I’m also mad about it because AOC is unusually good in congressional hearings. She is more prepared than anyone else. She is more efficient in asking the questions that matter. She isn’t wildly self indulgent in a way most members are during hearings. She actually considers follow through - compare AOC questing Michael Cohen vs Harris’s “tough” questioning of Kavanaugh that sounded like a setup but was actually nothing.
Congress should reward its members for working hard and showing skill and developing an expertise. If you just reward being an old guy, well, that’s what you get more of.
thanks! I'll be sure to quote you and other progressives on this when I win the Presidency. Can't tell you how much I appreciate you getting out the vote for me.
Also just a friendly reminder that Nancy Pelosi is corrupt. Her defense of insider trading is embarrassing and should have been disqualifying. Good riddance as soon as she's gone.
I have been extremely unimpressed with Congressional Democrats since the election. Utterly listless. I said in the comments section here the day after AOC was denied ranking member on Oversight it was a foolish thing to do. Democrats needed to forcefully eject the party elders yesterday. They're just on autopilot. AOC is a star, she's a team player, and she's great on camera. She has cred with exactly the low info voters we need to win back.
I think Republicans ditching seniority years ago as guiding principle for committee assignments has cultivated a set of effective brawlers. That has its own flaws, but you can't deny how effective they are at setting and driving the narrative. Democrats haven't been able to do that since they got shellacked in 2010.
It was allowed to hold over by advances in medical technology. Three generations ago, seniority was a fine system because most aging white dudes dropped dead of heart attacks.
Now they get bypasses and stents and keep racking up seniority.
This is more of a broader point not specific to congressional seniority, but one thing I've observed is that there's no Democrat who young leftists hate more than the young Democrat who came from a white-collar career track after graduating from a good college and wears a suit. Young Democrats like that are invariably 10x more hated than Democrats who are ideologically just as moderate but older. We've seen it play out in race after race: Joe Kennedy, Conor Lamb, Pete Buttigieg... I think Josh Shapiro kind of fits the mold as well (see, e.g., https://x.com/hamiltonnolan/status/1826444171978170874) - he isn't that young, but he looks young for a presidential candidate.
But the politicians with the most potential are the ones who have crossover appeal - white politicians who appeal to black voters and vice versa, female politicians who appeal to male voters and vice versa, young politicians who appeal to older voters and vice versa. If young people who are highly engaged in left-of-center politics (who tend to lean pretty far left since normies tend not to get interested in politics until later in life) make it a priority to deep-six any young politician who is likely to appeal to older voters (i.e. young politicians who come across personality-wise as socially conventional normies), then there will be very few young politicians who are capable of advancing very far in left-of-center politics while they're still young.
It's gotten to the point where it's just grotesque. We shouldn't be watching people have strokes, break hips, and just generally die of old age on camera as they attempt to lead the most powerful country in the world!
IMO, outside of mass media allowing the Lost Cause South to export its narrative and culture across the rural US, the big historical story of the past century has been medical tech’s creation of the gerontocracy.
Ed: Like, when Mike Duncan finally does his season on the Trump Revolution, THAT’s where his background episode is starting.
I think it's actually a other narrative, not technological reality, and that narrative is the denial of aging and death because it is so frequently hidden away. None of these politicians in their late 70s to 80s are performing even close to the level they were in their 60s. I hope this is a Boomer phase that passes soon.
I have friends who worked/have worked on the Hill for many years, and it's *really* bad. Most of the time, the identity of people in this situation is so tied up with Being a Member of Congress that they don't even consider leaving at an appropriate time. It's sad, but the implications of a legislature comprising a large proportion of both Really Old and Just Here to Perform people are very bad for the rest of us.
Interestingly, his new series, "The Martian Revolution" (yes, it's science fiction) features a revolution on Mars starting because the ruling overlords from Earth are extremely old -- like 150 years old and more.
How should Democrats play the shutdown? Voting against everything that doesn’t contain a national safe harbor for abortions during the first 13 weeks and in cases of fetal abnormality seems like a decent plan.
Democrats should do absolutely nothing to help the GOP do anything unless it comes with massive, humiliating concessions. The McConnell playbook is perfectly appropriate here.
I love JVL’s suggestion over at the Bulwark: “Our default demand should be ‘Make Puerto Rico and DC states’ any time they ask us to be the adults in the room”.
Before the last election, no doubt most Democrats thought that getting two Democratic Senators from Puerto Rico would be a slam dunk. That's one fast moving pendulum.
The asymetry between The Cares Act and McConnell refusing to convict Trump after January 6th pretty much sums up why are where we are. The Cares Act didn't even get any significant permanent changes in law.
What should they do as patriotic Americans and stewards of our government? Pass a clean CR that also finally kills the debt ceiling, since otherwise it will always be with us and it’s a huge structural risk to the country that serves no purpose.
What should they do as partisan hacks to advance the (divergent) goals of party success? Refuse to vote for anything Republicans want and let the thin margin of house majority cause a ton of infighting and damage to Rs and increase a rift with Trump etc, collateral damage to America be damned.
The Republicans typically haven't favored repealing the debt ceiling, so you'd have had to pair it with things they otherwise liked, and it wasn't worth it.
If the Republicans are asking now to remove it, treat that as a POSITIVE good, not a thing to ask concessions for.
A big tax bill like that is complex and repealing the whole thing would have been destabilizing, plus it did contain at least one good idea (increasing the standard deduction). But for sure they should have gotten rid of the debt ceiling if that could have been done under reconciliation (I don’t know—I am sure Republicans would filibuster any attempt to get rid of the debt ceiling). Even if it polled badly, it would be worth it.
I don’t understand the thrust of your question—seems orthogonal to my post.
Assuming you are really asking, though, the answer is, that you would have needed to do so on a bipartisan basis in 2021, and even if the parties agreed it was a good idea (they didn’t) they still would not have cooperated to do so, for the above gamesmanship reasons.
They should shut up and watch. When your adversary is in the process of destroying themselves, the last thing you want to do is get in the middle of it. I think Jeffries violated this rule yesterday. He seems to be wanting to score political points off of this, but he would get more by letting this Musk vs. hardliners brewing feud play out.
I don't think abortion can be in the CR, I think it has to be all nominally budget. A two month clean CR should get some votes, but they should do nothing that allows the upcoming Trump Travesty to be easier.
It appears to me Musk is just being an idiot and causing trouble, and Trump is going along with that because he believes he thrives on chaos and hopes he can force things to be easier for him later.
People who shouldn't be will be hurt by a government shutdown, but even more people will be hurt when the Republicans take office. Vote to minimize the destruction now, vote to minimize the destruction then. But the American people foolishly decided that having Republicans run things is a good idea. They have to be given the opportunity to see what that means.
It's the democrats' duty to protect the American people, but it's not their duty to protect the Republicans.
Trump is smart to want an increase in the debt ceiling. I think Democrats should offer to abolish it. Triumph gets a free hand but so does whoever wins in 2028.
The debt ceiling is a tricky thing politically, both as an idea and as a legislative tactic. As a policy it's stupid, but that's so poorly understood by the general public that calling for its abolition would not be popular. Democrats should privately offer to support abolishing it, and see if Trump will be willing to spend his political capital publicly killing it.
If he wants to make his upcoming clusterfuck of a budget bipartisan by throwing in an end to the debt ceiling, that's probably good enough policy that providing cover on the rest of its badness is worth it. But it would be bad politics and bad policy to just help him raise it to get his short term goals, knowing it will just be harder when eventually, likely two years from now, the democrats control at least one house and need to start cleaning up his mess.
It would need 60 votes to pass, which is part of the point. Democrats need to press popular demands every time Republicans can’t come up with the votes to press the government. Then they can say “senator X refused to fund the government because he wants to ban abortion”
Then again her Brian Thompson murder take is the type of stuff that gives normies a pause.
Democrats do need to do some serious image pivoting and I don’t think elevating AOC helps in that broader pivot. It might have little effect or it might set message priorities in the wrong direction.
I try not to trip over hypocrisy; it's common and usually unimportant. But there is a lot of irony in the number of self-identified "moderate", "pragmatic", "commonsense" commenters who lionize Daniel Penny out of one side of their mouth and admonish anyone who fails to weep and wail over the murder of Brian Thompson out of the other side.
One of those people tried to protect innocent people from a violent and mentally unstable man. He went too far and there was an unfortunate result. He'll still probably pay a price (in civil court) for trying to do a good deed.
The other committed a premeditated murder of a law-abiding man because he didn't agree with the way private health insurance works in this country.
I am increasingly alarmed by the positive (or anti-anti-Luigi) reaction to Luigi Mangione from the far left and among dissident and nihilistic people of all stripes. It feels genuinely corrosive to an ordered society. I do not believe the same is true of Daniel Penny or of the people who have a positive view of his actions.
1) I'm pretty skeptical of the self-defense/defense of others claim. Neely was unarmed and throwing a tantrum. He didn't touch anybody. Some people want to move the line on self-defense from "duty to retreat" to "stand your ground" to "chokehold first, ask questions later." I think that kind thing would be corrosive to society. I think the jury was correct not to convict, but only because Penny's action falls through a very narrow crack in New York's criminal statutes. (2) I think all vigilanteism, whether it's "eat the rich" flavored or "kill the poor" flavored is corrosive to society.
I’m not going to argue the case with you because if you’ve reviewed the evidence and decided Neely was merely throwing a tantrum then I have no illusions that I can change your mind about that. I don’t know how anyone in that subway car was supposed to know he was unarmed, though. And he already proved quite adept at seriously injuring an elderly woman without the aid of a weapon. Ugh, I said I wouldn’t do that.
No one is saying “kill the poor”. If I believed a police shooting of a black suspect was justified, could that stance be summarized as “kill all black people”? Would that be an appropriate way to characterize the views of people who expressed support for the officer?
No, no one wants to kill the poor. But you can sure put “eat the rich” on a sign and march through the streets.
The hypocrisy is not in the crimes but in the responses. It's in the moderates who think Penny was a man pushed into an impossible position by a dysfunctional system, but who can't understand how anyone would be anything but despondent over the murder of Brian Thompson. And to be clear, the hypocrisy goes both ways; it's also hypocritical for leftists who can't understand the people who see Penny as a righteous white knight.
To be clear, Penny and Mangione are both sinners. They got angry and frustrated and took violent action. They should be ashamed and we should be disgusted with them.
He traveled to Japan as a sex tourist and no Japanese woman wanted anything to do with him. He decided to habitually abuse hallucigenics and his narcissism lead him to murder in cold blood.
What concessions to AOC would you support? Because it's tough telling her and her fellow leftists to be good team players all the time and then offer them nothing. Just as "you make peace with your enemies", you make coalitional concessions to your factional opponents.
Really? The Biden administration gave into almost every priority of the Sanders/Warren wing. With every concession He did not appoint industry people to the executive. He snubbed tech and Musk. Dems have pushed "climate crisis", "racial equity", "environmental justice" as priorities. We pushed electorally toxic student debt handouts to appease them. We adopted strange gender and DEI positions to appease them. We killed permitting reform to appease them. And most of all, we juiced inflation just like they asked us too and gave out massive handouts to activists.
They are bad team players. Their caucus has been shrinking rather than growing. They freerode on anti-Trump backlash and act like they have a mandate. Tell them to actually win competitive races before they come asking for concessions again.
I get that. My point is that the popularist/"Yglesian" view is that all those policy concessions were bad and the left should cease such demands in future. My question is if anything is being offered to them instead. Or if the offer is just "suck it up".
They need to reorient their priorities because they have been rebuked. They have been running scattershot. Now I agree with getting rid of seniority based appointments to committees.
But they need to realize they have been cowed by voters.
Well, the Yglesian view is also apparently that AOC should be given a committee chairmanship for no reason other than being young. It's like he wants the party to go in that direction but also doesn't.
It sounds to me like the Yglesian view is that AOC should be asked to do more of what she's good at (beating up on Republicans) because the worse she makes Republicans look, the better it will be for moderate Democrats in marginal districts.
It's very similar to his 2019 and early 2020 takes on Sanders. I think Matt tacitly accepts that moderates are not going to get many concessions on the future platform after a narrow loss in 2024, and Trump will probably be unpopular by 2026 if not 2028, and he disagrees with Trump more than AOC. So he's back on his "merge the left and moderates" beat. That is the lesson of today's post.
Technically, being the ranking member, not the chairperson. (Of course, if two more Republican representatives disappear, that would change immediately!)
Some of us center-leftists think that climate should be a priority with or without quote marks around "climate crisis." Joe, bless you a million times for the IRA.
What do you think the nation should have done/be doing about this problem?
In a liberal democratic society, prioritizing things that voters don't care about is a good way to end up out of power. And if you end up out of power, it's probably not good if the party in power doesn't care at all about the thing you care about.
I just think climate crisis is bad terminology because it both over and undersells the scale of the challenge. It serves to make people concerned about addressing climate change look hysterical to those who care about more immediate problems.
I agree; I dislike the term "climate crisis." Something that unfolds over decades is not a crisis. I prefer "climate challenge." It's a real challenge and we have to confront it, but it's not a "burn the boats" situation.
Well, give them personal goodies like the leadership position they want. Invite them on the big Congressional trip to Europe, which instead had the same visuals as an assisted living field trip, presumably because spots were given out based on seniority.
Well, this is a very generous interpretation. I see that Pelosi also led a delegation to commemorate the same battle 5 years ago. Remarkable how often senior members of Congress need to go to Luxembourg at Christmastime on official business!
I think the concession is that if she has more power in the governing process, people listen to what she puts out and are less likely to dismiss it out of hand, even if the don't necessarily take up her recommendations on a particular topic.
I am defending her "evolution" in another comment thread, but I agree that her take on the murder of Thompson was a disappointing backslide, to put it mildly
I want to rant a lot about the response to this murder. Especially all of the media think pieces on how people are mad about health care. The underlying point being, maybe he deserved to be murdered. It's really really gross.
IMO Trump and the leftist "social media influencers" are two sides of the same coin, but the left doesn't want to admit that Hasan Piker and his ilk are just as toxic as Trump just because they somewhat agree with their politics.
Trump is a symptom as much as the lionization of Luigi Mangione; see also: the existence of Hawk Tuah girl (who thankfully may have earned herself a long prison sentence.)
I think this is mostly just that reddit users are super predisposed to this kind of thinking. But it's also widespread enough that I've had 2-3 IRL friends say things supportive of the murder, sadly
I had to google "Brian Thompson murder" because all the memes I've seen on social media name the perpetrator and not the victim, usually to lionize the killer as a hero of the people (and a sex icon). I can't recall ever seeing murder celebrated like this before.
I wonder what fraction of this posting is authentic, vs what fraction are "troll farms" and algorithms?
These are the same debased people who celebrated 10-7 and lionize Hamas. They use the whole "Medicare for all," "student debt relief", oppressor-oppressed dynamic as an excuse to be horrible people, to bully and abuse others, and just act on their most malign impulses.
I don't even care for AOC that much (and blog bogeyman Freddie's piece on her establishment turn makes me wonder just how "left" she really is anymore), but it seems obvious that this would have been a useful outlet for channeling left-flank energy. Lots of less-productive Do Somethings that will probably happen instead. It's like the Tim Walz bunt all over again: taking the safe low-drama low-risk cautious choice instead of swinging for the fences. Except this time it's not even trying for a come-from-behind victory, that game's already lost and the next one's started in an unfavourable position. As much as I've learned not to misunderestimate Pelosi over the years, I'd hope not to see a continuing string of such conservative plays. "You *are* trying to win, aren't you?"
I wouldn't even say putting Gerry Connolly in charge of oversight is a conservative safe play. Politically, it's risky to put someone who is clearly inferior to the other choice just as a personal favor.
Maybe she's just a little to focused on paying off some interpersonal debts*before she can properly retire, let this all be someone else problem, and actually enjoy the last few years of her life? Understandable in my opinion and maybe we can celebrate her burning some credibility as she passes the torch to the next generation.
* Interpersonal or Intrapersonal? I'm too lazy to ask ChatGPT so I'll fallback on not getting everything perfect. Hopefully everyone else here is also able to relax a bit as we progress through the holiday season. The game will still be there when we get back.
“Intrapersonal debts” would be debts that one part of Pelosi’s self owes to another part of herself. Sometimes I think I owe my past self something when he sets me up really well to complete a project, and I try to pay him back by doing it how he would have wanted it.
But I think you have it right that this could only be explained by interpersonal debts.
There's going to be a leftmost pole of the Democratic Party. AOC seems to be the only member of the Squad who hasn't completely lost it. This isn't an endorsement in any way, just an acknowledgement that this is a democracy and voters to my left exist and deserve representation too. And I'll take AOC over... the other Squad members.
Having said that, her quote from several years ago (paraphrasing) of "it's better to be morally correct than factually correct" I really think is the quote of the era lol
I met her in Election Day in 2020 and she mostly seems like a nice person but I am not a fan of her endorsing the repeal of MCAS in Massachusetts public schools.
I'm sure Matt is being sensitive and circumspect about the health issue, as he should be, but the fact is that regardless of Connolly's merits or lack there of, he has a serious cancer diagnosis and Dem leadership yet again seems to be setting itself up for a situation where it is relying on an aging member in failing health to perform energentically in a key role. In the back rooms where these things get hashed out, that should be disqualifying.
It’s best to keep AOC in her social media bubble. She’s good at getting progressives to like her posts, but she can do that without becoming ranking member of oversight. Being ranking member would put her on TV more, which would give her more exposure to normie voters, which is exactly what the party does not need.
Of course low information voters aren’t going to watch AOC’s TV hits, so this is all small beer. The risk is AOC pisses off moderate chamber of commerce types who find both populism and progressivism distasteful.
It really depends on *what* she's doing on TV. The whole point of putting her on oversight is that she'd be dragging Republicans through the mud. We need someone doing that, ideally someone from a safe seat, and she's really good at it.
The problem is that to the extent average Americans know AOC at all, they have the 2019 version in their heads, and not the 2024 version. Those preconceptions will make it difficult for her to be an effective messenger.
You can't have it both ways. If they don't listen to substance, they don't really know much about her (including the 2019 version), and putting her on TV won't really matter.
You can't say "We shouldn't put her on TV because we don't want people paying attention" and then claim that people do not, in fact, pay attention.
I think the people that dislike AOC are either quite partisan or very into politics baseball (like the readers of this blog). The people that know her as a young politician who goes viral in posts about fashion or from playing Fortnite on Twitch very likely have no idea of how far left-wing her positions are.
Putting her on TV where she gets to say (relatively) uncontroversial things about how corrupt Trump is, in ways that make for good soundbites, is not going to make a normie voter dig into her positions and think "Actually, rent control is bad!"
I don’t get what you don’t get. To the extent low-information voters know anything about AOC, it’s that she’s a member of The Squad, which they negatively associate with wildly left wing positions. People who think that about her are automatically going to tune out her arguments.
This is a wild take. You seem to be conceding that 2024 AOC is better than 2019. Why on earth wouldn't you want the potentially charismatic and popular 2024 AOC to get as much exposure as possible to change people's perceptions and banish the 2019 version from the forefronts of their minds?
I think you're overstating how unpopular she is. AOC's favorability isn't that different from Gavin Newsom's, and I think having someone like Newsom throwing bombs in Oversight would be a good use of him. And as you said, a lot of her unpopularity is stickiness from dumb stuff she said in 2019, which will matter less and less as the years go by. If all people knew from AOC was her excellent and carefully crafted DNC speech, she'd be popular.
An important difference is that AOC is a progressive who is willing to be pragmatic at times when necessary, while Newsom is a moderate who likes to pretend to be progressive when it helps him with San Francisco voters. They both have the same image, but AOC seems to have principles that get her that image, while Newsom just does it because he thinks it looks cool.
Her disapproval ratings amongst independents appear to be no worse than Gretchen Whitmers or Mayor Pete's, etc., so this notion that she's broadly and uniquely hated across the spectrum seems mostly tied to how much furious press she gets from right leaning outlets.
If AOC is part of the future of the party getting her out of the "social media bubble" and into communicating with the broader public seems like a good idea.
She seems smart enough to adjust her messaging to her audience and the party could help try to guide her in that rather than work against her.
This seems like a comment that was made without even reading the post. I'm not saying you can't think this, but the entire post argues for why you're wrong on this point and you don't spend anytime rebutting the claims MY makes (she's in a safe district, she won't be on tv arguing policy but will instead be on tv attacking Trump and trying to pull down republican approval ratings, she's very adept at publicity and coming across well so she's an effective messenger for attacking R's, etc. etc. etc.).
I don’t really disagree with Matt’s premises, I just don’t think the conclusion follows. She does have a large social media following, she is good at generating outrage. My point is she doesn’t need to be ranking member to use those skills and she might piss off moderates.
Democrats just gave their biggest platform to a “diet woke” woman of color from a blue state with disappointing results. Time to elevate moderate voices with more Midwestern appeal.
I agree and disagree with you. AOC is charismatic and can excite lots of voters the Democrats need to excite. And yet it's true that she is polarizing and may alienate lots of voters the Democrats will need.
I think she should have gotten the Oversight post. I also think the Democrats should also elevate MGP (if the initials don't mean anything to you then that shows the problem) even if she voted with the Republicans on the CR yesterday (one of only two Dems).
Do we know why Democrats seem committed to seniority to this extent?
Also, does Nancy Pelosi just dislike AOC for some reason? There was reporting from when Pelosi stepped down that seemed to indicate that they just have interpersonal issues.
Elevating a young, well-known member to attack a president who will perhaps be unpopular seems like a good investment in the future of the party.
Matt wrote about the groups attacking Democrats but the party dynamic also seems to reflect internal conflicts. As he mentions at the end, it seems like we have an environment where Democrats don't make an affirmative case for the party.
I wondered if it was the Sunrise protest thing. If it is, that’s really dumb. AOC pretty quickly gave up on that sort of nonsense and realized she is an actual member of Congress who can try to pass legislation.
I’m a big Pelosi booster but this seems incredibly short sighted and petty. I feel if she was smart, Pelosi would recognize AOC’s natural political talents and that she’s shown a real willingness to learn and evolve in her role in Congress (in contrast to some of other Squad members). Why not pass along Pelosi’s knowledge of effective legislating? AOC could be quite formidable.
And I say this as someone who’s way more centrist than AOC.
My best explanation is that Pelosi and others in leadership realize that the Sunrise protest supporter is who AOC actually is and that she's just playing nice until they give her some real authority.
I always saw that as Pelosi and AOC collaborating in an oppositional way - they both benefited from the attacks, rather than either suffering actual harm.
Part of it is union influence, which was pretty important to the Democrats of a certain age. Every union that I'm aware of uses seniority as the basis for job assignments and it isn't surprising that the Party uses something similar.
Yep! Good riddance to seniority and it was rather disappointing that we appeared to be getting this in the national divorce; definitely seems more Republican coded. And yet somehow they moved on to something of a new generation?
So maybe if our own evolutionary pathway to the next generation is similarly surprising (to the say the least) then maybe we can take comfort in knowing that we'll be there soon enough.
I'll just say that I have faith that we won't be holding on to seniority for long either. Just likely plenty of prior modes of primitive human savagery; I'm confident we can all finally put seniority and all that it entails in the cosmic dustbin soon enough.
Plus we already have bigger political and philosophical questions to ponder: forget age and generational differences between humans; we're ever more collapsing the divide between humans and machines (in my opinion)! Seems we're gonna need to focus on, from first principles, what are humans even for?
My understanding is that in recent-ish years, one of the bigger backers of the Seniority system was the CBC. Because black seats are pretty overwhelmingly safe compared to other blue seats, they have more time to rack up seniority and thus it gives them more factional power. This has somewhat waned recently, though, with the CBC failing to back one of its members (Scott) to control the Agriculture committee in face of non-CBC opposition because he was so clearly too old
That was six years ago and happened before she was even sworn into Congress. If Pelosi is still holding that against her then she's not as savvy or strategic as everyone considers her to be.
I worried at the time about the optics on it, that it would be used as evidence that the election was stolen by Biden (because hardly anyone listens to the content of the climate activists' speeches). I would hope she has now seen the bigger picture, especially what happened less than 2 months later.
Not sure we agree. Something odd happened during this election which was, despite being told (over and over ad nauseam) that Trump was a "threat to Democracy," millions of Biden voters stayed home. And many Democrats switched to voting for Trump.
My wife and I were voters for Democrats for 50 years. Became Independents 2 years ago, and voted for Trump this year.
There were many reasons, but one of the main ones was the arrogance and superiority displayed by "progressives" like AOC. They displayed clear contempt for the people we
Democrats had always fought for and protected, and the fact that 40% of people of color voted for Trump is consistent with our views of "progressives."
If you want us back (and we want to come back), then the "progressive" movement needs to be ignored. Electing AOC would have given a stronger voice to the "Progressive caucus" and the "squad" and would guarantee more losing for Democrats.
AOC and her like fought the wrong battles. It made them feel good, but actually betrayed the cause. "Progressives" have now given us Trump twice. That's real "progress," huh?
Every single time this account participates in the thread it turns into the most circular and silly debate. If anyone in the comment section is annoyed by the comment, just don't engage!
I just mock them because they are parroting canned talking points in order to seek contrarian validation though pushback. It's silly because what they write has little to do with the comments they respond to. They do this on other substacks too.
Their claiming to be Democrats who have been forced to vote for Trump reminds me of those "undecided" voters CNN interviewed who then went for Trump and it turns out, like, they were Republican committee people.
......and once we got a lecture from you about not engaging in ad hominem attacks. Yet in this thread there are numerous insults thrown our way, and your only reaction is to call this debate "silly."
For two years we have been warning Democrats, in every forum we could, that they were losing America, and were at risk of losing the election for this reason.
We were right. So, yes, ignore us.
What ever happened to liberalism?
Should we just keep our mouths shut? Is that what you are saying? Should people ignore our ideas? Is that what you are saying?
Were you right in predicting a Trump victory? Were you right in knowing that swing voters were turned off by progressive ideas about, say, treatments for children who are struggling with trans issue? Were you right in reading that literature and seeing that many policies used in this country regarding trans children had no research support for them?
Why insult us as you have done? What have we been wrong about?
p.s. "every single time." Do you really want to make that kind of overgeneralization?
Just out of curiosity- why are you a subscriber here? I don't mean it in a hostile way, I'm just curious why people with relatively conservative views spend $8 a month to read Matt's takes and sometimes argue in the comments section. Are you sympathetic to Matt's center-leftism on some level, or......?
I mean I don't have a subscription to a conservative Substack, and then show up and argue with the other commenters. Just curious what your motivation is
I think there are two things worth saying here. The first is that I would have some caution in this particular election over-confirming your notions of progressivism “losing America”. While I also think progressives have lost themselves in excess and were a headwind, the reality is closer to this always having been a doomed election due to inflation, global events, and most importantly thermostatic reaction. We are still a 50/50 country, and I think the truth is in 2028 we can run the exact same playbook decision-for-decision as we did this year and be guaranteed a close election with a good shot at winning. Not saying we should do that - there are oodles of changes I’d like to see happen including, yes, moderation and smarter messaging on police and trans topics. But in a forum where folks talk often about the pundit’s fallacy, I think it’s important to take a hard look at how critical our own personal fallacies really are, and measure our language and attitude accordingly.
But secondly, man people here are way too harsh on protest votes. There has to be a good-faith way to signal that the party has done something unacceptable, but I fear that we have basically no real way to measure or pay attention to those signals. It’s obvious that not protest voting on the gop side is what allowed for Trump’s rise - voters fell into line, brow beaten with “lesser of two evils” ad nauseum. The calculus didn’t work out for me to protest Harris (far from it honestly, I was mildly excited), but if Biden had remained the candidate I would have stayed home and spent my minuscule political power saying that a candidate like that was unacceptable. However. I do think we have to recognize that there is a limit to the protest vote signal, small as it already is. I feel that it is a one or two-time shot, beyond which your signal becomes not “party defector we (should) want to win back” but rather “this person doesn’t vote” or “this person is just a gop voter now.” And as you’ve felt here, the protest vote messaging isn’t very popular, especially when used over-frequently. I think that instead it needs to be conserved for the issue that drove your protest at the core. If you want to burn up that capital on disagreeing with a progressive pol’s (failed) committee run, you can, but is that really the place to spend your credibility? I think you should rather hoard your capital and spend it down at the most crucial point possible, potentially meaning now but also possibly meaning waiting until 2028’s primary! Your signal, regrettably small as it already is, has to be protected from becoming noise.
"by being mean." is not really true. It's that we don't belong with a Democratic party that is overrun by "progressives" whose idea of being "progressive" is to elect Trump twice. We are being told that we don't belong, over and over. That we are the "problem" over and over. OK. So, now you've convinced us......and millions of other Biden voters who stayed home.
That's another dimension to all of this. When we would post comments that threaten "progressive" views we often received insults......which made us see that we were on the right track with our thoughts.
It is weird, because I acknowledge that voters have agency and their choices are legitimate. I agree that Democrats did not pay enough attention to inflation, have listening too much to activists and pushed unpopular social issues, and failed to pivot on crime for fear of offending said groups. I acknowledge urban governance failures (where turnout tanked) and the failures of the Biden administration.
Still seeing the old “you made us vote for Trump” pulled out just reveals something about the speakers character. Especially when they chide us for pointing the scripts they parrot are silly because they don’t fit the context.
Nobody "made us" vote for Trump. Harris is anti-police, and police keep our grandchildren safer. She has advocated defunding over the years and even did recently.......something Dems tried to hide because they knew it wouldn't fly.
I'm down for bashing progressives all day long, but I don't think you get to act all high and mighty when you voted for Trump.
I hate most of the squad. AOC herself may be foolish and sometimes annoying, but she was also a real team player and left it all on the field to prevent this serial criminal from winning.
what does "ditching her" even mean? I agree that if you could replace everybody on the squad by Jared Golden clones, we'd be better off, but that's not gonna happen. The Groups can and should be ditched because nobody voted for them and they have no real power.
Not true of AOC. She's very famous and well liked by Dems, and she's making a serious effort to be a team player, moderate her rhetoric on unpopular issues, and become more popular. The only thing we can do with her is try to channel her talent and charisma in a positive way (by throwing her at Republicans).
The caricature of AOC that some commenters are throwing out on this thread is so bizarre. It's like they saw her storming Pelosi's office in 2018 and then just never paid attention to her again. She's not my ideal candidate, and I certainly disagree with her on plenty of policies, but she's also taken considerable strides in recent years to join the Dem. caucus wholeheartedly, be a team player, and work to make actual legislative change. Of all the social media style political personalities in Congress, she's the only one I've seen that actually seems interested in legislating rather than just generating views on social media.
The comments here would have you think she's the equivalent of Gaetz and MTG on the left. It's bananas.
Absolutely zero chance they can primary her. Dems can't just wish away their biggest star. "Sidelining" her isn't really possible either, she has the biggest reach of any Democrat. All we can do is consider ourselves lucky that she's shown a ton of pragmatism and try to weaponize her to our advantage. She has shown that if there's a path towards building power by moderating and being a team player, she will.
By the way, AOC is far more talented and charismatic than MTG. The only reason she's not much more popular are her more unpopular far-left positions.
Then stop being a coward. Just own that you prefer him, instead of this “well I voted for him but I didn’t want him to win, I just had no choice” show.
I agree that “some” progressives are just haters but they are a loud minority, I believe the left has better policy ideas and is directionally better on more issues than the right, that’s why I’m a moderate Democrat.
I want to have a big tent where you feel like you belong as much as anyone else. Hopefully we can achieve that in the next 4 years.
What this comment reveals is that you yourself recognize that Trump and Republicans are bad. But you dislike some people in the Democratic coalition and so you voted for someone who you realize is worse for the country, and you want to displace that onto someone else, like AOC. I recommend instead voting for people who are good for the country and recognizing that people saying mean things on social media can't hurt you.
I mean AOC will exist either way, in office, i. Social media, and in legacy media. The question is how you want her spending her time. Oversight is a good choice.
She and the progressive movement were far more central to discussions of the party in 2018/20/and 22 when the Dems had very good/great outcomes than they were in 2024. Your argument lacks nuance or evidence in support. You act like people weren't upset about immigration and inflation and global conflicts and any host of other things that have nothing to do with progressivism- yours is a shrill argument that comes from nowhere and amounts to nothing.
And you then attack everyone on a comment thread that has virtually no actual progressives or staunchly left wing commenters as being part of the same blob of DEI/Woke progressivism that you're using as your catch all explanation for everything in politics and America. It's not a serious argument.
I think it would be helpful if you were more specific about your qualms. Using broad and shifting labels like “progressive” as the basis for your stance can give your readers the impression that you’ve just been polarized into some kind of tribal opposition.
Her own district had a big swing towards Trump. Not enough to cause Trump to win the district or for her to lose the district, but she was the poorest performer among the four Democrats who represent all or part of the Bronx in Congress.
So I'm not sure she's changed her underlying opinions much(that is, I think she's almost certainly more anti-police than you), but she has seemed to accept that that's unpopular and not a recipe for winning elections, and she's willing to compromise on those things.
I don't see her ever saying "I was wrong about this police thing" so much as no longer spending any energy/effort on any of it, and instead working with more moderate voices on it, with the (quite logical) view that she'll still get more of what she wants with Democrats than Republicans.
I wouldn't hold my breath for her to say "I was wrong about" on this. But I'm trying to be big tent about it. If she's not actively pushing bad positions like "defund the police" and instead being reasonable then I'm not going to kick her out of the tent.
I'm not saying this attitude would make me vote for her for President over say... Haley(depending on Haley's positions at the time) but as a member of the Democratic coalition her new attitude seems fine.
She is incapable of admitting she has been wrong, even when she has changed her positions. (For example, she and other Progressives have thankfully largely abandoned NIMBY development policies.)
My prediction is you're probably sticking in the GOP column and Democrats are probably going to keep on doing almost all of the things they did under Biden with minimal revision. Matt probably agrees with the latter prediction, and that's why he's once again arguing for the left and moderate wing of Democrats to more formally bind together, like he did in 2019 for Sanders. Politics!
Well my response was mostly intended to Vicky & Dan that they're going to keep being a Republican. I wrote in for presidency, voted GOP for Congress. I'll probably vote GOP in 2028 for the presidency. I'm content enough.
The important thing here is Matt is shifting back to his 2019 position regarding the left faction of Dems after some of his time left-bashing. I wanted to stress that this can be coherent given his personal beliefs about the parties. But even granting that, this is a notable shift; he has read the tea leaves and he's not going to pick that drastic of a fight over the policy stuff. I think Vicky & Dan is not taking seriously enough Matt's own commitments to the Democratic party above whatever electoral developments progressives are or aren't guilty of.
I also don’t understand this comment. Matt is, as far as I can tell, sincerely committed to certain policy positions, including progressive taxation, social welfare, public education, a pro-growth mindset, a non-ethnically based view of American citizenship and patriotism, and a belief in the benefits of immigration to the US. The Republican Party has just taken over in DC and its commitment to those policy positions (and others that Matt Yglesias believes in, like being pro-choice) is limited or absent. So Matt wants the Democratic Party to succeed, because they are largely congruent with his policy positions. How exactly is this different from what Matt has been saying all along? He issued a manifesto quite recently laying out his preferred policy positions, and it certainly seemed to contain some left-bashing.
Directly elevating AOC to represent the party further versus Republicans is in obvious tension with those manifesto goals? And this has happened before; he argued in 2019 that Bernie Sanders and Democrats should further combine interests, which of course is part of how we got the Biden admin doing all these things he has since complained about.
I don’t think I agree here. It’s important to remember that Matt is not, as far as I can tell, a secret or disappointed Republican who wishes to return to the Republican fold. Matt has certain policy positions and orientations he supports and wants them implemented. He issued his manifesto as a way to focus on those items and get them enacted. Matt knows that the Democratic Party can’t win elections without the left, just like the Republican Party can’t win elections without the nativist or Christian right. I also don’t think Matt primarily blames Bernie for this stuff, and it is also true that Biden won the election of 2020. It seems to me more that Matt blames Biden and many members of his administration and some members of the left and Groups (not AOC) who weren’t team players for the loss. You don’t strike me as agreeing with Matt on a lot of issues. So why aren’t you happy?
Democrats, under the influence of "progressives" have lost the middle class, have lost working class, and are quickly losing minorities.
When we see our old beloved Democratic party of old, we'll be back. But we aren't binding with "progressives" who gave us Trump twice. That is a losing formula.
Republicans own the country now.
Any normal old-fashioned Democrat could have beaten Trump, but progressives did not want to win. So Biden picked the most progressive candidate and she picked the most progressive running mate. As Rahm Emmanuel recently pointed out (something we have been saying for two years now), progressives want to lose but be right, but Democrats want to win.
Look at the reactions to our comments. Do you see people really wanting to win or wanting to assert that they were actually "right" and people like us who could see two years ago that Trump would win don't even belong on this commenting board. Seriously, read them all. It is a barrage of insults and name-calling.
When, instead of looking at us, they should be looking at themselves and saying "why was I so clueless about the country and wrong?" But there is no soul-searching. Instead, as this column illustrates, the "solution" is to promote one of the very people whose ideas the country just repudiated.
Well I think per the comment brawling. you have to make a credible offer. For example, I was shopping for a car recently, and part of how that game goes is you say what price you're thinking of after they offer a price so they can see how badly you want it. What is your price for voting Democratic again?
My own is probably them handling pensions and immigration significantly more conservatively. I was a Democrat back in 2016, voted for Hillary in the primary to get the progressive stuff under control. It basically took over the party from my perspective, and so fair enough, but I'm not in the party anymore. Part of it is also that I became more sold on conservative economic arguments, so it's not really all on Democrats in that regard. I have a pretty steep price and don't think I'll be getting it offered back to me in the near future.
What you can't do for your price is *both* say you voted Trump and say "I'll vote for the kind of Democrats who can beat Trump." It's just not a coherent offer. It's like me taking monopoly money out at the dealership. They want serious customers. Parties want serious prices for votes.
So as I see it, Democrats narrowly lost this election over inflation and immigration issues they meaningfully exacerbated through policy decisions. By and large, they're not going to dramatically change in a rightward direction. I was wrong about predicting that in 2017. So it goes in a democracy. I have options in 2026 and 2028 to tell them I disagree and am not buying at their current price.
There was also a survey (can't find the link, but it's somewhere lost in the bowels of my computer) that these cultural issues were the main factor for swing voters who went to Trump.
I don’t understand this comment. You voted for Trump. So by definition, you personally contributed to giving “us” Trump. I’d rather hear why you changed your vote and the “many reasons”.
I have explained several aspects of this decision in response to other (often hostile) comments.
One big reason is that we do not want to live in a progressive world, and the Democratic Party has become infested with progressive thought. It's why we lost this election---for example, working Americans believe Democrats are more concerned with trans issues than with them. And they are correct.
Now here is an important dimension of this: We are not alone. We are not a one-off occurrence. Millions of Biden voters stayed home, not wanting to vote for Harris even though they were being told that Trump means the end of Democracy. And millions of others switched to Trump.
Something is wrong inside the party. Surveys show that people like Democratic principles, but do not like progressive ones. So, when my wife and I could see, two years ago, that this was going to drive people to Republicans, we started warning people on every forum we could.
We got slammed instead of listened to. Like we have in this particular thread.
We have been told, and all other Americans ahve been told, repeatedly that we white, old, male, law enforcement people are the "enemies." Well, it was listened to. Millions of them said "OK....I'll vote for Trump because his supporters don't blame me for everything that's wrong."
We don't want Harris/Progressives more than we don't want Trump.
And what we see is that progressives are digging in, like appointing AOC to this committee, instead of saying "how could we have been so wrong? What do we need to change?"
You say that “we” don’t want to live in a progressive world, and because of that you voted for Trump. But then you also say “we lost the election”. These can’t both be true. You voted for Trump and he won, so by definition you won the election. If you didn’t want Trump or Harris, you could have voted third party or left that choice blank. So you got the outcome you wanted. What is the problem here? Until you explain what it is exactly the Democratic Party can do to win your vote, no one here can actually help you out of your dilemma.
Are you a registered member of the Democratic party? It's a little bit odd to be a member of the Democratic party who votes for the candidate the party directly opposes. Did you vote for Democratic candidates lower down on the ballot?
You don't really have a coherent argument. You only seem to really dislike the word "progressive." Somehow just those letters in that formation makes you feel small, and you lashed out against the people using it as "arrogance and superiority displayed."
You are right though, that you are what the majority of Americans voted for. Who am I to argue that what most Americans want to be is "regressive."
Off-topic here, but inspired by a thread a couple days ago: Switzerland. It's the richest non-microstate in Europe by a lot, around the GDP per capita of Massachusetts. And this is despite having what are normally some large disadvantages: significant ethnic diversity, lack of a common language, extremely mountainous.
So why does Switzerland have the per capita GDP of Massachusetts rather than Afghanistan? And what can the rest of Europe learn from it?
Being the home to money launderers for centuries while also being ruthlessly neutral in all global conflicts has a tendency to be lucrative. Not easily replicable, though.
The top Swiss export is refined gold. (More than 10% of their GDP.) Not because they’re laundering money, but because, 1) the Swiss are really, really good at refining gold, and, 2) people trust them. Their second biggest export is pharmaceuticals, third is chemicals. Then banking. Then the watches and cuckoo clocks at around 3% of GDP. (Imagine a people who can take $200 in raw materials and turn it into a $12,000 dive watch!)
Switzerland has been rated the world’s #1 most innovative economy for more than a decade. (US is #2.) They have a sky-high literacy rate and are consistently well-ranked in international education rankings.
The watch thing is not unrelated to money laundering. You can carry a $12,000 watch out of the country without the questions that come with carrying $12,000 in cash.
My spiciest take on Switzerland is that their knowing suborning of tax fraud by Americans and others — so much so that it was literally *written into law* until the aughts — was a legitimate casus belli.
If, threatened with the option of changing their insane criminal-abetting law or going to war, the Swiss proved to be so committed to their love of foreign tax cheats that they were willing die for it, well then frankly they would have deserved it IMO.
I mean we (the US) absolutely crushed their money-laundering banks in the early 2000s though. We forced one of their banks, which I think was older than the US, literally out of business. With very real threats of imprisonment we made them clean up their entire tax evasion & money laundering business post-9/11. I can't think of another 1st world country that the US has so ruthlessly brought to heel
"Pictet was the last of more than 100 banks to collectively pay out more than $7.5 billion during a decade-long crackdown by the US..... US action against Swiss banks started in 2009 with UBS paying out $780 million to defer a tax evasion prosecution..... Faced with the prospect of banks being frozen out of the US market, the Swiss government agreed in 2013 to the “Swiss Bank Program”, which offered banks the chance to come clean and pay a fine to avoid prosecution.
But the most profound change to the Swiss financial sector was the severe dilution of banking secrecy, which had shielded foreign tax dodgers for generations. Secret numbered bank accounts have now been replaced by tax treaties with numerous countries that force Switzerland to reveal the extent of foreign funds held in Swiss bank coffers..... The death of strict banking secrecy has also had a dramatic effect on the private banking sector."
They're not all that ethnically diverse, probably less so than Massachusetts. The difference today between a Germanic-Swiss and a French-Swiss or an Italian-Swiss is probably about the same as between an Irish, Italian, or German Bay Stater. They all actually speak a common language even if they may have a different home language. And this is largely a function of the same process. The Bay Staters became one because of the shared experience of fighting WWII. The Swiss all became one because of their shared experience of aggressively staying out of WWII. It took a strong national consensus to do that despite any lingering sympathies the various ethnicities had for their lingual cousins.
Agree. But now I'm going to have to research whether French-Swiss and Italian-Swiss sound as funny to the French and Italians as German-Swiss sounds to German speakers.
My understanding is that the French do not make fun of the French Swiss and the way they talk, although they do make fun of the French Belgians and the way they talk.
So they make fun of their allies from two world wars, and don't make fun of the people who couldn't be stirred to give a shit they were conquered by the Nazis.
No wonder they're right up there with we Americans in people other people dislike.
“So why does Switzerland have the per capita GDP of Massachusetts rather than Afghanistan?”
Lots of folks have asked that question in one form or another in the past, but few are willing to admit the truth: It is because Afghanistan is full of Pashtun and the like whereas Switzerland is full of Swiss.
In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Really great trains.
In heaven, the bankers are Swiss, the lovers are Italian, the chefs are French, and the police are English. In hell, the lovers are Swiss, the bankers are Italian, the police are French, and the chefs are English.
Switzerland didn't get democracy until Napoleon overthrew the old undemocratic aristocracy about two centuries ago -- by military force. And parts of Switzerland lacked religious freedom until the 20th century.
My impression (though perhaps someone who knows more about accounting wants to correct me) is that a lot of Irish economic activity is only theoretically in Ireland. Lots of foreign profits recharacterized as Irish for tax reasons and that sort of thing.
If Trump & Republicans in Congress drop the US corporate tax rate down to 15% to match Ireland, then I suspect Ireland will see a dramatic drop in those rents.
Yes, it is exciting, especially in the age of Trump, though God only knows how long the EU is going to endure (needless to say the value of an Irish passport would plunge if we Irish are someday denied the right to work and live anywhere from Helsinki to Lisbon).
This is correct. Apple has its main Europe office in Ireland, so all of Apple's European revenue flows into Ireland (and then out to the USA, of course).
The Mexican state of Campeche is the richest part of Latin America, according to GDP per capita. That is because that is where Mexico's oil is, so the oil revenues of Mexico get credited to it. Campeche isn't really any better off than neighboring states; Mexico City is by far the most prosperous part of Mexico as far as the populace is concerned.
Great point. There’s no sexism involved. It’s just that the Oversight position requires one to grow the Oversight Mustache, and most (but not all!) women are unfortunately genetically incapable of exhibiting this crucial characteristic. What can you do but shrug and wait for that happy day when a savvy, strong-willed young woman’s facial hair finally becomes the professional asset her parents always promised it would be.
"But Connolly has no profile and no constituency outside his district."
Pelosi might see this as a feature, not a bug. AOC is so well known that it would be easy for her actions as an Oversight Committee member to be seen as "AOC vs. <fill in the blank scummy Republican>", with the media focusing the spotlight at least as much on her as on the Republican that she's dragging.
Yeah, AOC is extremely unpopular with swing voters, moderates, and independents. I’m not sure why you’d want to wrap Democratic oversight efforts in her reputation.
I mean tbh I have no idea what her national approval is, specifically among the rightmost third of Dem voters where it would matter most. Based on this comment thread I would say it’s improving (as most here fit that description), but Slow Borers are a rarefied bunch.
Yeah. TBH Matt had me convinced for a bit but this is clearly true.
Waxman may have been to the left of the party, but I would guess that very few Americans knew who he was or had a problem with him specifically. AOC is widely viewed as a far left extremist and having her associated with the party hurts with moderates (but helps with the left).
That being said, if you want her in your party, you need to find a role for her. Or decide she doesn't belong.
Agree w/Matt 100%, and Kyle M. beat me to the reason: much more than most members, she does her homework. I'm semi-retired now but early in her career I was part of a group of advocates who met with her on a fairly obscure financial services issue. I was stunned at how she'd actually read and absorbed the materials folks had sent her, asked probing questions, and ended up in a good place. Not exactly where I would've, but exactly where she should've, given her district and broader politics. Perfect example of politics by inclusion, expanding her scope to include slightly more moderate perspectives--she called it a "good fallback position--while advancing a more leftist vision.
Great post by Matt. This was a bad and totally unnecessary own goal by the Democrats. It makes me wonder if they know how to play this game at all.
If this was Nancy Pelosi's doing, then shame on her. If so, I suspect it's a continuation of her animus and resistance to AOC starting immediately after AOC won her first election in 2018 (and granted AOC's early antics gave Nancy some basis for this). Back in 2018 and 2019 I was a volunteer on Katie Hill's first campaign and was in contact with her and her staff afterwards (she's the CA-25 representative whose promising career unfortunately went up in flames after some awkward photo leaks). I distinctly recall how Pelosi clearly identified Hill as a potential future star and showered her with all kinds of promotions and perks even before her first day in office, and I suspected that Pelosi was trying her best to set Hill up as a counterweight to AOC.
On Waxman, who was my representative for a long time. I recall once running into him in a Santa Monica bookstore two days before the election, as he was quietly perusing the bookshelves. Ah, the joys of a totally safe district. No campaigning for him!
But Matt gives him short shrift; despite his close-mindedness on transit (he didn't want a subway in his district); he was one of the great legislators of the late twentieth century and more. As Wikipedia notes:
"Waxman was an influential liberal member of Congress, and was instrumental in passing laws including the Infant Formula Act of 1980, the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, the Clean Air Act of 1990, the Ryan White CARE Act of 1990, the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the State Children's Health Insurance Program of 1997, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010."
He also got the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill passed in the House, only for it to die in the Senate. Had it become law, we might be in a far different situation about carbon emissions than now.
We love old people. Hope to become one of them in the future. But having 75 year olds (and older) hang onto leadership positions as their energy and mental acuity decline is not good.
1. I think promotion based on seniority is an extremely bad way to run a company, a political party, or any kind of institution. I'm broadly anti-union for exactly this kind of reason
2. Do you think there's any age at which someone starts to lose mental competence and shouldn't be running the country anymore? 85? 90? 100? Did you think Biden was in a good cognitive place to be leader of the free world? Did Dianne Feinstein seem like she was in a good place at the end there to have an enormous amount of political power?
Professions with mandatory retirement ages include pilots, air traffic controllers, and state judges. Why would it be inappropriate for politicians too?
1. The general argument for promotion based on seniority is that it encourages longevity. What happens when you don't do this is the Republican Party, where Congressmen are out of office in their 50s because they don't place any value on institutional knowledge.
2. I think that the elderly should have freedom of choice to make their own decisions and it's rather disturbing to know that when I'm 70, other people will try to force me into retirement.
1. I would prefer to hiring the most competent person, not the one who's been there the longest. Do you think we should use seniority in corporate hiring too?
2. I think the idea is forced retirement at 75 or 80, not 70. But I'd be interested to hear you answer my questions from before:
Did you think Biden was in a good cognitive place to be leader of the free world?
Do you think pilots and air traffic controllers should get rid of the retirement ages they've had in the whole postwar era? You can fly a plane with several hundred passengers at age 90 or 100?
I mean, the whole problem with cognitive impairment is that the impaired *are not good judges of their own impairment*. So this obviates the 'people should be able to choose for themselves when they retire' argument. They may not be making good decisions about their own lack of good decisions!
Update, an 81 year old GOP Congresswoman who's been missing for 6 months has been discovered in a memory care unit. Yup, we definitely don't have a problem with elderly politicians here in the US!
"Kay Granger, 81, who was set to wind up a nearly 30-year career in the House in January, has been missing from her office for the past six months. The current longest-serving GOP representative had not been on record voting for or against anything since July..... She was reportedly living at a care home that specializes in memory loss after she'd been 'found wandering, lost and confused' in her district..... 'The fact that Kay Granger is unable to leave her nursing home to participate in the most important congressional vote of the year suggests she was already in visible decline when she ran for re-election in 2022,' said Rolando Garcia, a Republican Committeeman in the district.
'A sad and humiliating way to end her political career. Sad that nobody cared enough to “take away the keys” before she reached this moment and a sad commentary on the congressional gerontocracy.'"
But in what seems like a terrible attempt to cover it up, her staff posted an article about the event but dated it 12/18 (they even changed the dates in all the image filenames!!!):
I’m also mad about it because AOC is unusually good in congressional hearings. She is more prepared than anyone else. She is more efficient in asking the questions that matter. She isn’t wildly self indulgent in a way most members are during hearings. She actually considers follow through - compare AOC questing Michael Cohen vs Harris’s “tough” questioning of Kavanaugh that sounded like a setup but was actually nothing.
Congress should reward its members for working hard and showing skill and developing an expertise. If you just reward being an old guy, well, that’s what you get more of.
If there is a point of agreement between the left and centrist criticts within the party it is that "Gerentocracy sucks."
thanks! I'll be sure to quote you and other progressives on this when I win the Presidency. Can't tell you how much I appreciate you getting out the vote for me.
Signed.
J.D. Vance, President, 2028
Gerontocracy sucks.
Also just a friendly reminder that Nancy Pelosi is corrupt. Her defense of insider trading is embarrassing and should have been disqualifying. Good riddance as soon as she's gone.
https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775
True. Premise of article so easy to agree with i didn’t really need to even read (i still did) it could have just been a tweet.
And she never falls asleep during meetings.
I have been extremely unimpressed with Congressional Democrats since the election. Utterly listless. I said in the comments section here the day after AOC was denied ranking member on Oversight it was a foolish thing to do. Democrats needed to forcefully eject the party elders yesterday. They're just on autopilot. AOC is a star, she's a team player, and she's great on camera. She has cred with exactly the low info voters we need to win back.
I think Republicans ditching seniority years ago as guiding principle for committee assignments has cultivated a set of effective brawlers. That has its own flaws, but you can't deny how effective they are at setting and driving the narrative. Democrats haven't been able to do that since they got shellacked in 2010.
The party of young people being so committed to seniority is baffling.
It isn't even like these people are 50, they are really old for any job.
I wonder how much it is a holdover from union solidarity thinking.
It was allowed to hold over by advances in medical technology. Three generations ago, seniority was a fine system because most aging white dudes dropped dead of heart attacks.
Now they get bypasses and stents and keep racking up seniority.
This is more of a broader point not specific to congressional seniority, but one thing I've observed is that there's no Democrat who young leftists hate more than the young Democrat who came from a white-collar career track after graduating from a good college and wears a suit. Young Democrats like that are invariably 10x more hated than Democrats who are ideologically just as moderate but older. We've seen it play out in race after race: Joe Kennedy, Conor Lamb, Pete Buttigieg... I think Josh Shapiro kind of fits the mold as well (see, e.g., https://x.com/hamiltonnolan/status/1826444171978170874) - he isn't that young, but he looks young for a presidential candidate.
But the politicians with the most potential are the ones who have crossover appeal - white politicians who appeal to black voters and vice versa, female politicians who appeal to male voters and vice versa, young politicians who appeal to older voters and vice versa. If young people who are highly engaged in left-of-center politics (who tend to lean pretty far left since normies tend not to get interested in politics until later in life) make it a priority to deep-six any young politician who is likely to appeal to older voters (i.e. young politicians who come across personality-wise as socially conventional normies), then there will be very few young politicians who are capable of advancing very far in left-of-center politics while they're still young.
Millennials aren’t young any more
By comparison to Democratic congressional leadership, they might as well be in nappies.
Democratic congressional leadership is probably also in nappies.
Shut up! I'm not old you are!
Sorry, but the election results put the "party of young people" lie to rest.
+1000.
Down with the gerontocracy.
It's gotten to the point where it's just grotesque. We shouldn't be watching people have strokes, break hips, and just generally die of old age on camera as they attempt to lead the most powerful country in the world!
IMO, outside of mass media allowing the Lost Cause South to export its narrative and culture across the rural US, the big historical story of the past century has been medical tech’s creation of the gerontocracy.
Ed: Like, when Mike Duncan finally does his season on the Trump Revolution, THAT’s where his background episode is starting.
I think it's actually a other narrative, not technological reality, and that narrative is the denial of aging and death because it is so frequently hidden away. None of these politicians in their late 70s to 80s are performing even close to the level they were in their 60s. I hope this is a Boomer phase that passes soon.
I have friends who worked/have worked on the Hill for many years, and it's *really* bad. Most of the time, the identity of people in this situation is so tied up with Being a Member of Congress that they don't even consider leaving at an appropriate time. It's sad, but the implications of a legislature comprising a large proportion of both Really Old and Just Here to Perform people are very bad for the rest of us.
Interestingly, his new series, "The Martian Revolution" (yes, it's science fiction) features a revolution on Mars starting because the ruling overlords from Earth are extremely old -- like 150 years old and more.
Indeed, I’ve been listening
How should Democrats play the shutdown? Voting against everything that doesn’t contain a national safe harbor for abortions during the first 13 weeks and in cases of fetal abnormality seems like a decent plan.
Democrats should do absolutely nothing to help the GOP do anything unless it comes with massive, humiliating concessions. The McConnell playbook is perfectly appropriate here.
I love JVL’s suggestion over at the Bulwark: “Our default demand should be ‘Make Puerto Rico and DC states’ any time they ask us to be the adults in the room”.
I'm afraid the Republicans might think "two more Republican Senators from PR? Sign us up!"
The pendulum will eventually swing back.
Before the last election, no doubt most Democrats thought that getting two Democratic Senators from Puerto Rico would be a slam dunk. That's one fast moving pendulum.
The asymetry between The Cares Act and McConnell refusing to convict Trump after January 6th pretty much sums up why are where we are. The Cares Act didn't even get any significant permanent changes in law.
What should they do as patriotic Americans and stewards of our government? Pass a clean CR that also finally kills the debt ceiling, since otherwise it will always be with us and it’s a huge structural risk to the country that serves no purpose.
What should they do as partisan hacks to advance the (divergent) goals of party success? Refuse to vote for anything Republicans want and let the thin margin of house majority cause a ton of infighting and damage to Rs and increase a rift with Trump etc, collateral damage to America be damned.
I think killing the debt ceiling forever in exchange for a three month CR would be a fantastic deal for the Democrats (oh, and for the nation too).
But if it's not forever, then hell no.
And why did we not kill the debt ceiling and repeal the "Tax Cuts for the Rich and Deficits Act" in 2021?
The Republicans typically haven't favored repealing the debt ceiling, so you'd have had to pair it with things they otherwise liked, and it wasn't worth it.
If the Republicans are asking now to remove it, treat that as a POSITIVE good, not a thing to ask concessions for.
A big tax bill like that is complex and repealing the whole thing would have been destabilizing, plus it did contain at least one good idea (increasing the standard deduction). But for sure they should have gotten rid of the debt ceiling if that could have been done under reconciliation (I don’t know—I am sure Republicans would filibuster any attempt to get rid of the debt ceiling). Even if it polled badly, it would be worth it.
I don’t understand the thrust of your question—seems orthogonal to my post.
Assuming you are really asking, though, the answer is, that you would have needed to do so on a bipartisan basis in 2021, and even if the parties agreed it was a good idea (they didn’t) they still would not have cooperated to do so, for the above gamesmanship reasons.
Threading issue maybe—I was responding to Thomas Hutcheson’s question (why didn’t they repeal TCJA and repeal debt ceiling in 2021).
They should shut up and watch. When your adversary is in the process of destroying themselves, the last thing you want to do is get in the middle of it. I think Jeffries violated this rule yesterday. He seems to be wanting to score political points off of this, but he would get more by letting this Musk vs. hardliners brewing feud play out.
But how should they vote?
Still NO, but don’t make a bunch of noise.
Like Michael Corleone said to the greasy senator, "Here is my offer: nothing." ("Oh, and you'll pay the fee for my gambling license yourself.")
I don't think abortion can be in the CR, I think it has to be all nominally budget. A two month clean CR should get some votes, but they should do nothing that allows the upcoming Trump Travesty to be easier.
It appears to me Musk is just being an idiot and causing trouble, and Trump is going along with that because he believes he thrives on chaos and hopes he can force things to be easier for him later.
People who shouldn't be will be hurt by a government shutdown, but even more people will be hurt when the Republicans take office. Vote to minimize the destruction now, vote to minimize the destruction then. But the American people foolishly decided that having Republicans run things is a good idea. They have to be given the opportunity to see what that means.
It's the democrats' duty to protect the American people, but it's not their duty to protect the Republicans.
Trump is smart to want an increase in the debt ceiling. I think Democrats should offer to abolish it. Triumph gets a free hand but so does whoever wins in 2028.
The debt ceiling is a tricky thing politically, both as an idea and as a legislative tactic. As a policy it's stupid, but that's so poorly understood by the general public that calling for its abolition would not be popular. Democrats should privately offer to support abolishing it, and see if Trump will be willing to spend his political capital publicly killing it.
If he wants to make his upcoming clusterfuck of a budget bipartisan by throwing in an end to the debt ceiling, that's probably good enough policy that providing cover on the rest of its badness is worth it. But it would be bad politics and bad policy to just help him raise it to get his short term goals, knowing it will just be harder when eventually, likely two years from now, the democrats control at least one house and need to start cleaning up his mess.
“Triumph”—was that a typo, or are you equating the incoming President with the famed “Insult Comedy Dog”? They do have a lot in common.
typo
It would need 60 votes to pass, which is part of the point. Democrats need to press popular demands every time Republicans can’t come up with the votes to press the government. Then they can say “senator X refused to fund the government because he wants to ban abortion”
They're making hay on "the Republicans are in favor of children getting cancer" right now.
More accurately, they are in favor of children dying from cancer.
Then again her Brian Thompson murder take is the type of stuff that gives normies a pause.
Democrats do need to do some serious image pivoting and I don’t think elevating AOC helps in that broader pivot. It might have little effect or it might set message priorities in the wrong direction.
I am in the former camp.
Yet, she is a Democrat with a massively large following.
That says a lot of very negative things about young Democrats.
Maybe she had that take to balance out her slandering Daniel Penny as a murderer right out the gate last year /sarc
I try not to trip over hypocrisy; it's common and usually unimportant. But there is a lot of irony in the number of self-identified "moderate", "pragmatic", "commonsense" commenters who lionize Daniel Penny out of one side of their mouth and admonish anyone who fails to weep and wail over the murder of Brian Thompson out of the other side.
One of those people tried to protect innocent people from a violent and mentally unstable man. He went too far and there was an unfortunate result. He'll still probably pay a price (in civil court) for trying to do a good deed.
The other committed a premeditated murder of a law-abiding man because he didn't agree with the way private health insurance works in this country.
I am increasingly alarmed by the positive (or anti-anti-Luigi) reaction to Luigi Mangione from the far left and among dissident and nihilistic people of all stripes. It feels genuinely corrosive to an ordered society. I do not believe the same is true of Daniel Penny or of the people who have a positive view of his actions.
In a just world, the positive reaction to Luigi Mangione would be an albatross around the far left's neck for decades.
1) I'm pretty skeptical of the self-defense/defense of others claim. Neely was unarmed and throwing a tantrum. He didn't touch anybody. Some people want to move the line on self-defense from "duty to retreat" to "stand your ground" to "chokehold first, ask questions later." I think that kind thing would be corrosive to society. I think the jury was correct not to convict, but only because Penny's action falls through a very narrow crack in New York's criminal statutes. (2) I think all vigilanteism, whether it's "eat the rich" flavored or "kill the poor" flavored is corrosive to society.
I’m not going to argue the case with you because if you’ve reviewed the evidence and decided Neely was merely throwing a tantrum then I have no illusions that I can change your mind about that. I don’t know how anyone in that subway car was supposed to know he was unarmed, though. And he already proved quite adept at seriously injuring an elderly woman without the aid of a weapon. Ugh, I said I wouldn’t do that.
No one is saying “kill the poor”. If I believed a police shooting of a black suspect was justified, could that stance be summarized as “kill all black people”? Would that be an appropriate way to characterize the views of people who expressed support for the officer?
No, no one wants to kill the poor. But you can sure put “eat the rich” on a sign and march through the streets.
Could you elaborate on what the hypocrisy is?
The two cases you mention have nothing in common.
The hypocrisy is not in the crimes but in the responses. It's in the moderates who think Penny was a man pushed into an impossible position by a dysfunctional system, but who can't understand how anyone would be anything but despondent over the murder of Brian Thompson. And to be clear, the hypocrisy goes both ways; it's also hypocritical for leftists who can't understand the people who see Penny as a righteous white knight.
To be clear, Penny and Mangione are both sinners. They got angry and frustrated and took violent action. They should be ashamed and we should be disgusted with them.
Luigi wasn't pushed into any kind of "impossible situation".
He traveled to Japan as a sex tourist and no Japanese woman wanted anything to do with him. He decided to habitually abuse hallucigenics and his narcissism lead him to murder in cold blood.
> They got angry and frustrated and took violent action
You cannot be serious with this comparison
Holy shit, are you making a serious comparison between these two?
What concessions to AOC would you support? Because it's tough telling her and her fellow leftists to be good team players all the time and then offer them nothing. Just as "you make peace with your enemies", you make coalitional concessions to your factional opponents.
Really? The Biden administration gave into almost every priority of the Sanders/Warren wing. With every concession He did not appoint industry people to the executive. He snubbed tech and Musk. Dems have pushed "climate crisis", "racial equity", "environmental justice" as priorities. We pushed electorally toxic student debt handouts to appease them. We adopted strange gender and DEI positions to appease them. We killed permitting reform to appease them. And most of all, we juiced inflation just like they asked us too and gave out massive handouts to activists.
They are bad team players. Their caucus has been shrinking rather than growing. They freerode on anti-Trump backlash and act like they have a mandate. Tell them to actually win competitive races before they come asking for concessions again.
I get that. My point is that the popularist/"Yglesian" view is that all those policy concessions were bad and the left should cease such demands in future. My question is if anything is being offered to them instead. Or if the offer is just "suck it up".
They need to reorient their priorities because they have been rebuked. They have been running scattershot. Now I agree with getting rid of seniority based appointments to committees.
But they need to realize they have been cowed by voters.
Well, the Yglesian view is also apparently that AOC should be given a committee chairmanship for no reason other than being young. It's like he wants the party to go in that direction but also doesn't.
It sounds to me like the Yglesian view is that AOC should be asked to do more of what she's good at (beating up on Republicans) because the worse she makes Republicans look, the better it will be for moderate Democrats in marginal districts.
It's very similar to his 2019 and early 2020 takes on Sanders. I think Matt tacitly accepts that moderates are not going to get many concessions on the future platform after a narrow loss in 2024, and Trump will probably be unpopular by 2026 if not 2028, and he disagrees with Trump more than AOC. So he's back on his "merge the left and moderates" beat. That is the lesson of today's post.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/24/18510756/bernie-sanders-2020-democrats-neoliberals-chill
Technically, being the ranking member, not the chairperson. (Of course, if two more Republican representatives disappear, that would change immediately!)
Some of us center-leftists think that climate should be a priority with or without quote marks around "climate crisis." Joe, bless you a million times for the IRA.
What do you think the nation should have done/be doing about this problem?
Doing as much as possible to prevent Trump and the GOP from controlling energy policy, for starters.
I don't know what this means. And after Nov. 2022, no legislation would have been possible.
In a liberal democratic society, prioritizing things that voters don't care about is a good way to end up out of power. And if you end up out of power, it's probably not good if the party in power doesn't care at all about the thing you care about.
I just think climate crisis is bad terminology because it both over and undersells the scale of the challenge. It serves to make people concerned about addressing climate change look hysterical to those who care about more immediate problems.
I agree; I dislike the term "climate crisis." Something that unfolds over decades is not a crisis. I prefer "climate challenge." It's a real challenge and we have to confront it, but it's not a "burn the boats" situation.
Well, give them personal goodies like the leadership position they want. Invite them on the big Congressional trip to Europe, which instead had the same visuals as an assisted living field trip, presumably because spots were given out based on seniority.
To be fair, the trip to Europe was a commemoration of a WWII battle, so it kind of makes sense to have old people who remember the war go?
I mean, they aren't THAT old 😂 Nancy Pelosi was 4 for the Battle of the Bulge.
People close to her and her older caucus peers probably fought in the war: a parent, an uncle, etc. That's less true for the median caucus member
Well, this is a very generous interpretation. I see that Pelosi also led a delegation to commemorate the same battle 5 years ago. Remarkable how often senior members of Congress need to go to Luxembourg at Christmastime on official business!
I think the concession is that if she has more power in the governing process, people listen to what she puts out and are less likely to dismiss it out of hand, even if the don't necessarily take up her recommendations on a particular topic.
I am defending her "evolution" in another comment thread, but I agree that her take on the murder of Thompson was a disappointing backslide, to put it mildly
I happily missed that take, and am now made at you because I will google it and become annoyed.
I live in Baltimore and assholes keep posting pictures of the killer to the subreddit and the tankie brigade comes out to glorify violence.
I want to rant a lot about the response to this murder. Especially all of the media think pieces on how people are mad about health care. The underlying point being, maybe he deserved to be murdered. It's really really gross.
It points to the moral rot in this country. I am convinced Trump is a symptom and zoomers are the most afflicted by this rot.
I’m not quite as down on everyone as that but it is certainly true that Trump is an avatar of, well, something not good in the country.
There is something vulgar about how free people feel to be mean and vindictive.
IMO Trump and the leftist "social media influencers" are two sides of the same coin, but the left doesn't want to admit that Hasan Piker and his ilk are just as toxic as Trump just because they somewhat agree with their politics.
Trump is a symptom as much as the lionization of Luigi Mangione; see also: the existence of Hawk Tuah girl (who thankfully may have earned herself a long prison sentence.)
Only a matter of time before we start seeing edgy college kids wearing t-shirts with a Shepard Fairey or Che Guevara style picture of his face on it.
They have already super imposed his head on Christ.
I think this is mostly just that reddit users are super predisposed to this kind of thinking. But it's also widespread enough that I've had 2-3 IRL friends say things supportive of the murder, sadly
There was a survey showing something like 40% of Gen Z supporting the killing and like a quarter of the total population being ok with it.
I had to google "Brian Thompson murder" because all the memes I've seen on social media name the perpetrator and not the victim, usually to lionize the killer as a hero of the people (and a sex icon). I can't recall ever seeing murder celebrated like this before.
I wonder what fraction of this posting is authentic, vs what fraction are "troll farms" and algorithms?
These are the same debased people who celebrated 10-7 and lionize Hamas. They use the whole "Medicare for all," "student debt relief", oppressor-oppressed dynamic as an excuse to be horrible people, to bully and abuse others, and just act on their most malign impulses.
Also bots, based on the IRL turnout at the convention.
Exactly.They should be drumming her out, not giving her more authority.
She's exactly the type of politician that gives the democrats so much credibility problems with normies
Ding ding ding.
I don't even care for AOC that much (and blog bogeyman Freddie's piece on her establishment turn makes me wonder just how "left" she really is anymore), but it seems obvious that this would have been a useful outlet for channeling left-flank energy. Lots of less-productive Do Somethings that will probably happen instead. It's like the Tim Walz bunt all over again: taking the safe low-drama low-risk cautious choice instead of swinging for the fences. Except this time it's not even trying for a come-from-behind victory, that game's already lost and the next one's started in an unfavourable position. As much as I've learned not to misunderestimate Pelosi over the years, I'd hope not to see a continuing string of such conservative plays. "You *are* trying to win, aren't you?"
I wouldn't even say putting Gerry Connolly in charge of oversight is a conservative safe play. Politically, it's risky to put someone who is clearly inferior to the other choice just as a personal favor.
Maybe she's just a little to focused on paying off some interpersonal debts*before she can properly retire, let this all be someone else problem, and actually enjoy the last few years of her life? Understandable in my opinion and maybe we can celebrate her burning some credibility as she passes the torch to the next generation.
* Interpersonal or Intrapersonal? I'm too lazy to ask ChatGPT so I'll fallback on not getting everything perfect. Hopefully everyone else here is also able to relax a bit as we progress through the holiday season. The game will still be there when we get back.
“Intrapersonal debts” would be debts that one part of Pelosi’s self owes to another part of herself. Sometimes I think I owe my past self something when he sets me up really well to complete a project, and I try to pay him back by doing it how he would have wanted it.
But I think you have it right that this could only be explained by interpersonal debts.
Is this the first case of obligations to self being discussed at SB? Nice.
Documentation on a code project is a love letter to your future self.
That makes sense! Like intranet and internet. And something about clearly defining the entities of interest. Isn't always obvious without more context
"intra" is always within, and "inter" is always between.
This is interesting. Is ChatGPT faster than using a dictionary?
There's going to be a leftmost pole of the Democratic Party. AOC seems to be the only member of the Squad who hasn't completely lost it. This isn't an endorsement in any way, just an acknowledgement that this is a democracy and voters to my left exist and deserve representation too. And I'll take AOC over... the other Squad members.
Having said that, her quote from several years ago (paraphrasing) of "it's better to be morally correct than factually correct" I really think is the quote of the era lol
Pressley doesn't seem all that bad either, from what little I've heard of her
The fact that I forgot she existed is probably a good thing.
I met her in Election Day in 2020 and she mostly seems like a nice person but I am not a fan of her endorsing the repeal of MCAS in Massachusetts public schools.
I'm sure Matt is being sensitive and circumspect about the health issue, as he should be, but the fact is that regardless of Connolly's merits or lack there of, he has a serious cancer diagnosis and Dem leadership yet again seems to be setting itself up for a situation where it is relying on an aging member in failing health to perform energentically in a key role. In the back rooms where these things get hashed out, that should be disqualifying.
I really dislike AOC but this was quite persuasive.
It’s best to keep AOC in her social media bubble. She’s good at getting progressives to like her posts, but she can do that without becoming ranking member of oversight. Being ranking member would put her on TV more, which would give her more exposure to normie voters, which is exactly what the party does not need.
Of course low information voters aren’t going to watch AOC’s TV hits, so this is all small beer. The risk is AOC pisses off moderate chamber of commerce types who find both populism and progressivism distasteful.
It really depends on *what* she's doing on TV. The whole point of putting her on oversight is that she'd be dragging Republicans through the mud. We need someone doing that, ideally someone from a safe seat, and she's really good at it.
The problem is that to the extent average Americans know AOC at all, they have the 2019 version in their heads, and not the 2024 version. Those preconceptions will make it difficult for her to be an effective messenger.
Isn’t that why it’s good to have the 2024 version of her on TV?
At one level yes, but at another level people don't actually listen to substance so probably not.
You can't have it both ways. If they don't listen to substance, they don't really know much about her (including the 2019 version), and putting her on TV won't really matter.
You can't say "We shouldn't put her on TV because we don't want people paying attention" and then claim that people do not, in fact, pay attention.
I think the people that dislike AOC are either quite partisan or very into politics baseball (like the readers of this blog). The people that know her as a young politician who goes viral in posts about fashion or from playing Fortnite on Twitch very likely have no idea of how far left-wing her positions are.
Putting her on TV where she gets to say (relatively) uncontroversial things about how corrupt Trump is, in ways that make for good soundbites, is not going to make a normie voter dig into her positions and think "Actually, rent control is bad!"
I don’t get what you don’t get. To the extent low-information voters know anything about AOC, it’s that she’s a member of The Squad, which they negatively associate with wildly left wing positions. People who think that about her are automatically going to tune out her arguments.
This is a wild take. You seem to be conceding that 2024 AOC is better than 2019. Why on earth wouldn't you want the potentially charismatic and popular 2024 AOC to get as much exposure as possible to change people's perceptions and banish the 2019 version from the forefronts of their minds?
I think you're overstating how unpopular she is. AOC's favorability isn't that different from Gavin Newsom's, and I think having someone like Newsom throwing bombs in Oversight would be a good use of him. And as you said, a lot of her unpopularity is stickiness from dumb stuff she said in 2019, which will matter less and less as the years go by. If all people knew from AOC was her excellent and carefully crafted DNC speech, she'd be popular.
An important difference is that AOC is a progressive who is willing to be pragmatic at times when necessary, while Newsom is a moderate who likes to pretend to be progressive when it helps him with San Francisco voters. They both have the same image, but AOC seems to have principles that get her that image, while Newsom just does it because he thinks it looks cool.
Newsom is someone who met Kimberly Guilfoyle while mayor and thought it was a good idea to marry her!
I don’t that is correlated with moderate vs. progressive. I think Newsom just has poor judgement and discernment.
I think AOC is perceived a lot like Hillary.
Completely toxic
Her disapproval ratings amongst independents appear to be no worse than Gretchen Whitmers or Mayor Pete's, etc., so this notion that she's broadly and uniquely hated across the spectrum seems mostly tied to how much furious press she gets from right leaning outlets.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bLmjKzZ43eLIxZb1Bt9iNAo8ZAZ01Huy/edit?pli=1&gid=634536498#gid=634536498
She would be toxic as a national candidate, that doesn't make her toxic as a representative.
People apply the craziness to the national party.
They're female Democrats? I can't think of a single commonality for them besides that.
Hillary is only toxic to the Right. To the rest of us she’s just unlikable.
Which is why she lost to Trump?
Right but of course the problem is that people don't only know her from that speech.
If AOC is part of the future of the party getting her out of the "social media bubble" and into communicating with the broader public seems like a good idea.
She seems smart enough to adjust her messaging to her audience and the party could help try to guide her in that rather than work against her.
If she is the future than the future involves losing a lot of elections.
Don’t worry. In another 10 years she’ll hold exactly the same positions but will be considered Center Right.
Your lips to God’s ears
This seems like a comment that was made without even reading the post. I'm not saying you can't think this, but the entire post argues for why you're wrong on this point and you don't spend anytime rebutting the claims MY makes (she's in a safe district, she won't be on tv arguing policy but will instead be on tv attacking Trump and trying to pull down republican approval ratings, she's very adept at publicity and coming across well so she's an effective messenger for attacking R's, etc. etc. etc.).
I don’t really disagree with Matt’s premises, I just don’t think the conclusion follows. She does have a large social media following, she is good at generating outrage. My point is she doesn’t need to be ranking member to use those skills and she might piss off moderates.
Democrats just gave their biggest platform to a “diet woke” woman of color from a blue state with disappointing results. Time to elevate moderate voices with more Midwestern appeal.
I agree and disagree with you. AOC is charismatic and can excite lots of voters the Democrats need to excite. And yet it's true that she is polarizing and may alienate lots of voters the Democrats will need.
I think she should have gotten the Oversight post. I also think the Democrats should also elevate MGP (if the initials don't mean anything to you then that shows the problem) even if she voted with the Republicans on the CR yesterday (one of only two Dems).
This strikes me as a great example of Matt's pundit's fallacy.
Do we know why Democrats seem committed to seniority to this extent?
Also, does Nancy Pelosi just dislike AOC for some reason? There was reporting from when Pelosi stepped down that seemed to indicate that they just have interpersonal issues.
Elevating a young, well-known member to attack a president who will perhaps be unpopular seems like a good investment in the future of the party.
Matt wrote about the groups attacking Democrats but the party dynamic also seems to reflect internal conflicts. As he mentions at the end, it seems like we have an environment where Democrats don't make an affirmative case for the party.
AOC supported the Sunrise protest against Pelosi when she started in Congress, which I think has led to a permanent grudge.
AOC has the bad sense to support the Groups
I wondered if it was the Sunrise protest thing. If it is, that’s really dumb. AOC pretty quickly gave up on that sort of nonsense and realized she is an actual member of Congress who can try to pass legislation.
I’m a big Pelosi booster but this seems incredibly short sighted and petty. I feel if she was smart, Pelosi would recognize AOC’s natural political talents and that she’s shown a real willingness to learn and evolve in her role in Congress (in contrast to some of other Squad members). Why not pass along Pelosi’s knowledge of effective legislating? AOC could be quite formidable.
And I say this as someone who’s way more centrist than AOC.
Yes exactly. Petty grudges are not how you win. AOC realizes this, Pelosi really should too.
My best explanation is that Pelosi and others in leadership realize that the Sunrise protest supporter is who AOC actually is and that she's just playing nice until they give her some real authority.
Oversight committee chair gives her real authority to yell at Republicans. Which is good! She is undeniably good at this!
I mean if not AOC then Katie Porter
She's out of Congress. Left her house seat to run for the California Senate seat vacated by Feinstein. But then lost to Schiff in the primary. 😭
I always saw that as Pelosi and AOC collaborating in an oppositional way - they both benefited from the attacks, rather than either suffering actual harm.
Part of it is union influence, which was pretty important to the Democrats of a certain age. Every union that I'm aware of uses seniority as the basis for job assignments and it isn't surprising that the Party uses something similar.
Yep! Good riddance to seniority and it was rather disappointing that we appeared to be getting this in the national divorce; definitely seems more Republican coded. And yet somehow they moved on to something of a new generation?
So maybe if our own evolutionary pathway to the next generation is similarly surprising (to the say the least) then maybe we can take comfort in knowing that we'll be there soon enough.
I'll just say that I have faith that we won't be holding on to seniority for long either. Just likely plenty of prior modes of primitive human savagery; I'm confident we can all finally put seniority and all that it entails in the cosmic dustbin soon enough.
Plus we already have bigger political and philosophical questions to ponder: forget age and generational differences between humans; we're ever more collapsing the divide between humans and machines (in my opinion)! Seems we're gonna need to focus on, from first principles, what are humans even for?
My understanding is that in recent-ish years, one of the bigger backers of the Seniority system was the CBC. Because black seats are pretty overwhelmingly safe compared to other blue seats, they have more time to rack up seniority and thus it gives them more factional power. This has somewhat waned recently, though, with the CBC failing to back one of its members (Scott) to control the Agriculture committee in face of non-CBC opposition because he was so clearly too old
That was six years ago and happened before she was even sworn into Congress. If Pelosi is still holding that against her then she's not as savvy or strategic as everyone considers her to be.
She did it again 4 years ago in 2020, once Biden was declared the official winner: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/aoc-squad-green-new-deal-rally-dnc-b1759353.html
I worried at the time about the optics on it, that it would be used as evidence that the election was stolen by Biden (because hardly anyone listens to the content of the climate activists' speeches). I would hope she has now seen the bigger picture, especially what happened less than 2 months later.
Not sure we agree. Something odd happened during this election which was, despite being told (over and over ad nauseam) that Trump was a "threat to Democracy," millions of Biden voters stayed home. And many Democrats switched to voting for Trump.
My wife and I were voters for Democrats for 50 years. Became Independents 2 years ago, and voted for Trump this year.
There were many reasons, but one of the main ones was the arrogance and superiority displayed by "progressives" like AOC. They displayed clear contempt for the people we
Democrats had always fought for and protected, and the fact that 40% of people of color voted for Trump is consistent with our views of "progressives."
If you want us back (and we want to come back), then the "progressive" movement needs to be ignored. Electing AOC would have given a stronger voice to the "Progressive caucus" and the "squad" and would guarantee more losing for Democrats.
AOC and her like fought the wrong battles. It made them feel good, but actually betrayed the cause. "Progressives" have now given us Trump twice. That's real "progress," huh?
It seems like the people who voted for Trump gave us Trump.
Disliking progressives is fine, but people who vote for Trump also have agency. No one is forced to vote for him because the Squad is too annoying.
I agree! Keep believing this. Don't learn anything from Trump's two wins! Feel right instead!
signed
President Vance
2028
You’re “you made us vote for Trump by being mean” contrarian schtick is getting old. It’s silly.
And I say this as someone who tells Democrats that voters don’t like many of the things they are selling.
Every single time this account participates in the thread it turns into the most circular and silly debate. If anyone in the comment section is annoyed by the comment, just don't engage!
Don't feed the trolls should be rule #1 in any high-quality comment section imo
I just mock them because they are parroting canned talking points in order to seek contrarian validation though pushback. It's silly because what they write has little to do with the comments they respond to. They do this on other substacks too.
Their claiming to be Democrats who have been forced to vote for Trump reminds me of those "undecided" voters CNN interviewed who then went for Trump and it turns out, like, they were Republican committee people.
......and once we got a lecture from you about not engaging in ad hominem attacks. Yet in this thread there are numerous insults thrown our way, and your only reaction is to call this debate "silly."
For two years we have been warning Democrats, in every forum we could, that they were losing America, and were at risk of losing the election for this reason.
We were right. So, yes, ignore us.
What ever happened to liberalism?
Should we just keep our mouths shut? Is that what you are saying? Should people ignore our ideas? Is that what you are saying?
Were you right in predicting a Trump victory? Were you right in knowing that swing voters were turned off by progressive ideas about, say, treatments for children who are struggling with trans issue? Were you right in reading that literature and seeing that many policies used in this country regarding trans children had no research support for them?
Why insult us as you have done? What have we been wrong about?
p.s. "every single time." Do you really want to make that kind of overgeneralization?
Just out of curiosity- why are you a subscriber here? I don't mean it in a hostile way, I'm just curious why people with relatively conservative views spend $8 a month to read Matt's takes and sometimes argue in the comments section. Are you sympathetic to Matt's center-leftism on some level, or......?
I mean I don't have a subscription to a conservative Substack, and then show up and argue with the other commenters. Just curious what your motivation is
I think there are two things worth saying here. The first is that I would have some caution in this particular election over-confirming your notions of progressivism “losing America”. While I also think progressives have lost themselves in excess and were a headwind, the reality is closer to this always having been a doomed election due to inflation, global events, and most importantly thermostatic reaction. We are still a 50/50 country, and I think the truth is in 2028 we can run the exact same playbook decision-for-decision as we did this year and be guaranteed a close election with a good shot at winning. Not saying we should do that - there are oodles of changes I’d like to see happen including, yes, moderation and smarter messaging on police and trans topics. But in a forum where folks talk often about the pundit’s fallacy, I think it’s important to take a hard look at how critical our own personal fallacies really are, and measure our language and attitude accordingly.
But secondly, man people here are way too harsh on protest votes. There has to be a good-faith way to signal that the party has done something unacceptable, but I fear that we have basically no real way to measure or pay attention to those signals. It’s obvious that not protest voting on the gop side is what allowed for Trump’s rise - voters fell into line, brow beaten with “lesser of two evils” ad nauseum. The calculus didn’t work out for me to protest Harris (far from it honestly, I was mildly excited), but if Biden had remained the candidate I would have stayed home and spent my minuscule political power saying that a candidate like that was unacceptable. However. I do think we have to recognize that there is a limit to the protest vote signal, small as it already is. I feel that it is a one or two-time shot, beyond which your signal becomes not “party defector we (should) want to win back” but rather “this person doesn’t vote” or “this person is just a gop voter now.” And as you’ve felt here, the protest vote messaging isn’t very popular, especially when used over-frequently. I think that instead it needs to be conserved for the issue that drove your protest at the core. If you want to burn up that capital on disagreeing with a progressive pol’s (failed) committee run, you can, but is that really the place to spend your credibility? I think you should rather hoard your capital and spend it down at the most crucial point possible, potentially meaning now but also possibly meaning waiting until 2028’s primary! Your signal, regrettably small as it already is, has to be protected from becoming noise.
A joint account is just such a crazy premise.
"by being mean." is not really true. It's that we don't belong with a Democratic party that is overrun by "progressives" whose idea of being "progressive" is to elect Trump twice. We are being told that we don't belong, over and over. That we are the "problem" over and over. OK. So, now you've convinced us......and millions of other Biden voters who stayed home.
This is just a totally incoherent take and below the standards of the typical comment here.
That's another dimension to all of this. When we would post comments that threaten "progressive" views we often received insults......which made us see that we were on the right track with our thoughts.
But do you think it is good that Trump is elected?
Most progressives, including AOC, do not think that. To say that their idea of being "progressive" is to elect Trump twice seems not fair.
12% of Sanders voters switched to Trump. Another 12% stayed home. Costing Clinton the election.
Read The Liberal Patriot and other sources that surveyed swing voters. "Progressive" ideas were the main reason for them voting for Trump.
Progressives want to feel right. They never ask: "Will advocating this help us win?"
I mean those folks in Dearborn voting for the Greens seemed to think so….
If you think the problem is that AOC encouraged people to vote for Trump, then why did you think that voting for Trump was a good thing?
Again silly.
What part do you disagree with?
That you, and other Trump voters, have agency?
If you think Trump being elected is good, fair enough. If you think it is bad then voting for him is probably the wrong way to go.
It is weird, because I acknowledge that voters have agency and their choices are legitimate. I agree that Democrats did not pay enough attention to inflation, have listening too much to activists and pushed unpopular social issues, and failed to pivot on crime for fear of offending said groups. I acknowledge urban governance failures (where turnout tanked) and the failures of the Biden administration.
Still seeing the old “you made us vote for Trump” pulled out just reveals something about the speakers character. Especially when they chide us for pointing the scripts they parrot are silly because they don’t fit the context.
Nobody "made us" vote for Trump. Harris is anti-police, and police keep our grandchildren safer. She has advocated defunding over the years and even did recently.......something Dems tried to hide because they knew it wouldn't fly.
https://livinginthebedofapickup.blogspot.com/2024/08/why-we-wont-vote-for-harris-her-anti.html
I'm down for bashing progressives all day long, but I don't think you get to act all high and mighty when you voted for Trump.
I hate most of the squad. AOC herself may be foolish and sometimes annoying, but she was also a real team player and left it all on the field to prevent this serial criminal from winning.
She didn't give us Trump. *You* gave us Trump.
AOC is a perfect representative of The Groups and progressive thought that caused Trump to win.
They should be ditching her
what does "ditching her" even mean? I agree that if you could replace everybody on the squad by Jared Golden clones, we'd be better off, but that's not gonna happen. The Groups can and should be ditched because nobody voted for them and they have no real power.
Not true of AOC. She's very famous and well liked by Dems, and she's making a serious effort to be a team player, moderate her rhetoric on unpopular issues, and become more popular. The only thing we can do with her is try to channel her talent and charisma in a positive way (by throwing her at Republicans).
I would side line her, and hopefully primary her.
Same way I hope Republicans sideline and then get rid of people like MTG
The way that *some* people put AOC and MTG in the same category is an indicator of the deterioration of rational thought in this country.
The caricature of AOC that some commenters are throwing out on this thread is so bizarre. It's like they saw her storming Pelosi's office in 2018 and then just never paid attention to her again. She's not my ideal candidate, and I certainly disagree with her on plenty of policies, but she's also taken considerable strides in recent years to join the Dem. caucus wholeheartedly, be a team player, and work to make actual legislative change. Of all the social media style political personalities in Congress, she's the only one I've seen that actually seems interested in legislating rather than just generating views on social media.
The comments here would have you think she's the equivalent of Gaetz and MTG on the left. It's bananas.
Absolutely zero chance they can primary her. Dems can't just wish away their biggest star. "Sidelining" her isn't really possible either, she has the biggest reach of any Democrat. All we can do is consider ourselves lucky that she's shown a ton of pragmatism and try to weaponize her to our advantage. She has shown that if there's a path towards building power by moderating and being a team player, she will.
By the way, AOC is far more talented and charismatic than MTG. The only reason she's not much more popular are her more unpopular far-left positions.
More talented to push idiotic positions isn't a win for me.
"progressives" are anti-white, anti-male, anti-boomer, and anti-police.
And my wife and I are all four. We were kicked out of the Democratic Party.
Your wife is male? I’m a little surprised that you would support such a person in your life, but I’m proud of you regardless.
Same energy:
https://youtu.be/abVJLOPBnXU?si=1YztkST8vSPlqc0p
Then stop being a coward. Just own that you prefer him, instead of this “well I voted for him but I didn’t want him to win, I just had no choice” show.
"coward." This is the level of "progressive" thinking.
If the shoe fits man. Also, I'm quite conservative these days, so your model needs calibration.
PLEASE go away. You are not serious people.
because we have the audacity to challenge "progressives?"
i.e., the same people who the data show gave us Trump TWICE?
I agree that “some” progressives are just haters but they are a loud minority, I believe the left has better policy ideas and is directionally better on more issues than the right, that’s why I’m a moderate Democrat.
I want to have a big tent where you feel like you belong as much as anyone else. Hopefully we can achieve that in the next 4 years.
Freddie deHater!!!
What this comment reveals is that you yourself recognize that Trump and Republicans are bad. But you dislike some people in the Democratic coalition and so you voted for someone who you realize is worse for the country, and you want to displace that onto someone else, like AOC. I recommend instead voting for people who are good for the country and recognizing that people saying mean things on social media can't hurt you.
This is an aside, but it’s certainly not the case that 40% of people of color voted for Trump. AP VoteCast suggests the number is 30%.
Whatever the fuck a person of color is lol it’s whatever one wants it to be 🤪
I mean AOC will exist either way, in office, i. Social media, and in legacy media. The question is how you want her spending her time. Oversight is a good choice.
Democrats will never win as long as "progressives" like AOC are what people identify with the party.
So, keep her and lose. OK. We tried.
She and the progressive movement were far more central to discussions of the party in 2018/20/and 22 when the Dems had very good/great outcomes than they were in 2024. Your argument lacks nuance or evidence in support. You act like people weren't upset about immigration and inflation and global conflicts and any host of other things that have nothing to do with progressivism- yours is a shrill argument that comes from nowhere and amounts to nothing.
And you then attack everyone on a comment thread that has virtually no actual progressives or staunchly left wing commenters as being part of the same blob of DEI/Woke progressivism that you're using as your catch all explanation for everything in politics and America. It's not a serious argument.
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-progressive-moment-is-over?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
It's almost like your polling supports my comment without you realizing it...
that really makes sense. I did polling? Did I make any money from it? Hope so?
I think it would be helpful if you were more specific about your qualms. Using broad and shifting labels like “progressive” as the basis for your stance can give your readers the impression that you’ve just been polarized into some kind of tribal opposition.
I agree with you about AOC in the past, but she really has leaned more into actually winning elections now.
Her own district had a big swing towards Trump. Not enough to cause Trump to win the district or for her to lose the district, but she was the poorest performer among the four Democrats who represent all or part of the Bronx in Congress.
If so, and I would respect that, then she needs to clearly state, repeatedly, "I was wrong about......."
So I'm not sure she's changed her underlying opinions much(that is, I think she's almost certainly more anti-police than you), but she has seemed to accept that that's unpopular and not a recipe for winning elections, and she's willing to compromise on those things.
I don't see her ever saying "I was wrong about this police thing" so much as no longer spending any energy/effort on any of it, and instead working with more moderate voices on it, with the (quite logical) view that she'll still get more of what she wants with Democrats than Republicans.
I wouldn't hold my breath for her to say "I was wrong about" on this. But I'm trying to be big tent about it. If she's not actively pushing bad positions like "defund the police" and instead being reasonable then I'm not going to kick her out of the tent.
I'm not saying this attitude would make me vote for her for President over say... Haley(depending on Haley's positions at the time) but as a member of the Democratic coalition her new attitude seems fine.
She is incapable of admitting she has been wrong, even when she has changed her positions. (For example, she and other Progressives have thankfully largely abandoned NIMBY development policies.)
My prediction is you're probably sticking in the GOP column and Democrats are probably going to keep on doing almost all of the things they did under Biden with minimal revision. Matt probably agrees with the latter prediction, and that's why he's once again arguing for the left and moderate wing of Democrats to more formally bind together, like he did in 2019 for Sanders. Politics!
Why are so many Trump voters so cranky about it? You voted for Trump and/or wanted Harris to lose. You got your wish. Why aren’t you happy?
Well my response was mostly intended to Vicky & Dan that they're going to keep being a Republican. I wrote in for presidency, voted GOP for Congress. I'll probably vote GOP in 2028 for the presidency. I'm content enough.
The important thing here is Matt is shifting back to his 2019 position regarding the left faction of Dems after some of his time left-bashing. I wanted to stress that this can be coherent given his personal beliefs about the parties. But even granting that, this is a notable shift; he has read the tea leaves and he's not going to pick that drastic of a fight over the policy stuff. I think Vicky & Dan is not taking seriously enough Matt's own commitments to the Democratic party above whatever electoral developments progressives are or aren't guilty of.
I also don’t understand this comment. Matt is, as far as I can tell, sincerely committed to certain policy positions, including progressive taxation, social welfare, public education, a pro-growth mindset, a non-ethnically based view of American citizenship and patriotism, and a belief in the benefits of immigration to the US. The Republican Party has just taken over in DC and its commitment to those policy positions (and others that Matt Yglesias believes in, like being pro-choice) is limited or absent. So Matt wants the Democratic Party to succeed, because they are largely congruent with his policy positions. How exactly is this different from what Matt has been saying all along? He issued a manifesto quite recently laying out his preferred policy positions, and it certainly seemed to contain some left-bashing.
Directly elevating AOC to represent the party further versus Republicans is in obvious tension with those manifesto goals? And this has happened before; he argued in 2019 that Bernie Sanders and Democrats should further combine interests, which of course is part of how we got the Biden admin doing all these things he has since complained about.
I don’t think I agree here. It’s important to remember that Matt is not, as far as I can tell, a secret or disappointed Republican who wishes to return to the Republican fold. Matt has certain policy positions and orientations he supports and wants them implemented. He issued his manifesto as a way to focus on those items and get them enacted. Matt knows that the Democratic Party can’t win elections without the left, just like the Republican Party can’t win elections without the nativist or Christian right. I also don’t think Matt primarily blames Bernie for this stuff, and it is also true that Biden won the election of 2020. It seems to me more that Matt blames Biden and many members of his administration and some members of the left and Groups (not AOC) who weren’t team players for the loss. You don’t strike me as agreeing with Matt on a lot of issues. So why aren’t you happy?
Democrats, under the influence of "progressives" have lost the middle class, have lost working class, and are quickly losing minorities.
When we see our old beloved Democratic party of old, we'll be back. But we aren't binding with "progressives" who gave us Trump twice. That is a losing formula.
Republicans own the country now.
Any normal old-fashioned Democrat could have beaten Trump, but progressives did not want to win. So Biden picked the most progressive candidate and she picked the most progressive running mate. As Rahm Emmanuel recently pointed out (something we have been saying for two years now), progressives want to lose but be right, but Democrats want to win.
Look at the reactions to our comments. Do you see people really wanting to win or wanting to assert that they were actually "right" and people like us who could see two years ago that Trump would win don't even belong on this commenting board. Seriously, read them all. It is a barrage of insults and name-calling.
When, instead of looking at us, they should be looking at themselves and saying "why was I so clueless about the country and wrong?" But there is no soul-searching. Instead, as this column illustrates, the "solution" is to promote one of the very people whose ideas the country just repudiated.
Well I think per the comment brawling. you have to make a credible offer. For example, I was shopping for a car recently, and part of how that game goes is you say what price you're thinking of after they offer a price so they can see how badly you want it. What is your price for voting Democratic again?
My own is probably them handling pensions and immigration significantly more conservatively. I was a Democrat back in 2016, voted for Hillary in the primary to get the progressive stuff under control. It basically took over the party from my perspective, and so fair enough, but I'm not in the party anymore. Part of it is also that I became more sold on conservative economic arguments, so it's not really all on Democrats in that regard. I have a pretty steep price and don't think I'll be getting it offered back to me in the near future.
What you can't do for your price is *both* say you voted Trump and say "I'll vote for the kind of Democrats who can beat Trump." It's just not a coherent offer. It's like me taking monopoly money out at the dealership. They want serious customers. Parties want serious prices for votes.
So as I see it, Democrats narrowly lost this election over inflation and immigration issues they meaningfully exacerbated through policy decisions. By and large, they're not going to dramatically change in a rightward direction. I was wrong about predicting that in 2017. So it goes in a democracy. I have options in 2026 and 2028 to tell them I disagree and am not buying at their current price.
Good points.
Polls show that cultural issues were also almost as important:
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/
There was also a survey (can't find the link, but it's somewhere lost in the bowels of my computer) that these cultural issues were the main factor for swing voters who went to Trump.
Thanks for a nice discussion.
Here is the link. It summarizes many reasons why we believe the Democratic Party is not like the party of old that we held dear.
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/throw-the-groups-under-the-bus
I don’t understand this comment. You voted for Trump. So by definition, you personally contributed to giving “us” Trump. I’d rather hear why you changed your vote and the “many reasons”.
I have explained several aspects of this decision in response to other (often hostile) comments.
One big reason is that we do not want to live in a progressive world, and the Democratic Party has become infested with progressive thought. It's why we lost this election---for example, working Americans believe Democrats are more concerned with trans issues than with them. And they are correct.
Now here is an important dimension of this: We are not alone. We are not a one-off occurrence. Millions of Biden voters stayed home, not wanting to vote for Harris even though they were being told that Trump means the end of Democracy. And millions of others switched to Trump.
Something is wrong inside the party. Surveys show that people like Democratic principles, but do not like progressive ones. So, when my wife and I could see, two years ago, that this was going to drive people to Republicans, we started warning people on every forum we could.
We got slammed instead of listened to. Like we have in this particular thread.
We have been told, and all other Americans ahve been told, repeatedly that we white, old, male, law enforcement people are the "enemies." Well, it was listened to. Millions of them said "OK....I'll vote for Trump because his supporters don't blame me for everything that's wrong."
We don't want Harris/Progressives more than we don't want Trump.
And what we see is that progressives are digging in, like appointing AOC to this committee, instead of saying "how could we have been so wrong? What do we need to change?"
You say that “we” don’t want to live in a progressive world, and because of that you voted for Trump. But then you also say “we lost the election”. These can’t both be true. You voted for Trump and he won, so by definition you won the election. If you didn’t want Trump or Harris, you could have voted third party or left that choice blank. So you got the outcome you wanted. What is the problem here? Until you explain what it is exactly the Democratic Party can do to win your vote, no one here can actually help you out of your dilemma.
We Democrats lost the election. We lost it two years ago.
We got the outcome we wanted only because the alternative was terrible--a progressive.
The Democratic Party, to win us back, has to be the Democratic Party and not the Progressive Party....which it is right now.
Are you a registered member of the Democratic party? It's a little bit odd to be a member of the Democratic party who votes for the candidate the party directly opposes. Did you vote for Democratic candidates lower down on the ballot?
Voted for other Democrats. Still don't understand what it means to be a liberal, do you? You are in a tribal mind-set, not a liberal one.
You don't really have a coherent argument. You only seem to really dislike the word "progressive." Somehow just those letters in that formation makes you feel small, and you lashed out against the people using it as "arrogance and superiority displayed."
You are right though, that you are what the majority of Americans voted for. Who am I to argue that what most Americans want to be is "regressive."
Thank you for the free psychoanalysis.
I will use your feedback to improve myself as a person so I no longer feel "small."
Off-topic here, but inspired by a thread a couple days ago: Switzerland. It's the richest non-microstate in Europe by a lot, around the GDP per capita of Massachusetts. And this is despite having what are normally some large disadvantages: significant ethnic diversity, lack of a common language, extremely mountainous.
So why does Switzerland have the per capita GDP of Massachusetts rather than Afghanistan? And what can the rest of Europe learn from it?
Being the home to money launderers for centuries while also being ruthlessly neutral in all global conflicts has a tendency to be lucrative. Not easily replicable, though.
Also doesn't hurt that it's basically a NATO and EU free rider.
Collaborated with the Nazis during WW2, too.
“…money launderers…”
The top Swiss export is refined gold. (More than 10% of their GDP.) Not because they’re laundering money, but because, 1) the Swiss are really, really good at refining gold, and, 2) people trust them. Their second biggest export is pharmaceuticals, third is chemicals. Then banking. Then the watches and cuckoo clocks at around 3% of GDP. (Imagine a people who can take $200 in raw materials and turn it into a $12,000 dive watch!)
Switzerland has been rated the world’s #1 most innovative economy for more than a decade. (US is #2.) They have a sky-high literacy rate and are consistently well-ranked in international education rankings.
The watch thing is not unrelated to money laundering. You can carry a $12,000 watch out of the country without the questions that come with carrying $12,000 in cash.
"You can carry a $12,000 watch out of the country without the questions that come with carrying $12,000 in cash"
True. How many watches do you suppose you could carry out before some border official asked, "May I please see your paperwork?"
$12k isn't expensive for a Rolex watch. You can pay $75k for one.
You can spend north of a million bucks on a Richard Mille. I don't think that makes them more suitable for money laundering.
12k isn't much money if you are laundering it
You can multiply that by many watches.
My spiciest take on Switzerland is that their knowing suborning of tax fraud by Americans and others — so much so that it was literally *written into law* until the aughts — was a legitimate casus belli.
If, threatened with the option of changing their insane criminal-abetting law or going to war, the Swiss proved to be so committed to their love of foreign tax cheats that they were willing die for it, well then frankly they would have deserved it IMO.
I mean we (the US) absolutely crushed their money-laundering banks in the early 2000s though. We forced one of their banks, which I think was older than the US, literally out of business. With very real threats of imprisonment we made them clean up their entire tax evasion & money laundering business post-9/11. I can't think of another 1st world country that the US has so ruthlessly brought to heel
link?
https://www.france24.com/en/20130104-oldest-swiss-bank-wegelin-close-usa-court-secrecy-tax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Birkenfeld
https://taxjustice.net/2021/04/06/buffet-of-tax-evading-secrecy-revealed-by-us-settlement-with-swiss-bank-rahnbodmer/
https://www.ifcreview.com/news/2024/november/switzerland-the-swiss-bank-credit-suisse-violated-the-agreement-with-the-us-on-tax-evasion/
"Pictet was the last of more than 100 banks to collectively pay out more than $7.5 billion during a decade-long crackdown by the US..... US action against Swiss banks started in 2009 with UBS paying out $780 million to defer a tax evasion prosecution..... Faced with the prospect of banks being frozen out of the US market, the Swiss government agreed in 2013 to the “Swiss Bank Program”, which offered banks the chance to come clean and pay a fine to avoid prosecution.
But the most profound change to the Swiss financial sector was the severe dilution of banking secrecy, which had shielded foreign tax dodgers for generations. Secret numbered bank accounts have now been replaced by tax treaties with numerous countries that force Switzerland to reveal the extent of foreign funds held in Swiss bank coffers..... The death of strict banking secrecy has also had a dramatic effect on the private banking sector."
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/how-the-us-tax-evasion-crackdown-impacted-swiss-banking/49032750
Oh yeah we should have annexed them after WWII anyway
Should have been divided up between Austria, Italy, and France.
They're not all that ethnically diverse, probably less so than Massachusetts. The difference today between a Germanic-Swiss and a French-Swiss or an Italian-Swiss is probably about the same as between an Irish, Italian, or German Bay Stater. They all actually speak a common language even if they may have a different home language. And this is largely a function of the same process. The Bay Staters became one because of the shared experience of fighting WWII. The Swiss all became one because of their shared experience of aggressively staying out of WWII. It took a strong national consensus to do that despite any lingering sympathies the various ethnicities had for their lingual cousins.
Agree. But now I'm going to have to research whether French-Swiss and Italian-Swiss sound as funny to the French and Italians as German-Swiss sounds to German speakers.
My understanding is that the French do not make fun of the French Swiss and the way they talk, although they do make fun of the French Belgians and the way they talk.
At least the Belgians have the good sense to use septante and nonante (not sure about the Swiss)
Counting in French is so weird.
So they make fun of their allies from two world wars, and don't make fun of the people who couldn't be stirred to give a shit they were conquered by the Nazis.
No wonder they're right up there with we Americans in people other people dislike.
I don't think it's that deep.
Do tell what you find out. I think this is fascinating!
Aggressively staying out of WW2 by collaborating with the Nazis. Hitler didn't have to invade it.
By comparison, Eamon De Valera quietly collaborated with the Allies, at great political risk.
Paris might be as prosperous if it hadn’t been occupied twice in the last 135 years and taxed to fund world war one.
“So why does Switzerland have the per capita GDP of Massachusetts rather than Afghanistan?”
Lots of folks have asked that question in one form or another in the past, but few are willing to admit the truth: It is because Afghanistan is full of Pashtun and the like whereas Switzerland is full of Swiss.
1. The context & history of the countries is VERY different.
2. The culture & upbringing of their inhabitants is shaped by that.
I'll assume you're not talking about genetic differences, but if you are then we can of course have that absurd discussion too.
I'd much rather be brought up in Switzerland than Afghanistan.
I wasn’t suggesting anything genetic. It’s just that Switzerland has a superior culture.
Siding pretty openly with the Nazis during WW2 was not superior.
In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Really great trains.
I thought the quote ended with "the cuckoo clock."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/quotes/
That, as they say, is the joke
In heaven, the bankers are Swiss, the lovers are Italian, the chefs are French, and the police are English. In hell, the lovers are Swiss, the bankers are Italian, the police are French, and the chefs are English.
I was waiting for this joke.
As the progenitor of many jokes that fail to land because people have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, respect.
But this is Slow Boring. Trains are really important!
Switzerland didn't get democracy until Napoleon overthrew the old undemocratic aristocracy about two centuries ago -- by military force. And parts of Switzerland lacked religious freedom until the 20th century.
Matt had a post about this a while ago and the conclusion was “not really sure why Switzerland is so great”
r > g
>>Switzerland. It's the richest non-microstate in Europe by a lot,<<
You regard Ireland as a microstate?
My impression (though perhaps someone who knows more about accounting wants to correct me) is that a lot of Irish economic activity is only theoretically in Ireland. Lots of foreign profits recharacterized as Irish for tax reasons and that sort of thing.
Collecting rents on IP is a perfectly respectable way to make a living!
(As the proud new owner of an Irish passport, I feel obliged to stick up for my peeps.)
Anyway, Norway, too, is richer than Switzerland!
If Trump & Republicans in Congress drop the US corporate tax rate down to 15% to match Ireland, then I suspect Ireland will see a dramatic drop in those rents.
Or if Ireland raises them. Wasn't there a Biden initiative targeting rich country corporate tax rate arbitrage? Whatever became of that?
Congrats on the citizenship! That’s very exciting
Yes, it is exciting, especially in the age of Trump, though God only knows how long the EU is going to endure (needless to say the value of an Irish passport would plunge if we Irish are someday denied the right to work and live anywhere from Helsinki to Lisbon).
They came up with a whole new statistic because all the tax havens were distorting the GDP so much
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_gross_national_income
This is correct. Apple has its main Europe office in Ireland, so all of Apple's European revenue flows into Ireland (and then out to the USA, of course).
The Mexican state of Campeche is the richest part of Latin America, according to GDP per capita. That is because that is where Mexico's oil is, so the oil revenues of Mexico get credited to it. Campeche isn't really any better off than neighboring states; Mexico City is by far the most prosperous part of Mexico as far as the populace is concerned.
Irish GDP/capita has shot up but Irish consumption/capita basically hasn't changed at all.
Nazi gold. (/s)
Not snark. Switzerland openly collaborated with the Nazis.
Great point. There’s no sexism involved. It’s just that the Oversight position requires one to grow the Oversight Mustache, and most (but not all!) women are unfortunately genetically incapable of exhibiting this crucial characteristic. What can you do but shrug and wait for that happy day when a savvy, strong-willed young woman’s facial hair finally becomes the professional asset her parents always promised it would be.
"But Connolly has no profile and no constituency outside his district."
Pelosi might see this as a feature, not a bug. AOC is so well known that it would be easy for her actions as an Oversight Committee member to be seen as "AOC vs. <fill in the blank scummy Republican>", with the media focusing the spotlight at least as much on her as on the Republican that she's dragging.
Yeah, AOC is extremely unpopular with swing voters, moderates, and independents. I’m not sure why you’d want to wrap Democratic oversight efforts in her reputation.
This
I'm surprised more people on this comic section.Don't understand how unpopular AOC is
I mean tbh I have no idea what her national approval is, specifically among the rightmost third of Dem voters where it would matter most. Based on this comment thread I would say it’s improving (as most here fit that description), but Slow Borers are a rarefied bunch.
Yeah. TBH Matt had me convinced for a bit but this is clearly true.
Waxman may have been to the left of the party, but I would guess that very few Americans knew who he was or had a problem with him specifically. AOC is widely viewed as a far left extremist and having her associated with the party hurts with moderates (but helps with the left).
That being said, if you want her in your party, you need to find a role for her. Or decide she doesn't belong.
Because AOC knows how to get attention, and because the attention would be on subjects bad for Republicans.
Exactly. You need the person in this role to be perceived as above the fray for the focus to be on deeds not personalities.
Agree w/Matt 100%, and Kyle M. beat me to the reason: much more than most members, she does her homework. I'm semi-retired now but early in her career I was part of a group of advocates who met with her on a fairly obscure financial services issue. I was stunned at how she'd actually read and absorbed the materials folks had sent her, asked probing questions, and ended up in a good place. Not exactly where I would've, but exactly where she should've, given her district and broader politics. Perfect example of politics by inclusion, expanding her scope to include slightly more moderate perspectives--she called it a "good fallback position--while advancing a more leftist vision.
Great post by Matt. This was a bad and totally unnecessary own goal by the Democrats. It makes me wonder if they know how to play this game at all.
If this was Nancy Pelosi's doing, then shame on her. If so, I suspect it's a continuation of her animus and resistance to AOC starting immediately after AOC won her first election in 2018 (and granted AOC's early antics gave Nancy some basis for this). Back in 2018 and 2019 I was a volunteer on Katie Hill's first campaign and was in contact with her and her staff afterwards (she's the CA-25 representative whose promising career unfortunately went up in flames after some awkward photo leaks). I distinctly recall how Pelosi clearly identified Hill as a potential future star and showered her with all kinds of promotions and perks even before her first day in office, and I suspected that Pelosi was trying her best to set Hill up as a counterweight to AOC.
On Waxman, who was my representative for a long time. I recall once running into him in a Santa Monica bookstore two days before the election, as he was quietly perusing the bookshelves. Ah, the joys of a totally safe district. No campaigning for him!
But Matt gives him short shrift; despite his close-mindedness on transit (he didn't want a subway in his district); he was one of the great legislators of the late twentieth century and more. As Wikipedia notes:
"Waxman was an influential liberal member of Congress, and was instrumental in passing laws including the Infant Formula Act of 1980, the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, the Clean Air Act of 1990, the Ryan White CARE Act of 1990, the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the State Children's Health Insurance Program of 1997, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010."
He also got the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill passed in the House, only for it to die in the Senate. Had it become law, we might be in a far different situation about carbon emissions than now.
+100 on Waxman, the unsung hero of Congress. It's a terrible shame about the Waxman-Markey bill.
Am I the only one who's getting really, really sick of the "fuck old people" bent this site has taken on?
We love old people. Hope to become one of them in the future. But having 75 year olds (and older) hang onto leadership positions as their energy and mental acuity decline is not good.
This is EXACTLY what I am talking about.
There is no other way to read this opinion.
1. I think promotion based on seniority is an extremely bad way to run a company, a political party, or any kind of institution. I'm broadly anti-union for exactly this kind of reason
2. Do you think there's any age at which someone starts to lose mental competence and shouldn't be running the country anymore? 85? 90? 100? Did you think Biden was in a good cognitive place to be leader of the free world? Did Dianne Feinstein seem like she was in a good place at the end there to have an enormous amount of political power?
Professions with mandatory retirement ages include pilots, air traffic controllers, and state judges. Why would it be inappropriate for politicians too?
1. The general argument for promotion based on seniority is that it encourages longevity. What happens when you don't do this is the Republican Party, where Congressmen are out of office in their 50s because they don't place any value on institutional knowledge.
2. I think that the elderly should have freedom of choice to make their own decisions and it's rather disturbing to know that when I'm 70, other people will try to force me into retirement.
1. I would prefer to hiring the most competent person, not the one who's been there the longest. Do you think we should use seniority in corporate hiring too?
2. I think the idea is forced retirement at 75 or 80, not 70. But I'd be interested to hear you answer my questions from before:
Did you think Biden was in a good cognitive place to be leader of the free world?
Do you think pilots and air traffic controllers should get rid of the retirement ages they've had in the whole postwar era? You can fly a plane with several hundred passengers at age 90 or 100?
I mean, the whole problem with cognitive impairment is that the impaired *are not good judges of their own impairment*. So this obviates the 'people should be able to choose for themselves when they retire' argument. They may not be making good decisions about their own lack of good decisions!
Update, an 81 year old GOP Congresswoman who's been missing for 6 months has been discovered in a memory care unit. Yup, we definitely don't have a problem with elderly politicians here in the US!
"Kay Granger, 81, who was set to wind up a nearly 30-year career in the House in January, has been missing from her office for the past six months. The current longest-serving GOP representative had not been on record voting for or against anything since July..... She was reportedly living at a care home that specializes in memory loss after she'd been 'found wandering, lost and confused' in her district..... 'The fact that Kay Granger is unable to leave her nursing home to participate in the most important congressional vote of the year suggests she was already in visible decline when she ran for re-election in 2022,' said Rolando Garcia, a Republican Committeeman in the district.
'A sad and humiliating way to end her political career. Sad that nobody cared enough to “take away the keys” before she reached this moment and a sad commentary on the congressional gerontocracy.'"
It looks like she did show up for an event honoring her in November: https://appropriations.house.gov/news/blogs/members-celebrate-texas-tough-kay-granger
But in what seems like a terrible attempt to cover it up, her staff posted an article about the event but dated it 12/18 (they even changed the dates in all the image filenames!!!):
https://kaygranger.house.gov/2024/12/members-celebrate-texas-tough-kay-granger
And unsurprisingly, people are using this misleading page to claim the actual reporting is fake.
See my latest comment….