Month: November 2025

Besides Chuck Schumer

Ahead of Tuesday’s New York City election won decisively by Zohran Mamdani, the Washington Post Editorial Board published a hit piece on him. Those who worried that the purchase of the Post by Jeff Bezos would seriously degrade the paper’s jounalism have their worst fears confirmed. Comically, in a fashion worthy of The Onion.

“Zohran Mamdani’s success is a warning,” the lead opinion blared. “How did a socialist with almost no governing experience become New York’s mayoral frontrunner?” the Post asks.

A reader not in Donald Trump’s pocket might ask instead, how did a philandering, career con-man with no governing experience, strings of ex-wives and bankruptcies, and a “university” courts closed as a fraud become president of the United States? And a second time after having his charity shuttered as a personal slush fund, two impeachments, 34 felony convictions, four criminal indictments, and a violent insurrection?

But the Post wasn’t done humiliating itself:

One of the most notable aspects of Mamdani’s political success is that voters know what they’re getting. The young politician was born into a life of wealth and privilege, and from that perch he adopted a worldview centered around destroying the economic system that made his adopted country thrive.

Strike Mamdani and insert Trump and you’ve got the man who invited billionaires like Bezos to stand behind him at the presidential inauguration on January 20. Days later, Trump himself set about destroying the economic system that made this country thrive. Ask American soybean farmers if they are thriving now. Somehow the Post missed all that and without a hint of irony raised the alarm about a man who wants to set up five not-for-profit groceries.

Mamdani “has had only one full-time job outside of politics,” the Post warns. Outside of reality TV, Donald Trump had never worked outside his small family business before the Oval Office.

Bezos will champion “personal liberties and free markets” whatever it does to his paper’s credibility. Including with editorials arguing for unfettered markets because “many American failures are often the result of government intervention rather than a free market run amok.” Tell it to the nearly 9 million people who lost their jobs and at least 10 million who lost their homes in the 2008 crash of Wall Street.

Michael Tomasky almost condemned the Post after it published “In defense of the White House ballroom.” But after “the recent hiring of three conservative columnists” this one on Mamdani cinched it. He lets loose at The New Republic:

The nation’s capital, a city that is the seat of the federal government and home to many thousands of public servants, and a city that Democratic presidential candidates generally carry with around 90 percent of the vote, has three conservative voices and no longer has a single liberal newspaper.

Right-wing owners are buying up major news outlets from coast to coast. “We are at most a few years away from the mainstream media becoming controlled top to bottom, with a few very exceptions, by ultrarich conservatives and their hirelings,” Tomasky writes.

What is to be done? Well, some say this doesn’t really matter that much—people get their news from TikTok, so liberals should focus on social media, podcasts, YouTube. I have no beef with this argument. Liberals are way behind conservatives in these realms. But legacy media outlets still matter because of who reads them. And they are being taken over by right-wing and libertarian billionaires who want quite simply to destroy the idea of the public weal.  

So this is what is to be done: Rich liberals need to get together, see all this for the democracy-ending crisis that it is, and pool tens of millions of dollars into an organization that will buy existing media outlets (traditional and social) and start new ones. They have been asleep to this problem for 20-plus years. Well, as one of my favorite proverbs has it, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now. If The Washington Post becoming right-wing doesn’t make these people want to take spade in hand and plant some trees, what on earth will?

Except too many rich liberals are like old-guard Democrats. Too out of touch and short-term in their thinking.

(h/t IW)

Update: Corrected spelling of Bezos.

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What a concept

The Associated Press headline this morning reads: Democrats dominate as economic woes take a toll on Trump’s GOP:

Democrats dominated the first major Election Day since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

And while a debate about the future of the Democratic Party may have only just begun, there are signs that the economy — specifically, Trump’s inability to deliver the economic turnaround he promised last fall — may be a real problem for Trump’s GOP heading into next year’s higher-stakes midterm elections.

Democrats won and won big. In Virginia, in New Jersey, and in New York City and elsewhere. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger will be Virginia’s first female governor. She won by 15 points. In New Jersey, the New York Times reports, “Mikie Sherrill cruised to victory in a governor’s race that polls had projected would be neck and neck.” She won by 13 points. And Zohran Mamdani, 34, will be New York City’s next mayor. He defeated old-guard Democrat, Andrew Cuomo, by nearly 9 points. Mamdani will be the youngest mayor in over a century after turnout that was the highest since 1969. CNN called the California Proposition 50 redistricting question a win for Gov. Gavin Newsom with 0 percent reporting. With over a quarter of votes yet uncounted, “Yes” leads by 28 points.

As for the “future of the Democratic Party,” brace for the punditry to robotically ask: “Who represents the new face of the Democratic Party going forward, Zohran Mamdani or Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill?” Just as robotically, Democrats asked that question should answer with “Yes.”

Mamdani: "New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant." pic.twitter.com/QF3up3c4k0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2025

Republicans already have an answer ready for their xenophobic base. The otherwise know-nothing-about-that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) tossed off a long X post about Mamdani salted with “extremist, “Marxist,” “dangerous,” and “radical, big-government socialist.” Very predictable. New Yorkers have salty words and gestures in response to that. They also have a new mayor-elect.

Do you understand the assignment?

Last night on MSNBC, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) gave a response to the “face of the party” question worth watching if you missed it. Voters in line were heard calling out some of the Democratic establishment. They understood that they were not just voting against the Trump agenda and for Mamdani, AOC said. They turned out in numbers to rededicate the party to the needs of working people, and their cost of living and civil rights, as well as to defeat the old guard of the Democratic Party who are on notice.

“We have a future to plan for. We have a future to fight for.” The message behind Mandami’s election is that Democrats who won’t do that together will be left behind. “Do you understand the assignment of fighting fascism right now?”

Mamdani’s victory speech below:

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Welcome to our world…

Trump’s getting really steamed about the filibuster. Sure, he believes he can just order the world to his liking but he wants Republicans to have to bend the knee publicly to every crackpot, bullshit idea he comes up with. It will be interesting to see if they acquiesce to this as they’ve done with everything else:

President Trump’s Truth Social demands to end the filibuster are just a hint of his coming rampage if Senate Republicans hold out against him, advisers tell Axios.

Most Senate Republicans have no interest in nuking the filibuster. But Trump’s frustration is the first clear sign that the shutdown, which becomes a record on Wednesday, is getting to him.

• “He will make their lives a living hell,” one Trump adviser told Axios.
• “He will call them at three o’clock in the morning. He will blow them up in their districts. He will call them un-American. He will call them old creatures of a dying institution. Believe you me, he’s going to make their lives just hell,” the source continued.
• Another adviser emphasized: “He’s really mad about this.”

For weeks, Trump wasn’t paying close attention to the shutdown out of a belief that Democrats would eventually drop their demands.

• Now, he is starting to put Republican senators on blast for not changing the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation, arguing it gave Democrats leverage to shut down the government for a record amount of time.
• “The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks the filibuster outrageous and anti-democratic,” one of the advisers said.
• Trump was already steamed about the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, which has allowed Democratic senators to block certain judicial nominees.

Some of the newer, populist Senate Republican voices are warming to the idea.

• Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) raised the idea of changing the filibuster to end the shutdown last month on Fox News, saying, “Let’s make this a Republican-only vote.”
• Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) expressed willingness to do away with the filibuster if needed. Hawley said if he’s “got to choose between feeding 42 million Americans who are needy and have to have federal food assistance to eat, or defending the arcane rules of the Senate — I’m going to choose those people.”
• Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) also told Axios he would be willing to change the filibuster rules “under certain circumstances.”
• Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said he understood Trump’s frustration, “but I think that Democrats are about to cave” by the end of the week. When pressed to clarify whether he opposed ending the filibuster, he responded, “I said what I just said.”

He wants every last one of them publicly lined up to kiss his ring.

The filibuster is the last excuse some of them have for not openly joining the fascist takeover. This would be the final capitulation.

What will Trump do if the Supreme’s knock down his tariff power grab? (I think this may be one of the few places where they buck his authority. Lot’s of important people’s money is at stake and we know how they feel about that.)

Aides have spent weeks strategizing how to reconstitute the president’s global tariff regime if the court rules that he exceeded his authority. They’re ready to fall back on a patchwork of other trade statutes to keep pressure on U.S. trading partners and preserve billions in tariff revenue, according to six current and former White House officials and others familiar with the administration’s thinking, some of whom were granted anonymity to share details of private conversations.

“They’re aware there are a number of different statutes they can use to recoup the tariff authority,” said Everett Eissenstat, former deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council during Trump’s first term. “There’s a lot of tools there that they could go to to make up that tariff revenue.”

The contingency planning underscores how much is at stake for Trump, who has used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law designed for national emergencies, to impose tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner — the foundation of his second-term economic agenda. The justices will weigh whether the law gives the president broad power to impose economic restrictions — or whether Trump has stretched it beyond what Congress intended.

If the court curtails that power, it could upend not only the White House’s “America First” trade strategy but also the global negotiations Trump has leveraged it to shape.

The article goes into how the court could upend a whole lot of Trump’s economic and foreign policy (by simply reading the clear meaning of the Constitution!) but from my perspective it doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal. Everything is already chaotic so unwinding it wouldn’t make it any worse.

Here are the contingency plans, such as they are:

Aides concede that other tariff authorities are not a “one-for-one replacement” for the emergency law, though they confirmed they are pursuing them.

In fact, the White House has already laid some of the policy groundwork under those authorities, such as the 1970s-vintage Section 301, which the U.S. used against China in Trump’s first term, or the Cold War-era Section 232, which allows tariffs on national-security grounds.

The administration has launched more than a dozen 232 investigations into whether the import of goods like lumber, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical minerals from other countries impairs national security. Since January, Trump has used that authority to impose new tariffs on copper, aluminum, steel and autos.

It has also opened a 301 investigation into Brazil’s trade practices, including digital services, ethanol tariffs and intellectual property protection. It’s a model officials say could be replicated against other countries if the court curtails IEEPA — and could be used to pressure countries into reaffirming the trade deals that they’ve already negotiated with the United States, or to accept the rates that Trump has unilaterally assigned them.

But those tools come with challenges: Section 301 investigations can take months to complete, slowing Trump’s ability to impose tariffs unilaterally or tie them to unrelated goals like ending the war between Russia and Ukraine or stem the flow of fentanyl across the U.S. border.

Section 232 offers broad discretion to impose tariffs on national-security grounds, but because the levies are sector-based, they are typically applied across a product category, limiting Trump’s ability to pressure individual countries.

And imposing new duties on global industries like semiconductors or pharmaceuticals, as Trump has threatened, could upend recent agreements the administration has reached with trading partners, especially China, which negotiated a trade truce last week.

“This detente may have weakened the president’s resolve to go forward with the 232s. We’re worse off than we were,” a second person close to the administration said.

The U.S. has already promised to delay fees on Chinese vessels arriving at U.S. ports following the conclusion of a Section 301 investigation on China’s shipbuilding practices as a result of the Thursday meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The U.S. also agreed to delay an investigation into China’s adherence to its trade deal from Trump’s first term.

Section 122, meanwhile, allows only short-term tariffs of up to 15 percent and for no more than 150 days unless Congress acts to extend them — a narrow clause meant to address trade deficit emergencies. The authority could potentially serve as a bridge between an adverse court ruling and new duties Trump wants to put in place using other authorities.

Then there’s Section 338 — a rarely used provision that’s been on the books for nearly a century. In theory, it could let Trump swiftly impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on any country, if he can explain how they are engaging in “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” actions that hurt U.S. commerce. Section 338 does not require a formal investigation before a president can impose tariffs, but would likely face similar legal challenges.

Yeah, whatever. Anything to stop Trump from seizing more unilateral power.

Meanwhile, some people think he should just go through Congress the way the Constitution says he must. But the Senate has surprisingly taken a small stand against that:

At least four Republicans are openly opposed to the global tariffs — bucking Trump in a series of symbolic votes last week. And it’s unclear whether there’s appetite for a vote on Trump’s tariffs in the House, which has been shielded from weighing in on the tariffs until the end of January, after Republican leadership blocked votes on Trump’s national emergencies.

We live in hope.

Paul Krugman knows Trump is enjoying the pain he’s inflicting:

There’s been plenty of scathing commentary about the lavish, Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party Donald Trump threw at Mar a Lago — a party complete with sequined, feathered dancers and, yes, a scantily-clad woman in a giant martini glass. The party, held just hours before 42 million Americans were about to lose federal food assistance, as 1.4 million federal workers are going without pay, was grotesque. It was also, like everything Trump, unspeakably vulgar.

But many commenters described the festivities as “tone deaf,” as if Trump didn’t realize how it would look to be holding such a party as tens of millions of Americans are facing severe hardship. C’mon. Of course he realized how it would look. He understood perfectly well that he was partying while ordinary Americans were suffering. And that understanding — combined with the belief that he can get away with it — was a big reason he enjoyed the event.

During Trump’s first term Adam Serwer wrote a justly celebrated article for The Atlantic titled “The cruelty is the point.” He argued that cruelty, and the joy some people take from inflicting cruelty, are what bind Trump’s most loyal supporters to him:

Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united.

Serwer was thinking of working-class and middle-class Trump supporters, many of whom are voting against their own economic interests. But you can see the same joy in cruelty, not just in Trump, but in most of his top minions, from Stephen Miller and JD Vance to Tom Homans, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth. All of them clearly take a smirking satisfaction in their ability to stick it to the poor and powerless.

What about the guests at the party? What about the oligarchs abasing themselves at Trump’s feet? Some of them may share in the cruelty of Trump’s inner circle. Most probably just don’t care about other people’s suffering, certainly not enough to risk Trump’s wrath by protesting or even failing to show up.

So, to repeat, the party at Mar a Lago wasn’t a case of tone deafness, living it up despite others’ suffering. It was in large part a party held to celebrate others’ suffering.

This is something people need to understand. It’s not schadenfreude. It’s sadism.

Margaret Sullivan talks about the sad demise of CBS News today in there newsletter. She recounts the departure of longtime anchor John Dickerson, and the embarrassing 60 Minutes Trump interview last Sunday. He said a lot of stupid things, as usual, but Sullivan homes in on the part where Trump gives away the fact that he has CBS in his pocket. Not that we didn’t know that, but it’s always good to see it right out there:

During his interview with Norah O’Donnell for that show this past Sunday night, Trump decided to play media critic. This part of his interview didn’t make the cut of what was shown on the broadcast, but it certainly is telling about the rightward leanings of new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss — and even more telling about the direction of the corporate ownership.

CBS News published the entire transcript, including Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, which also didn’t make the cut for broadcast. Here are the parts I’m pointing to:

“And actually ‘60 Minutes’ paid me a lot of money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not — you have a great — I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great — from what I know.

Also this highly inaccurate depiction of the supposed basis of his lawsuit: “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took (Kamala Harris’s) answer out that was so bad it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news.”

And this: “I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership — CBS and new ownership. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”

Trump is clearly talking about David Ellison, the son of pro-Trump mega-billionaire Larry Ellison, the second-richest person on earth. The younger Ellison is now the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, parent company of CBS, after a merger. David Ellison installed Bari Weiss as editor in chief. It’s instructive that as the likes of John Dickerson walk out the door, she is said to be recruiting Scott Jennings (who makes a living defending Trump on CNN), as well as Bret Baier of Fox News.

There just can’t be too many media outfits dedicated to giving Trump big slurpy wet kisses 24/7.

This is the Hungarian model. But again, America is a much different country than Hungary. And the public still has power. Don’t watch CBS News. Don’t pay to stream it.

CONSPIRACY THEORY NO MORE:

Stephen Miller: “The Democrat Party, via the Biden-Harris Terrorist Administration devised a scheme to import illegal aliens into the country by the millions — granting them ‘parole,’ which gives them work permits, which gives them Social Security… pic.twitter.com/1g23q7zpwy

— 🇺🇸RealRobert🇺🇸 (@Real_RobN) November 4, 2025

He just gets more and more hysterical and extreme. His head is going to explode any day now.

President Donald Trump has been lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize since at least 2018 when his administration managed the release of three Americans from North Korea, modestly proclaiming “everyone thinks I should win the Nobel Peace Prize — but I would never say it.” Of course he did say it, over and over again, repeating his litany of all the wars he’s allegedly ended. He was sorely disappointed when the committee awarded the prize to Venezuelan democracy activist Maria Corina Machado instead. But there’s always next year. 

None of this talk of peace is to say that Trump hasn’t been issuing violent threats to a variety of targets. He’s always loved to warn people that he’s prepared to unleash fire and fury if they don’t immediately bend to his will. Before their famous bromance, he even explicitly threatened nuclear war with North Korea, tweeting to Kim Jong Un, “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

Since he returned to office in January, Trump has been talking about actually invading or annexing countries, whether it’s Greenland, Canada or, more recently, to “go in and kill Hamas” in Gaza. He bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities with unknown results, and in the last couple of months he’s initiated a murder spree on the high seas in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, ostensibly to defend against “narco-terrorists” who are “attacking” the United States by allegedly selling drugs to eager American consumers. He has been publicly denying that he plans to order an attack on the Venezuelan mainland, but it’s very hard to imagine why the Pentagon would need to amass a large flotilla, including an aircraft carrier, off the country’s coast for any other reason. 

There’s been a lot of speculation that Trump is following some version of the Monroe Doctrine and asserting his dominance over “his” hemisphere. But Iran and Gaza don’t fit that concept, and over the weekend he made yet another threat, this time against Africa’s most populous — and oil-rich — country. Seemingly out of nowhere he published a bizarre post on Truth Social:

If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, “guns-a-blazing,” to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!

“If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet?” That Nobel Peace Prize is definitely in the bag now, especially after he followed up with another post on Saturday that warned, “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious and sweet.” He also added Nigeria to the government’s religious freedom watch list.

Secretary of Defense — who now bills himself as “Secretary of War” — Pete Hegseth immediately responded to Trump’s order. “Yes sir. The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

As Trump returned to Washington, D.C., from Florida on Sunday, he was asked if there was a possibility that he would order American boots on the ground and he replied, “Could be.”

According to CNN, this was yet another case of the president seeing a segment on Fox News. He was heading down to Florida for his “Let Them Eat Cake” Halloween party and got “very angry”” But this has been a subject of interest among the far right Christian contingent for a while now. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., has called for America to stop what he erroneously characterizes as “Christian mass murder.” Influencer-gadfly and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer has been posting about the issue as recently as Friday before Trump made his announcement. A highly respected member of Trump’s informal coterie of outside advisers, it’s entirely possible that Fox News got their heads up from her since she is now credentialed to cover the Pentagon.

Whatever the case, this appears to be based upon misinformation. Nigeria is dealing with the Boko Haram extremist group, which does target Christians. But it also threatens Muslims who don’t accept its radical form of Islam, as well as those who are sympathetic to the Nigerian government. Most experts and analysts reject the assertion that this is some kind of Christian genocide. 

Trump may have wanted to give a little something to his “cherished Christians,” as he sometimes refers to his evangelical supporters, but Hegseth is a much more interesting case. This is, after all, a man who wrote a book called “American Crusade,” which the Guardian described as “depicting Islam as a natural, historic enemy of the west; presents distorted versions of Muslim doctrine in ‘great replacement’-style racist conspiracy theories; treats leftists and Muslims as bound together in their efforts to subvert the U.S.; and idolises medieval crusaders.”

In fact, Hegseth literally wears his love for the crusaders on his body — and believes that he has been persecuted for it. As scholars Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque wrote in the Bulwark, the defense secretary complained that the Jerusalem Cross on his chest got him booted from guard duty during President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021 because it made him a potential threat. He says he was discriminated against because of his religion. But that symbol is a highly politicized part of the far-right’s obsession with the Templar myths, and Hegseth knows that.

He sports a sword embedded in a cross on his forearm, which symbolizes the verse in which Christ says, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Hegseth also prominently displays the words “Deus Vult” on his chest, the battle cry of the first crusade. In his book, he makes his belief clear that those words mean for “followers of Christ to take up the sword in defense of their faith, their families, and their freedom.” 

Hegseth is also a member of an extreme far-right sect called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches that also believes in militant Christianity. It’s heavily influenced by Reconstructionism, a theology that religion scholar Julie Ingersoll describes as believing “it’s the job of Christians to exercise dominion over the whole world.”

In short, Hegseth is a serious Christian nationalist, and there could be nothing more satisfying for him than to muster a fighting force to wage war against Muslims in a foreign land in the name of Jesus Christ. It sounds medieval and it is, but Hegseth is the “secretary of war,” and if Loomer were to persuade the addled president to give the go-ahead, it’s likely he would not hesitate to execute the strategy. 

Whether they will follow through on this is anyone’s guess. At some point, one might hope that a few of the Christians who are clamoring for the U.S. to go into Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” might spare a thought for their fellow followers of Christ who are being terrorized every single day right here in America at the hands of an oppressive government that is deporting them to face certain persecution.  

Salon

Election Day in The Big Apple

The world expects that at the end of today, Zohran Mamdani, 34, will be mayor-elect of New York City. He is singular political talent. Watch his interaction from Monday night with MSNBC’s Ari Melber.

The man is quick. He’s engaging. He laughs. He’s most importantly, likeable.

Anand Giridharadas yesterday paid special attention to Mamdani’s winning smile. Giridharadas tried to imitate it in the mirror and began to wonder: “Do I smile enough? Do I ever smile? Was my grandmother right that I look angry in my book jacket photos? Am I angry? Why am I so angry? What kind of life could I have had if I could smile like that guy?”

There is political substance and there is affect. Presentation. Curb appeal. Mamdani has it. Too many progressives do not, Giridharadas worries (emphasis mine):

One of the many things I read in the smile is a break from a dominant affect of today’s progressivism. Mamdani is as bona fide a progressive as they come. And this frees him to adopt a steadfast sunniness, encapsulated by but not limited to the smile, that distinguishes him from many who share his worldview. Some progressives will scowl as they read this, thereby proving my point, but progressivism has an affect problem. It is fueled by righteous anger, which it sometimes fails to transcend. America today is depressing, but being depressing is no way to win people over to make America less depressing. Sometimes progressivism struggles to be more than just the sum of the injustices it fights, the boots on necks that it wishes to dislodge. It can be angry and pessimistic to the exclusion of reminding people of its own victories as a movement. It can be hostile to people who agree partly but not entirely. It can value purity over welcome and conversion. And there is something in Mamdani’s smile that breaks from all that. It says: I am against many things, and I want to do and create many things because of the things I am against, but I am more than what I am against.

Mamdani’s smile, “paints the beautiful tomorrow,” as political strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio frames it. A Bernie Sanders aide tells Giridharadas that Mamdani is “’assigning an emotion’ to the policy agenda he is championing.” An upbeat one.

These observations, of course, grow out of his book “The Persuaders.” My most important takeaway (sorry, Anat — she gets an entire chapter) reduces to “Is there room among the woke for the waking?” It gets at the behavior among some progressive purists to police speech and opinions and expel “heretics” from their midst. It is no way to build the critical mass necessary, say, to inspire millions to join a national strike. Welcome the newbies who agree with you mostly and allow them to grow into their new activist clothing. Smack them down for not knowing up front the insiders’ approved terminology or secret handshakes and you’ll alienate potential allies, friends you’ll need to build a movement. (Those terms and behaviors tend to faddish and short-lived anyway.)

The kind of progressive activist Giridharadas mentions views every victory as incomplete, every bill as half a loaf, every compromise a betrayal no matter the upside. They are exhausting downers and often single-issue. I call them glass-half-empty progressives. They wonder bitterly why more people don’t want to hang with them.

Which takes us back to Anat: If you want people to join your party, throw a better party.

Ridicule and fun have been integral to every anti-authoritarian movement across place and time.If you want people to come to your party, you gotta throw a better party. If you want people to have the courage to stand up to their justified fear of the leader, you must make said leader look small.

— Anat Shenker-Osorio (@anatosaurus.bsky.social) 2024-12-03T18:05:43.154Z

Dance more. Mock your opponents more. Smile more.

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Dick Cheney: A key architect of the Iraq War

Dick Cheney, vice president under George W. Bush and key architect of the Iraq War, is dead at 84. Condolences to his family. Sorry for your loss, Liz.

The Bush-Cheney administration’s lying the United States into invading Iraq, and Cheney’s role in “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation,” is what pushed me into writing political commentary. That eventually landed me here. I first encountered Cheney’s role in the subterfuge that previewed “Shock and Awe” detailed variously at Salon, Salon again, a series in The American Conservative, and Salon yet again. Bush, known for ascribing snarky nicknames to his staff, called Cheney “Big Time.”

Le Monde remembers another:

With his sepulchral voice and rare words, Dick Cheney claimed his nickname of “Darth Vader” and his taste for the dark side of power with provocative pride. After three decades behind the scenes, with George W. Bush’s consent, he imposed himself during two terms as perhaps the most influential and powerful vice president in the history of the United States. History’s verdict has been merciless with the “father” of the Iraq invasion and of the excesses of the war on terror. He never expressed the slightest regret.

Cheney was a pivotal figure, Vanity Fair observes. He was “the principal architect of American power in the first years of the 21st century; that is, until the abject failures of military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq helped set the stage for the rise of Trumpian “America First” isolationism on the right, a commensurate anti-imperialism on the left, and a diminution of America’s position in the world.”

Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project declares Cheney, “A real Republican, to the last.” Interpret that as you will.

In the too little too late department, MSN reminds readers:

… Cheney became one of the nation’s most prominent Republicans to oppose Donald Trump. Along with his daughter, Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman, Dick Cheney said that he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. “There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said before the election, which Trump won.

It takes one, etc. Cheney’s family will mourn him.

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