At some point, I would like to see someone do a deep dive into why something like Project 2025 matters — even to people that might vote for Trump. He alludes to it on the trail but many do not know there is a concrete plan in place to game our institutions, rules, Constitution, etc. to not only undermine all of them but create situations where there is no answer to them if Congress will not act. Trump doesn’t have to be capable — he will just appoint people to carry it out because it benefits HIM. And PLEASE make these issue coverages shareable — the people who most need to see and be aware of them are not the majority of your subscribers. Think of it as a public service. 😊
Of course Normal Stuff Matters, but if you think there is no threat to the ability to discuss normal stuff again, keep ignoring the Gorilla in the room. You are a smart guy but you fail to see the overall human pictures. Woman are far more intuned with what really matters and you mentioned Nothing. Really? You lost me at "at Normal Stuff Matters". Please re-read what you wrote and now put on a different hat and try, just try to see through another lens. Your awareness is in the category of MOTO, Master of the Obvious.
i dunno, if we were just going to vote on thumbs up or thumbs down for dishwasher and banking regs, i'd be on the other side. sometimes the narrative is worth considering.
On the one hand, I think there's a real danger of doing the wolf-who-cried-boy thing..."The Media" already ran that playbook into the ground for several years. And it's not like there was literally zero wolf? Even a mildly apologetic 1/6 apologist would admit that such events are, uh, not standard operating procedure in our country. Still, after years of reading about how jackbooted thugs were coming to my neighborhood, or it was the beginning of the Turnip Monarchy, or America As We Know It Is Finished...at the end of the day, so, so, so much of that fear and loathing didn't materialize. It stayed theoretical, confined to places like The Atlantic and David Frum's fever dreams. And for a relative social conservative/downer on "democracy", if one tuned out all the Cassandrizing, actual day to day life...was...mostly fine? Not that much changed in concrete terms, other than getting a bigger tax refund. And I think it's very easy to make the case that things won't go that way the second time around, that the black swans are coming home to roost, that the circumstances that largely blunted Turnip's worst policies are quite different now. The tariff stuff alone is absurd enough for me to not touch that option with an 11-foot pole. So, well done on making that case, I hope to read more of it.*
On the other hand...I think there's a danger of getting lost in The Weeds, so to speak. One doesn't have to frame the election as a Referendum On Democracy or whatever to point out (correctly!) that things have taken several absurdist turns for the worse in our politics...sure, the tail risks aren't unique, historically speaking. But there's a reason that summarizing 1/6 as "a bunch of hooligans protested at the capitol, small handful dead, mostly cop suicides" is not-inaccurate while wildly missing The Point. It's the mirror logic to Mostly Peaceful Protests. The Strategic Gravitas Reserve + peoples' capacity to care is highly depleted, yet it'd still be a mistake to frame the election as solely about butter-and-bread issues. Some amount of import ought to be emphasized. I don't know how to stick that landing without exhausting the populace again, and I'd be happy to see Turnip not-elected simply on the policy merits...but it'd ring a bit hollow, since it means we didn't grapple with the rot at the core of our instutitions that allowed such buffonery in the first place.
*This also largely why I'm passing on Politix; if you're making the interestingly relevant potatoes-and-meat arguments in the regular columns, what's the add-value? I can get cry-Wolf-Blitzerism from ~any other outlet, that's not your advantageous comparison.
The policy stakes on NATO and foreign policy seem incredibly high in the Trump vs Biden choice. It may not matter to voters, or in some cases voters' preferences may actually align more with their perception of what Trump will do. But the stakes and long-term knock on effects of Trump being president are really quite huge
I recognize that MY strongly favors most policies of the Democratic Party, with thoughtful, reasoned exceptions. It is a pleasure to read his work and become more knowledgeable.
What I find difficult is the absence of balance respecting the threats to our democracy by both parties. 1/6, Charlottesville, the wacky Oregon ranchers, and other events are despicable. But why the silence on Biden's refusal to specifically condemn antifa violence (antifa is only an idea?), or his running mate's efforts to raise bail money (to make rioting as painless as possible), or the suppression of free speech, not through Wilsonian three minute men but through funding lieing NGOs and jawboning tech billionaires? These actions i find more subversive than Trump's stupidity, for his actions have been open and openly condemned, while silence reigns over most of the left respecting authoritarian actions for policies they favor.
Is there actually a threat from antifa violence? Who was Harris raising bail money for? These don’t sound like significant threats comparable to the attempted taking of federal land in Oregon but maybe I’m missing something.
In my opinion, tolerance for and encouragement of violence, if the actions generally favor your policies and/or please voting blocs that favor you, are dangerous and anti-democracy. It is using a mob, not any democratic process. Where does use of the mob end and rule by the mob begin?
I say antifa attacking and injuring both police and innocent bystanders, attacking a courthouse, burning a police station, ransacking and destroying private property, are genuine threats to society.
News reports said Harris contributed to and supported a group raising funds to bail out rioters. I noted the Oregon issue so as to make the point that the threats to democracy are catholic. The point is to stop the nonsense by fairly identifying those who hold their short-term objectives as more important than the health of our democracy.
The recurring problem with Trump is that he’s a living breathing ddos attack. Yes we should talk about regressive tax cuts and inflationary policy. But we also need to talk about democracy and attacks on federal bureaucracy (here bureaucracy should be read with a positive connotation). And we need to talk about the rise of just blatant nazi sludge welling up into normal society.
But for any media outlet to cover all of this would require so much coverage as to overwhelm or at least inundate readers. So NYT drops to one principal component (democracy and norms) and covers the rest as window dressing.
I don't think I have TDS but IMO this post vastly understates the risk to democracy from a second Trump term. My sense is that there is a clear plan with people to put it into the action to weaken different parts of the state and use that remove accountability for Trump's actions, get the power to go after his enemies both real and perceived, and generally assume unchecked power. That plan (I believe) includes weakening election oversight to make it exceedingly difficult for an opposing party to win future elections.
Maybe that's a big exaggerated but I think it's closer to the truth than simply looking at what's Trump done so far.
I’d really like to hear your perspective on how big a threat we should consider a second Trump presidency. I despise Trump as much as anyone, but I also wonder how much the doomism over his potential reelection is over dramatic. Horrible president with major policy consequences, no doubt. But is he actually a threat to democracy as we know it?
One one hand, he already did everything he could to stage a coop when he lost re-election before, and that didn’t work. He escaped accountability and made a mockery of our rules and norms, but we moved on to Biden nonetheless. Also, the Supreme Court may be overly partisan, but we do have the 22nd amendment. On the other hand, it’s safe to assume Trump will only appoint sycophants and yes men a second time around, and there will be no one to check his worst impulses as there was the first time. Also, he will clearly be seek retribution against his perceived political enemies.
So question for you, Matt, is how much should we really consider Trump’s potential reelection a threat to democracy as opposed to just a potentially really bad four years of leadership and policy?
I did not expect to miss the Clinton era laundry list of micro-policies, but I am missing that in the Democratic message right now. I feel like a "making government work for real people" kind of message hits Biden's strengths and the contrast with Republicans. Trump simply will not make any of government work better. Biden's programs from year 1 and 2 are increasing manufacturing and R and D investment, increasing wages not at the top but for middle and lower income americans, reduced drug prices for critical medicines (insulin) ....etc [this is where I want the campaigns to fill in the blanks]
One area I appreciate is the work on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness - Congress passed a program to forgive student loans for people who worked 10 years in public service - for government and non-profits. The program did not work, and Biden fixed it, delivering real benefit to mostly middle class workers. And, Biden also has been working to shut down scam degree programs and forgive debt for students conned into enrolling in these programs...
I wish that there were 30 of these mini summaries of specific programs just pinging around to contrast with "Trump built 1/1000th of a wall on the border, part of it fell down, and he made it harder for doctors in rural areas (often non-citizens) to renew visas and keep providing care."
Can we have a rep somewhere introduce Trump's tariff plan in order to get it scored by the CBO? Feels like an excellent opportunity to be able to reference a trusted non-partisan source that shows the excruciating inflationary effects of this proposal. Though I assume someone must have already had this idea.
The problem with that as shorthand is there really are anarchists out there. Accuse them of supporting Joe Biden and they'll throw a brick through your window.
Is opposition to Roe a "prudish Christian attitude towards sexuality?"
At some point, I would like to see someone do a deep dive into why something like Project 2025 matters — even to people that might vote for Trump. He alludes to it on the trail but many do not know there is a concrete plan in place to game our institutions, rules, Constitution, etc. to not only undermine all of them but create situations where there is no answer to them if Congress will not act. Trump doesn’t have to be capable — he will just appoint people to carry it out because it benefits HIM. And PLEASE make these issue coverages shareable — the people who most need to see and be aware of them are not the majority of your subscribers. Think of it as a public service. 😊
Of course Normal Stuff Matters, but if you think there is no threat to the ability to discuss normal stuff again, keep ignoring the Gorilla in the room. You are a smart guy but you fail to see the overall human pictures. Woman are far more intuned with what really matters and you mentioned Nothing. Really? You lost me at "at Normal Stuff Matters". Please re-read what you wrote and now put on a different hat and try, just try to see through another lens. Your awareness is in the category of MOTO, Master of the Obvious.
i dunno, if we were just going to vote on thumbs up or thumbs down for dishwasher and banking regs, i'd be on the other side. sometimes the narrative is worth considering.
Democracy need not be overturned wholesale to be undermined in harmful ways.
On the one hand, I think there's a real danger of doing the wolf-who-cried-boy thing..."The Media" already ran that playbook into the ground for several years. And it's not like there was literally zero wolf? Even a mildly apologetic 1/6 apologist would admit that such events are, uh, not standard operating procedure in our country. Still, after years of reading about how jackbooted thugs were coming to my neighborhood, or it was the beginning of the Turnip Monarchy, or America As We Know It Is Finished...at the end of the day, so, so, so much of that fear and loathing didn't materialize. It stayed theoretical, confined to places like The Atlantic and David Frum's fever dreams. And for a relative social conservative/downer on "democracy", if one tuned out all the Cassandrizing, actual day to day life...was...mostly fine? Not that much changed in concrete terms, other than getting a bigger tax refund. And I think it's very easy to make the case that things won't go that way the second time around, that the black swans are coming home to roost, that the circumstances that largely blunted Turnip's worst policies are quite different now. The tariff stuff alone is absurd enough for me to not touch that option with an 11-foot pole. So, well done on making that case, I hope to read more of it.*
On the other hand...I think there's a danger of getting lost in The Weeds, so to speak. One doesn't have to frame the election as a Referendum On Democracy or whatever to point out (correctly!) that things have taken several absurdist turns for the worse in our politics...sure, the tail risks aren't unique, historically speaking. But there's a reason that summarizing 1/6 as "a bunch of hooligans protested at the capitol, small handful dead, mostly cop suicides" is not-inaccurate while wildly missing The Point. It's the mirror logic to Mostly Peaceful Protests. The Strategic Gravitas Reserve + peoples' capacity to care is highly depleted, yet it'd still be a mistake to frame the election as solely about butter-and-bread issues. Some amount of import ought to be emphasized. I don't know how to stick that landing without exhausting the populace again, and I'd be happy to see Turnip not-elected simply on the policy merits...but it'd ring a bit hollow, since it means we didn't grapple with the rot at the core of our instutitions that allowed such buffonery in the first place.
*This also largely why I'm passing on Politix; if you're making the interestingly relevant potatoes-and-meat arguments in the regular columns, what's the add-value? I can get cry-Wolf-Blitzerism from ~any other outlet, that's not your advantageous comparison.
The policy stakes on NATO and foreign policy seem incredibly high in the Trump vs Biden choice. It may not matter to voters, or in some cases voters' preferences may actually align more with their perception of what Trump will do. But the stakes and long-term knock on effects of Trump being president are really quite huge
I recognize that MY strongly favors most policies of the Democratic Party, with thoughtful, reasoned exceptions. It is a pleasure to read his work and become more knowledgeable.
What I find difficult is the absence of balance respecting the threats to our democracy by both parties. 1/6, Charlottesville, the wacky Oregon ranchers, and other events are despicable. But why the silence on Biden's refusal to specifically condemn antifa violence (antifa is only an idea?), or his running mate's efforts to raise bail money (to make rioting as painless as possible), or the suppression of free speech, not through Wilsonian three minute men but through funding lieing NGOs and jawboning tech billionaires? These actions i find more subversive than Trump's stupidity, for his actions have been open and openly condemned, while silence reigns over most of the left respecting authoritarian actions for policies they favor.
Is there actually a threat from antifa violence? Who was Harris raising bail money for? These don’t sound like significant threats comparable to the attempted taking of federal land in Oregon but maybe I’m missing something.
In my opinion, tolerance for and encouragement of violence, if the actions generally favor your policies and/or please voting blocs that favor you, are dangerous and anti-democracy. It is using a mob, not any democratic process. Where does use of the mob end and rule by the mob begin?
I say antifa attacking and injuring both police and innocent bystanders, attacking a courthouse, burning a police station, ransacking and destroying private property, are genuine threats to society.
News reports said Harris contributed to and supported a group raising funds to bail out rioters. I noted the Oregon issue so as to make the point that the threats to democracy are catholic. The point is to stop the nonsense by fairly identifying those who hold their short-term objectives as more important than the health of our democracy.
The recurring problem with Trump is that he’s a living breathing ddos attack. Yes we should talk about regressive tax cuts and inflationary policy. But we also need to talk about democracy and attacks on federal bureaucracy (here bureaucracy should be read with a positive connotation). And we need to talk about the rise of just blatant nazi sludge welling up into normal society.
But for any media outlet to cover all of this would require so much coverage as to overwhelm or at least inundate readers. So NYT drops to one principal component (democracy and norms) and covers the rest as window dressing.
I like that "living breathing ddos attack" metaphor!
Not mine—Noah Smith’s. Not that I can cite it properly.
I don't think I have TDS but IMO this post vastly understates the risk to democracy from a second Trump term. My sense is that there is a clear plan with people to put it into the action to weaken different parts of the state and use that remove accountability for Trump's actions, get the power to go after his enemies both real and perceived, and generally assume unchecked power. That plan (I believe) includes weakening election oversight to make it exceedingly difficult for an opposing party to win future elections.
Maybe that's a big exaggerated but I think it's closer to the truth than simply looking at what's Trump done so far.
I’d really like to hear your perspective on how big a threat we should consider a second Trump presidency. I despise Trump as much as anyone, but I also wonder how much the doomism over his potential reelection is over dramatic. Horrible president with major policy consequences, no doubt. But is he actually a threat to democracy as we know it?
One one hand, he already did everything he could to stage a coop when he lost re-election before, and that didn’t work. He escaped accountability and made a mockery of our rules and norms, but we moved on to Biden nonetheless. Also, the Supreme Court may be overly partisan, but we do have the 22nd amendment. On the other hand, it’s safe to assume Trump will only appoint sycophants and yes men a second time around, and there will be no one to check his worst impulses as there was the first time. Also, he will clearly be seek retribution against his perceived political enemies.
So question for you, Matt, is how much should we really consider Trump’s potential reelection a threat to democracy as opposed to just a potentially really bad four years of leadership and policy?
I did not expect to miss the Clinton era laundry list of micro-policies, but I am missing that in the Democratic message right now. I feel like a "making government work for real people" kind of message hits Biden's strengths and the contrast with Republicans. Trump simply will not make any of government work better. Biden's programs from year 1 and 2 are increasing manufacturing and R and D investment, increasing wages not at the top but for middle and lower income americans, reduced drug prices for critical medicines (insulin) ....etc [this is where I want the campaigns to fill in the blanks]
One area I appreciate is the work on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness - Congress passed a program to forgive student loans for people who worked 10 years in public service - for government and non-profits. The program did not work, and Biden fixed it, delivering real benefit to mostly middle class workers. And, Biden also has been working to shut down scam degree programs and forgive debt for students conned into enrolling in these programs...
I wish that there were 30 of these mini summaries of specific programs just pinging around to contrast with "Trump built 1/1000th of a wall on the border, part of it fell down, and he made it harder for doctors in rural areas (often non-citizens) to renew visas and keep providing care."
thank you. its hard to live in a world where the truth eludes us all... but having an open internet is super important.
Can we have a rep somewhere introduce Trump's tariff plan in order to get it scored by the CBO? Feels like an excellent opportunity to be able to reference a trusted non-partisan source that shows the excruciating inflationary effects of this proposal. Though I assume someone must have already had this idea.
The problem with that as shorthand is there really are anarchists out there. Accuse them of supporting Joe Biden and they'll throw a brick through your window.
Make your coverage one arrow among many ... what the country needs from those who are able. Thanks.