why anyone should "put aside" January 6th. That's pretty much one of those jokes: "But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?"
J6 was a protest that morphed into a riot, no more or less, in a year that saw dozens of such incidents. The difference was that the vast majority of those were on the BLM side of things, meaning that the perpetrators were largely ignored as compared to the J6 rioters who were pursued with the full force of the government.
There is zero question that millions more illegals flooded into the country under Biden/Harris compared to the Trump administration. There should also be zero question that the primary factor there was the Biden admin allowing Trump's agreement with the Mexican government to impede migration to the US southern border to lapse.
There is no comparison between the destruction in the wake of BLM demonstrations and the J6. To make those cases comparable would require that Biden, Harris, or other Dem leaders a) publicly and privately foster protestors to "fight" and engage in "trial by combat" over the murder of George Floyd––they didn't; b) have their arm twisted before condemning the violent destruction by looters––Dem leadership condemned right away; c) then revise history to openly claim those nights of mayhem were really "nights of love"; d) promise to pardon people who were convicted of rioting and destruction of federal property; e) later deny that looters were violent––none of which they did.
Most of all, f) the violence after BLM protests did not attack the site of the transfer of federal power in order to try to abort an election of a president.
If the choice is between Trump and Obama then absolutely you can argue that one is preferable to the other based on the difference in metrics between those two.
If the choice is between Trump and Harris then the question of what Obama did is completely irrelevant.
In terms of the BLM riots versus J6 dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, lost their lives as a result of the BLM riots. The cost for those riots ran into the billions of dollars. And far more of the country was directly exposed to the BLM riots as compared to J6.
As for those claims you are making specifically about Trump and J6, let's see your sources.
Trump was presented one of the greatest opportunities in our country’s history to seize dictatorial control during Covid. Even his political enemies were begging him to tell people when they could even leave their own house. And he passed and primarily turned power over to the states. These are not the instincts of a dictator.
What did he do...except attempt to stay in power after losing the election you mean? And I'm talking serious, sustained attempts to subvert the system and overturn the results of the election.
I don't have a big problem with his policies as president (at least, no more than I might any president). I have a big problem with his reckless attempts to subvert the 2020 election. When it comes to Donald Trump, I'm a single-issue voter.
The Time piece IS specific. Banning the Hunter laptop story is also specific. Numerous CEOs, etc came out and SPECIFICALLY articulated that 'fortifying' the 2020 election was necessary to ensure a Biden victory. Don't be obtuse...its desperate.
I think that absent mail in balloting Trump would have probably won in 2020, and that the judicial process whereby mail in balloting was implemented in places like PA in a fashion that seemed to run counter to statute was irregular to say the least.
Given that Trump was watching unelected bureaucrats roll out mail in balloting in states where supposedly only the legislature had the ability to make such changes I would guess that his mindset was that the election was being stolen from him by elections officials who were making an end run around the law.
PA Act 77 was passed in 2019 by a Republican-controlled state assembly with strong Republican support. No challenge was brought until November 21 2020, when Mike Kelly tried to have either all absentee ballots invalidated -- 2.5 million -- or invalidate all votes and let the (Republican) state legislature choose the electors for the state.
You tell me if the law that was passed by Republicans and on the books since October 2019 was what Trump had in mind in the months leading up to the election...but he didn't bother to ever challenge it, nor did the party, until after the 2020 election over a year later. And challenge it in order to disenfranchise 2.5 million (or 6.9 million) people who were, as far as they understood it, following the law.
One would think if he were worried about that statute and wanted to challenge it, he'd have done so in April or June or August instead of after the election (and not even really by him, though I don't know what if any coordination there may have been between Kelley and the Trump campaign).
Spent every minute drumming up loud, often cruel and bizarre, controversies that divided Americans until the rule of law literally broke down in 2020 and there were riots in the streets.
Tried his best to rob you of your healthcare, but came one vote short.
Succeeded in robbing you of your abortion rights.
Spent the pandemic attempting to make it as partisan as possible, leading to hundreds of thousands of extra deaths when his followers who he’d told COVID was no big deal, refused to take the vaccine.
Tried to steal the election and, when he didn’t succeed, sent a mob to attack Congress and, when that failed, installed his autocratic followers into the election boards across the country who will surely do their best to steal the next election if he loses.
Face it. This was a shit President and is a shit man.
Leaving the same comment I left on Ross Barkan's piece today:
If Trump wins again, I won't like it. But I won't make the same mistake I did in his first term by getting over-emotional all the time. I'm committing to a more stoic approach.
Froomkin and his ilk are frequent believers in magical thinking. If enough of the correct words appear in the correct places, Trump will magically disappear. They are gnostics.
As if Froomkin has forgotten that the NYT, the WaPo, and most of the MSM spent years breathlessly chasing a conspiracy theory so wacky, it would have gotten them laughed out of the 1962-era John Birch Society.
Cue up images of Birchers wearing Very Stiff Suits, smirking at one another and making the "will you get a load of these guys?" gestures.
I also find it rich that the same people who insist that Trump is senile are the same people who insist that he is About To Take Over The World. The man is so incompetent, he could not get a Team R Congress to repeal Obamacare.
It’s not Trump I fear, he is definitely very incompetent. I fear the people he could enable. They’ve all had four years to learn how to stroke his ego and butter him up. There are anti-abortion/anti-IVF groups whose leaders have said they know Trump probably doesn’t really care about their causes but they know he would sign a national ban into law.
He’s the chaos candidate and I while he can’t simply enact Project 2025 by himself, it’s a massive gamble and I don’t blame people for feeling worried about the worst case scenario.
We heard that one in 2016 as well. As if Team R didn't spend eight years railing against Obamacare.
Edit: axtually, we've been hearing how Team R is lockstep marching to destroy democracy since Bill Clinton's first term.
Sure, but Team R are far more off the rails than they were in 2016 even.
Not really. They certainly are not more organized.
I’d love to hear why you think that is the case. They seem to all be singing from the same sheet to me.
I mean that sincerely, by the way. I’m doing chemo so not always able to keep up. Haha
The guy who was flogging Trump Watches(tm) and gives liberals the vapors by bringing on unfunny comedians? Seriously?
In terms of the actual political campaign I think Team R has done a much better job than Team D to this point.
Well, Team D has a habit of coasting on its institutional advantages.
I think this is right but more to do with the uniqueness of the circumstances rather than what each respective team is doing. When Biden's frailties became too obvious to cover up, the Dems had to switch gears and went with someone who is not only a terrible candidate but also has publicly espoused every zany progressive idea of the past 5-10 years which she now has to try and backtrack from since none of them are remotely popular with the electorate at large.
You know I'm a never-Trumper but how do you quantify "Team R has done a much better job"? Trump favorability has gone nowhere and the Harris campaign has really moved the needle.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/kamala-harris/
I have noted that the Democrat are a well-coordinated and agreeable group of comrades that can drag a crappy candidate to the finish line for a win. While the Republicans are a feckless and disorganized internally fighting group of factions that require Trump to drag their asses to the finish line to win.
The only reason that the Republicans look good now is that they have resigned to supporting Trump as they have discovered that nobody like the neocons. The only reason that the Democrats are not able to drag Harris to the finish line is that the Democrat performance in office and their ideas being pushed suck more than their candidates.
I say this with all due respect but this is part of the problem. The hyperbole is just too much. First of all, the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total Republican demolition of the Democrats is the abortion topic. The Republicans are completely on their heels on this topic. It has cost them winnable elections over the last 4 years.
The Roe v Wade overturning is just another maddening case of misinformation. They kicked the decision to the states. In 10 years at the most, abortion will be completely legal in all 50 states. Red states will have more restrictions and the timeline could be shorter in some states than in others but eventually it will be legal everywhere. The majority of the country wants it legal and they will eventually get their way. I live in one of the reddest states in the country and can promise you that if it was put to a vote, abortion will be legal.
I agree with you fully, abortion is popular and I think there is a level of hysteria surrounding Trump. I was more speaking to the fear of the unknown, which is powerful and I find it frustrating that some people who believe themselves to be so tuned in snub their nose at an understandable fear to exert how intellectually superior they are. But let’s not ignore real issues, like two potentially three seats on the SCOTUS.
also, abortion was decided and it was already legal. People have died and been seriously harmed since it was kicked back to the states, doctors are leaving red states in droves (Idaho has lost 20% of their OB/GYNs since their ban was enacted, they aren’t coming back). I’m sorry, but I find that far more maddening than people worrying about the unlikely case that a national ban could be enacted. It’s unacceptable that it even got to this point and anyone who isn’t livid about it really lacks a sense of proportion in my mind.
Did you read the article or just the headline? This is why people don't trust the media. I read that article. The article said that they lost 55% of their high risk pregnancy doctors leaving them with only 5. That means they lost 6. These are extreme outlier cases.
20% just picked up and moved to another state? Does that make sense to you? The source was Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative. What the hell is that? How do they even know that?
Do you know how hard is to build a practice, build a patient base? Then you just walk away from that? Put a for sale in your yard and move to another state? Come on.
Seems pretty clear that the law has been pretty disastrous for obstetrical care in Idaho, your protestations about the difficulty of find a new practice notwithstanding.
“ Idaho is digging itself into a workforce hole that will take many years, if not decades, to fill. But before we can stabilize the environment and move forward, we have to stop digging. And we need more clarity in our laws to help with that,” said Susie Pouliot Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association.”
“ Dr. Sara Thomson, a Boise OB-GYN who represented the Idaho section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said at the Capitol presentation some OB-GYNs she knows have left because of the “moral conflict” they experience while treating patients. And more are thinking about leaving if Idaho’s laws don’t change, she said.
“Many of us have had a crisis of conscience about what to do. Feeling both deeply committed to our patients, but also concerned about what this means for us personally and for our own families,” Thomson said. “The threat of incarceration for five years for patient care is a heavy burden. And being told that no physician in our state has been prosecuted — yet — or that a case of medical necessity is unlikely to be prosecuted, is not adequately reassuring.””
“ Idaho is seeing the expansion of “obstetric deserts,” where “pregnant mothers may need to travel long distances either for prenatal care or for the delivery of their baby,” said Idaho Hospital Association CEO Brian Whitlock.”
“ But Idaho hospitals have seen twice or sometimes three times the number of OB-GYN vacancies than they usually had, Whitlock said. Idaho hospitals, meanwhile, are seeing a third or half as many OB-GYNs applying to jobs, he said.”
I think your fears are unfounded given the actual threats to Americans are things like economic collapse and nuclear war. Everything else is really twaddle and subject to the majority interests.
Democrats will ram unpopular policies down everyone's throats. Republicans including Trump will not. This has to do with what Haidt observed that Republicans tend to operate with a more diverse set of moral filters. Democrats can justify every action over claims of harm and care as their only moral consideration.
Just name a policy or action that Trump has taken or proposed that is not a majority view.
Just because Trump wasn’t literally caught taking a briefcase full of cash from Putin doesn’t mean he was innocent. He flirted with a dictator, and encouraged him to interfere with an election, publicly and privately, and continues his quiet alliance with Putin to this day. All of this was more than enough to be a major scandal before the bar of bad actions was raised so high that it wouldn’t count unless there was a literal pee tape published.
In other words, we don't need evidence. We just know.
All of the things I said are true and proven.
He said “Putin if you’re listening…” His son privately said Russian interference would be great.
*That’s*.your evidence? Seriously?
Donald Trump and his spawn are grifters. No joke. The man was behind the operation of "Trump University", to name but one recent example.
That does not make the russiagate conspiracy theory true any more than it means that Trump must have been behind the murder of Mickey Mouse.
In fact, if Putin had half the intelligence that russiagate conspiracy theorists routinely ascribe to him, he'd have enough sense to pick a patsy with less obvious and public baggage. Putin certainly wouldn't let said patsy do bonehead things, nickel and dime crap like pay porn stars out of campaign funds or give the foreign policy establishment the vapors by calling for rapprochement with Russia.
Instead, he'd pick a flunky that looks and talks too good to be true, charming and devoted wife and 2.43 well-scrubbed and seemingly well-adjusted kids. He'd pick a flunky that says all the right things on the campaign trail, one that doesn't set a million internet Russia experts, volunteer FBI agents, amateur spy hunters and MSM talking heads frothing at the mouth with crackpot conspiracy theories.
Putin would also pick a candidate who reserves his true passions for ten-year old Polynesians of either sex. Not some doofus so without shame that he couldn't even be blackmailed by pu$$ygate, because everyone already knows, that's just how Trump rolls.
Of course, if Putin had as much sense as God gave my youngest kitten, he'd make sure that his puppet was well prepared and had a whole list of appointees, all carefully vetted and prepared and compromised in advance. Not the clownshow that was the Trump transition. Not the Keystone Kops omnishambles that has been a hallmark of Trump administration staffing from Day One.
And lastly, once Putin carefully slipped his stooge into power, he'd quietly make sure that his stooge undertook policies that favor Russia. Not policies identical to those of a meaner, more reckless, more dysfunctional version of a Dubya administration.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/11/27/leaked-transcript-proves-russiagaters-have-been-right-all-along/
Again, to believe the russiagate conspiracy theory, you have to believe that Putin has superpowers bordering on the occult. At the same time, you have to believe that Putin has no idea how to use these superpowers.
There are people who believe that Trump is a literal paid Kremlin stooge. I’m not one of them. I think he accepted and encouraged political gifts from Putin and, since, has always treated Putin as an ally.
Evidence? Hell, when Trump took office, the transition team literally had to call the general Kremlin switchboard, as they had no contacts in the Russian government.
I just do not see how the Obama/Biden years can be described in any way that makes this so: "the Democrats are a feckless center-right party." Well, feckless, yes. But to be center-right must make the far left, far, far away from anything resembling center.
It really isn't too different than R's saying that the party is just RINO's and secretly trying to do the Dems bidding. Which you hear all the time on the red side of the internet.
Yep. It's typically bullshit in both directions. Combine that with the fact that Freddie sees almost everything through economic eyes first when it comes to "left" vs. "right" and economically, one can certainly argue that the Democratic *party* is center-right, at least under Clinton, and arguably under Obama (Obamacare being more an exception than a rule).
But once you bring cultural issues into it, there doesn't appear to be much argument for them being center-right.
Obamacare was The Heritage Foundation's plan for fixing healthcare. By the time it came into the national spotlight the right had moved further right, that doesn't mean that it wasn't originally a conservative plan.
The fact that Republicans haven't been able to come up with any alternatives to Obamacare that actually address the healthcare system, while as a leftist I can think of more than a few, is further proof of this.
That's quite fair. Originally, it was loosely based on Republican Mitt Romney's plan from Massachusetts, as I understand it, and there was a whole lot of sops thrown to the various drug and insurance companies in it. I think it's fair to call it corporate liberalism, which is pretty descriptive of Obama.
It's the same shit from people who expect too much.
"Why doesn't the ACA have a public option???" Because they didn't have the votes.
"Why didn't they do anything about climate change?" Because they didn't have the votes and the courts struck down the clean power plan.
"Why didn't they do more stimulus???" Because they didn't have the votes.
Obama was a legitimate lefty but dealt with an absolutely obstructionist congress after his first 2 years. If he could have made congress carry out his will we'd have some pretty progressive policies in place right now.
Joe Lieberman (I - Aetna)
Legitimate leftists don't allow torture to go unpunished, or at the very least would attempt to reform the system, and they also don't allow Wall St. to get away with wrecking the economic prospects of a generation (millennials). Also they don't greatly expand the use of drone warfare.
"didn't have the votes" because of the rotating villain strategy. First is was Joe Lieberman, then Manchin and Sinema sent out to flummox the will of the people. And if they can't find enough senators to be villains, there is always the parliamentarian to fall back on.
Nope, I'm not having it. The Dems have maxed out their credit limit on promises. Until they deliver something other than another war or some wokie bullshit, I'm doe with them.
I don't understand your perspective. Are you saying they are making these people oppose their agenda? It's happening organically. The democratic party isn't bullying them into voting no. That would be ridiculous.
And just under Biden they've passed a huge stimulus package, the first every climate bill in US history, and a large infrastructure bill. That's a productive presidency.
And under Obama they passed the largest health care reform in 50 years.
What has the GOP done in that time? Nothing but tax cuts.
Classic move to deflect to the Republicans when discussing the problems with the Democrats. I'm not talking about the GOP right now, so let's stay on topic.
The majority of Americans want Medicare for All, but the monied interests do not. Cue Joe Loserman to be the rotating villain to erase the veto proof majority in the Senate to derail the public option. So no, Obama care was not any sort of "health care reform," it was an insurance bailout scheme.
As for the "stimulus package" you may recall that originally there was the infrastructure provisions (big money to corporate donors) and the build back better provisions (direct aid to normal people with things like child care for working parents). Remember the Dems genius move to split the bills, knowing that the Republicans would vote to pass the corporate welfare heavy infrastructure bill and then Manchin and Sinema would refuse to joint Build Back Better and allow it to die.
And don't get me started on abortion rights, where the Dems had 8 fucking months to codify roe while they controlled the White House and both houses of congress. They could not even be bothered to codify Roe during the lame duck session between the election and the Republicans taking over the house.
The votes weren't there because the Dems did not want them to be there. Until they deliver on what they are always "fighting for" I'm not voting for them, period. Got it, Jack?
I'm sorry this is totally ridiculous. Your perspective is that moderates don't actually exist, but are manufactured by the party? Those bills didn't pass because moderates shot them down. That's it. It's simple. They couldn't get the votes. Your weird conspiracy about democrats intentionally creating bills to piss off moderates is just that, a conspiracy. When you have 50 senate seats everyone needs to be on board. They weren't. That's it.
Lord Almighty. Medicare for All is the moderate position since most of the electorate favors it. But then again, you're the type who always has a ready excuse to defend the Dems no matter what. I've already schooled you with the facts, which you haven't addressed. You just sputter out the same vapid talking points.
I mean, yes? The far left is, definitionally, far from the center.
"Though I suspect, sadly, that therapy might not be too constructive for many of them. Because I’m willing to bet that they want their therapists to be Big Mommy too."
Money quote.
The savage anger of this piece is striking. Especially that quote.
By the by, I spend a decent amount of time in therapy and around people who do therapy and oh boy is he right.
Along those lines:
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-robbery-of-three-liberal-arts-graduates-the-police-report
Omg, the tears!! I'm dyin.
And from 2010, no less...back in the good ol days! The Sonntag 'valuables' part put me over the edge....had to wipe away the snot from laughing so hard.
TY for this....
There is a reason it stuck in my head.
I've read some funny, sardonic shit there @ McSweeneys...thats a top one!
Brilliant.
Park Slope Pravda....also on the nose. Lol.
It's victimhood culture. People grew up being told that they were the victims of [insert -ism], whether personal or systematic. Can't settle conflicts on their own.
Oh how I wish the Democratic party was actually center-left, instead of being dominated by progressives on both economic and social issues in the post-Obama era.
It's incredible how much of a standout Obama was relative to the other post-Clinton presidential candidates. It amazes me that politicians rise to the very top while being not very good at some of the core competencies of being a politician--like speaking at length to convince people to vote for you.
Obama would have killed it on Rogan talking sports.
Trump is an immensely flawed candidate in terms of running a professional campaign as well, but he can at least put on a show.
Me from 2016 would hate hearing me say this, but the Trump supporters can be pretty fun too. They've got memes!
I'd love it if Bill Clinton were running, with Matt Yglesias as his policy advisor, but I think Freddie would probably call them "center-right."
The current Dem party has college educated professionals and government employees as its essential client, with tech and finance multimillionaires and trust fund kids as their funding class. They're willing to enact some large giveaways as long as they include the middle class (often the upper middle class) and they love college style demonstrative progressivism, but to a Marxist like Freddie, they have to look like pretty weak tea. I'd call them functionally center-left, but left of neoliberals like Yglesias.
If a Marxist considers all capitalists to be on the right, regardless of views on redistribution, then that just makes it pointless for a Marxist to engage with non-Marxists using “left/right” labels.
Is Bernie a man of the right? Elizabeth Warren?
What defines the center here in theoretical or empirical terms?
Only certain readers of the NYT would appreciate your spot-on use of the word synecdoche.
"You have to have a political plan to defeat him, an appeal to make ordinary, distracted, low-information voters prefer your agenda, and 21st century Democrats still don’t know what that plan looks like."
What on earth makes you thinkt hat the average frsutrated Team D apparatchik wants anything to do with icky flyover people or their concerns? Many are fat and have bad taste.
Rather, the normies should vote Team D, because Team D obviously are just Better, More Virtuous, More Enlightened and Educated People and they have the totebags to prove it! (That also is why the PMC see their status as the hegemonic class as being entirely nautral and just. Because they deserve it.)
I haven't fully fleshed out my thoughts on this, but I don't think it's a coincidence that Marxist philosophy, as filtered through our political and media elite, has moved from class-based to race-based. The "elite" has always had to suppress the urge to hold the lower classes in contempt, at least in some part because open class contempt is a betrayal of their professed political philosophies. But moving from class to race made it not only acceptable, but virtuous, to finally unleash their pent-up contempt for the lower class.
I have written about this before - if Marx taught nothing else, he taught that everything is downstream of technology (which sets the limits on what is possible) and economics (which sets the limits on what options are available).
That said, to paraphrase Chris Hedges, today's elites will display a touching sensitivity to all manner of racial, gender, etc. issues. They will not readily discuss economic class.
That's the secret; hate on poor white people, the universal scapegoat. (No one likes poor white people, not even ourselves.)
All the arrogance of religion, without any evangelical program.
And you don’t even get doughnuts on Sunday after services.
One viewpoint that I've been dragged to, kicking and screaming over the past eight years is that Team D is, for the most part, right. Seeing the depths to which Team R has sunk to has been a real eye-opener. Team R really does have a higher percentage of terrible people in it, and a higher percentage of those who stand by and enable terrible people. One reason Team D holds different views than Team R is that Team D is better educated, so their views are correct, while Team R is full of buffoonish conspiracy theorists who are wrong about everything.
Right now Team R is trying to elect someone who has explicitly promised to destroy or weaken the institutions that make America a great country. While they do this, they insist that it is neccessary to "save" the country from a candidate with bog-standard centrist views and policies. That is both stupid and evil. Hillary Clinton was right about them, back on 9/9/16.
Epstein's flight logs not withstanding ...
This brings to mind the chilling question that Anton Chiguhr asked Carson Wells in “No Country for Old Men”: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
Anyway, it's been Team D that has been pushing for censorship. To "save democracy ", of course.
I'm not sure what you mean by that statement about the rule. Following the rule of "people who lose elections should leave office" seems like it has been a good thing so far, bad stuff happened after Trump broke it. America isn't perfect right now, it never is, but having a more rule-abiding and lawful president for the past four years has been an improvement. The rule-breaking that Trump did made things worse, not better.
Censorship has always been a "both sides" thing, even before Trump. There are definitely some attempts by Democrats to censor "misinformation," but Trump has threatened to do similar things when he attains power, like revoking the broadcasts licenses of networks that are critical of him. There has also been a concerted effort by Republicans to both censor pornography, and to classify any discussion of sexuality that they disagree with as pornography.
Ask yourself how we got to this place, other than "Team D Good. Team R bad".
Even if Trump were to order censorship (he didn't from 2016-2020), he has no institutional support and would get nowhere. Sort of like how the Pentagon simply ignored orders from Trumpt hat they didn't like. Team D, on the other hand, has plenty of institutional support.
Since all you offer are dopey insults and statements so vague that they might as well be copypaste.
You are minimizing the GOP’s power by waving away their terrible actions. That’s been a deliberate framing on the right to both censor others and complain about censorship.
Sounds like more "Team D Good - Team R Bad" framing, especially as you are so vague on what "terrible acts" were committed and how any Team R president would get any such actions effectuated.
I find these “heterodox” commentary spaces frustrated because too many people just excuse everything Trump does and don’t think that they are just biased.
I am not excusing anything, and I have precisely zero intention to vote for Trump.
Good for you.
Bravo. What a great piece.
Albert Einstein supposedly said something like 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result". That describes the current Democratic party. Trump is charged with a crime: no impact on the polls. Trump is charged with more crimes: no impact on the polls. Trump is convicted: you see where I'm going.
Maybe, just maybe, what matters to voters right now is the high price of groceries and rent. Why not talk to them about that? Instead the Democrats seem to think that if they just keep yelling the same thing ("Nazi", "fascist") over and over again that even if it didn't work the first or third or twentieth time that maybe the 100th time it will finally get through. And if that doesn't work? Let's go for 500.
Guess what though? Banging your head against a wall doesn't accomplish anything other than giving you brain damage.
Make no mistake, the Democrats are losing the election. A large part of that is their inability to talk to voters about the issues that matter to voters. Instead they focus on the issues that matter to Democrats. Why? I'm not the only person to posit that they are living in an extraordinary bubble that leaves them unable to empathize or communicate with most of the country.
It should also be obvious to anyone not already a Never-Trumper that he was being railroaded.
Hell, I have precisely zero intention to vote for Trump, and I can see that.
I mean he did some shit, but the NY charges were bonkers, I agree.
The scope and reach of American criminal law is such that an aggressive prosecutor can always find a reason to go after anyone, especially anyone involved in higher leverl business or politics.
Yes, the charges were ok as a technical legal matter, however, if they were actually enforced that way, you'd have to throw half of NYC im prison.
The Georgia charges of, "find me some votes" are what you could legit nail him on, even under Trump v. US. But they fucked that prosecution up.
"Yes, the charges were ok as a technical legal matter, however, if they were actually enforced that way, you'd have to throw half of NYC im prison."
That's sort of my point. This is entriely intentional. There is always a pretect to attack anyone that people of influence and authority want attacked, and it is entirely legal.
This also keeps anyone from rocking the boat too much.
Yeah, it’s why I shut off my ears when anyone talks about how we are, “undermining the rule of law.” Exaggerating RE valuations to support collateralized bank loans is literally the job of tens of thousands of people
But Pelosi JUST said. 'don't agonize, organize!' And the cattle lowed their approval....
LMAO....
"Teacher, teacher, Donny said a bad word!"
You have to examine the nature of Trump's crimes and convictions. On Judge Merchan's 34 felonies. OK, misdemeanors can get rolled up into felonies if they're done in aid of a felony. Fine by me. But Trump was never convicted of the supporting felony. Judge Merchan didn't even name the exact felony, he offered three possible felonies from which the jurors could choose to think were the supporting felonies required to turn the accounting errors into felonies. Then Judge Merchan said the jurors don't need to have 100% concurrence for a conviction. Um, that's blatantly un American to not require 100% of the jury pool for a conviction.
It would be like if you got a speeding ticket, went to Traffic Court and the judge upgraded it to a felony because he then accused you of fleeing a crime ... without needing a conviction of the supporting crime to roll your speeding ticket into a felony.
So maybe you want to live in a country where any judge can roll a misdemeanor into a felony on the judges accusation alone ... not me.
"But Trump was never convicted of the supporting felony."
Absolutely. Whenever I'm debating somebody about those criminal charges I always ask them one simple question: why wasn't Trump charged with that second crime?
It has always been the case that a prosecutor can say something like:
"The accused kidnapped the victim, killed her in some fashion, perhaps with a weapon such as the gun we have shown he possessed or the rat poison we have shown he purchased, then buried her in his back yard. This was murder."
And then some jurors can vote "guilty" because they're pretty sure he killed the victim with a gun, and some because they think it was rat poison, and some because they have no idea how exactly he did it but they're sure he did it somehow. And among the 12 jurors their may be 12 different opinions as to the accused's actual motive. And that's fine.
The jurors must be unanimous that he committed the crime (and on what crime he committed). They are not required (nor have they have been required, nor would it be reasonable to require them) to agree on the *details* of the crime.
> Um, that's blatantly un American to not require 100% of the jury pool for a conviction.
100% of the jury pool agreed that Trump was guilty of the crime he was accused of. That is, they were convinced that Trump took the actions he did in support of a felony. There is no reason (or precedent, or requirement) that they need to agree on which felony it was.
> It would be like if you got a speeding ticket, went to Traffic Court and the judge upgraded it to a felony because he then accused you of fleeing a crime ... without needing a conviction of the supporting crime to roll your speeding ticket into a felony.
If the prosecutor can convince a jury that you were fleeing a crime, then that's... perfectly fair? It has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, it has to be a jury of your peers, the jury has to be unanimous, all the protections of criminal trials must apply, obviously. But ultimately the principle is that if a jury unanimously finds you guilty of the elements of an offence, then you're guilty and must suffer the punishment.
There is no "the jury said I murdered someone but they got the murder weapon wrong so I go free" defence in American law. Nor, I would argue, should there be.
But Trump wasn't convicted of the underlying felony. The jury wasn't trying Trump on the underlying felony. AND the underlying felony was out of that court's jurisdiction. Judge Merchan blocked the defense from bringing as a witness, the man who wrote the law Judge Merchan was accusing Trump of violating.
Its one thing for you to be tried in court with jurisdiction of law A for a crime A. Its another thing for you to be tried in a court with jurisdiction of law B, on charge B but being accused of crime A where court B doesn't have jurisdiction for law A. Which is what happened.
`high price of groceries and rent'
Kamala has spoken to at least price gouging.
Muddled her message in the crucial final weeks with the "Trump is a Nazi" rhetoric. Zero appeal to swing voters.
Who did the picture at the top of the article?
I think you're drawing a bad comparison between George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Bush was a terrible president, no doubt, but he recognized the rule of law, and saw himself primarily as a civil servant. (He was a terrible example of a civil servant, but leave that to the side for now.) Donald Trump is contemptuous of democracy, views the law as something for other people to obey, associates proudly with criminals, is a felon himself, sneers at public service as the occupation of suckers and losers, and would watch this nation burn to the ground as long as he got to loot the ashes.
This is what people mean when they say Trump is not normal. I think they are right.
George Bush doesn’t care about black people
And isn't it absolutely bizarre where Kanye ended up?
All of that is granted, but even so I think W. was the worst presidency of my lifetime. (Born in the early '80s.)
The website First Things ran a piece recently tracing the history of American institutions twisting the rule of law and dismantling institutional neutrality, and although the groundwork for it was laid with Nixon and certain tools developed by the Clinton administration, in their telling it really ramped up under Dubya. Spying, wiretaps, turning the tools of the intelligence against citizens. And above all, the weaponization of global finance, used to suppress anything the leaders of Western countries didn't like – e.g. Trudeau freezing the assets of people donating to the trucker protest. Bush not only damaged America, his administration helped build totalitarian tools that are weilded the world over. Democrats talking about maybe shredding the 1st amendment to fight "disinformation" is a direct descendent of the new norms W. helped put in place.
And none of that even touches on Iraq and WMDs
The worst contribution Trump made is coarsening the culture around politics. He may be an idiot and a wannabe despot, but he only cares about making himself feel big. He's too short-sighted. I don't believe anything else he did during his (first?) term has proved as wide-reaching.
Trump vs. US may prove to be more damaging to the nation than anything GWB ever thought of doing.
Maybe, but it's the capstone of the development of the Imperial Presidency, which started under FDR, and got completely out of control under Truman (who didn't understand the implications of what he was doing), and really accelerated under Nixon and Reagan. Clinton, IMO was actually a small step back as Congress actually took some real power after the 1994 election. The 9/11 came and Cheney and his "unitary theory" put the whole thing together. Trump v. US was just legal confirmation of a situation that already existed de facto.
After the number of coubntries we have turned into failed states, we deserve a taste of our own medicine.
Bush enabled the military, the intelligence agencies, and the billionaires. He caused the Great Recession by his unwillingness to control Wall Street. He invaded countries at the behest of special interests. He destroyed education. He signed the Patriot Act and created DHS. He allowed banks to steal 7 million homes.
In short GWB hurt American and the world a lot more than Trump ever would or could. Obama was just as bad as GWB in many ways.
Stop pretending these people are good or honorable. Every president since at least Bush 41 has hurt the country and the world.
Trump doesn't follow the gentleman's agreements that have defined politics for centuries. He doesn't care about the polite fictions, he doesn't owe favors to any power brokers, and he doesn't care about the party, or his fellow Rs, or getting re-elected. Which, to the electorate, makes him free of bullshit.
If by "gentleman's agreements" you mean "rule of law", then I certainly agree. He's certainly full of bullshit, whatever the electorate thinks.
(It's interesting to note that Trump has yet to win the national vote, BTW. Maybe next week will see something different, but for now, he's just not that popular a guy.)
His success is a shame to the establishment, and a disgrace to the country, that we are so divided and isolated that 1/3 f the country can't come up with anything better than a reality TV guy mouthing tired reactionary tropes for a leader. Because honestly, what else do we have? Populism seems to be the future when all other forms of community have died off.
There is some truth to this. Trump may be weak, stupid and easily manipulated, but he is on some level a principal and not an agent. Every other president within living memory has been more of an agent than a principal.
Bush recognized the rule of law? Excuse me?! You must be referring to something other than the warrantless surveillance, the torture, the extraordinary rendition, etc etc.
10 years ago I subscribed and paid for newspapers in NY, Washington D.C., Boston, Tampa, Miami and St. Petersburg. After 2016 they all became one paper with nearly identical editorial pages, fewer book reviews and less and less local coverage. Thank goodness Substack emerged.
`fewer book reviews'
Thankfully we still have The New York Review of Books, though the election issue essays are but slightly better than the stuff FdB posted about above.
Freddie, what do you think of the Yglesias-type point that the most important piece of context for the 2024 election is that virtually every single incumbent political party in Europe and North America, whether left or right, has gotten trounced recently?
Because they should be.
It is abundantly obvious that no incumbent party is concerned with benefiting the average frustrated citizen.
America is fantastically rich and minimum wage workers in the US earn more than middle class people in major G7 economies. Exactly how much better do you think we can make things?
Even if that were true, this is not exactly the best of all possible worlds.
do you hear yourself?
This is just outright bogus.
The U.S. isn't even in the top 20 for minimum wage. And that's without a national healthcare system. Which not only virtually every other "1st World" country has, but would also make America's rating much worse if factored into the formula.
It would be more accurate to say America's fantastically rich are fantastically rich compared to other G7 economies.
What’s a national healthcare system? Like the Netherlands or Germany?
If the US did develop a national healthcare system, to where would we go for healthcare?
If you read any Canadian or British news, you'll discover nationalized healthcare is free, but unavailable.
And if you’ve ever needed to access the system here, you’ll find that it is expensive and unavailable in many areas of the country. In our rural county, there are NO primary care providers taking new patients. Appointments for first line specialties like cardiology and endocrinology (diabetes and other metabolic diseases) are 3-5 months out.
The types of care that people start needing on a routine basis starting around age 60 are completely swamped. In some cases that’s probably not a big deal—if you wait 6 months for a hip or knee replacement it’s not going to kill you, but delays in care for conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc. are going to result in people getting sicker and needing more expensive interventions once they do get care.
If you keel over in the street yes, you’ll be seen immediately, but that is also true in Canada.
In the US everyone gets healthcare immediately, but its in dispute who covers it. In Canada no one gets healthcare immediately, but there's no dispute over who covers it.
I saw a guy on a six month wait list for a gall bladder surgery. He ended up paying for it to be done in Alaska.
How about bringing down the crime rate and enforcing the border?
Enforcing the border would dramatically raise inflation and make 80% of the public a lot poorer.
How?
Huge decline in the low cost labor force.
If you think that 80% of the population are illegal immigrants I suppose that makes sense.
What do you think the price impact would be of deporting all the illegals? 1%, 5%…?
Nonsense.
Inflation is when the government prints boatloads of money.
Not every country has a situation where homelessness is a huge problem, a medical crisis can bankrupt you, and lead pipes can't be remediated. Hell, we weren't like that only a few decades ago. 1960s American went to the moon, it's not entirely clear to me that we can. Don't bother throwing a bunch of stats at me, they don't change the underlying reality and many of them measure things that don't matter.
1960s America went to the moon by spending 3-4% of the federal on the project for several years (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#/media/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg for example).
I am reasonably confident that if we spent 200 billion per year (3% of the current federal budget) for 4 years straight on going to the moon, we would be able to do a decent job of it even in today's much-more-regulated-than-the-1960s environment.
And yes, you can argue that you should be using constant inflation-adjusted dollars, not fractions of the budget, but it sort of speaks to prioritization and focus: going to the moon was a thing that was _wanted_ on the federal level and then people made it happen.
That's sort of the point, federal revenue is much greater, borrowing is astronomically higher and yet the budget is so shot through with waste and corruption there's no money for such a thing. We meant to the moon for about $318 Billion dollars in todays money, having to do a lot of the.design and engineering from scratch. In 2016 the Pentagon buried a study that showed it was wasting $125 Billion a year in unnecessary bureaucracy alone. That doesn't.incluse things like the littoral combat ship ($11 Billion for basically nothing), nor the enormous waste in the rest of the government. So there's a ton of money that should be there that just isn't for no particular reason (not to.mention uncollected taxes due to hamstringing the IRS).
Also, even if we had the money, this country has a fraction of the industrial base it did back then so costs would be probably higher.
This is SOOOO missing from any discourse. Its really weird.
Trump is just the specific American expression of an international populist phenomenon. He is definitely not unique at a global level.
Strange thing: Trump actually has a record as President. Forget that fan favorite "he incited an insurrection on Jan 6!!!" Ignore his bombastic, off-the-cuff speechifying, which is what FdB and everyone else seems to react to. What exactly during his first term did he actually do that was so very heinous, policy-wise? I lived through those years. No one was sent to camps. Contra Whoopi, interracial marriages were not SWATted. Nuclear missiles were not launched. Newspaper editors were not rounded up and sent to Guantanamo. What did he, you know, do? Wouldn't that be more, you know, relevant to an assessment of what a second Trump term might look like?
And really FdB, divisive? Really? You have been rather good at fearlessly pointing out the self-evident (that's not a dig, you really have, where others on the left cower and quake), except the self-evident truth that the modern progressive left's raison d'etre is to sow social discord and division, to threaten their ideological opponents (I mean, Keith Olbermann?). Hillary said deplorables. Obama said bitter clingers. Yet Trump is divisive?
Do better next time.
Martin Gurri wrote that Trump's rhetoric was off the charts but his actual governance was staid and pedestrian. As proof look at how many of his policies were continued by Biden after he took over. Now even Harris is saying that she wants to continue building the border wall.
I would posit that his rhetoric HAD to be off the charts, as that would be the only way someone could break past the wall of false information being spread about him and his plans.
"What exactly during his first term did he actually do that was so very heinous, policy-wise?"
As the many super conservative generals and cabinet members who have said the dude is, in fact, fascistic and dangerous. Have you read any of their accounts? Trump wanted to do criminal, heinous things; sane people stopped him.
He wanted to launch missiles into Mexico. He wanted to arrest and round up political enemies, and fired people when they wouldn't do it. He wanted to send troops into the streets, and fired generals when they wouldn't do it. He wanted to have protestors and immigrants shot in the legs.
These aren't the fever dreams of pearl-clutching DNC operatives––they are first-hand reports from people who would have been thrilled to have a hard-right, charismatic Trump bringing to voters into the Republican party. But they were sorry to report that the dude was bat-shit crazy and put the US and many other countries at serious risk.
Citations,pls
Just for starters: Baker and Glasser, The Divider. Almost all of their sources inside the Trump administration are either on the record or have since gone public. It documents the missiles he ordered into Mexico, the desire to shoot protestors and immigrants in the legs, the order to send troops into US cities, the orders to arrest Biden, Clinton, and others––and much, much more.
The most recent from Kelly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-trump-fitness-character.html
A round-up of Gen. Kelly, Gen. Milley, Esper (missiles into Mexico), Gen. Mattis, Bolton, Tillerson, sundry others:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/25/election-trump-staffers-john-kelly
Even a little googling will take you to a lot more.
NYT and The Guardian.
Nothing but gossip.
Ah. So the newspapers changed the quotes then? Or maybe they really said a lot of nice things about Trump, the but quotes were merely edited very unfairly?
Given that those allegations are disputed how do you weight the witnesses who are defending Trump versus the witnesses who are disparaging him?
Lol. The NYT actually recorded Gen. Kelly saying those things on tape; it ain't gossip. But sure, that's just a deep fake I guess . . . . .
Who precisely got fired because they wouldn't arrest Trump's enemies?
So if gossip gets RECORDED, it's not gossip then?
Did he want "demonstrators" shot in the legs, or rioters?
Good god. In the US, neither cops nor troops are allowed to shoot either demonstrators or rioters, unless a life is directly at risk. Fourth Amendment.
I guess y'all are post-Constitution now, at least as long as its Trump who calls the shots.
Where did the thing about Trump wanting to shoot people in the legs come from? I've been googling but can't find it.
Biden, of course, famously proposed that the police should shoot more people in their legs. https://reason.com/2020/10/15/joe-biden-townhall-cops-shoot-in-the-leg/
Shooting George Floyd protestors in the legs, via book by Secretary of Defense Esper, who was fired:
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-defense-secretary
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3473642-esper-trump-asked-about-shooting-protesters-in-the-legs-or-something-after-george-floyd-death/
Shooting migrants in the legs (and electrifying fences, putting spikes on fences, putting alligators in trenches, etc)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49901878
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-suggested-shooting-migrants-in-leg-to-slow-them-down-according-to-new-book/
There are countless other first-hand reports from Trump cabinet members who describe the weekly or daily efforts to pull him back from bizarre or criminal acts. The whole Project 2025 is to ensure no one is hired in a second Trump term who will thwart him in anything he wants to do.
So we agree troops or police shouldn't shoot people in the legs, then? Well, that's something.
Biden's dumb remark was proposing an alternative to cops using a "shoot to kill" policy with criminal suspects; Trump wanted to shoot migrants in the legs to "slow them down" and wanted to shoot US protestors in the legs to stop protests that he thought made him "look weak."
And none of that happened. By contrast during Biden-Harris literally millions of illegals have entered into the country, unvetted, and wreaked havoc.
In terms of actual effects whose administration looks better?
And if it does - you’ll gladly defend it. Right?
Based on the actual historical record who's more likely to do something crazy?
Like trying to steal an election? That seems pretty crazy.
If J6 is the best argument that the opposition can muster that Trump tried to steal an election I should let you know right now that I consider that nonsense.
But 'fortifying' an election is fine. Mmk.
Answer the question.
What makes you think I would defend any craziness on the part of any administration? I'm certainly happy to point out the failure of the current regime with regard to the border, or their contribution to domestic inflation.
What makes you think I would defend any craziness on the part of any administration? I'm certainly happy to point out the failure of the current regime with regard to the border, or their contribution to domestic inflation.
How many millions have crossed the border unvetted? How many were turned back or deported? What are we actually talking about?
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigration-figures/
The border is a serious issue; too bad Republicans won't work with Democrats to authorize many more border officials to process applicants as per US law. But the havoc you refer to has been fused to countless lies and obfuscations (they're eating the cats). To me it is self-evident that Biden-Harris administration looks better than the Trump administration overall (including on the economy). Especially when we have Republican "obstructionists" like Kelly, Esper, and Mattis to thank for stopping a lot of heinous actions.
Biden/Harris didn't reverse fundamental rights for women––something that a lot of folks see as a much greater "havoc" than illegal immigration.
Neither Biden nor Harris has made breaking the law their favorite past time like Trump has (steal documents and lie about it under oath, call up election officials and demand they "find" you votes, etc. etc.)
And, no, I don't see why anyone should "put aside" January 6th. That's pretty much one of those jokes: "But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?"
J6 was a protest that morphed into a riot, no more or less, in a year that saw dozens of such incidents. The difference was that the vast majority of those were on the BLM side of things, meaning that the perpetrators were largely ignored as compared to the J6 rioters who were pursued with the full force of the government.
There is zero question that millions more illegals flooded into the country under Biden/Harris compared to the Trump administration. There should also be zero question that the primary factor there was the Biden admin allowing Trump's agreement with the Mexican government to impede migration to the US southern border to lapse.
How many millions? Should Trump be faulted for during fewer arrests and deportations of criminal migrants than Obama?
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/USA-IMMIGRATION/0H001PBKB5E8/index.html
There is no comparison between the destruction in the wake of BLM demonstrations and the J6. To make those cases comparable would require that Biden, Harris, or other Dem leaders a) publicly and privately foster protestors to "fight" and engage in "trial by combat" over the murder of George Floyd––they didn't; b) have their arm twisted before condemning the violent destruction by looters––Dem leadership condemned right away; c) then revise history to openly claim those nights of mayhem were really "nights of love"; d) promise to pardon people who were convicted of rioting and destruction of federal property; e) later deny that looters were violent––none of which they did.
Most of all, f) the violence after BLM protests did not attack the site of the transfer of federal power in order to try to abort an election of a president.
If the choice is between Trump and Obama then absolutely you can argue that one is preferable to the other based on the difference in metrics between those two.
If the choice is between Trump and Harris then the question of what Obama did is completely irrelevant.
In terms of the BLM riots versus J6 dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, lost their lives as a result of the BLM riots. The cost for those riots ran into the billions of dollars. And far more of the country was directly exposed to the BLM riots as compared to J6.
As for those claims you are making specifically about Trump and J6, let's see your sources.
Clearly the only real bad thing he did was to give the media reason to cause people lije you to "think" like this. TDS anyone?
Trump was presented one of the greatest opportunities in our country’s history to seize dictatorial control during Covid. Even his political enemies were begging him to tell people when they could even leave their own house. And he passed and primarily turned power over to the states. These are not the instincts of a dictator.
What did he do...except attempt to stay in power after losing the election you mean? And I'm talking serious, sustained attempts to subvert the system and overturn the results of the election.
I don't have a big problem with his policies as president (at least, no more than I might any president). I have a big problem with his reckless attempts to subvert the 2020 election. When it comes to Donald Trump, I'm a single-issue voter.
But 'fortifying' an election is fine.
Got it.
Seriously, what is your exact point here? You're just to make an equivalency, then just come out and make your point. I suspect you can't and won't.
My point is that the 2020 election was f'ed with, and we all know it.
Be specific.
The Time piece IS specific. Banning the Hunter laptop story is also specific. Numerous CEOs, etc came out and SPECIFICALLY articulated that 'fortifying' the 2020 election was necessary to ensure a Biden victory. Don't be obtuse...its desperate.
So what specific measures did Trump take to "subvert" the election?
Yeah, man, you're just concerned about being right. Admirable.
It's called the "battlefield of ideas", not the "safe space" or "playground" of ideas.
Arguing with someone who is intentionally obtuse or arguing in clear bad faith is a waste of time. You're not battling. You're dishonest. And boring.
Again with the "boring" stuff. What relevance does "boring" have? Who cares?
https://benthams.substack.com/p/trump-attempted-a-coup
Some of them are listed herein. I very briefly mentioned them in my comment above.
I think that absent mail in balloting Trump would have probably won in 2020, and that the judicial process whereby mail in balloting was implemented in places like PA in a fashion that seemed to run counter to statute was irregular to say the least.
Given that Trump was watching unelected bureaucrats roll out mail in balloting in states where supposedly only the legislature had the ability to make such changes I would guess that his mindset was that the election was being stolen from him by elections officials who were making an end run around the law.
PA Act 77 was passed in 2019 by a Republican-controlled state assembly with strong Republican support. No challenge was brought until November 21 2020, when Mike Kelly tried to have either all absentee ballots invalidated -- 2.5 million -- or invalidate all votes and let the (Republican) state legislature choose the electors for the state.
You tell me if the law that was passed by Republicans and on the books since October 2019 was what Trump had in mind in the months leading up to the election...but he didn't bother to ever challenge it, nor did the party, until after the 2020 election over a year later. And challenge it in order to disenfranchise 2.5 million (or 6.9 million) people who were, as far as they understood it, following the law.
One would think if he were worried about that statute and wanted to challenge it, he'd have done so in April or June or August instead of after the election (and not even really by him, though I don't know what if any coordination there may have been between Kelley and the Trump campaign).
https://senatormastriano.com/2022/01/26/op-ed-how-pennsylvania-democrats-hijacked-act-77/
What did he do as president?
Spent every minute drumming up loud, often cruel and bizarre, controversies that divided Americans until the rule of law literally broke down in 2020 and there were riots in the streets.
Tried his best to rob you of your healthcare, but came one vote short.
Succeeded in robbing you of your abortion rights.
Spent the pandemic attempting to make it as partisan as possible, leading to hundreds of thousands of extra deaths when his followers who he’d told COVID was no big deal, refused to take the vaccine.
Tried to steal the election and, when he didn’t succeed, sent a mob to attack Congress and, when that failed, installed his autocratic followers into the election boards across the country who will surely do their best to steal the next election if he loses.
Face it. This was a shit President and is a shit man.
Muslim Ban
Sending unmarked, militarized law enforcement into Portland and detaining citizens without due process
Failing to divest from his business ties and profiting of the office of the presidency
banger post frodo I’m snapping and yassing like a wild animal right now
FdB. On fire.
Leaving the same comment I left on Ross Barkan's piece today:
If Trump wins again, I won't like it. But I won't make the same mistake I did in his first term by getting over-emotional all the time. I'm committing to a more stoic approach.
Froomkin and his ilk are frequent believers in magical thinking. If enough of the correct words appear in the correct places, Trump will magically disappear. They are gnostics.
They never grew up, and realized that, at some point, you have to become the authority.