“ It also seems to me that if you look at well-liked Democratic Party presidents — Obama, Clinton, JFK — they have mostly stood on the sunnier and more optimistic side of things.”
This used to be a general nonpartisan truism in national politics. At least until recently, to me the most surprising thing about Trump’s electoral support has been that it exists despite his nihilism.
I appreciate Booker’s work here and hope that it continues. This is the kind of “resistance” I am inspired to join.
I saw a widely liked tweet from an Organizer over the weekend, complaining how the protestors went immediately from protest to brunch.
There’s a strand of thinking on parts of the left that in order to be a genuine form of political activity, it must be done in the most miserable and angry way possible.
It's good when politics is not a totalizing force in peoples' lives. When this disaster passes, hopefully, it will be even less present than it is now. This is at odds with a political revolution, of course, but who wants that?
Am I the only one here who remembers the '68 presidential campaign? Hubert Humphrey was the original "happy warrior". And my first experience of rooting for a Democratic candidate who lost. Not my last, though!
Effective organization needs to have elements of fun in order to be sustainable. I think of something like the union halls of yore. And it would also help toward Matt's Make Hanging Out Great Again agenda.
In 2028, the Democratic nominee for President should run as a sunny optimist prepared to see the best in everyone and committed to a positive vision of the future.
In 2026, the Democrats should take a sledgehammer to the Republicans and tie them to every bad thing that is happening. Beat them to their knees and then smash them to the ground.
But please not another sunny optimist like Biden who refuses to take action against the people who got us here. If the people who architected the current disaster see anything other than devastating, punitive consequences, they *will* do it again.
Loved booker in that show street fight which also highlighted how nasty democrats can be to each other. He really shined as a political beast and was willing to knock on every door and address every criticism no matter how unfair. Been a fan of his for some time blown away by his filibuster rooting for him next election.
It is worth noting, though, that Harris ran just about the most upbeat campaign ever (the theme was litterally joy) and she lost the popular vote to the nihilist. There was more going on, of course, but it is notable.
"But what people hear matters. Nobody is under any obligation to talk about politics with friends or family or to post about it on social media. But to the extent that you do this, you should be hoping to be persuasive to persuadable people."
I basically never bother to discuss politics on the internet but the other day I replied to a Reddit comment asking what specific policies someone could possibly disagree with in the Australian Greens platform.
I listed a few. Even though I agree with probably 75% of their platform. The general gist of the replies was that I was just a paleo conservative Dutton sock puppet and it was completely impossible for an actual non asshole human being yo disagree on any of those points.
Which just left me feeling...fuck I'm definitely never voting for the Greens if this is how their supporters engage with people who already broadly sympathetic to a lot of their platform.
Well, the Australian Greens have become an ultra left wing party more than an environmental party.
One of their platforms is that women get an additional 12 days of paid leave a year for menstruation. Sorry, "reproductive health leave of 12 days a year is open to any gender". Though it is under their Women's Equality part of their platform.
They also want to freeze all rent increases nationwide for 2 years.
This is bizarre. Why not promote more paid sick leave in general and women can use it however they want? And are they going to keep tabs on women's private medical history, or do you get "reproductive health leave" even when you are pregnant or menopausal?
There's already 20 days of paid vacation and 10 days of paid sick/carer's leave per year, which carries over if not used. On top of 9 federal public holidays and each state seems to have 1 or 2 state public holidays on top of that.
That's already 39+ working days off per year. There's, what, 250 week days a year? So Australians already get 15% of the year off. Almost enough to take a paid day off of work every week.
How much should they increase paid sick leave beyond where it is already at?
Oh, and the Greens are also advocating for a 4-day work week. So really they want everyone to work three days a week, when you combine a 4-day work week and all the paid leave and public holidays.
Weren't they the driving force behind Germany's nuclear phaseout? Which then left Germany deeply dependent on Russian gas, and now has significantly hobbled their economy to the point that they are increasing their coal consumption.
I think it's less about moral validation and more about feelings of group solidarity and superiority. Though obviously moral validation is an important component.
Reminds me of one of Sally’s Rooney characters in conversations with friends being annoyed at some acquaintance and saying “she’s probably a fucking labour voter.” In other words conservatives were so nonexistent in her world of left wingers the worst thing conceivable was one of those labour voters.
You're missing the point that the person was so far to the left that they thought "Labour voter" was an insult--they didn't even consider the possibility the target was genuinely conservative.
Using "Trump voter" as an insult makes considerably more sense, though it's still not something we should be encouraging.
I can't speak specifically of the Aussie Greens like you can, but green parties in general always depress me with disapproval, and this is due to how zero sum and pessimistic they get as they regularly devolve into degrowth advocacy.
And what's additionally disappointing and annoying is that green has always been far and away my favorite color! I wish my takes better aligned with a party that used that color!
Yeah, it's the real "grab bag of policies, untested by their actual application". They're also pretty NIMBY, in practice if not in theory and just generally opposed to tradeoffs and compromise. Climate change is the #1 priority unless and until it conflicts with one of their sixteen other #1 priorities; then it is a tie, and it turns out the conflict is because of capitalism.
I've voted for the Greens as a moderating force a couple of times, but gradually arrived at the view that minor parties in parliamentary democracies, even once closer to me on the political spectrum, mostly serve to push the major ones away from hard choices. "Labour with an extra splash of environmentalism" is not a bad outcome, but "labour with an extra splash of environmentalism, but only on those issue labour cares least about" often isn't.
> They're also pretty NIMBY, in practice if not in theory
This is the #1 deal breaker for me. They don't have too many explicit NIMBY policies but like you say, in practice they are super NIMBY. An Independent candidate in my electorate broke with Greens over that and is now running as Teal with some Climate 200 funding. Unfortunately, I find her actual policies pretty thin -- they aren't even so much "policies" as general vibes (she's going to "relieve childcare costs - ease pressure on working families" and that is literally the extent of what she has to say) -- so it is pretty hard to get excited about her campaign.
The substantive critiques of the filibuster and / or mixing up mottes and baileys aside: this was one of the best Slow Boring articles I can remember. I have been feeling despairing over both the specific situation in the US and broader cultural shifts I find troubling and alienating, but this gave me hope.
I am a huge sucker for “love your enemy” and “the arc of history bends towards justice” moments, so you can take for what it’s worth the fact that I actually teared up at MY’s description of Booker acknowledging without malice breaking Thurmond’s record - an overly sentimental and suggestible goofball putting too much stock in a cinematic moment, maybe.
But I will say this - I’ve lived outside the US for 8 years and counting, with no plans to come back. As I do I have felt more and more - unfairly - like Americans are a foreign people I understand less and less. Slow Boring as a whole and its commentariat have helped forestall this. But also, Slow Boring’s celebration of events like Booker’s filibuster, which are only possible in America, remind me that there is something still worth loving and being proud of in my native land.
The half of the country that seems to think the best way to run the economy is by destroying it. Even before tariffs blew a hole in global trade, Republicans' economic agenda was incredibly inflationary and anti-growth.
But it’s not half the country. Only about 2/3 of Americans are eligible to vote. Only about 2/3 of eligible voters voted in 2024.
77M people voted for Trump, that’s 22% of 340M Americans.
But a LOT of those folks are not very politically engaged and really just vote straight red because culturally that’s what you do in most of rural America.
There were 17M votes for Trump in the Republican primary. That’s it. That’s only 5% of the population. That’s his actual base of support.
If you go around imagining that 1/2 people around you are MAGA heads, that’s wrong. It’s 1/20. Unfortunately in our system that’s enough to win, and we should fix that!
But there is no “half of the country” that supports anything in America, including Trump.
The 1/3 of non-eligible Americans are mostly under 18? If the discussion is about how Americans think and who they support, excluding children from the denominator is appropriate.
I considered posting about this but when I looked up the number of eligible voters I still got 244 million, and 17 million voters came out to 7% of that, so I felt it was close enough not to bother.
But yes, it seems to be 7% not 5% for the percent voting for him in the primary.
I superlike™️ this comment. I've been struggling with similar feelings of alienation in my "real life" - I don't identify with the everything-bagel protesters I encountered over the weekend, or my TDS relatives/friends/colleagues, or my Trump-voting friends and acquaintances. Or, tbh, some of the abundance-related arguments about how Americans (at least until recently) have it so much better because we have bigger houses/cars/salaries/more stuff. As a vision, it's a little bit limited. What Matt describes in today's post, on the other hand, has incredible potential to inspire us to try to do better.
If there were actually some sort of trade-off between "bigger houses/cars/salaries/more stuff" and "community ties/walkable communities/civic virtue/social solidarity" then you might have a point, but most every other country has the same problems, if not worse.
All things considered, a wealthier citizenry should make it easier to deal with the other problems if we so desire.
Demonstrably, none of the rest of the world desires to sacrifice "stuff" for community or solidarity either! The several places that pay lip service to it just use it as a figleaf for endless power-grabbing by local elites, either economic or political, that makes the citizenry worse off and fails to achieve anything of substance.
I've spent about as much time living outside the US as C-Man and came away with all the more appreciation for it; I think that would very likely be true even had I lived in Europe or Japan instead of China, based on the time I have spent in those two.
As retirement destinations many places seem pleasant enough to spend a part of my time, but there is at present almost nowhere else in the world where I can buy a comfortable home to raise my two kids, participate in my local civic institutions, earn this good a living with my knowledge and skills, see my multi-racial family accepted and looked out for by our neighbors and schools...
I will Superlike (tm) this in return! You are a kindred spirit - I also don't identify with any of the things you mention. Part of this is because I am temperamentally inclined to be skeptical of trends, ideological explanations, and basically anything that involves doing something in a group, but it's also because through Slow Boring I've come to understand that it's the slow boring of hard boards that matters (despite my aversion to groups, this is a community that I actually like quite a bit!)
More to the point, though, I very much sympathize with the feelings of alienation: figuring those out and charting my path in the world as someone who's not a weirdo or a loner but also a half a beat off of what most people seem to want out of life has been the defining feature of my life as I slide into early middle age. So know that you have a fellow alienation-navigating-person here supporting you and who is always happy to chat about this topic.
"figuring those out and charting my path in the world as someone who's not a weirdo or a loner but also a half a beat off of what most people seem to want out of life"
Possibly! Or pretty close, anyway. It's always very nice, and very anchoring in what feels like constant tumult, to recognize someone whose experience resonates.
Agree with most of this but will say, as someone who lived abroad and in America the last decade, the day to day experience with Americans is largely positive and they remain kind, outgoing, odd people. I think we all should remember that how we think if Americans are often seen through the lens of algorithmic media
Agreed - that's why I say my feelings are, in part, unfair. And Slow Boring and its commentariat go a long way towards helping mitigate my superficial impressions!
That was my reaction, too, but I think it may be ambiguous because the use of the word "strong" is ambiguous in respect to positions.
Sometimes people say that a position is "strong" and mean that it is very ambitious, demands a lot, is no weak tea, etc., in which case the strong position would be "trillions in spending etc."
Sometimes people say that a position is "strong" and mean that it is easily defensible, not exposed to easy attack, etc. in which case the strong position would be "social security, etc."
Or: sometimes the "stronger" position makes more claims or assertions, and the "weaker" position makes a proper subset of those claims. Sometimes the relation is reversed, and the proper subset is "stronger" because it's easier to defend a smaller number of claims.
So, anyhow, I think Matt's diagram is reversed, but if you push me on that claim then I'll retreat to saying that there's a systemic confusion in the use of the motte-and-bailey metaphor.
The image itself that became the meme is not my cup of tea because it loses the intuitive concentric-circles-Venn-diagram sense of the fallacy. The motte is meant to be the defensible-to-external-threats core of the ethos, the bailey a set of ideological extensions thereto that aren’t so intellectually robust but are more interesting / palatable / desirable to advance to its adherents.
What the meme image may gain in historical accuracy (and clarity of spatially separating text) it unfortunately loses in intuitive logical presentation of its ideas.
"... the intuitive concentric-circles-Venn-diagram sense...."
Yeah, that's the version in which the "stronger" position is the more defensible one, because it makes a proper subset of the claims made by the "weaker" (but more ambitious) position.
I agree that the picture should be replaced with one that puts the bailey around the motte.
ETA: tho it's not always a straightforward proper subset relation: sometimes the motte is "kill and eat the rich" and the bailey is "keep the rich alive in cages." In one sense the bailey here is "more defensible," but not by being a proper subset of the motte -- they are not compatible. So then, the motte really is outside the bailey altogether. Similar things with e.g. "NHS for USA" and "health insurance for all" -- not proper subsets, but still motte-and-bailey, more ambitious vs. more defensible.
I don’t understand this discussion at all, and I suspect the concept of motte and bailey has become an internet technical term with no relationship to the original concept. The motte is the higher ground (artificial mound) and more defensible, and the Bailey is the lower keep. When the Bailey is taken you retreat to the motte to hold out. So the Bailey is where you go when your initial position has been taken. As far as I can tell, the other use has very little to do with this.
No, you have understood it exactly, only now substitute interminable internet wrangling for siege warfare.
Someone makes a bold claim on the internet -- or at least it sounds bold. But when they are pressed on what they mean, they retreat to a milder version of it. The original bold claim sounded exciting and ambitious -- they were staking out, so to speak, a bigger territory -- but it is also, for that reason, less defensible. The position to which they retreat when pressed is less open to refutation or disagreement, but often so mild as to be banal or even tautologous.
This dynamic is especially annoying when the advocate keeps switching, whether intentionally or unintentionally, between the stronger and weaker versions of an ambiguous thesis.
I think motte and bailey is one of those figures of speech that's become unmoored from its physical origin, like flywheel, and now means something more loose. It seems like motte and bailey is coming to be a rough synonym for bait and switch.
I’m fine with requiring mottes to be proper subsets of Baileys, at least as rhetorical formulations. I think this is an implicit requirement of the fallacy. I don’t think “kill and eat the rich” and “keep the rich alive in cages” counts because they’re logically disjoint sets.
"I’m fine with requiring mottes to be proper subsets of Baileys...."
But have you not found the metaphor used in the looser sense, in which the motte is merely more defensible, even if not a proper subset, e.g. the health insurance case? What would you call it when someone vacillates between two positions, one more ambitious and one more defensible, that are logically disjoint?
(bailey: "motte-and-bailey can only be used when the motte is a proper subset of the bailey!"
motte: "motte-and-bailey can be used whenever the motte is a retreat to a more defensible position, even if it is not a proper subset.")
Hmmm…the examples of M+B that comes to mind are semantic debates about the meaning of a claim where both the broader and narrower interpretation are plausibly implied by the scope (but in reality everyone means the broad one and retreats to the narrow one in bad faith when challenged.) (eg is “defund the police” actually what it means or is it “reallocate resources to social work and send them to mental health crisis calls instead”) —and I believe the meaning of “feminism” is one of the ur-examples of how the fallacy is employed. I think “health insurance for all” and “NHS for USA” wouldn’t count as M+B except inasmuch as both might fall under “what does it mean to say everyone should have health coverage?” — they’re formally disjoint but practically speaking ‘NHS for all' is a superset within the context under discussion.
TL;DR : I think there’s an implicitly missing third thing (viz., the scope of the claim) that establishes the context for being interpeted in a narrower versus broader way, in which *in context* sets cease to be disjoint for practical purposes. (Eg Bernie Sanders Thought - does this mean “Tax capital gains at income rates” or “literally eat the rich?”). I see your point about this potentially doing violence to Venn Diagrams beyond what they can bear, however, and you’ve convinced me to be more sympathetic to the meme images.
It's not that leftist pols are trying to sneak far left ideas into innocuous packages, it's that they're advocating for far left ideas and then retreating and reframing them as common sense moderate ideas when pushed
>it's that they're advocating for far left ideas and then retreating and reframing them as common sense moderate ideas when pushed<
I don't think so. Maybe I skimmed too rapidly, but I thought what Matt claims is that Bernie-style leftists talk a great "moderation" game (common sense ideas like tax fairness) in times like these, but then "retreat" to leftist purity tests when it comes time to nominate candidates.
No, it's not motte and bailey. It's bait and switch. "Hey, other Democrats, see, we're just being good moderate soldiers." And then they say, "And oh by the way, now that we have your attention and support, here's our *real* agenda."
Popularism for the hard left: mumble in public to the centrist normies about core welfare and tax simplicity, then reassure donors behind closed doors that, no, actually, we'll fund it all by nationalizing Big Oil and converting all their assets to minority-owned solar?
Personally, I would find a Senator talking for 25 hours far more compelling if it was actually in service of doing his job as a Senator rather than it being something like a 25 hour DNC speech. He wasn't filibustering. The was no bill he was blocking. He wasn't proposing a bill. He could have spent 25 hours taking about the legislature needing to reclaim it's tariff powers from the executive with a bill to back it up. That would have been much better. What I want from the politicians is for them to see that they DO have actual power, an actual role in the system, actual jobs, and to start going out there and trying to do them. The performative legislature is the entire problem.
Well ackshually, Senator Booker should've singlehandedly worked around America's flawed political institutions and wrest back power that the legislature has, be default, granted to the executive.
He should, in fact, make his best effort to wield the power that he has, effectually or not, because that's his job and he has a duty to the people who elected him to do it. Save the generic speechifying. Be a legislator.
I mean, he is a minority senator. The fact that this wasn’t a specfic bill is, I agree, dumb, but the agency you wish to see him exercise is genuinely extremely limited.
Sure, he may well be unpersuasive and therefore ineffectual. That could be because that's just the circumstances or maybe he's just a poor legislator who's only compelling to those who are already persuaded, either way he would be acting as a serious person looking to be vindicated by events. How many days of the market collapsing before Congress rushes to intervene? Who's gonna be at the head of that? Who's acting as a leader? Right now it's Rand Paul. Not Cory Booker.
Obviously if he's gonna talk for 25 hours he gonna cover more ground than any one legislative goal. The point is to be persuasive in favor of something tangible within the purview of his position.
I like Booker and I am glad to see him get broadly positive earned-media prominence, but as a substantive matter I absolutely DGAF about this particular publicity stunt (beyond some totally non-political minutiae like the logistics of not peeing for 25 hours.)
I'd say I'm usually quite sensitive to performative politics, and since Democrats don't wield a lot of tangible hard power right now, that puts me mostly in the "ride things out and wait for the backlash to the pain" camp. But somehow I was all in on Booker. I'm not sure I can articulate exactly why, but I'll take a stab.
For one, one of the things I dislike about performative politics is that it's usually cheap. In this case, the sheer physical demands of what Booker did elevated the act.
Second, as others have said, I don't think there were a lot of tangible legislative things he could have done (devoting 25 hours to proposing a tariff bill with no chance of becoming law is not necessarily a better way to represent the people than what he did). So in some ways, "I'm just going to give a speech and the speech is the point" feels like the most honest thing in the moment.
Finally, although it's clearly beside the main point of the speech, the symbolism of having a black man break Strom Thurmond's anti-civil-rights-filibuster record just made me happy - it was a reminder of progress and an America worth fighting for.
I'd add that few in my circle of friends and associates were even aware of what Booker was doing, much less why. That's not a value judgment, this just shows my circle is fundamentally different MY's.
So, from my perspective, Booker's speech did nothing. The best that can be said is that it improved the morale of Democrats who pay close attention to these sorts of things.
This seems like a great overview of why Cory Booker is a charismatic politician who’s good at giving speeches, but imo kind of sidesteps the more important question: does he have the guts to sincerely moderate on key issues and break with the party line when necessary?
NormieWatch: over the past week, I heard a little about the recent Mostly Peaceful Protests, nothing at all about Booker Sets Guinness Book Of World Records Record, undercurrents of fear about Liberace Day Tariffs, and a whole lot about...whatever the current sportsball thing is. Oh, and people excited about the White Lotus finale. So I was glad to see the bit about how, no, acktually, a doomer zero-sum eat-the-1% view is both depressingly demotivating in and of itself, and also frequently alienating to people like my coworkers who just have ordinary low-end private industry jobs. Relationships with bosses vary, but for the most part, even the most cynical fellows have at least one manager they're happy to shoot the shit with...don't hate the playa, hate the game, and all that. All company paychecks come from the same place, we'd love if they were bigger, but inflicting unprofitability on the business as a whole is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Nor does anyone sneer at our store manager for buying a nice house in [posh zipcode] - kinda hard to when he volunteers to clean the bathrooms so us grunts don't have to. Is this the face of oligarchy?
Tariffs have actually been really interesting in this regard, because they've forced a sense of clarity on people who probably never thought much about free trade beyond generic "boo NAFTA, outsourcing bad" vibes. But watching prices go up for products we handle every day, customer disappointment about same, and *not* hearing a bunch of lazy blame-it-on-capitalism, man/"greedflation", cope - that has been a surprising and welcome change for me. Skin in the game. Somehow I'll make an economist out of you!
Relatedly, much as Musk and Turnip are assclowns, I'd still much rather read their tweets/press releases/whatever vs. the super-cringe Greetings Fellow Teenagers attempts most Ds put out. Fundamentally not understanding how the series of tubes media landscape works in current_year is definitely a stupid reason to pay an electoral price, but that's democracy for ya. It's the same deal with the artist formerly known as alt-right...I might not agree with their politics, but by George, wojak memes are funny and relatable in a way "transgender PoC DESTROYS Mitch McConnell!"-type #takedowns never were. Like you'd think the people who coined code switching would be better able to apply the concept in electoral situations, but alas, poor Yorick. The people mostly want Barpod, not Contrapoints.
Booker, with his "we don't resent the successful, we just don't think we need to give them tax cuts" is inching closer to the soaring universalist language I've described before. Ironically, it probably makes raising taxes as a part of a grand deal in the next decade an easier lift. Anti-rich and anti-business rhetoric doesn't really do much in a vacuum. If Elon Musk advocates cutting popular programs, you can bring up that he's a billionaire. But if something like that isn't happening, it doesn't really get people out of bed the way leftists think it does. JFK, Clinton, and Obama were exactly who I was thinking Democrats need to emulate rhetorically. Needs more sappy "we're all in this together" rhetoric and fewer enemy's lists.
Yeah, I mean I think that a lot of progressive really struggle to understand is that Americans tend to be incredibly aspirational. They like wealth. They want to be rich. They have high regards of capitalism. Mega corporations like Amazon and Apple are incredibly popular - more so than most politicians. That doesn’t mean they wanna cut social programs to give tax cuts to the rich that also doesn’t mean that want to engage in broad class war
Yeah, I think how my view has changed on this is that I used to think anti-rich rhetoric didn't appeal to me but it appealed to the electorate. And on second thought, I don't necessarily think it repels too many people, but most people don't get excited about it either. It really jazzes up the leftmost 10% of the electorate or so and nobody else really.
I used to think that the failure to promote younger talent like Booker by the democratic party represented bad leadership decisions or bad luck, but the tariff response makes me wonder if that is true.
There is a deeply held economic nostalgia for the postwar economy, especially in the Midwest, but throughout American culture. When Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden and Donald Trump talk about working people, you clearly feel that they mean a man in a blue collar job with a union card, who probably does not live in a big city and is probably white. Bernie said that Musk, despite founding huge companies, has done nothing for working people. That statement feels non-sensical, but everyone understands what he means. Bernie speaks in away that appeals to both Youngstown and Austin simply by being so old.
When you hear Booker or Gallego speak, you clearly feel that they are talking to waitresses and janitors and landscapers, and a certain type of voter will never forgive them for it.
There's a lot good here, but to underscore 2 points:
1. Primaries and field clearing. A lot of political hobbyists are just dense on this point. Primaries SEEM democratic because they involve voting. But they in practice do two things-- put unrepresentative party bases in charge of who gets elected in America, and create situations where the most effective way for parties to exercise control is to keep people off the ballot entirely. None of this is actually good.
2. Strom Thurmond. Part of Democrats' ptoblem with identity issues is simply that they love to talk about them. The voters simply don't think of themselves as bigots, generally believe policy should be color blind, and just don't want to hear about identity issues very often.
My favorite example from last year-- the female delegates wearing white at Kamala's convention speech. To her credit, she knew better than to do this (unlike Hillary Clinton who leaned into wearing white). But still, the delegates wearing white meant there was a bunch of talk about identity politics at the convention as the connection to suffragettes was explained. Back in 2020, the Norman Rockwell painting about Ruby Bridges was modified with an image of Harris. The public HATES this stuff. They think Democrats talk too much about identity categories and think too much about them.
So Booker is being smart in his graciousness towards Strom Thurmomd. And it wouldn't matter if he were a white Democrat-- he would still need to be gracious. The point is that every time talking about identity categories is unnecessary, the smart play is for us NOT to do it. We love doing it and it turns off the voters.
"The public HATES this stuff. They think Democrats talk too much about identity categories and think too much about them."
For the n-th time, Kamala said almost NOTHING about identity issues during her campaign. When she talked about herself, it was almost always "America is a wonderful country where the daughter of two immigrants can credibly dream of running for POTUS" and not "I'm a historic candidate because I'm a woman of color, so you must vote for me to be a good person."
That's exactly why I pointed to the delegates being the problem there. Harris is VERY smart about race and sex and absolutely knew to avoid this stuff, but her supporters just can't help themselves. They need to learn to start not talking about this stuff and not doing this stuff.
Is Cory Booker still single? I ask because a) I wonder how that would play in a Presidential race, and b) I went down to the protest on the mall on Saturday and Cory Booker could CLEAN UP. Ladies are thirsty for the Book.
One would hope that "I'm single" would play better in a Presidential race than "I'm married to my third wife, on whom I cheated with a porn actress while she was caring for our newborn child," but I'm probably being naive.
This isn't a political comment at all, but one really toxic thing in our culture is how people jump to conclusions based on no evidence that any prominent single person must be gay.
(And in Booker's case, he dated Rosario Dawson. Come on.)
The one and only time I ever thought it would be cool if this was true was when Manti Te'o had that catfishing scandal. A Mormon football player attending the most prominent Catholic university in the country--that would have blown off several ceilings at once.
It would be better in Democratic Party politics if he were gay than if it turns out he has a long line of female hookups behind him. That he’s single because he’s having a good time.
I believe the common wisdom is that he’s gay (but not out), so being non-single in a manner consonant with his (rumored) sexuality might be a political liability, as I expect it may unfortunately be for Pete Buttigieg.
Buchanan was the only never married president, but we've had several presidents who weren't married while in office due to their spouse's death beforehand--Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, to name a few. The past's short life expectancies really sucked.
Grover Cleveland also had never married when he entered the White House, but did so while President...to a 21 year old. And he had romantic scandal beforehand too--1884 was the "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!" election.
Grover Cleveland's marriage is WAY creepier than "she was 21" makes it sound. He first met his future wife *when she was an infant* and she knew him as "Uncle Cleve" growing up.
Oh I cut out a *lot* of creepiness with him so as to not sully the thread too much. Until Trump came around he had no serious competition for the creepiest president. And when you contrast that with corrupt as hell "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, continental liar from the state of Maine!" on the GOP side...yeesh, 1884 is one of the worst elections ever.
This was not the take I expected this Monday morning … and frankly, I’m here for it (literally). I’ll get the breathless takes elsewhere today. Thanks.
"...huge stretches of it were models... are worth trying to copy...."
I made this very point to the other people at my neighborhood association after my 25th hour of filibustering about Democratic politics and they did not seem to agree. Actually, they had all left 24 hours previously. I guess it motivated them?
I've got lots of (very unoriginal, forgive me) thoughts on this.
First of all, Cory Booker is awesome, good for him! I admire him greatly for what he's done.
Now let's get into some details!
"But the idea that nastiness and negative affect are going to win the day strikes me as a lazy tactic that people reach for because they lack creativity and skill."
Yes, yes, Matt Y is absolutely right! Remember how Kamala, with her big smile and her emphasis on "Joy" and her campaign ads that said "I want to be President for ALL AMERICANS" handily triumphed over the scowling, angry Trump, who was all about "I AM YOUR RETRIBUTION" and whose campaign surrogate once said "Daddy's home, and he's PISSED! He's going to SPANK his daughter, and it's going to HURT, because she DESERVES it!" People were instantly put off by this kind of vengeful sadism-meets-creepy porn fantasy, and that's why Trump lost.
Oh, wait...
/facepalm
/headdesk
"But the vast majority of Democratic Party politicians could make their engagement with the public more interesting by being more willing to do what Trump did in 2015-2016 and speak more from the heart and less from a standpoint of dogmatic coalition-management."
Jesus Christ on a poppyseed bagel. This is like telling your socially awkward friend, "Being popular is super easy, barely an inconvenience! Just be yourself! [beat] No, no, NOT LIKE THAT!!!"
The Median Non-College-Educated Middle-Aged Guy in Suburban Michigan (MNCEMAGISM for short) doesn't want politicians who "speak from the heart." MNCEMAGISM wants politicians who *appear to speak from the heart* while telling MNCEMAGISM *what he wants to hear.* Remember Hillary? I'm sure she spoke from the heart when she said "half of Trump's followers belong in a basket of deplorables." How'd that work out for her? For that matter, how does it work when any progressive activist speaks very passionately from the heart about climate change or trans rights and the Matt Y's of the world resoundingly slap them down with a "Shut up, you fool, you'll scare MNCEMAGISM away and then we'll never win another election!"
Yes, I get it, the lesson is "don't insult voters," except Trump has insulted various sets of voters repeatedly, and now he's in the White House and the GOP has both chambers of Congress.
Enough people either actively wanted what's in Trump's heart or just didn't pay enough attention to care.
So I don't come across as a lefty extremist who just reflexively opposes everything you say:
1. Biden and Harris failed badly on illegal immigration. They should have taken it on early, without being racist about it, like, "America is a nation of immigrants but also a nation of laws, we want to decide who stays here, not let others take advantage of us."
2. The student loan relief stuff was bad and politically tone-deaf, further alienating the median non-college-educated voter.
3. There continued to be too much wokery, although much of it, in fairness, was not coming from Biden himself, who always read more as "aw-shucks old white guy from Scranton" than "woke warrior."
Other than than, Biden/Harris policy was... mostly fine! The US economy was the "envy of the world," according to a 2024 article in The Economist. The CHIPS act was good. Sure, prices didn't return to 2019 levels, but nobody was going to achieve that, not even Mr. Penguin Tariffs. International leadership was mostly good, especially on Ukraine (opinions differ on Israel/Palestine, but that's a no-win situation if ever I saw one.) We were governed mostly by boring-but-competent people who didn't make the news every second day for saying something unfathomably stupid.
And Biden didn't feed NIH-funded research into the wood chipper, so there's that.
I am fine with the CHIPS act, also the infrastructure bill. Neither were perfect, but both reasonable bi-partisan compromises (the red tape that was added to them was not fine)
That being said, the best research shows inflation in the US was about 3% higher because of excess stimulus.
I think Biden's reasoning of why to go big was defensible (even though he was warned by people some notable Democrat economists it was too big). But once inflation started to show, why not pull back all the unspent stimulus?
International, I broadly supported Biden on Ukraine (though I wish he was a bit more aggressive with weapon deliveries). But his withdrawal from Afghanistan was a shameful disaster.
Three days late but you do know Trump negotiated the Afghanistan pullout by completely cutting out the Afghan government in negotiations and folding to the Taliban, right? Biden followed through on an awful deal because he ran on restoring America's international standing, showing that the next administration will follow the agreements made by the previous one. If you think the pullout was bad blame Trump for being shit at negotiating, I don't know why your mad at Biden for making the best out of shit situation he was handed.
Yep, I thought Trump should never have negotiated that deal. But it was Biden that followed through with it, and worse royally fucked up the execution.
So he should have not gone through with the deal instead? I also think we shouldn't have pulled out in the first place, but once we sign onto an international agreement it is in our best interests to stick to it. The first Trump admin ripped up so many deal Obama had signed onto, like JCPOA or TPP, and lessened our credibility to counties abroad (and he is doing much greater damage the second time around) Biden was trying to fix that. What about the pullout did you not like? If its because of the sheer chaos, then that again is downstream of Trump sucking at negotiating. The Afghan army disintegrated, because they had no motivation to keep fighting and knew that without the US they would lose to the Taliban. Trump lowered troop levels to 2500 before he left office unwillingly, and during that period of troop reduction the Taliban reignited their offensive. Biden get into office having campaigned on ending the Afghanistan war, as well as reintroducing responsible American foreign policy, and decided to implement a bad deal, only delaying the withdrawal by a few months. Would sending more troops back to protect assets have made sense when we had already "brought back our boy's"?. One side of the political spectrum is demonstrably worse than the other, so I don't understand why you want both parties to lose.
And now we've got four years' worth of policy failures (including irreversible ones; America's reputation among other democracies is shot, and that won't change even if Trump keels over from a heart attack tomorrow and Democrats take both chambers of Congress in 2026) crammed into the past two months! Yay?
/taps the "would you rather have a bowl of plain oatmeal or a bowl of dog excrement" sign
I mean, Trump's whole slogan from the beginning has been "Make America Great Again", which on its face sounds pretty optimistic! And if you watch his ads, the campaign treats him as someone who's strength as a leader is going to bring back the prosperity and happiness of the good ol days. Both campaigns had optimistic tones contrasted with a warning that their opponent was going to be the worst thing that ever happened to America.
As to Trump himself, there's a reason a majority of the country has never liked him, even if some of that majority has reluctantly voted for him. Given how unpopular the Biden-Harris administration was going into the election, there's an argument that Trump's general nastiness and divisiveness is the only reason that the race was even as close it was.
Especially for people like Mark Zuckerberg who had to suffer from Meta's share price more than doubling under Biden which naturally led him to run to Trump in order to see that share price soar by negative 20% since inauguration day. Smart guy, this master of the universe.
He didn't endorse anyone in the 2024 election, and has cozied up to Trump _after_ the election, which, I'm not sure if it's smart or dumb, but not obviously dumb in the way that getting him elected might be.
"While declining to endorse Trump, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that “seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
He added: “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”"
Yes, we sure dodged a bullet by refusing to elect that woke Commie extremist Kamala and instead going with the brilliant businessman Trump, who is working hard (you know, when not golfing) to Make America Great Again!
I wouldn't have thought that trashing our international alliances and sending our economy into a 100% self-inflicted and stupid downturn was a fair price for getting rid of trans people in women's sports and cutting down on illegal immigrant crossings, but that's just me.
1) It would have been the Harris Administration, not the Biden Administration
2) Trump said a ton of crazy sh*t about what he planned to do if reelected, Kamala warned people over and over and over "look, don't reelect him, he'll do crazy/bad things," too bad people didn't believe her
3) you bet your ass I would take another four years of a "shambolic" Democratic Administration that was within the Overton window over the utter fustercluck we have right now
4) I have to get some actual work done now, have a good day.
Yes, it would have been “the Harris Administration,” but I don’t know why you think that mattered in the election.
I am not at all in favor of Trump’s tariffs and wish Congress or the Supreme Court would put an end to that nonsense. And I’m not saying these people should have voted for Trump, only that there were a lot of good reasons not to vote for Harris.
But don't take it from me; read these words of the noted woke fringe lefty activist David Brooks, who puts it thusly in The Atlantic:
"Until January 20, 2025, I didn’t realize how much of my very identity was built on this faith in my country’s goodness—on the idea that we Americans are partners in a grand and heroic enterprise, that our daily lives are ennobled by service to that cause. Since January 20, as I have watched America behave vilely—toward our friends in Canada and Mexico, toward our friends in Europe, toward the heroes in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office—I’ve had trouble describing the anguish I’ve experienced. Grief? Shock? Like I’m living through some sort of hallucination? Maybe the best description for what I’m feeling is moral shame: To watch the loss of your nation’s honor is embarrassing and painful."
It's hard to remember after all that's happened, but we all voted for Joe because when he spoke from the heart, you could tell that he loved "real America". It's possible but difficult to find a candidate where the contents of their heart is appealing to voters. And it's pretty easy to see that Harris / Clinton in their hearts loved the cosmopolitan values of big cities instead. I am also not particularly fond of "real America" and find them deplorable pretty often, but that's why I'm not running for president! Booker and Obama found a way to speak to the "common man" by relating to inner city kids, and it comes off as authentic in a way that pandering to the rust belt yet again does not.
I saw Booker (and Democrats en masse) getting mocked this weekend for being bad at being opposition generally and that this was particularly dumb and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because I honestly do not see what else they could be doing.
Some of the criticism was coming from people who won't be happy unless Democratic elected officials are throwing molotoc cocktails, they are easy enough to dismiss, but some it is coming from people I think are actually smart, but it's never followed by the thing that they think Democrats should be doing, so I'm at a loss.
I think that's quite a strawman; most of the criticism of Booker (and Senate Democrats generally) that I'm seeing on Bluesky it that they are GIVING the Republicans "unanimous consent" to move forward on nominations, including self-described large penis haver and returning lickspittle Matt Whitaker for Ambassador to NATO, immediately after Booker's speech (see here from a former Congressional staffer: https://bsky.app/profile/aaronhuertas.bsky.social/post/3lmafjy7stk2e).
Maybe you don't think the Dems should be delaying GOP business that they oppose, but Dems do have the power to do so under the current Senate rules, and "many people are saying" that they should use it, at least in some cases, to strategically call attention to particularly egregious/offensive nominees and other destructive policy.
“ It also seems to me that if you look at well-liked Democratic Party presidents — Obama, Clinton, JFK — they have mostly stood on the sunnier and more optimistic side of things.”
This used to be a general nonpartisan truism in national politics. At least until recently, to me the most surprising thing about Trump’s electoral support has been that it exists despite his nihilism.
I appreciate Booker’s work here and hope that it continues. This is the kind of “resistance” I am inspired to join.
I saw a widely liked tweet from an Organizer over the weekend, complaining how the protestors went immediately from protest to brunch.
There’s a strand of thinking on parts of the left that in order to be a genuine form of political activity, it must be done in the most miserable and angry way possible.
I much prefer the Booker way!
Ugh. When is this portion of the left going to learn that self-denial and -flagellation is just not appealing to most people?
To be fair I often feel like denying and flagellating progressives.
It's good when politics is not a totalizing force in peoples' lives. When this disaster passes, hopefully, it will be even less present than it is now. This is at odds with a political revolution, of course, but who wants that?
I hate the politics of joylessness.
Am I the only one here who remembers that there used to be a "happy warrior" trope in politics?!
Am I the only one here who remembers the '68 presidential campaign? Hubert Humphrey was the original "happy warrior". And my first experience of rooting for a Democratic candidate who lost. Not my last, though!
Effective organization needs to have elements of fun in order to be sustainable. I think of something like the union halls of yore. And it would also help toward Matt's Make Hanging Out Great Again agenda.
I much prefer the brunch way. Brunch is awesome!
It's not breakfast! It's not lunch! It's the best of both worlds, and you get to sleep in a little.
Going to brunch after a protest is a sign that your are a decadent capitalist oppressor rather than a true member of the oppressed proletariat.
In 2028, the Democratic nominee for President should run as a sunny optimist prepared to see the best in everyone and committed to a positive vision of the future.
In 2026, the Democrats should take a sledgehammer to the Republicans and tie them to every bad thing that is happening. Beat them to their knees and then smash them to the ground.
But please not another sunny optimist like Biden who refuses to take action against the people who got us here. If the people who architected the current disaster see anything other than devastating, punitive consequences, they *will* do it again.
Sounds good, as long as the sunny optimist President appoints an active Attorney General.
Loved booker in that show street fight which also highlighted how nasty democrats can be to each other. He really shined as a political beast and was willing to knock on every door and address every criticism no matter how unfair. Been a fan of his for some time blown away by his filibuster rooting for him next election.
Yes it did. You can draw the same contrast between Reagan and Trump on the GOP side.
Although Booker's exuberance is on another level. He makes those three look like Eeyore
It is worth noting, though, that Harris ran just about the most upbeat campaign ever (the theme was litterally joy) and she lost the popular vote to the nihilist. There was more going on, of course, but it is notable.
"But what people hear matters. Nobody is under any obligation to talk about politics with friends or family or to post about it on social media. But to the extent that you do this, you should be hoping to be persuasive to persuadable people."
I basically never bother to discuss politics on the internet but the other day I replied to a Reddit comment asking what specific policies someone could possibly disagree with in the Australian Greens platform.
I listed a few. Even though I agree with probably 75% of their platform. The general gist of the replies was that I was just a paleo conservative Dutton sock puppet and it was completely impossible for an actual non asshole human being yo disagree on any of those points.
Which just left me feeling...fuck I'm definitely never voting for the Greens if this is how their supporters engage with people who already broadly sympathetic to a lot of their platform.
Why so many environmentalists everywhere are willing, maybe even eager, to alienate potential allies is beyond my comprehension.
Well, the Australian Greens have become an ultra left wing party more than an environmental party.
One of their platforms is that women get an additional 12 days of paid leave a year for menstruation. Sorry, "reproductive health leave of 12 days a year is open to any gender". Though it is under their Women's Equality part of their platform.
They also want to freeze all rent increases nationwide for 2 years.
This is bizarre. Why not promote more paid sick leave in general and women can use it however they want? And are they going to keep tabs on women's private medical history, or do you get "reproductive health leave" even when you are pregnant or menopausal?
There's already 20 days of paid vacation and 10 days of paid sick/carer's leave per year, which carries over if not used. On top of 9 federal public holidays and each state seems to have 1 or 2 state public holidays on top of that.
That's already 39+ working days off per year. There's, what, 250 week days a year? So Australians already get 15% of the year off. Almost enough to take a paid day off of work every week.
How much should they increase paid sick leave beyond where it is already at?
Oh, and the Greens are also advocating for a 4-day work week. So really they want everyone to work three days a week, when you combine a 4-day work week and all the paid leave and public holidays.
Isn’t that what most Greens are like?
The German Greens have been much more pragmatic
Weren't they the driving force behind Germany's nuclear phaseout? Which then left Germany deeply dependent on Russian gas, and now has significantly hobbled their economy to the point that they are increasing their coal consumption.
I think the point is the German Greens are much more pragmatic on non-environmental issues, as opposed to be a catch-all left-wing party
Then they backtracked when Germany could no longer get Russian gas.
The Australian Greens barely win any seats (1 in 2019, 4 in 2022). Why should anyone care what this fringe group thinks about anything?
The Australian Greens are part of the coalition in Canberra and implemented statewide rent control.
Ouch
Some people really get off on feeling morally pure and yelling at others for acknowledging reality.
Because they don’t actually want to address problems. They want to feel morally validated.
I think it's less about moral validation and more about feelings of group solidarity and superiority. Though obviously moral validation is an important component.
They are playing the wrong game!
If too many people voted for the Greens, then voting for the Greens wouldn't be cool anymore.
Reminds me of one of Sally’s Rooney characters in conversations with friends being annoyed at some acquaintance and saying “she’s probably a fucking labour voter.” In other words conservatives were so nonexistent in her world of left wingers the worst thing conceivable was one of those labour voters.
I've heard similar things (in reverse) from people I know. "Trump voter" is the worst possible insult.
You're missing the point that the person was so far to the left that they thought "Labour voter" was an insult--they didn't even consider the possibility the target was genuinely conservative.
Using "Trump voter" as an insult makes considerably more sense, though it's still not something we should be encouraging.
I can't speak specifically of the Aussie Greens like you can, but green parties in general always depress me with disapproval, and this is due to how zero sum and pessimistic they get as they regularly devolve into degrowth advocacy.
And what's additionally disappointing and annoying is that green has always been far and away my favorite color! I wish my takes better aligned with a party that used that color!
Yeah, it's the real "grab bag of policies, untested by their actual application". They're also pretty NIMBY, in practice if not in theory and just generally opposed to tradeoffs and compromise. Climate change is the #1 priority unless and until it conflicts with one of their sixteen other #1 priorities; then it is a tie, and it turns out the conflict is because of capitalism.
I've voted for the Greens as a moderating force a couple of times, but gradually arrived at the view that minor parties in parliamentary democracies, even once closer to me on the political spectrum, mostly serve to push the major ones away from hard choices. "Labour with an extra splash of environmentalism" is not a bad outcome, but "labour with an extra splash of environmentalism, but only on those issue labour cares least about" often isn't.
> They're also pretty NIMBY, in practice if not in theory
This is the #1 deal breaker for me. They don't have too many explicit NIMBY policies but like you say, in practice they are super NIMBY. An Independent candidate in my electorate broke with Greens over that and is now running as Teal with some Climate 200 funding. Unfortunately, I find her actual policies pretty thin -- they aren't even so much "policies" as general vibes (she's going to "relieve childcare costs - ease pressure on working families" and that is literally the extent of what she has to say) -- so it is pretty hard to get excited about her campaign.
The internet is a bad place :/
And it used to be bad in a better way.
In the "I love the Power Glove, it's so bad" way?
In a “it’s cat videos and porn, but not actively making us angrier and melting all that is solid into air” way.
The substantive critiques of the filibuster and / or mixing up mottes and baileys aside: this was one of the best Slow Boring articles I can remember. I have been feeling despairing over both the specific situation in the US and broader cultural shifts I find troubling and alienating, but this gave me hope.
I am a huge sucker for “love your enemy” and “the arc of history bends towards justice” moments, so you can take for what it’s worth the fact that I actually teared up at MY’s description of Booker acknowledging without malice breaking Thurmond’s record - an overly sentimental and suggestible goofball putting too much stock in a cinematic moment, maybe.
But I will say this - I’ve lived outside the US for 8 years and counting, with no plans to come back. As I do I have felt more and more - unfairly - like Americans are a foreign people I understand less and less. Slow Boring as a whole and its commentariat have helped forestall this. But also, Slow Boring’s celebration of events like Booker’s filibuster, which are only possible in America, remind me that there is something still worth loving and being proud of in my native land.
I've lived in America those 8 years and also feel Americans are a foreign people I understand less and less.
The half of the country that seems to think the best way to run the economy is by destroying it. Even before tariffs blew a hole in global trade, Republicans' economic agenda was incredibly inflationary and anti-growth.
But it’s not half the country. Only about 2/3 of Americans are eligible to vote. Only about 2/3 of eligible voters voted in 2024.
77M people voted for Trump, that’s 22% of 340M Americans.
But a LOT of those folks are not very politically engaged and really just vote straight red because culturally that’s what you do in most of rural America.
There were 17M votes for Trump in the Republican primary. That’s it. That’s only 5% of the population. That’s his actual base of support.
If you go around imagining that 1/2 people around you are MAGA heads, that’s wrong. It’s 1/20. Unfortunately in our system that’s enough to win, and we should fix that!
But there is no “half of the country” that supports anything in America, including Trump.
The 1/3 of non-eligible Americans are mostly under 18? If the discussion is about how Americans think and who they support, excluding children from the denominator is appropriate.
I considered posting about this but when I looked up the number of eligible voters I still got 244 million, and 17 million voters came out to 7% of that, so I felt it was close enough not to bother.
But yes, it seems to be 7% not 5% for the percent voting for him in the primary.
I superlike™️ this comment. I've been struggling with similar feelings of alienation in my "real life" - I don't identify with the everything-bagel protesters I encountered over the weekend, or my TDS relatives/friends/colleagues, or my Trump-voting friends and acquaintances. Or, tbh, some of the abundance-related arguments about how Americans (at least until recently) have it so much better because we have bigger houses/cars/salaries/more stuff. As a vision, it's a little bit limited. What Matt describes in today's post, on the other hand, has incredible potential to inspire us to try to do better.
If there were actually some sort of trade-off between "bigger houses/cars/salaries/more stuff" and "community ties/walkable communities/civic virtue/social solidarity" then you might have a point, but most every other country has the same problems, if not worse.
All things considered, a wealthier citizenry should make it easier to deal with the other problems if we so desire.
It's the "desire" I had in mind. I buy most of the agenda from a policy standpoint.
Demonstrably, none of the rest of the world desires to sacrifice "stuff" for community or solidarity either! The several places that pay lip service to it just use it as a figleaf for endless power-grabbing by local elites, either economic or political, that makes the citizenry worse off and fails to achieve anything of substance.
I've spent about as much time living outside the US as C-Man and came away with all the more appreciation for it; I think that would very likely be true even had I lived in Europe or Japan instead of China, based on the time I have spent in those two.
As retirement destinations many places seem pleasant enough to spend a part of my time, but there is at present almost nowhere else in the world where I can buy a comfortable home to raise my two kids, participate in my local civic institutions, earn this good a living with my knowledge and skills, see my multi-racial family accepted and looked out for by our neighbors and schools...
I will Superlike (tm) this in return! You are a kindred spirit - I also don't identify with any of the things you mention. Part of this is because I am temperamentally inclined to be skeptical of trends, ideological explanations, and basically anything that involves doing something in a group, but it's also because through Slow Boring I've come to understand that it's the slow boring of hard boards that matters (despite my aversion to groups, this is a community that I actually like quite a bit!)
More to the point, though, I very much sympathize with the feelings of alienation: figuring those out and charting my path in the world as someone who's not a weirdo or a loner but also a half a beat off of what most people seem to want out of life has been the defining feature of my life as I slide into early middle age. So know that you have a fellow alienation-navigating-person here supporting you and who is always happy to chat about this topic.
"figuring those out and charting my path in the world as someone who's not a weirdo or a loner but also a half a beat off of what most people seem to want out of life"
C-man, are you...me?!
Possibly! Or pretty close, anyway. It's always very nice, and very anchoring in what feels like constant tumult, to recognize someone whose experience resonates.
Agree with most of this but will say, as someone who lived abroad and in America the last decade, the day to day experience with Americans is largely positive and they remain kind, outgoing, odd people. I think we all should remember that how we think if Americans are often seen through the lens of algorithmic media
Agreed - that's why I say my feelings are, in part, unfair. And Slow Boring and its commentariat go a long way towards helping mitigate my superficial impressions!
You got your motte and bailey mixed up
"You got your motte and bailey mixed up"
That was my reaction, too, but I think it may be ambiguous because the use of the word "strong" is ambiguous in respect to positions.
Sometimes people say that a position is "strong" and mean that it is very ambitious, demands a lot, is no weak tea, etc., in which case the strong position would be "trillions in spending etc."
Sometimes people say that a position is "strong" and mean that it is easily defensible, not exposed to easy attack, etc. in which case the strong position would be "social security, etc."
Or: sometimes the "stronger" position makes more claims or assertions, and the "weaker" position makes a proper subset of those claims. Sometimes the relation is reversed, and the proper subset is "stronger" because it's easier to defend a smaller number of claims.
So, anyhow, I think Matt's diagram is reversed, but if you push me on that claim then I'll retreat to saying that there's a systemic confusion in the use of the motte-and-bailey metaphor.
The image itself that became the meme is not my cup of tea because it loses the intuitive concentric-circles-Venn-diagram sense of the fallacy. The motte is meant to be the defensible-to-external-threats core of the ethos, the bailey a set of ideological extensions thereto that aren’t so intellectually robust but are more interesting / palatable / desirable to advance to its adherents.
What the meme image may gain in historical accuracy (and clarity of spatially separating text) it unfortunately loses in intuitive logical presentation of its ideas.
"... the intuitive concentric-circles-Venn-diagram sense...."
Yeah, that's the version in which the "stronger" position is the more defensible one, because it makes a proper subset of the claims made by the "weaker" (but more ambitious) position.
I agree that the picture should be replaced with one that puts the bailey around the motte.
ETA: tho it's not always a straightforward proper subset relation: sometimes the motte is "kill and eat the rich" and the bailey is "keep the rich alive in cages." In one sense the bailey here is "more defensible," but not by being a proper subset of the motte -- they are not compatible. So then, the motte really is outside the bailey altogether. Similar things with e.g. "NHS for USA" and "health insurance for all" -- not proper subsets, but still motte-and-bailey, more ambitious vs. more defensible.
I don’t understand this discussion at all, and I suspect the concept of motte and bailey has become an internet technical term with no relationship to the original concept. The motte is the higher ground (artificial mound) and more defensible, and the Bailey is the lower keep. When the Bailey is taken you retreat to the motte to hold out. So the Bailey is where you go when your initial position has been taken. As far as I can tell, the other use has very little to do with this.
"I don’t understand this discussion at all...."
No, you have understood it exactly, only now substitute interminable internet wrangling for siege warfare.
Someone makes a bold claim on the internet -- or at least it sounds bold. But when they are pressed on what they mean, they retreat to a milder version of it. The original bold claim sounded exciting and ambitious -- they were staking out, so to speak, a bigger territory -- but it is also, for that reason, less defensible. The position to which they retreat when pressed is less open to refutation or disagreement, but often so mild as to be banal or even tautologous.
This dynamic is especially annoying when the advocate keeps switching, whether intentionally or unintentionally, between the stronger and weaker versions of an ambiguous thesis.
I think motte and bailey is one of those figures of speech that's become unmoored from its physical origin, like flywheel, and now means something more loose. It seems like motte and bailey is coming to be a rough synonym for bait and switch.
Ok, this is very helpful, thanks.
Just realized I made a mistake here. The Motte is where you go when your initial position has been taken in the Bailey.
I’m fine with requiring mottes to be proper subsets of Baileys, at least as rhetorical formulations. I think this is an implicit requirement of the fallacy. I don’t think “kill and eat the rich” and “keep the rich alive in cages” counts because they’re logically disjoint sets.
"I’m fine with requiring mottes to be proper subsets of Baileys...."
But have you not found the metaphor used in the looser sense, in which the motte is merely more defensible, even if not a proper subset, e.g. the health insurance case? What would you call it when someone vacillates between two positions, one more ambitious and one more defensible, that are logically disjoint?
(bailey: "motte-and-bailey can only be used when the motte is a proper subset of the bailey!"
motte: "motte-and-bailey can be used whenever the motte is a retreat to a more defensible position, even if it is not a proper subset.")
Hmmm…the examples of M+B that comes to mind are semantic debates about the meaning of a claim where both the broader and narrower interpretation are plausibly implied by the scope (but in reality everyone means the broad one and retreats to the narrow one in bad faith when challenged.) (eg is “defund the police” actually what it means or is it “reallocate resources to social work and send them to mental health crisis calls instead”) —and I believe the meaning of “feminism” is one of the ur-examples of how the fallacy is employed. I think “health insurance for all” and “NHS for USA” wouldn’t count as M+B except inasmuch as both might fall under “what does it mean to say everyone should have health coverage?” — they’re formally disjoint but practically speaking ‘NHS for all' is a superset within the context under discussion.
TL;DR : I think there’s an implicitly missing third thing (viz., the scope of the claim) that establishes the context for being interpeted in a narrower versus broader way, in which *in context* sets cease to be disjoint for practical purposes. (Eg Bernie Sanders Thought - does this mean “Tax capital gains at income rates” or “literally eat the rich?”). I see your point about this potentially doing violence to Venn Diagrams beyond what they can bear, however, and you’ve convinced me to be more sympathetic to the meme images.
He picked the wrong metaphor. It's not a motte and Bailey. He should have used the Trojan horse meme.
Nah I think he got the meme right.
It's not that leftist pols are trying to sneak far left ideas into innocuous packages, it's that they're advocating for far left ideas and then retreating and reframing them as common sense moderate ideas when pushed
The Motte and Bailey:
"Eat the rich!"
"All I'm really talking about is an incremental increase to the capital gains tax."
>it's that they're advocating for far left ideas and then retreating and reframing them as common sense moderate ideas when pushed<
I don't think so. Maybe I skimmed too rapidly, but I thought what Matt claims is that Bernie-style leftists talk a great "moderation" game (common sense ideas like tax fairness) in times like these, but then "retreat" to leftist purity tests when it comes time to nominate candidates.
The Trojan Horse:
They say, "Tax the rich!" They mean, "Overthrow capitalism!"
They say, "Green New Deal." They mean, "Degrowth."
They say, "Support the working class." They mean, "Seize the means of production."
This is so annoying too. It’s straight up linguistic nihilism.
No, it's not motte and bailey. It's bait and switch. "Hey, other Democrats, see, we're just being good moderate soldiers." And then they say, "And oh by the way, now that we have your attention and support, here's our *real* agenda."
Popularism for the hard left: mumble in public to the centrist normies about core welfare and tax simplicity, then reassure donors behind closed doors that, no, actually, we'll fund it all by nationalizing Big Oil and converting all their assets to minority-owned solar?
I'm not in a position to criticize Matt on this one because I regularly struggle to understand this as well. This subthread has been clarifying.
Personally, I would find a Senator talking for 25 hours far more compelling if it was actually in service of doing his job as a Senator rather than it being something like a 25 hour DNC speech. He wasn't filibustering. The was no bill he was blocking. He wasn't proposing a bill. He could have spent 25 hours taking about the legislature needing to reclaim it's tariff powers from the executive with a bill to back it up. That would have been much better. What I want from the politicians is for them to see that they DO have actual power, an actual role in the system, actual jobs, and to start going out there and trying to do them. The performative legislature is the entire problem.
Well ackshually, Senator Booker should've singlehandedly worked around America's flawed political institutions and wrest back power that the legislature has, be default, granted to the executive.
He should, in fact, make his best effort to wield the power that he has, effectually or not, because that's his job and he has a duty to the people who elected him to do it. Save the generic speechifying. Be a legislator.
I mean, he is a minority senator. The fact that this wasn’t a specfic bill is, I agree, dumb, but the agency you wish to see him exercise is genuinely extremely limited.
Sure, he may well be unpersuasive and therefore ineffectual. That could be because that's just the circumstances or maybe he's just a poor legislator who's only compelling to those who are already persuaded, either way he would be acting as a serious person looking to be vindicated by events. How many days of the market collapsing before Congress rushes to intervene? Who's gonna be at the head of that? Who's acting as a leader? Right now it's Rand Paul. Not Cory Booker.
To be fair, Rand Paul has a better chance of peeling off 14 Republican senators to make something veto-proof than Cory Booker does.
But then, of course, there's the House of Representatives.
I mean that assumes that there are sufficient republican senators to throw 60 votes behind clawing back tariff power. This seems highly unlikely.
67 votes. Trump would obviously veto any legislation curbing his powers!
It's not his job to assume. It's his job to be persuasive and cast his vote. I'm certainly not assuming anything.
Is there some indication that they are mutually exclusive? What legislation do you think wasn't accomplished in those hours?
Obviously if he's gonna talk for 25 hours he gonna cover more ground than any one legislative goal. The point is to be persuasive in favor of something tangible within the purview of his position.
When you get 350 million likes on TikTok, I'd say that signals "mission accomplished."
The most valuable commodity in politics is attention and breaking through the noise.
There is nothing in the Senate to filibuster because Trump has decided to ignore Congress. That is kind of the point.
I like Booker and I am glad to see him get broadly positive earned-media prominence, but as a substantive matter I absolutely DGAF about this particular publicity stunt (beyond some totally non-political minutiae like the logistics of not peeing for 25 hours.)
I'd say I'm usually quite sensitive to performative politics, and since Democrats don't wield a lot of tangible hard power right now, that puts me mostly in the "ride things out and wait for the backlash to the pain" camp. But somehow I was all in on Booker. I'm not sure I can articulate exactly why, but I'll take a stab.
For one, one of the things I dislike about performative politics is that it's usually cheap. In this case, the sheer physical demands of what Booker did elevated the act.
Second, as others have said, I don't think there were a lot of tangible legislative things he could have done (devoting 25 hours to proposing a tariff bill with no chance of becoming law is not necessarily a better way to represent the people than what he did). So in some ways, "I'm just going to give a speech and the speech is the point" feels like the most honest thing in the moment.
Finally, although it's clearly beside the main point of the speech, the symbolism of having a black man break Strom Thurmond's anti-civil-rights-filibuster record just made me happy - it was a reminder of progress and an America worth fighting for.
That was my reaction too.
I'd add that few in my circle of friends and associates were even aware of what Booker was doing, much less why. That's not a value judgment, this just shows my circle is fundamentally different MY's.
So, from my perspective, Booker's speech did nothing. The best that can be said is that it improved the morale of Democrats who pay close attention to these sorts of things.
This seems like a great overview of why Cory Booker is a charismatic politician who’s good at giving speeches, but imo kind of sidesteps the more important question: does he have the guts to sincerely moderate on key issues and break with the party line when necessary?
We'll find out when primary season begins.
I’d imagine a safe-seat senator has more utility setting the party line than breaking the party line
I assumed the implication was that he has bigger ambitions than Senator.
NormieWatch: over the past week, I heard a little about the recent Mostly Peaceful Protests, nothing at all about Booker Sets Guinness Book Of World Records Record, undercurrents of fear about Liberace Day Tariffs, and a whole lot about...whatever the current sportsball thing is. Oh, and people excited about the White Lotus finale. So I was glad to see the bit about how, no, acktually, a doomer zero-sum eat-the-1% view is both depressingly demotivating in and of itself, and also frequently alienating to people like my coworkers who just have ordinary low-end private industry jobs. Relationships with bosses vary, but for the most part, even the most cynical fellows have at least one manager they're happy to shoot the shit with...don't hate the playa, hate the game, and all that. All company paychecks come from the same place, we'd love if they were bigger, but inflicting unprofitability on the business as a whole is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Nor does anyone sneer at our store manager for buying a nice house in [posh zipcode] - kinda hard to when he volunteers to clean the bathrooms so us grunts don't have to. Is this the face of oligarchy?
Tariffs have actually been really interesting in this regard, because they've forced a sense of clarity on people who probably never thought much about free trade beyond generic "boo NAFTA, outsourcing bad" vibes. But watching prices go up for products we handle every day, customer disappointment about same, and *not* hearing a bunch of lazy blame-it-on-capitalism, man/"greedflation", cope - that has been a surprising and welcome change for me. Skin in the game. Somehow I'll make an economist out of you!
Relatedly, much as Musk and Turnip are assclowns, I'd still much rather read their tweets/press releases/whatever vs. the super-cringe Greetings Fellow Teenagers attempts most Ds put out. Fundamentally not understanding how the series of tubes media landscape works in current_year is definitely a stupid reason to pay an electoral price, but that's democracy for ya. It's the same deal with the artist formerly known as alt-right...I might not agree with their politics, but by George, wojak memes are funny and relatable in a way "transgender PoC DESTROYS Mitch McConnell!"-type #takedowns never were. Like you'd think the people who coined code switching would be better able to apply the concept in electoral situations, but alas, poor Yorick. The people mostly want Barpod, not Contrapoints.
And here I thought I was the only one who celebrated Liberace Day.
I really appreciated the art in this mesmerizing stream of consciousness comment. Interesting stuff, avalanche.
Booker, with his "we don't resent the successful, we just don't think we need to give them tax cuts" is inching closer to the soaring universalist language I've described before. Ironically, it probably makes raising taxes as a part of a grand deal in the next decade an easier lift. Anti-rich and anti-business rhetoric doesn't really do much in a vacuum. If Elon Musk advocates cutting popular programs, you can bring up that he's a billionaire. But if something like that isn't happening, it doesn't really get people out of bed the way leftists think it does. JFK, Clinton, and Obama were exactly who I was thinking Democrats need to emulate rhetorically. Needs more sappy "we're all in this together" rhetoric and fewer enemy's lists.
Yeah, I mean I think that a lot of progressive really struggle to understand is that Americans tend to be incredibly aspirational. They like wealth. They want to be rich. They have high regards of capitalism. Mega corporations like Amazon and Apple are incredibly popular - more so than most politicians. That doesn’t mean they wanna cut social programs to give tax cuts to the rich that also doesn’t mean that want to engage in broad class war
Yeah, I think how my view has changed on this is that I used to think anti-rich rhetoric didn't appeal to me but it appealed to the electorate. And on second thought, I don't necessarily think it repels too many people, but most people don't get excited about it either. It really jazzes up the leftmost 10% of the electorate or so and nobody else really.
Senator Gallego had a succinct way of putting it: “most Americans want a big ass house and a big ass truck”
I used to think that the failure to promote younger talent like Booker by the democratic party represented bad leadership decisions or bad luck, but the tariff response makes me wonder if that is true.
There is a deeply held economic nostalgia for the postwar economy, especially in the Midwest, but throughout American culture. When Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden and Donald Trump talk about working people, you clearly feel that they mean a man in a blue collar job with a union card, who probably does not live in a big city and is probably white. Bernie said that Musk, despite founding huge companies, has done nothing for working people. That statement feels non-sensical, but everyone understands what he means. Bernie speaks in away that appeals to both Youngstown and Austin simply by being so old.
When you hear Booker or Gallego speak, you clearly feel that they are talking to waitresses and janitors and landscapers, and a certain type of voter will never forgive them for it.
This is very insightful
Love this. Booker is perfect case study for 2020 —> 2028 changes needed
Physical stamina contrast with Biden also has a size & strength elements. Even at his peak, Biden wasn’t a 6’3” D1 tight end.
There's a lot good here, but to underscore 2 points:
1. Primaries and field clearing. A lot of political hobbyists are just dense on this point. Primaries SEEM democratic because they involve voting. But they in practice do two things-- put unrepresentative party bases in charge of who gets elected in America, and create situations where the most effective way for parties to exercise control is to keep people off the ballot entirely. None of this is actually good.
2. Strom Thurmond. Part of Democrats' ptoblem with identity issues is simply that they love to talk about them. The voters simply don't think of themselves as bigots, generally believe policy should be color blind, and just don't want to hear about identity issues very often.
My favorite example from last year-- the female delegates wearing white at Kamala's convention speech. To her credit, she knew better than to do this (unlike Hillary Clinton who leaned into wearing white). But still, the delegates wearing white meant there was a bunch of talk about identity politics at the convention as the connection to suffragettes was explained. Back in 2020, the Norman Rockwell painting about Ruby Bridges was modified with an image of Harris. The public HATES this stuff. They think Democrats talk too much about identity categories and think too much about them.
So Booker is being smart in his graciousness towards Strom Thurmomd. And it wouldn't matter if he were a white Democrat-- he would still need to be gracious. The point is that every time talking about identity categories is unnecessary, the smart play is for us NOT to do it. We love doing it and it turns off the voters.
"The public HATES this stuff. They think Democrats talk too much about identity categories and think too much about them."
For the n-th time, Kamala said almost NOTHING about identity issues during her campaign. When she talked about herself, it was almost always "America is a wonderful country where the daughter of two immigrants can credibly dream of running for POTUS" and not "I'm a historic candidate because I'm a woman of color, so you must vote for me to be a good person."
That's exactly why I pointed to the delegates being the problem there. Harris is VERY smart about race and sex and absolutely knew to avoid this stuff, but her supporters just can't help themselves. They need to learn to start not talking about this stuff and not doing this stuff.
As Matt says, it is an issue Dems should lower the salience of as much as possible.
Is Cory Booker still single? I ask because a) I wonder how that would play in a Presidential race, and b) I went down to the protest on the mall on Saturday and Cory Booker could CLEAN UP. Ladies are thirsty for the Book.
One would hope that "I'm single" would play better in a Presidential race than "I'm married to my third wife, on whom I cheated with a porn actress while she was caring for our newborn child," but I'm probably being naive.
Look, King David had eight wives and he was a great ruler, so I don't know what the big stink about Trump is here.
Make Polygamy Great Again?
This isn't a political comment at all, but one really toxic thing in our culture is how people jump to conclusions based on no evidence that any prominent single person must be gay.
(And in Booker's case, he dated Rosario Dawson. Come on.)
The one and only time I ever thought it would be cool if this was true was when Manti Te'o had that catfishing scandal. A Mormon football player attending the most prominent Catholic university in the country--that would have blown off several ceilings at once.
It would be better in Democratic Party politics if he were gay than if it turns out he has a long line of female hookups behind him. That he’s single because he’s having a good time.
I believe the common wisdom is that he’s gay (but not out), so being non-single in a manner consonant with his (rumored) sexuality might be a political liability, as I expect it may unfortunately be for Pete Buttigieg.
According to google we've had exactly one unmarried president before - Buchanan. Being unmarried might work against him as well.
Buchanan was the only never married president, but we've had several presidents who weren't married while in office due to their spouse's death beforehand--Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, to name a few. The past's short life expectancies really sucked.
Grover Cleveland also had never married when he entered the White House, but did so while President...to a 21 year old. And he had romantic scandal beforehand too--1884 was the "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!" election.
Grover Cleveland's marriage is WAY creepier than "she was 21" makes it sound. He first met his future wife *when she was an infant* and she knew him as "Uncle Cleve" growing up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Cleveland#Childhood
Oh I cut out a *lot* of creepiness with him so as to not sully the thread too much. Until Trump came around he had no serious competition for the creepiest president. And when you contrast that with corrupt as hell "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, continental liar from the state of Maine!" on the GOP side...yeesh, 1884 is one of the worst elections ever.
The term “First Lady” was coined for his niece, who was his frequent companion and adviser.
Better than calling her "First Wife" though that would make an excellent prequel to "Big Love."
It would at least be nice to have a closeted gay senator not from South Carolina.
Well Senator Lujan is another often-rumored one
I did not know that! Sadly, I think you may be right about the political ramifications
HE DATED ROSARIO DAWSON, PEOPLE
Yeah, I think "Booker just doesn't really do romantic relationships well" is underrated.
What are the odds that was even real vs. for show?
Because this is a high-class Substack, I'll refrain from making a Seinfeld real/spectacular joke concerning Rosario Dawson.
And because I am a man of culture, I understand the reference perfectly.
It was a storybook romance for the ages, but, alas, as is so often the case, fairytales can't come true!
Tim Scott eventually got a girlfriend
And married her! He didn't get anything from that bold move, but I hope they're happy together anyway.
I seem to remember Charlie Crist had one whenever he was running for governor. I don’t think Lindsey Graham ever has.
This was not the take I expected this Monday morning … and frankly, I’m here for it (literally). I’ll get the breathless takes elsewhere today. Thanks.
I don't think it strikes him as "breathless"? He's saying he liked this because it wasn't breathless.
Oh whoops, I read "not here for it"!
"...huge stretches of it were models... are worth trying to copy...."
I made this very point to the other people at my neighborhood association after my 25th hour of filibustering about Democratic politics and they did not seem to agree. Actually, they had all left 24 hours previously. I guess it motivated them?
I've got lots of (very unoriginal, forgive me) thoughts on this.
First of all, Cory Booker is awesome, good for him! I admire him greatly for what he's done.
Now let's get into some details!
"But the idea that nastiness and negative affect are going to win the day strikes me as a lazy tactic that people reach for because they lack creativity and skill."
Yes, yes, Matt Y is absolutely right! Remember how Kamala, with her big smile and her emphasis on "Joy" and her campaign ads that said "I want to be President for ALL AMERICANS" handily triumphed over the scowling, angry Trump, who was all about "I AM YOUR RETRIBUTION" and whose campaign surrogate once said "Daddy's home, and he's PISSED! He's going to SPANK his daughter, and it's going to HURT, because she DESERVES it!" People were instantly put off by this kind of vengeful sadism-meets-creepy porn fantasy, and that's why Trump lost.
Oh, wait...
/facepalm
/headdesk
"But the vast majority of Democratic Party politicians could make their engagement with the public more interesting by being more willing to do what Trump did in 2015-2016 and speak more from the heart and less from a standpoint of dogmatic coalition-management."
Jesus Christ on a poppyseed bagel. This is like telling your socially awkward friend, "Being popular is super easy, barely an inconvenience! Just be yourself! [beat] No, no, NOT LIKE THAT!!!"
The Median Non-College-Educated Middle-Aged Guy in Suburban Michigan (MNCEMAGISM for short) doesn't want politicians who "speak from the heart." MNCEMAGISM wants politicians who *appear to speak from the heart* while telling MNCEMAGISM *what he wants to hear.* Remember Hillary? I'm sure she spoke from the heart when she said "half of Trump's followers belong in a basket of deplorables." How'd that work out for her? For that matter, how does it work when any progressive activist speaks very passionately from the heart about climate change or trans rights and the Matt Y's of the world resoundingly slap them down with a "Shut up, you fool, you'll scare MNCEMAGISM away and then we'll never win another election!"
Yes, I get it, the lesson is "don't insult voters," except Trump has insulted various sets of voters repeatedly, and now he's in the White House and the GOP has both chambers of Congress.
Enough people either actively wanted what's in Trump's heart or just didn't pay enough attention to care.
It wasn't about Harris's campaign. It was about the 4 years of policy failures of the Biden/Harris administration.
Inflation, immigration and to a lesser extend culture war/trans issues.
So I don't come across as a lefty extremist who just reflexively opposes everything you say:
1. Biden and Harris failed badly on illegal immigration. They should have taken it on early, without being racist about it, like, "America is a nation of immigrants but also a nation of laws, we want to decide who stays here, not let others take advantage of us."
2. The student loan relief stuff was bad and politically tone-deaf, further alienating the median non-college-educated voter.
3. There continued to be too much wokery, although much of it, in fairness, was not coming from Biden himself, who always read more as "aw-shucks old white guy from Scranton" than "woke warrior."
Other than than, Biden/Harris policy was... mostly fine! The US economy was the "envy of the world," according to a 2024 article in The Economist. The CHIPS act was good. Sure, prices didn't return to 2019 levels, but nobody was going to achieve that, not even Mr. Penguin Tariffs. International leadership was mostly good, especially on Ukraine (opinions differ on Israel/Palestine, but that's a no-win situation if ever I saw one.) We were governed mostly by boring-but-competent people who didn't make the news every second day for saying something unfathomably stupid.
And Biden didn't feed NIH-funded research into the wood chipper, so there's that.
So I don't come across as a righty extremist :)
I am fine with the CHIPS act, also the infrastructure bill. Neither were perfect, but both reasonable bi-partisan compromises (the red tape that was added to them was not fine)
That being said, the best research shows inflation in the US was about 3% higher because of excess stimulus.
I think Biden's reasoning of why to go big was defensible (even though he was warned by people some notable Democrat economists it was too big). But once inflation started to show, why not pull back all the unspent stimulus?
International, I broadly supported Biden on Ukraine (though I wish he was a bit more aggressive with weapon deliveries). But his withdrawal from Afghanistan was a shameful disaster.
For me, I REALLY wanted both parties to lose.
Three days late but you do know Trump negotiated the Afghanistan pullout by completely cutting out the Afghan government in negotiations and folding to the Taliban, right? Biden followed through on an awful deal because he ran on restoring America's international standing, showing that the next administration will follow the agreements made by the previous one. If you think the pullout was bad blame Trump for being shit at negotiating, I don't know why your mad at Biden for making the best out of shit situation he was handed.
Yep, I thought Trump should never have negotiated that deal. But it was Biden that followed through with it, and worse royally fucked up the execution.
So he should have not gone through with the deal instead? I also think we shouldn't have pulled out in the first place, but once we sign onto an international agreement it is in our best interests to stick to it. The first Trump admin ripped up so many deal Obama had signed onto, like JCPOA or TPP, and lessened our credibility to counties abroad (and he is doing much greater damage the second time around) Biden was trying to fix that. What about the pullout did you not like? If its because of the sheer chaos, then that again is downstream of Trump sucking at negotiating. The Afghan army disintegrated, because they had no motivation to keep fighting and knew that without the US they would lose to the Taliban. Trump lowered troop levels to 2500 before he left office unwillingly, and during that period of troop reduction the Taliban reignited their offensive. Biden get into office having campaigned on ending the Afghanistan war, as well as reintroducing responsible American foreign policy, and decided to implement a bad deal, only delaying the withdrawal by a few months. Would sending more troops back to protect assets have made sense when we had already "brought back our boy's"?. One side of the political spectrum is demonstrably worse than the other, so I don't understand why you want both parties to lose.
"It was about the 4 years of policy failures"
And now we've got four years' worth of policy failures (including irreversible ones; America's reputation among other democracies is shot, and that won't change even if Trump keels over from a heart attack tomorrow and Democrats take both chambers of Congress in 2026) crammed into the past two months! Yay?
/taps the "would you rather have a bowl of plain oatmeal or a bowl of dog excrement" sign
I mean, Trump's whole slogan from the beginning has been "Make America Great Again", which on its face sounds pretty optimistic! And if you watch his ads, the campaign treats him as someone who's strength as a leader is going to bring back the prosperity and happiness of the good ol days. Both campaigns had optimistic tones contrasted with a warning that their opponent was going to be the worst thing that ever happened to America.
As to Trump himself, there's a reason a majority of the country has never liked him, even if some of that majority has reluctantly voted for him. Given how unpopular the Biden-Harris administration was going into the election, there's an argument that Trump's general nastiness and divisiveness is the only reason that the race was even as close it was.
“Enough people either actively wanted what's in Trump's heart or just didn't pay enough attention to care”
I think they were paying attention, most of them, and saw how bad the alternative was.
Working out great so far.
Especially for people like Mark Zuckerberg who had to suffer from Meta's share price more than doubling under Biden which naturally led him to run to Trump in order to see that share price soar by negative 20% since inauguration day. Smart guy, this master of the universe.
He didn't endorse anyone in the 2024 election, and has cozied up to Trump _after_ the election, which, I'm not sure if it's smart or dumb, but not obviously dumb in the way that getting him elected might be.
"While declining to endorse Trump, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that “seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
He added: “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”"
https://www.aol.com/zuckerberg-reveals-endorsement-decision-2024-002856676.html
Sometimes you endorse even while you're saying you're not endorsing.
That's fair.
I don’t care about the fortunes of Zuckerberg.
Yes, we sure dodged a bullet by refusing to elect that woke Commie extremist Kamala and instead going with the brilliant businessman Trump, who is working hard (you know, when not golfing) to Make America Great Again!
I wouldn't have thought that trashing our international alliances and sending our economy into a 100% self-inflicted and stupid downturn was a fair price for getting rid of trans people in women's sports and cutting down on illegal immigrant crossings, but that's just me.
The question at the time was not about international alliances, it was do you want four more years of the shambolic Biden Administration?
1) It would have been the Harris Administration, not the Biden Administration
2) Trump said a ton of crazy sh*t about what he planned to do if reelected, Kamala warned people over and over and over "look, don't reelect him, he'll do crazy/bad things," too bad people didn't believe her
3) you bet your ass I would take another four years of a "shambolic" Democratic Administration that was within the Overton window over the utter fustercluck we have right now
4) I have to get some actual work done now, have a good day.
Yes, it would have been “the Harris Administration,” but I don’t know why you think that mattered in the election.
I am not at all in favor of Trump’s tariffs and wish Congress or the Supreme Court would put an end to that nonsense. And I’m not saying these people should have voted for Trump, only that there were a lot of good reasons not to vote for Harris.
I can't figure out who you're angry at.
Are you angry at Trump for being who he is, or are you angry at the American people for not... being better?
Both.
But don't take it from me; read these words of the noted woke fringe lefty activist David Brooks, who puts it thusly in The Atlantic:
"Until January 20, 2025, I didn’t realize how much of my very identity was built on this faith in my country’s goodness—on the idea that we Americans are partners in a grand and heroic enterprise, that our daily lives are ennobled by service to that cause. Since January 20, as I have watched America behave vilely—toward our friends in Canada and Mexico, toward our friends in Europe, toward the heroes in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office—I’ve had trouble describing the anguish I’ve experienced. Grief? Shock? Like I’m living through some sort of hallucination? Maybe the best description for what I’m feeling is moral shame: To watch the loss of your nation’s honor is embarrassing and painful."
It's hard to remember after all that's happened, but we all voted for Joe because when he spoke from the heart, you could tell that he loved "real America". It's possible but difficult to find a candidate where the contents of their heart is appealing to voters. And it's pretty easy to see that Harris / Clinton in their hearts loved the cosmopolitan values of big cities instead. I am also not particularly fond of "real America" and find them deplorable pretty often, but that's why I'm not running for president! Booker and Obama found a way to speak to the "common man" by relating to inner city kids, and it comes off as authentic in a way that pandering to the rust belt yet again does not.
I saw Booker (and Democrats en masse) getting mocked this weekend for being bad at being opposition generally and that this was particularly dumb and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because I honestly do not see what else they could be doing.
Some of the criticism was coming from people who won't be happy unless Democratic elected officials are throwing molotoc cocktails, they are easy enough to dismiss, but some it is coming from people I think are actually smart, but it's never followed by the thing that they think Democrats should be doing, so I'm at a loss.
The key thing to remember is that online, everything is always the Democratic Party's fault.
Nailed it.
I think that's quite a strawman; most of the criticism of Booker (and Senate Democrats generally) that I'm seeing on Bluesky it that they are GIVING the Republicans "unanimous consent" to move forward on nominations, including self-described large penis haver and returning lickspittle Matt Whitaker for Ambassador to NATO, immediately after Booker's speech (see here from a former Congressional staffer: https://bsky.app/profile/aaronhuertas.bsky.social/post/3lmafjy7stk2e).
Maybe you don't think the Dems should be delaying GOP business that they oppose, but Dems do have the power to do so under the current Senate rules, and "many people are saying" that they should use it, at least in some cases, to strategically call attention to particularly egregious/offensive nominees and other destructive policy.