There were no Confederate flags, but the high school band still struck up “Dixie” as a fight song at pep rallies before integration finally reached Greenville, South Carolina in 1970. A recent arrival in the “New South,” I was called Yankee now and again. It was strange then. That “heritage” seems even stranger now.
Anna Venarchik, herself an Alabama native, writes about the legacy of The United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC over decades very successfully retconned the Civil War as something other than bloody treason by an entire region of the country to prevent the future I saw at a northern Virginia Waffle House. That too was a Lost Cause.
“They all think we’re white supremacists but they don’t want to bother to find out,” said one member on a Zoom Venarchik attended this decade.” Who “they” were went unsaid.
“I am interested in people understanding that the organization is a forward-looking organization,” a youngish septuagenarian from a New York chapter told Venarchik, before reversing herself and declining an interview. The UDC declined Venarchik’s other efforts to secure an interview. She never got to inquire in what way the UDC is forward-looking.
These days, the UDC’s principle focus is on retaining its marble headquarters in Richmond, dedicated in November 1957. Venarchik explains after sketching a brief history of the group:
The Daughters settled in the former Confederate capital after Governor William Tuck, who spent his governorship fighting civil rights laws, offered the land. Virginia’s General Assembly approved the offer in 1950 and tacked on $10,000 toward construction fees. The deed, however, included stipulations: If the UDC doesn’t use the property for five years, it reverts to the Commonwealth. The UDC cannot sell the building, because the state controls the land; the group cannot move it, because it’s marble. If they ever couldn’t pay for upkeep, they would have to abandon the memorial.
The structure was vandalized and firebombed in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Since then, UDC monuments have come down across Richmond.
“Just the nicest ladies” is how the Daughters see themselves. They often used such phrases while discussing their charity projects. Divisions annually report how many hours of volunteer work they complete: in 2021, over 12,000 hours in Florida, over 180,000 in Texas. But their use of the phrase also suggests how they define “racist”: someone who feels animosity toward Black people, who wishes to see communities of color suffer. And “white supremacy” is associated with violence, not societal conditions. By holding to these definitions, the Daughters maintain confusion as to why such terms are applied to them. They don’t feel these things; they’re just nice ladies.
I spoke with a former member of the UDC’s brother group, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (he requested anonymity), who cautioned me against generalizing the organization, which isn’t a monolith. He worked with Daughters in Richmond for years and said some divisions are more genteel, others more “hard-core.” Some Daughters want to save statues—especially in North Carolina—others just like to hang out with friends. And some were formerly members of the Children of the Confederacy, the auxiliary organization where youth learn “true” history. In 2021, the youngest member was added at only 45 minutes old, so I found it ironic—and disturbing—when one Daughter told me she sympathized when descendants of the enslaved are offended by Confederate statues. But she added that it’s important to make sure such people understand the true narrative: “You can tell them that they have been lied to all their life.”
Being branded a loser is bad. Really bad. Any show of weakness is disqualifying, a mortal sin on the right. Donald Trump is obsessed with projecting strength. Vladimir Putin and Trump’s other crushes are strong, and strongmen. The lengths to which Trump and the MAGA cult will go to avoid losing we witnessed after November 2020 and in courts since. The UDC spent over a century redefining the Lost Cause as the South’s finest hour, thwarted only by Yankee treachery.
Given half a chance, MAGA will do the same with Trump’s 2020 loss (he didn’t lose) and Jan. 6. That’s not a prediction. It’s already happening. Trump won. Who you gonna believe, Trump or your lyin’ eyes? There was no insurrection. Jan. 6 was a War of Liberal Aggression.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, has made a splash on her book tour (“Oath and Honor”) in a series of interviews. She pulls no punches about the depths of Republican Party degradation she witnessed before her ouster from Congress after voting for Trump’s Jan. 6 impeachment. She is determined to do “whatever it takes” to prevent a second Trump term, including a third-party run for president (Washington Post):
“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Cheney said in a Monday interview with The Washington Post. But, she said, “I happen to think democracy is at risk at home, obviously, as a result of Donald Trump’s continued grip on the Republican Party, and I think democracy is at risk internationally as well.”
Given her appeal to independents, former Republicans and some Democrats, many Trump critics in both parties have noted that a presidential run by Cheney could undercut her stated goal of defeating Trump, because it could draw some votes away from President Biden. Cheney said those considerations would all be part of her analysis, and underscored that she would not do anything that would help Trump return to the White House.
A third-party run would be a daunting task, the Post offers. Such “candidates must either attach themselves to third parties that have ballot access or petition for their own place on state ballots.” Whatever it takes?
I have mixed feelings. Giving remaining non-MAGA Republicans and independents a face-saving way to vote against Trump could shave enough votes from the dictator-in-waiting to deprive him of electoral votes in one or two swing states. In North Carolina at least, independents (UNAffiliateds) voted statewide 58% against Joe Biden. A sliver of those might welcome a way to vote for a Republican who’s not Trump rather than for a Democrat, something Cheney herself has not ruled out. It is hard to see how she would draw votes away from Biden.
Nevertheless, conventional wisdom is out the door, Cheney believes.
At a moment when Trump is leading his GOP rivals by more than 40 points in many polls of the Republican race, she contends that not just the Republican primary electorate but the party itself has “lost its way,” caught in the grip of what she calls the “cult of personality.”
Because of that, the “tectonic plates of our politics are shifting,” she said, and conventional wisdom about third parties and the bifurcated primary process that produces a Republican nominee and a Democratic nominee is “pretty irrelevant, in my view, in the 2024 cycle, because the threat is so unique.”
.@Liz_Cheney: "People need to think about what it means when a president won't enforce court rulings he disagrees with. As soon as that happens…we're unraveling the fundamental structures and systems that make us a nation of laws, so there won't be any guardrails to stop him." pic.twitter.com/lRdInRP8zL
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio urged her to join the House Freedom Arrested Development Caucus because “we don’t have any women and we need one.” He may need a criminal defense lawyer, she suggests.
Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania was so angry at Cheney for releasing a statement before the impeachment vote, he told her in a caucus meeting (CNN):
“It’s like you’re playing in the biggest game of your life and you look up and see your girlfriend sitting on the opponent’s side!”
The remark provoked a chorus of female members who yelled back, “She’s not your girlfriend!”
Arrested development, indeed.
'He is not the lesser of two evils': Cheney tells @maddow she doesn’t want to “imagine” what Trump winning would be like.
The women’s rights organization made a similar statement in late November condemning the Hamas attacks, but quickly deleted the post.
International women’s organizations have been roundly criticized by Jewish, Israeli, and other groups since October 7 for their relative silence on the brutality faced by Israeli women during Hamas’s rampage in southern Israel.
On Saturday, after the UN Women statement condemning Hamas, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen took to X to slam the UN women’s organization.
“The conduct of UN Women, as well as the UN Secretary-General and other UN agencies, since the October 7 massacre, is disgraceful.,” Cohen wrote. “UN Women’s message is weak and late when it comes after almost two months of silence and ignoring the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and sexual crimes committed by the terrorist organization, Hamas.”
The UN’s long silence has, unfortunately, been mirrored by many of the groups who had been the most vocal about sexual assault and abuse in other contexts.
Over at Slate, a group of progressive writers — including Dahlia Lithwick, Mimi Rocah, Jennifer Taub, Tamar Zepper, Joyce Vance, and Julie Zebrak called out their fellow feminists:
Of all of the horrors coming out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, among the most horrible are the barbaric murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and kidnappings of women and young girls in Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. And yet, deepening this distressing event, there has been a disheartening silence about, or worse, denial of these evils; reticence from the voices here at home in the U.S. who have, in the recent past, embraced other women who needed their support. Israeli and Jewish women find themselves isolated.
For the past three decades, women have stood up for other women. When our sisters’ bodies and dignity were targeted and violated, women and allies of all ages and backgrounds organized, supported, and spoke out.
The CNN anchor called it “remarkable” that the subject hasn’t been getting more attention, adding “I’ve seen a lot of Progressive women. Generally speaking, they’re quick to defend women’s rights and to speak out against using rape as a weapon of war, but downright silent on what we saw on October 7th and what might be happening inside Gaza right now to these hostages.”
“Why is that?” Bash asked Jayapal.
“I don’t know that that’s true,” Jayapal said. “I think we always talk about the impact of war on women in particular.”
After some verbal dodging, Bash pressed Jayapal for a more direct answer:
“With respect,” Bash interjected. “I was just asking about the women, and you turned it back to Israel. I’m asking you about Hamas…”
“I already answered your question, Dana,” Jayapal countered. “I said it’s horrific, and I think that rape is horrific. Sexual assault is horrific. I think that it happens in war situations. Terrorist organizations like Hamas obviously are using these as tools. However, I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians. Fifteen thousand Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes, three-quarters of whom are women and children…”
“And it’s horrible,” said Bash, “but you don’t see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women.
Bash’s fellow CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga praised Bash’s interview: “Good on @DanaBashCNN to continually press @RepJayapal on condemning Hamas’ horrific sexual violence against Israeli women. Jayapal repeatedly said she spoke out specifically against the sexual violence but has apparently not done so, at least on X.”
Other progressives also dunked on Jayapal’s attempts to “balance” her reaction.
I saw the Jayapal interview and it was cringe-worthy, frankly. It’s no fun being put on the spot but this one wasn’t hard. All she had to do was say “Of course I condemn the rapes of those women.I condemn all sexual violence and there is no excuse for it.” Period. Full Stop.
I have long wondered when intersectionality was going to be put to a real test on the left. Identity politics are easy when there is no tension within the coalition and there’s a monolithic enemy. But humans are complicated creatures and the world is full of contradictions. It was only a matter of time before this kind of conflict rose to the surface in the progressive coalition.
That’s why it’s best to ground your political philosophy in a set of morals and principles. It doesn’t make horrifically difficult situations like the Gaza crisis more navigable but it does simplify questions like these. Unequivocally condemning war crimes and terrorism, regardless of the victims or the perpetrators, should be one of the easiest.
What else is new? After all, he’s been saying Biden stole the 2020 election for 3 solid years
With his latest tribute to the late great Pee Wee Herman, former president Donald Trump unveiled his latest “I know you are but what am I” campaign strategy over the weekend by attacking President Joe Biden as “the destroyer of American democracy.”
President Trump In Iowa: “Biden and his Radical Left allies like to pose as defenders of “Democracy”—but Joe Biden is not the DEFENDER of American Democracy, Joe Biden is the DESTROYER of American Democracy, and the WRECKER of the American Dream.” pic.twitter.com/3DsBKsiaJ4
The crowd loved it, as they love all things Trump. The Des Moines Register interviewed one rally goers who explained why: “Teens have rock stars that they follow like Taylor Swift. Grown-ups have Trump.” It doesn’t really matter what he says.
Trump’s senior campaign adviser explained the real reason for this new campaign slogan:
TRIGGER WARNING!!! Want to watch the lefties heads explode?? Push this message: “…Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … This [Trumps] campaign is a righteous crusade to liberate our republic from Biden and…
The Washington Post reported that a “senior Trump adviser” told them, “President Trump is turning the tables, We are not going to allow Joe Biden and the Democrats to gaslight the American public, and it’s clear from what LaCivita wrote that it’s yet another of their juvenile attempts to “own the libs.”
I don’t think I saw any lefties heads exploding over this but many people did explode with laughter. The claim is ludicrous, of course. Trump’s the one who attempted to overturn the election and incited a violent mob to storm the capitol and stop the certification of the election. There is no greater example of democracy destruction than that. But he said it and it wasn’t off the cuff. They passed out placards before the rally that said, “Biden attacks Democracy” and flashed the words on a big screen above him as he said it.
The New York Times characterized this move as the Trump campaign “going on offense” to counter accusations by Biden that he is a threat to democracy. But I’m not sure this marks much of a change in strategy. After all, Trump has been saying since 2016 that any election he loses is rigged. He even says it when he wins! Recall his “commission” to investigate voter fraud in the election against Hillary Clinton in which he sought to prove that he really won the popular vote because of all the illegal votes. That investigation didn’t go anywhere but his claims helped set the stage for his Big Lie in 2020.
This weekend he made an even bolder claim:
Trump says the elections are “rigged” if he doesn’t win in California, Illinois, and New York.
He further commanded his troops to go to Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit to “watch” the vote count next November to make sure they don’t cheat. I think we know what he’s telling them to do, don’t you? “It will be wild….”
All of his talk about electoral fraud for the past five years is essentially saying that the Democrats in general and Biden specifically are destroying democracy by stealing elections. This has been the central message of his ongoing campaign. Why anyone thinks that this is a new tack is beyond me.
Trump does this to get his followers all excited and angry so they’ll send him money and come out to vote. It’s a fundamentally dishonest but rational approach and it’s one that’s kept the Republican Party under his spell for the last eight years. In that respect it has been a great success. But if swing voters haven’t been convinced that Biden stole the election from Trump by now, all this bellowing about Biden “destroying democracy” is going to fall on deaf ears. Everyone in America has heard it all before.
It can be powerful in a different way, however. It serves to neutralize the topic as just more political “tit-for-tat” and some people may just dismiss the entire argument that the Democrats are making. Witness how Trump and his Republican henchmen have managed to persuade a majority of the American public that Biden is involved in corrupt activity with his son.
Most adults say President Biden has at the very least acted unethically in his handling of the international business dealings of his son Hunter, including about a third who say he did something illegal. Only 30% of the public think Biden has done nothing wrong regarding Hunter’s business dealings.
They have even managed to convince 40% of Democrats that Joe Biden acted unethically or illegally based solely on lies and innuendo. It’s a stunning result that proves the power of repetition and propaganda. The AP reported that result and then added this, proving that Trump has gotten exactly what he wanted:
A similar percentage of adults (67%) said former President Donald Trump acted unethically or illegally in his interactions with the president of Ukraine according to an AP-NORC poll taken in October 2019, with 38% believing he acted illegally.
Trump is at this very moment pushing hard for the US House to impeach Joe Biden over all this and the new speaker Mike Johnson said that he thinks it’s just about ready to go. Everyone knows that it’s dead on arrival in the US Senate but that doesn’t matter. All Trump wants to do is ensure that Biden is impeached in order to neutralize his own impeachment(s).
His claims of Biden “weaponizing” the government against him, despite no evidence that Biden had anything to do with the Justice Department’s decisions is now serving to open the door for his authoritarian agenda of retribution which he portrays as legitimate:
Trump on Truth Social suggests he would use DOJ in retaliatory ways, says the charges against him opened “Pandora’s Box” and that Biden should tell prosecutors to drop them “before it’s too late for him and the rest of the country.” To Dems he adds “be careful what you wish for.”
As you can see, the Pee-Wee Herman strategy isn’t springing from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago brain trust. This is Trump’s one true talent. He instinctively understands the power of turning his own flaws into his rivals’ and then criticizing them for it. Psychologists call this “projection” and it is. But it’s more than that. Trump is corrupt and incompetent and he’s projecting that on to Biden to be sure. But he’s also feeding the cynicism that has overtaken our political culture.
His own followers may believe that he is an innocent martyr being persecuted unjustly, but all those swing voters or “low information” voters who may be unhappy about other things can be persuaded that “they all do it” or even “they’ve always done it” so what’s the big deal? He knows that all he has to do is get his fan base out and convince a small sliver of the rest of the voting population that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between him and Joe Biden and he could pull off another win like he did in 2016.
The Atlantic has published a big series on “if Trump wins” and it’s full of interesting stuff, much of which I’ll discuss here over the next few days.
l’ll start out with this one from McKay Coppins, on who Trump plans to put into his top spots. It won’t be like last time when he surrounded himself with people he thought came “right out of Central Casting.”
Don’t expect it to happen again. The available supply of serious, qualified people willing to serve in a Trump administration has dwindled since 2017. After all, the so-called adults didn’t fare so well in their respective rooms. Some quit in frustration or disgrace; others were publicly fired by the president. Several have spent their post–White House lives fielding congressional subpoenas and getting indicted. And after seeing one Trump term up close, vanishingly few of them are interested in a sequel: This past summer, NBC News reported that just four of Trump’s 44 Cabinet secretaries had endorsed his current bid.
Even if mainstream Republicans did want to work for him again, Trump is unlikely to want them. He’s made little secret of the fact that he felt burned by many in his first Cabinet. This time around, according to people in Trump’s orbit, he would prioritize obedience over credentials. “I think there’s going to be a very concerted, calculated effort to ensure that the people he puts in his next administration—they don’t have to share his worldview exactly, but they have to implement it,” Hogan Gidley, a former Trump White House spokesperson, told me.
What would this look like in practice? Predicting presidential appointments nearly a year before the election is a fool’s errand, especially with a candidate as mercurial as this one. And, whether for reasons of low public opinion or ongoing legal jeopardy, some of Trump’s likely picks might struggle to get confirmed (expect a series of contentious hearings). But the names currently circulating in MAGA world offer a glimpse at the kind of people Trump could gravitate toward.
One Trump-world figure with a record of deference to the boss is Stephen Miller. As a speechwriter and policy adviser, Miller managed to endure while so many of his colleagues flamed out in part because he was satisfied with being a staffer instead of a star. He was also fully aligned with the president on his signature issue: immigration. Inside the White House, Miller championed some of the administration’s most draconian measures, including the Muslim travel ban and the family-separation policy. In a second Trump term, some expect Miller to get a job that will give him significant influence over immigration policy—perhaps head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or even secretary of homeland security. Given Miller’s villainous reputation in Democratic circles, however, he might have a hard time getting confirmed by the Senate. If that happens, some think White House chief of staff might be a good consolation prize.
For secretary of state, one likely candidate is Richard Grenell. Before Trump appointed him ambassador to Germany in 2018, Grenell was best-known as a right-wing foreign-policy pundit and an inexhaustible Twitter troll. He brought his signature bellicosity to Berlin, hectoring journalists and government officials on Twitter, and telling a Breitbart London reporter early in his tenure that he planned to use his position to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe.” (He had to walk back the comment after some in Germany interpreted it as a call for far-right regime change.)
Grenell’s undiplomatic approach to diplomacy exasperated German officials and thrilled Trump, who reportedly described him as an ambassador who “gets it.” Grenell has spent recent years performing his loyalty as a Trump ally and, according to one source, privately building his case for the secretary-of-state role.
One job that Trump will be especially focused on getting right is attorney general. He believes that both of the men who held this position during his term—Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr—were guilty of grievous betrayal. Since then, Trump has been charged with 91 felony counts across four separate criminal cases—evidence, he claims, of a historic “political persecution.” (He has pleaded not guilty in all cases.) Trump has pledged to use the Justice Department to visit revenge on his persecutors if he returns to the White House.
“The notion of the so-called independence of the Department of Justice needs to be consigned to the ash heap of history,” says Paul Dans, who served in the Office of Personnel Management under Trump and now leads an effort by the Heritage Foundation to recruit conservative appointees for the next Republican administration. To that end, Trump allies have floated a range of loyalists for attorney general, including Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Josh Hawley; former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Jeffrey Clark, formerly one of Trump’s assistant attorneys general, who was indicted in Georgia on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election (the charges are still pending).
Vivek Ramaswamy—the fast-talking entrepreneur running in the Republican presidential primary as of this writing—is also expected to get a top post in the administration. Ramaswamy has praised Trump on the campaign trail and positioned himself as the natural heir to the former president. Trump has responded to the flattery in kind, publicly praising his opponent as a “very, very, very intelligent person.” Some have even speculated that Ramaswamy could be Trump’s pick for vice president.
Why not make Marjorie Taylor Green Secretary of Defense? Or Tucker Carlson as National Security Adviser? It’s absurd. And for those of you who are thinking that he won’t be able to get any of them confirmed, think again. If Trump wins the Republicans will very likely take the Senate and if that happens they are going to change any rules they don’t like. They will not long observe such niceties as the filibuster and if they have a majority they’ll confirm anyone Trump wants them to confirm.
Apparently, the Washington Post has decided it needs to “move to the center” and I’m sure you know what that means. It’s pretty devastating for them to do this at this particular moment. If we ever needed clear-headed analysis it’s now and if there’s one thing we know, “centrism” (aka “both sides”) is never clear headed.
They’ve been laying good people off and one of them is Paul Waldman, one of the best analysts they had. The good news is that he has a newsletter so his insights will still be accessible. (Thank god for blogging, eh?)
Here’s one he posted today and I could not agree with it more.
Any regular consumer of political news has been deluged with stories recently about traditionally Democratic voting groups who may be ready to defect from Joe Biden in 2024, especially Muslim Americans and young people. It’s mostly about recent events in Israel and Gaza, but the grievances driving this debate have included housing costs, student debt, and climate change. This has produced a good deal of intra-left squabbling on social media, often featuring some version of the following conversation:
Person A: “We won’t forgive Joe Biden, and he shouldn’t expect our votes.”
Person B: “So you’re going to help Donald Trump get elected? The person who is most dangerous to you and everything you value? Great plan.”
Person A: “We’re tired of being told over and over that we have to accept Tweedledee because Tweedledum would be worse. Don’t keep telling us to shut up and get in line. If you want our votes you have to earn them.”
Person B: “You don’t get it.”
Person A: “No, YOU don’t get it.”
Oh, I’ll take that one even farther. I recall having a conversation back in 2000 with a Nader voter who insisted that he couldn’t vote for Al Gore because of his family’s association with Occidental petroleum and their treatment of Columbia’s U’Wa tribe. I told him that George W. Bush was a oil man to his bones and that his treatment of indigenous people around the world would be a hundred times worse than Gore’s and he retorted, “George Bush is not my enemy!” We all know how that turned out, don’t we? It was ever thus.
Waldman continues:
I’m not going to try to prosecute one side of this argument. Both sides have some valid points to make, and both perspectives need to be understood. But I do want to suggest a way of thinking about the presidency that might help clarify things.
What if instead of thinking about our vote for president as a profound expression of our innermost self in all its complexity, we think about it as just one piece of our more complex engagement with the political world, and one that doesn’t have to be expressive and inspiring, not because it isn’t important, but precisely because it is?
Your presidential vote doesn’t have to give you a sense of fulfillment and joy. It can be purely instrumental — often, it may be just insurance, contributing to one outcome you’re only partly in favor of to avoid a much worse outcome. Making that choice doesn’t mean you aren’t idealistic or principled, it just means you see politics in a holistic way.
The last thing I want to do is crush anyone’s political idealism, and I understand why many on the left don’t like Joe Biden. His history is problematic in a great many ways. While his embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and tepid comments about Palestinian human rights after October 7 shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone, many still found them justifiably maddening. He’s by nature a compromiser. He made some promises that are unfulfilled. His age — more specifically, the fact that he looks and sounds extremely old, regardless of his actual mental acuity — makes it impossible for many people, especially younger people, to relate to him and have confidence in his ability to serve effectively through a second term.
But I think there’s something else going on among younger voters and their dismissal of Biden: They haven’t yet had the opportunity to have their unreasonably high hopes dashed by a president.
How Barack Obama broke our hearts
If you’re under 30, you may not remember too much about the 2008 campaign, but for many liberals at the time, Obama embodied everything they ever wanted in a presidential candidate. He was young, smart, cool, urban and urbane, multiracial and culturally aware, an extraordinary orator and someone free of personal scandal or, it seemed, a single character flaw. In short, he was the one they had waited their whole lives for, even as he told them “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” That was the core of Obama’s rhetorical magic: He convinced you that you could be an actor in a historic drama, not just an observer but a hero. It was intoxicating.
My favorite manifestation of this feeling was a simple website called Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle. Every time you reload it, it tells you another way Obama lives inside your heart, from “Barack Obama made you a mixtape” to “Barack Obama emailed your dad and told him how great you are.” It was self-aware while still buying into how great it was to finally feel this way about a politician.
At the time, there were very few discouraging words on the left; the feeling was just too powerful. But then reality had its say. The Obama years were filled with unpleasantness — the rise of the Tea Party, the furious racial backlash to the election of a Black president — and Obama himself turned out to be less a revolutionary figure than a rather ordinary Democrat with center-let impulses, one whose practical ambitions never matched the historic sweep of his rhetoric.
To understand why people like me have limits to how disappointed we can be with Joe Biden, and why we’re more pleased with the good things Biden has done than some others might be, you have to grasp both parts of the Obama experience, the initial exuberance and the eventual let-down.
Living with the president’s limitations
I’m sure I’m not the only one who now knows that there will never be a president who fills me with joy and never disappoints me. So while Elizabeth Warren was my favored candidate in the 2020 primaries, I made peace with the idea of Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee and eventual president, despite the many criticisms I had of him over the years.
Accepting the president’s limitations doesn’t mean you stop trying to make the president you have better. In fact, it makes the project more urgent. It’s easy to say “It would be better if we had a different president.” Convincing the president you have to be a better version of themselves is more complicated.
That’s not to say that there’s something wrong with vigorous criticism of the president. That, in fact, is what activists are supposed to do: criticize, cajole, demand, and from time to time, even threaten.
We also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that progressive activists have accomplished a great deal in the last few years in pushing this administration to the left, which is possible precisely because Joe Biden is an extremely malleable politician. He doesn’t have immovable beliefs; as his party moves, he’ll move. The result is that even for its faults, his has been the most progressive presidency since at least Lyndon Johnson’s, and perhaps even Franklin Roosevelt’s.
It’s not because Joe Biden is a fundamentally progressive guy. It’s because of a combination of historical circumstance, the evolution of the Democratic Party, and the work of left activists who have shown themselves to be both pragmatic and principled. Some of them are members of Congress, some of them serve in the administration, and some of them are outside government. They’ve been deeply engaged with this administration, and to act as though Biden’s policy choices haven’t served a great many progressive goals is to demean their hard work and accomplishments.
I’m not going to run down the list of Biden’s successes on things like climate and debt forgiveness, though it is worth noting one specific that gets less attention: His record on promoting diversity on the federal bench has been nothing short of spectacular, far better than Obama or Bill Clinton. The point is not that it’s good enough and we should all just be celebrating. It’s that when you get a president who is open to influence and progressives work hard to influence them, many good things can happen, even if there are going to be disappointments along the way.
That isn’t an argument against idealism, it’s an argument for not allowing idealism to convince you that politics will ever be uncomplicated. There will be powerful forces arrayed against you, your opponents will not disappear, convincing the public you’re right will be a challenge, and you are unlikely to ever have a president who believes exactly as you do about everything, let alone one who doesn’t disappoint you in many ways.
Because the news media focus so much on the president, we can easily convince ourselves that the most direct thing we do in relation to that individual — cast a vote every four years — ought to be the center of our political engagement just as he is the center of the national political world. But it shouldn’t be. There are a thousand ways to engage with politics, and in many of them you can have a far greater impact than you will with a presidential vote. If Joe Biden has disappointed or angered you, there are a great many ways to make it less likely he will do so in the future. But helping Donald Trump become president (even in the most indirect way) is not one of them.
Some might say that feels like a kind of emotional blackmail. But it’s reality: the 2024 election is going to be very close, and Trump is already making it more than clear that should he win, he plans nothing less than a dismantling of the American political system and replacing it with a right-wing autocracy. We can’t wish that fact away, and we have to make our political decisions in light of it. Even if the better outcome of that contest won’t make us feel great.
I guess I’m dead inside because even though I’ve been a political junkie all my life, I can’t think of any politician I fell in love with that way. I don’t see them as my daddy or my boyfriend or my girlfriend. I can admire them or respect them but except to the extent they represent things I care about, I don’t have a deep emotional investment in them as individuals. I didn’t have that with Obama either and the whole hero worship aspect of his presidency frankly made me uncomfortable. I guess I’m just not subject to that sort of thing.
But I agree with Waldman that disappointment in politicians you love is a powerful emotion for many people and part of becoming a mature citizen in a democracy is to understand why that is. Young people are naturally idealistic and it’s hugely important for progress that they are. You need that fresh energy all the time or a coalition goes stale. But it’s almost always the case that passionate idealism fades over time in the face of the reality that Waldman outlines above. It’s just the way it works.
But right now the stakes in presidential politics are so much higher than they’ve ever been in my lifetime, largely due to the entire Republican Party’s embrace of radical authoritarianism and the ongoing worship among adult right wingers for Donald Trump. (I have often observed that they are all affected with a mass case of arrested development. MAGA is their Woodstock.) We have to hope that there are enough voters on the other side who are willing to channel their idealism into an imperfect vessel this time out or the consequences will be dire. My main worry there is that after eight years in the spotlight, MAGA and Trump just seem normal to a lot of young people so they don’t see them for the massive threat they really are.
The Atlantic this morning delivers a full spread of articles announcing the imminent demise of the Late Great United States of America, all part of its “If Trump Wins” series. There is growing alarm about another Trump presidency and reason for it. But it’s not as if Robert Kagan’s, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” just last week did not give many of us sleepless nights already.
Conventional wisdom has finally caught up with what Ruth Ben-Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) and Timothy Snyder (“On Tyranny“) have warned about for years. This Trump guy whom sane people treated as an ignorant, loudmouth jerk, and his red-hatted band of equally loudmouth sycophants and Beltway collaborators, are a genuine threat to the country’s existence. Have you heard? They ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. There’s video.
Trump is out for revenge, writes David Frum. He will dump NATO, warns Anne Applebaum. His second term will be all loyalists, lapdogs and cronies, explains McKay Coppins. And with control of the Department of Justice, he’ll get away with it, predicts Barton Gellman.
A second Trump term would instantly plunge the country into a constitutional crisis more terrible than anything seen since the Civil War. Even in the turmoil of the 1960s, even during the Great Depression, the country had a functional government with the president as its head. But the government cannot function with an indicted or convicted criminal as its head. The president would be an outlaw, or on his way to becoming an outlaw. For his own survival, he would have to destroy the rule of law.
An acquaintance I encountered last night could not take the stress 18 months ago and had checked out. She was resigned last night to doomsday arriving posthaste. While it’s nice that CW has figured out it is time to call fascism fascism and raise democracy’s DEFCON status, we must be careful not to overdo it.
Dr. Helen Caldicott of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the anti-nuclear group, once tried in her talks to shock listeners into action about the threat of nuclear weapons. By blasting her audiences with a flood of frightening statistics (I attended one of those speeches in person) the crusader sometimes accomplished the opposite:
PSR Executive Director Jane Wales, while acknowledging a huge debt to Caldicott, said in 1984 that the time for the “bombing runs” (as insiders call the speech) was past. “We knew it was past when someone interrupted the speech one evening, actually interrupted it, and said, ‘We know all that, but what can we do?’”
I’m assembling mailing lists for the 5th Ed of For The Win right now. Two years ago 40% of Idaho’s counties either had no functioning Democratic committees (or no sign of them on the Net). Today all do. Two years ago an even higher percentage of Iowa’s counties were MIA. Today only 5 are. Sure, it’s red Idaho and Iowa, but it’s dramatic progress in two short years. Nobody knows about that. Now you do.
That Statista chart is from May 10, 2022. A followup from Oct 18, 2023 reports the market has cooled somewhat since last year. Nevertheless:
While house prices have continuously grown in recent years, incomes have not followed at the same pace. That means that for aspiring homeowners, purchasing a home has become increasingly unaffordable. In a survey among people actively looking to buy a home, one in three millennials cited the high house prices as the main barrier to homeownership. Meanwhile, inflation is on the rise and has forced the Federal Reserve to introduce a gradual increase in interest rates, leading to a double increase in the cost of borrowing. As a result, homebuyer sentiment plummeted, Americans across all age groups agreeing that the current time was not a good time to buy a home.
Home ownership is still one of the main ways Americans build wealth. If I were Gen Z, I’d be pissed too.
The rental market has cooled in part because there’s a lot of new inventory, which means landlords are grappling with rising vacancies and have less leverage to raise rents. That’s the reverse of what’s happening in the for-sale housing market, where prices are rising due to an inventory shortage. Listings in the for-sale market have plunged because surging mortgage rates have prompted many homeowners to stay put, as moving would mean trading in their low rate for a much higher one.
Is there a housing supply problem? That’s the word on the street. But institutional investors looking to squeeze more profit from the housing market are another factor:
Between Invitation Homes, Blackstone BX +1.7%, and the major groups that are buying single-family homes, 1 in 3 houses in Texas were bought by a PE firm last year and Wall Street owns 1.2 million homes across the country. With that type of buying power in any market center, the shortage of homes is not just a product of supply and demand. These investors are looking for certain types of homes and taking inventory away from middle class Americans or first-time home buyers – the average buy box is a 1,400-2,300sqft., 3- or 4-bedroom single family home. Although this doesn’t affect high target markets like San Francisco, New York or Los Angeles, Americans are no longer able to buy a house in the submarkets where the average purchase price is $350-450k. When there are 1.2 million homes that are owned by Wall Street in today’s market center, institutional investors ultimately don’t care about the price of the home – they’re just trying to make yield on the rents because they can afford to pay cash for the homes. They have no intention of releasing these homes into the market center, which is adding to the housing shortage and creates a bigger problem. We can’t build our way out of the shortage of inventory.
Looking at housing in our town one Sunday, I spotted three houses on one street bought the same day by the same real estate group out of Boca Raton. They are now rentals. Yes, it’s a factor.
People don’t look to the thing that has gotten better for them (like more options for jobs.) They look to the things that have gotten worse for them, and 30% more expensive food and 50% more expensive houses over the course of 3 years is a huge shock and the only way out of that is through.
Financial analysis does not reduce individual angst. If you’ve seen $5 and $6 boxes of breakfast cereal in stores in the last couple of years, you know what he’s talking about. People cannot eat GDP.
Roe, George claimed, had been decided based on “plain historical falsehoods.” For instance, for centuries dating to English common law, he asserted, abortion has been considered a crime or “a kind of inchoate felony for felony-murder purposes.”
The argument was echoed in dozens of amicus briefs supporting Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that struck down the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Seven months before the decision, the argument was featured in an article on the web page of the conservative legal network, the Federalist Society, where Leo is co-chair.
In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito used the same quote from Henry de Bracton, the medieval English jurist, that George cited in his amicus brief to help demonstrate that “English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century corroborate the treatises’ statements that abortion was a crime.”
George, however, is not a historian. Major organizations representing historians strongly disagree with him.
That this questionable assertion is now enshrined in the court’s ruling is “a flawed and troubling precedent,” the Organization of American Historians, which represents 6,000 history scholars and experts, and the American Historical Association, the largest membership association of professional historians in the world, said in a statement. It is also a prime example of how a tight circle of conservative legal activists have built a highly effective thought chamber around the court’s conservative flank over the past decade.
A POLITICO review of tax filings, financial statements and other public documents found that Leo and his network of nonprofit groups are either directly or indirectly connected to a majority of amicus briefs filed on behalf of conservative parties in seven of the highest-profile rulings the court has issued over the past two years.
It is the first comprehensive review of amicus briefs that have streamed into the court since Trump nominated Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, solidifying the court’s conservative majority. POLITICO’s review found multiple instances of language used in the amicus briefs appearing in the court’s opinions.
Read on to see just how bad it is. Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society are right int he middle of it, of course.
The article delves deeply into the self-serving arguments being made by various right wing actors to bolster the specious priors of the conservative justices. The way they have gamed the justice system is unbelievable.
This is one of the reasons why I’m reluctant to hold out too much hope that the courts are going to save us from Donald Trump. I think it’s 50/50 at best. These people may not be MAGA but they are something just as dangerous in their own way. They have a far right agenda and they have corruptly adopted the willingness to shelve intellectual integrity and legal principles in order to enact it. That’s the tie that binds the coalition together.
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