Nuts that Trump would choose 2008 Obama as VP. He’s not “out of central casting,” if you know what I mean, and that matters to Trump.
No, he runs alongside his golfing buddy’s wife, who happens to be a prominent senator. She lives in New York too, so he has to change his residency to Florida. Not a big deal—the taxes are lower down there.
Besides, their daughters are buddies too. They’re great surrogates for the campaign and both play a central role in the new administration. By the early 2020s, they’re both in Congress and regulars on the Sunday morning shows. In the #MeToo era, their family names are practically synonymous with female empowerment.
After some rocky years in the 2010s, Dems are pretty jazzed about their first all-female ticket in 2024. The only question on anyone’s mind: will it be Trump-Clinton or Clinton-Trump?
Put me down as someone who would stop paying for your substack if it was only available bundled with Glenn Greenwald. I have no desire for my money to flow to him.
“ Taiwan should be making serious plans for its own defense, drawing up extensive lists of what kind of equipment would be genuinely useful in that situation and asking friendly countries to give it to them.”
My understanding is that Taiwan’s latest set of defense reforms was very much oriented in this direction; attempting to make itself prohibitively expensive to take rapidly and turn into an indigestible morsel once taken.
Now that they’re watching what Ukraine has been able to accomplish, I’m sure there’s some note-taking going on.
I also suspect that the CCP is paying close attention to exactly what economic buttons are being pushed to punish Russia. I’m not sure they can really proof themselves, but they can certainly inflict a lot more pain than Russia could.
ADVICE TO STREAMERS: If you are strapped for cash (or just want to save money), only subscribe to one service at a time. Seriously. Sign up for ONE MONTH of a streaming service, watch the fifteen or twenty movies that interest you for a whopping $0.55-$1 per title AND THEN CANCEL. Then sign up for a new service and repeat. Cycle through the streaming services that way. You aren't doing anything unseemly: that is the business model THEY chose, so fuck 'em.
Also, use Kanopy, the streaming service available through your local library. You can choose ten titles per month from a catalog of like 30,000 movies.
Personally, I have annual subscriptions to a few streaming services that I love and support: Criterion, Arrow, Shudder. That winds up being a reasonable $220 per year. If I want to view a different catalog of titles, I sign up for one month and immediately cancel, as described above.
I am definitely more on the "anti-bigness" side of things than Matt, but that's a different can of worms.
Lamenting the death of the Slatepitch, and immediately following it up with a Trump/Obama ticket counterfactual is real practice what you preach stuff. Nicely done.
Re subscriptions/streaming -- Apple News+ is a reasonable option for most newspapers and magazines. They make it hard to find some of the content you want, but it's mostly there somewhere. I like getting much of the WSJ news side without much money reaching the Murdochs. Also pretty good digital versions of magazines I used to subscribe to in hard copy. Initially I thought I'd buy the Apple News+ sub and cancel all my other print media subscriptions. But I just couldn't stick to that. I want a certain amount of in-depth news and analysis on a few topics. I am very happy with Slow Boring but I can't see me consuming two to four additional newsletters, even at a discounted rate. Even though I am 90% retired, I don't have that kind of time. I see a dichotomy between the Substack concept and bundling.
Slatepitch on Gore as president, and on the 2000 election as the least consequential of the modern era - his VP Joe Liberman (aka Democratic Dick Cheney) pushes Gore into Iraq, which then leads to a McCain presidency essentially as described in your scenario. The supreme court nominations all happened in 2005 or later, so this leads to no changes in the supreme court compared to real history. Meanwhile, a young Illinois senator named Barack Obama capitalizes on left-wing discontent at previous foreign policy failures under the last Democratic president to win the 2008 primary. He probably still chooses Joe Biden as VP since the same reasons more or less apply. Of course the financial crisis leads to Obama winning the presidency, which then leads to Donald Trump winning in a racist backlash in 2016 and history following essentially the same path as today.
"But at the same time, I think moderates would do better if they walked back some of the leftward shifts of the past decade and acted a bit more like the Max Baucus or Mary Landrieu types we used to have"
But uh, Mary Landrieu lost re-election as an incumbent Senator. This is part of my issue with Shorism- it's not exactly a new or novel observation that Dems should run moderate candidates to win elections in rural states, they've been doing it for longer than any of us have been alive. It's just that with the nationalization of politics, they literally can't win anymore! Other than Manchin. You can be as moderate, pro-gun and anti-socialism as you want- if you have a D next to your name, you're basically guaranteed to lose in a rural state. The content of your message is basically irrelevant. If Baucus had continued running for Senator into the 2010s, the odds are very high that he would've lost to a Republican too.
Here's a list of moderate rural Dem Senators who all lost as incumbents in the 2010s/2020: Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, Mary Landrieu, Kay Hagan, Joe Donnelly, Blanche Lincoln and Russ Feingold
I too loved the hilarious and unexpected twist on the aftermath of a Gore victory. But real-talk: the GOP and rightwing blogosphere, already littered with fascists like Ann "Someone Should Blow Up the New York Times Building" Coulter, would have shamelessly exploited 9/11 for short-term political advantage. Gore would have been blamed for the security failures by almost the entire conservative establishment.
The leaders of the engineered GOP legislative majorities in Wisconsin are trying in a couple of ways to make executive branch appointees more like parliamentary ministers accountable to them. One way is by simply not having Democrats appointed: there's a court case now about whether (Republican) appointees to state boards (think university regents or natural resource board members) have to leave if their (Democratic) successors are never confirmed by the state Senate. Another is never confirming the secretaries who run state agencies. The Senate can remove acting secretaries at any time by majority vote and did exactly when the Secretary of Agriculture criticized the legislature for not releasing funds to combat farmer suicides. The prospect of losing their jobs at any moment has to make the secretaries more cautious. Of course, none of this will apply the next time a Republican is governor. #welcometohungary
On the anti-bigness, I worry about countervailing power and the ability of large corporations to have essential powers due to their size: "quantity has a quality all its own."
Nuts that Trump would choose 2008 Obama as VP. He’s not “out of central casting,” if you know what I mean, and that matters to Trump.
No, he runs alongside his golfing buddy’s wife, who happens to be a prominent senator. She lives in New York too, so he has to change his residency to Florida. Not a big deal—the taxes are lower down there.
Besides, their daughters are buddies too. They’re great surrogates for the campaign and both play a central role in the new administration. By the early 2020s, they’re both in Congress and regulars on the Sunday morning shows. In the #MeToo era, their family names are practically synonymous with female empowerment.
After some rocky years in the 2010s, Dems are pretty jazzed about their first all-female ticket in 2024. The only question on anyone’s mind: will it be Trump-Clinton or Clinton-Trump?
Put me down as someone who would stop paying for your substack if it was only available bundled with Glenn Greenwald. I have no desire for my money to flow to him.
The pivot from "death of the Slatepitch" to the Trump/Obama ticket is a trolling masterpiece and I salute it for exactly what it is.
“ Taiwan should be making serious plans for its own defense, drawing up extensive lists of what kind of equipment would be genuinely useful in that situation and asking friendly countries to give it to them.”
My understanding is that Taiwan’s latest set of defense reforms was very much oriented in this direction; attempting to make itself prohibitively expensive to take rapidly and turn into an indigestible morsel once taken.
Now that they’re watching what Ukraine has been able to accomplish, I’m sure there’s some note-taking going on.
I also suspect that the CCP is paying close attention to exactly what economic buttons are being pushed to punish Russia. I’m not sure they can really proof themselves, but they can certainly inflict a lot more pain than Russia could.
ADVICE TO STREAMERS: If you are strapped for cash (or just want to save money), only subscribe to one service at a time. Seriously. Sign up for ONE MONTH of a streaming service, watch the fifteen or twenty movies that interest you for a whopping $0.55-$1 per title AND THEN CANCEL. Then sign up for a new service and repeat. Cycle through the streaming services that way. You aren't doing anything unseemly: that is the business model THEY chose, so fuck 'em.
Also, use Kanopy, the streaming service available through your local library. You can choose ten titles per month from a catalog of like 30,000 movies.
Personally, I have annual subscriptions to a few streaming services that I love and support: Criterion, Arrow, Shudder. That winds up being a reasonable $220 per year. If I want to view a different catalog of titles, I sign up for one month and immediately cancel, as described above.
I am definitely more on the "anti-bigness" side of things than Matt, but that's a different can of worms.
Lamenting the death of the Slatepitch, and immediately following it up with a Trump/Obama ticket counterfactual is real practice what you preach stuff. Nicely done.
Re subscriptions/streaming -- Apple News+ is a reasonable option for most newspapers and magazines. They make it hard to find some of the content you want, but it's mostly there somewhere. I like getting much of the WSJ news side without much money reaching the Murdochs. Also pretty good digital versions of magazines I used to subscribe to in hard copy. Initially I thought I'd buy the Apple News+ sub and cancel all my other print media subscriptions. But I just couldn't stick to that. I want a certain amount of in-depth news and analysis on a few topics. I am very happy with Slow Boring but I can't see me consuming two to four additional newsletters, even at a discounted rate. Even though I am 90% retired, I don't have that kind of time. I see a dichotomy between the Substack concept and bundling.
I would love a Slow Boring/Very Serious/Model Citizen Substack policy nerd bundle.
Thanks for the fun meetup yesterday! It was great to meet some fellow Slow Borers and Matt was an excellent host.
Slatepitch on Gore as president, and on the 2000 election as the least consequential of the modern era - his VP Joe Liberman (aka Democratic Dick Cheney) pushes Gore into Iraq, which then leads to a McCain presidency essentially as described in your scenario. The supreme court nominations all happened in 2005 or later, so this leads to no changes in the supreme court compared to real history. Meanwhile, a young Illinois senator named Barack Obama capitalizes on left-wing discontent at previous foreign policy failures under the last Democratic president to win the 2008 primary. He probably still chooses Joe Biden as VP since the same reasons more or less apply. Of course the financial crisis leads to Obama winning the presidency, which then leads to Donald Trump winning in a racist backlash in 2016 and history following essentially the same path as today.
"But at the same time, I think moderates would do better if they walked back some of the leftward shifts of the past decade and acted a bit more like the Max Baucus or Mary Landrieu types we used to have"
But uh, Mary Landrieu lost re-election as an incumbent Senator. This is part of my issue with Shorism- it's not exactly a new or novel observation that Dems should run moderate candidates to win elections in rural states, they've been doing it for longer than any of us have been alive. It's just that with the nationalization of politics, they literally can't win anymore! Other than Manchin. You can be as moderate, pro-gun and anti-socialism as you want- if you have a D next to your name, you're basically guaranteed to lose in a rural state. The content of your message is basically irrelevant. If Baucus had continued running for Senator into the 2010s, the odds are very high that he would've lost to a Republican too.
Here's a list of moderate rural Dem Senators who all lost as incumbents in the 2010s/2020: Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, Mary Landrieu, Kay Hagan, Joe Donnelly, Blanche Lincoln and Russ Feingold
Encouraging the funding of actual research into DEI practice is a really cool idea! Going to work on that.
I would bundle a noahpinion with Yglesias today. And I'd mess up your pronunciation for free.
I really like that last idea. Substack bundling.
I too loved the hilarious and unexpected twist on the aftermath of a Gore victory. But real-talk: the GOP and rightwing blogosphere, already littered with fascists like Ann "Someone Should Blow Up the New York Times Building" Coulter, would have shamelessly exploited 9/11 for short-term political advantage. Gore would have been blamed for the security failures by almost the entire conservative establishment.
The leaders of the engineered GOP legislative majorities in Wisconsin are trying in a couple of ways to make executive branch appointees more like parliamentary ministers accountable to them. One way is by simply not having Democrats appointed: there's a court case now about whether (Republican) appointees to state boards (think university regents or natural resource board members) have to leave if their (Democratic) successors are never confirmed by the state Senate. Another is never confirming the secretaries who run state agencies. The Senate can remove acting secretaries at any time by majority vote and did exactly when the Secretary of Agriculture criticized the legislature for not releasing funds to combat farmer suicides. The prospect of losing their jobs at any moment has to make the secretaries more cautious. Of course, none of this will apply the next time a Republican is governor. #welcometohungary
On the anti-bigness, I worry about countervailing power and the ability of large corporations to have essential powers due to their size: "quantity has a quality all its own."