There was a weird moment during that fateful debate between him and Biden in June where I actually believed Trump was being mostly honest. I found the quote:
"And I’ll tell you something – I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be under indictment because I wouldn’t have been his political appoint – you know, opponent. Because he indicted me because I was his opponent.
I wish he was a great president. I would rather have that.
I wouldn’t be here. I don’t mind being here, but the only reason I’m here is he’s so bad as a president that I’m going to make America great again. We’re going to make America great again."
It doesn't quite come through from the text alone but he sounded very tired when he said it. My take from it is that his motivation for round 2 is not and never has been policy.* It's to stay out of prison, which he has most likely succeeded in doing.
*My suspicion about round 1 remains that it was a publicity stunt that got out of control but I doubt we will ever know the truth about that one way or the other.
These contortions to sanewash Trump are frustrating in the extreme. There is zero credibility to anything that guy has said. There is shrinking evidence of any good faith in anything Republicans say.
And I don't mean randos online that say crazy things. I mean top levels of the republican party. Zero accountability.
It wasn't a weird moment of honesty during the debate. It was a grifter using a classic grift. And you are propping it up with some credulity in ways that flat out don't make sense.
In what way do you think "he's said things like that and clearly not meant them before" isn't a rebuttal to you quoting him and saying he is honest? Similarly, in what way is pointing out that people ascribe way more thought to Trump's words than he has ever been shown to give them not a rebuttal?
I meant if Trump immediately resigned the presidency as Marc Robbins suggested. Cincinnatus was famous for supposedly having promptly retired when the crisis that he was summoned to deal with was over.
Why do you think that him using an effective political line is an insight into his soul? Of course he wanted to be President, he wanted to continue being President so much that he denied the election results last time out and tried to fraudulently stay in office.
Garland and Fani Willis should go down in infamy as two of the worst prosecutors in American history. They had 4 years and they fucked this up, plain and simple.
Fani Willis let the easiest case fall apart in the stupidest way possible (OK maybe the documents case was equally a slam dunk, but that was DOA when Judge Cannon got it).
Whoa whoa whoa....Alvin Bragg's decision to create a novel felony prosecution solely to go after a former president of the other party (whose approval ratings then shot up, helping him secure the R nomination before going on to win the Presidency) has to at least warrant him a spot on the podium, if not the gold medal.
Which came with zero penalties whatsoever and helped him win the presidency. The very definition of a Pyrrhic victory.
ETA: let’s also not praise him for obtaining a conviction in a case that never should have been brought in the first. I despise Trump, but there is a 0% chance that this case would have been brought against Michael Bloomberg, Mark Cuban, or anyone other than Donald Trump. If you’re abusing the power of your office to bring charges against political opponents then obtaining a conviction in a sham case is not a point in your favor.
How can I have been conned by someone I didn't vote for or ever supported?
I understand a lot of emotions today but no need for all of this projection.
Edit to add if it wasn't clear, I think he should be in prison. Unfortunately the people (at least nominally) on our side lacked the competence to achieve that.
I think this is the most surreal aspect of all this. The MAGA crew talk with dark tones all the time about how everything's Apocalyptic and terrible and yet seem to take risk very unseriously, in practice. Fine, even if you don't buy into Climate Change being a real thing, take your pick off all the other "polycrisis" type stuff going down right now! Wouldn't you want a very buttoned-up crew of people with actual plans and experience going in to address it all?
Like, we're really going to have a Fox News host run the entire Department of Defense when we're arguably in Cold War 2.0!? Even if you like and agree with the guy, he just doesn't have anywhere near the chops for that gig! Most of us wouldn't, either!
And, fine, maybe we can charitably consider Trump's chaotic energy something needed to "stir things up" when the old way isn't working. And maybe his Madman Theory will make our enemies fear us. But what evidence do we have (and, again, he literally did this job once already) that he's got the bite to backup the bark? Trump just got owned time after time in foreign affairs. He planned to but didn't end the war in Afghanistan. North Korea played him. China played him. Russia played him. He messed up the pandemic response (which, lest we forget, is largely why he wasn't serving his second term as president in 2021, instead of 2025). In all those four years, he couldn't even build that most hyped up symbol, The Wall. So where's the juice!?
Even if you're absolutely convinced that Biden sucked every bit as much or more, well, is that really an endorsement. That Trump couldn't do a lot of stuff that Biden, the ostensibly "weak, senile, bitchmade, traitorous, etc." Democrat couldn't do? Trump's supposed to be the superhero here! You can't even find a reference point for how great and powerful he must be! And yet...
Frum is a neocon, warmonger and is partially responsible for the Iraq war. I’m not sure why anyone gives a shit what that guy has to say. He should be in jail, instead of a 5 million dollar house in Bethesda.
I mean, you're not wrong, but it still is unsatisfying to me. Trump's MAGA crew aren't all shiftless losers (though many of them are just base grifters). Maybe the Republicans are now "the stupid party," but they also have among them tens of millions of Americans among them who are successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and (increasingly) tech titans. People who are able to use their brains and effect change and progress in their own lives.
And even among the less conventionally successful who place their hopes in Trump, isn't there a large population of Conservative Americans who ostensibly take their own lives and affairs very seriously, doing exactly the stuff that you have to do to be effective in any domain, public or private? Like, you can't even run a church bake sale with such feckless preparation! You just can't be an adult and be this unserious without your life just falling apart. And most people are at least semi-functional. So it just doesn't add up for me.
I think this fits in with what JVL of the Bulwark wrote recently: support for Trump is a sign of a decadent society where people don't have skin in the game/they don't think a Trump presidency will have negative consequences for *them*. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/did-the-elites-really-fail-us
Distrust of experts is a classic American problem. Andrew Jackson's campaign song in the 1820s was "The Hunters of Kentucky", a song mythologizing his untrained country boy riflemen in the Battle of New Orleans who didn't actually contribute to the battle's victory. This vein of our culture is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
This totally makes sense, but I'm going to apply the reality test to it: do most Americans in their daily lives really disregard expertise? I don't mean in specific, politicized domains like public health. I mean EVERYTHING. People do go to the doctor (and Americans are even willing to pay many multiples of what the average global citizen for the privilege!). They wouldn't hire their idiot cousin to build the bridge they use daily. Nor are they going to step onto the top of a rocket that's not got an army of PhDs with notepads around it.
They say there are no atheists in the foxhole, but in my experience, there are not that many expertise skeptics when the issue is life or death. So why when it comes to governance, which REALLY matters, actually, people are just like "LOL, WHATEVS!"
Yes, they do. There is a reason you have commercials advertising products “invented by a mom” and movies like Dave exist. People really do like to imagine that the world isn’t so complex, that in fact it is the experts who are wrong.
Much like disregarding expertise feels personally costly when you're badly injured but not so when being asked to take a vaccine for a disease you don't think you'll get, it may also feel costly when you think functional government is personally important to you and not costly when you don't. Most of these people seem to not understand that government administers many functions of their everyday life so efficiently that it is effectively invisible to them.
"Like, we're really going to have a Fox News host run the entire Department of Defense when we're arguably in Cold War 2.0!? Even if you like and agree with the guy, he just doesn't have anywhere near the chops for that gig! Most of us wouldn't, either!"
I think the key to understanding this crew is that when they use the word "we" they are not actually talking about the de jure United States, its de jure institutions, and its de jure citizenry. To them their "nation" - their "United States" - comprises only a certain subset of this country, and their main enemy isn't China or Russia or any other foreign regime. Their main enemy is liberalism, whether foreign or domestic. If their nation is facing a crisis, the crisis is the threat of liberalism. If they need plans and experience, the plans and experience they need are ones that can combat and defeat liberalism.
How did China "play him"? Trump's administration singularly changed the direction of >20 years of trade policy - to such a degree - that it became a bipartisan position and subsequently Biden only strengthened the trade barriers. China is in an emphatically worse position now than in 2015.
Again, I think Trump was right that the China-US status quo wasn't tenable. But it's actually doing something about it that he failed utterly on his own terms. Here let me examine the much-discussed economic war between the two countries during the meat of his term:
Specifically, Trump came back from his first May 2018 Washington summit with the Chinese with a "Mission Accomplished" grin, announcing that the Chinese are gonna buy all our soybeans and the trade deficit disappears. Says the same thing later in December. They meet again the next June at the G20. Trump pretends they had another deal in August at G7. Then they're gonna by the soybeans again in October. The in January 2020, we're back again with the soybean-buying, in the form of the US–China Phase One trade deal struck in Washington to take effect in Feb. By the end of 2020, the deal is declared a total failure.
The Chinese never intended to buy all those soybeans. It never made any sense. After two years of meetings and all the self-congratulation and false-starts. They played and embarrassed him. And they'll do it again and again and again for the next four years. The trade deficit with China is now the biggest it ever has been. I won't be surprised if, for all the "decoupling" bluster, that deficit will only grow further.
As I've talked before with all the nonsense around China's EVs, Reuters has great reporting on China. Here's how impactful the Round I tariffs were, "Trump's tariffs of 25% on $370 billion of Chinese imports helped reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China from $418 billion in 2018 to $279 billion in 2023." That was and still is - because factories as still shifting as a result of Biden's continuity / acceleration - a MASSIVE impact.
That article is a devastating indictment of the Trump trade war. If that's what you consider winning, I don't know what losing might look like.
I am perfectly open to the argument that Trump blew up the bad Republican consensus on China trade, and then Biden did intelligent things with it. Unfortunately what Trump was actually bad, and now he's back to do more of it.
Losing looks a lot like China right now. Again -- this thread goes back to Geoffrey G saying (1) "China played Trump" and (2) "he failed utterly on his own terms". That's just not true. China's share of US trade deficit has dropped from ~ 50% in 2015 to 25% last year has shifted out of China to Mexico and Vietnam. That's a great global development, even if it was Trump who got the ball rolling.
Keep in mind that prior to Trump's first election the establishment trade policy plan was TPP, which was very clearly an effort at Chinese economic containment.
The Bernie/Trump pincer movement killed that, but it's clear that elite consensus was already shifting towards hostility to China; they just thought that tariffs were a stupid way to do it, because tariffs are usually stupid.
You're right about this, David, and since Trump was the one who initiated the policy change, you can't ignore his role. Yet given how belligerent China has become under Xi, I strongly doubt that any President would have continued the previous policies.
As we've seen, Republican sentiment tanks during Democratic administrations, and vice versa. But the world keeps turning. With a few notable exceptions, I think the president has a limited ability to steer events, and the idea of someone being in charge is mostly a cope.
But another thing to keep in mind is that "Black Swan" type events, in particular, have high contingency. That is to say that they can often hinge on a single variable. And that single variable can be in the power of a political leader and their policy. Even if it's inadvertent.
That's especially true when you widen the lens to the pre-causes of events and their resolutions. The COVID vaccines were possible because some people got grant funding years back to conduct mRNA research, a then-backwater of science. A series of leaders said "yes" enough time that that research got funded.
Specifically, in 2008-2010, DARPA had launched the biotechnology research program ADEPT to develop emerging technologies for the US military. That was under the Obama Administration. But it was certainly in the planning stages under Bush, when his people likely saw it as something salient to the GWOT and defense against pathogen-based WMDs. That DARPA then awarded a $25 million grant to Moderna that eventually led to a mRNA COVID vaccine is thanks to decisions made a whole generation earlier for totally different intended outcomes.
And, of course, some key decisions (and key mistakes) both prolonged and worsened the pandemic, but also foreshortened the vaccine development. Trump also signed off on Operation Warp Speed. Would he do that today, given the politicization of vaccines since? Probably not! That's contingency!
I said something the day after the election that was, basically, we just need to focus on what he and his administration actually do and respond precisely to that rather than chasing around his rambling bullshit, shitposting, and trolling. Resistance this time around means responding effectively to the pieces on the board and not exhausting ourselves via hyperventilation before anything has actually happened.
So ends the worst period of waiting. Now it gets real. Now we will have specific things to respond to.
I think the "watch what he does not what he says" mantra has maybe gone too far. In every other walk of life, people try to anticipate actions by powerful actors.
In addition, discourse is a big part of how policy develops, especially for Trump, who is pretty purely motivated by what he can get away with. Countries around the world right now are trying to signal there will be pushback to Trump's bullying instincts, to nip in the bud trade wars.
So for sure there is a need to pick battles. But there is no need to be purely reactive.
The problem with responding to what he says in order to deter his actions is that it requires too much precision, judgment, and discretion. Actions have consequences; words may or may not be meaningful. Does anyone doubt that in a month (a week?) no one will ever be talking about Greenland again? Or that it was simply a way for Trump to draw attention to himself, change the subject and rile people up? We react far too much to his words, like kittens chasing a laser pointer. Let's try ignoring those words and just focus on actions for a while and see how it goes.
I recommend Democrats resist resisting in a way that frames much of what Trump pursues in nefarious ways. He’s a bully, etc. I saw some framing like that around Greenland. If we can make a deal with them why shouldn’t we (being the US). Framing it as bad comes off as anti-American.
Make counter arguments to the masses. Trump is bad in every thing he does is an argument that. Argue on the merits now.
I’m ready for some real policy debates. Let’s hear it.
As Binya said below, if you're simply reacting, you're too slow. You must anticipate a dangerous adversary's likely moves and counter them. That means parsing out a lot of the ranting and zone-flooding-of-shit for where the sucker punch is coming. At least if you have the agency to do something about it, as most democratic citizens do more than they realize, in ways big and small.
Trump is unpredictable, but he also at least tries to do much of what he says. When he hits resistance, he often quietly folds. But that requires deterrence, as in the military sphere. You don't want to be a soft target.
The extent to which Biden has acted to undermine the justice system in his final days has astonished me.
In issuing the pardon for his son, he accuses his own Justice Department of pursuing a politically-motivated prosecution and then says the jury system cannot be trusted to deliver a judgement in the case of a politically-connected person like his son.
This morning, he has issued preemptive pardons for Fauci, Milley and the January 6 commission, while stating that he doesn't believe they have committed any crimes. Effectively, Biden is saying the criminal justice system cannot be trusted to deliver justice for politically-connected people.
These are the same bogus and irresponsible talking points Trump has used in his defense against criminal charges in state and federal courts. I think they are both wrong.
Another view is that this is false equivalence. The reason Trump was, unprecedentedly for a former president, indicted for so many things, convicted of a felony and held civilly liable for assault is that he engaged in cosmically more criminal and tortious activity than any of his predecessors. Biden would appear to be convinced, with good reason, that Trump will not rest until the rule of law in the United States is utterly dead and that his MAGA courts will be his accomplices, so that this is the only way to ensure that his admittedly deadbeat son is not jailed for the 54-year sentencing guideline maximum he could otherwise face and that innocent public servants who would otherwise incur, at a minimum, million-dollar legal bills, and maybe worse, do not become Pam Bondi's political prisoners. Sadly I find it difficult to believe that this is unreasonable or unrealistic. Believe bad people with power when they tell you what they are going to do.
That last part really is key. Neither Biden nor any of his advisers campaigned or even made noise about going after Trump or his people, quibble about the details, but even in NY the legal process was used in a normal way, by normal, albeit as always flawed, human beings.
That simply isn't the case with Trump or the people he is appointing. He really has said these people should be prosecuted for doing exactly what was their job under the Constitution, and he has said he'll appoint people who will do that, AND he's nominated people who themselves have publicly stated that's what they'll do or what should happen.
Trump lies so consistently about everything that it does make it near impossible to predict his actual behaviors. That's really abnormal in human beings, so the people that Trump is appointing probably are not pathological liars in the same way Trump is. If Kash Patel, soon to be head of the FBI, says all these people should be investigated and prosecuted it's probable that he means it. There is no real check on his ability to immiserate and persecute people, even if maybe the court system would eventually not allow them to be imprisoned.
I don't like what Biden is choosing, but I think he is facing a Hobbesian choice. Trump and his minions are going to under cut the rule of law by abusing their power, and Biden is empowered to mitigate that harm. The cost of that mitigation is a possible undermining of the perception of the integrity of the Justice Department.
This makes zero sense. If Trump creates frivilous prosecutions it would backfire on him when they are thrown our of court. Biden has helped Trump by casting suspicion on all the people he pardoned, and he severely damaged the country: 1. by giving credence to Trump's dangerous libels against the justic system 2. creating a terrible precedent where people in power can expect impunity granted to them by the president. This encourages criminal behavior by people in charge who will prioritize loyalty to potus over the rule of all . EXACTALY teh precedent you don't want set just before Trump returns to power! Our only hope is that SCOTUS declares preemptive pardons unconstitutional.
How does a case being thrown out backfire on Trump? He issues a statement, by which I mean he sends out a Tweet denouncing these out of control judges. Somewhat more soberly the Justice department issues a statement that says we believe the judge made a mistake in this case and we're going to examine all our options including appeal on these charges or bringing separate charges.
All of which is sort of beside the point, because the punishment is really in the investigation. If the federal government comes after you, your life is turned upside down and put on a hellish hold. All of your time and all of your money will be consumed with dealing with it.
The FBI will subpoena every electronic record and every piece of paper you have ever touched. Every employer you've ever had will turn over your file. Everyone you've ever written a check to, including nieces and nephews on their birthdays, will have to go to an FBI office and give a statement, where they'll be asked all sorts of terrible questions having nothing to do with anything. "Did Uncle TH ever touch you inappropriately?" Then they'll ask your siblings and their spouses the same questions. Every colleague you work with now or have worked with in the past will be interviewed by the FBI. Every volunteer group you've ever been part of, same thing. And the FBI will ask them terrible questions, and sooner or later, everyone but maybe your closest family members and friends will decide seeing you isn't worth the hassle, and will also start to wonder, well if the FBI is checking doesn't that mean they have something? Maybe, three years and all your retirement savings later you'll get a judge to throw out he charges, or worse have to go to trial and hope it ends well.
I strongly disagree. The people targeted have a serious public profile. They have the means to defend themselves and they very very easily crowdfund much more. Yes, it won't be comfy and cosy for them, but the life of a public servant at the upper echelons of society isn't supposed to be comfy and cosy. The inconvenience of undergoing and thwarting a frivolous investigation is the *least* they could to fight for democracy, if it is indeed on the line as they claim. Previous generations of leaders went to prison, suffered bodily harm and died in the cause of freedom. But this generations of leaders are cowards who talk the talk but won't lift a finger to actually protect the institutions of this country. Instead they actually join in in ruining these very institutions because they put their own momentary comfort above their country and its future.
"Yes, it won't be comfy and cosy for them, but the life of a public servant at the upper echelons of society isn't supposed to be comfy and cosy."
Whoa, no. This is completely wrong. Senior public servants should not expect that they are signing up for a life of living hell just for doing their jobs if the other party gets into power. You can't have a public service like that.
Which judges do you have in mind as candidates for throwing indictments out of court? - Matthew Kacsmaryk? Aileen Cannon? James Ho? One of the several MAGA hacks on the Supreme Court? Actually I hope you are right, but doesn't it really hinge on what one thinks is likely to happen in the new administration? If you think that Trump is an incompetent, incurious, grifting buffoon, who will simply try a bunch of performative stunts with little long-term impact on the rude good health of American democracy, then of course the Biden pardons just look plumb silly. But if you think there's a risk that the toxic combination of the Stephen Miller/Claremont Review types whispering in his ear and Heil Elon and the other tech zillionaires high on Ayn Rand and the Classic Comix version of Nietzsche helping him out actually ends with Pinochet mood music, political opponents in outdoor detention in major urban stadiums or pitched out of helicopters, with the rest of the MAGA panoply of sadism front and center, then I get it. Obviously the latter is extreme and hopefully unlikely, but Biden was clearly worried about the risk, and after yesterday's charming spectacle, if I were him, I wouldn't bet the safety of innocent civil servants and patriotic military officers against it, let alone that of my son.
I'm not a lawyer but I don't think a pardon guarantees that you don't get hassled by Justice, the FBI, or even Congress. At the most, you can hope a judge would throw out any warrants or indictments eventually.
Yes, this is a huge factor in why I think a lot of these pardons were mistakes. If someone is already willing to pursue a frivolous prosecution against a party, a pardon is not going to prevent them from pursuing that prosecution if they want to waste the resources on it.
If only we had a way to prevent the executive branch from convicting its enemies. Some sort of separation of powers would have helped, and if, on top of that, we also made sure the power to convict would be in the hands of ordinary citizens then that would have been great? But we don't have all that, so clearly we need to give total impunity to people in power so they literally cannot be held accountable for anything they did while in office. All that is surely very democratic and totally justified /s
It's really poor to ignore the justifications given for actions then rail against motives you appear to have made up. Biden explicitly said he is concerned about the harms of meritless prosecutions. Not convictions.
Do you disagree with that? Specifically in a case where a President who is himself a convicted felon nominates an FBI director with an enemies list, on which these individuals were included? Whose AG nominee holds much of her wealth in the President's meme stock?
Should nothing be done to prevent a justice system run by such people to torment people as much as they can, on the premise that so long as people are ultimately exonerated, the time and money spent defending themselves is irrelevant?
EDIT: I was reminded Fauci is already the victim of harassment including death threats which have led to arrests. Arrests the Kash Patel FBI might not be so interested in making. Does this dedicated public servant deserve no protection?
I’d like to make a dismissive wanking gesture in the direction of the phrase “this dedicated public servant.” At best, he is a self-aggrandizing bureaucratic empire builder who is dumb enough to explain to the New York Times exactly how he lies to the public; at worst, he lied to Congress about funding programs they prohibited and covered it up. This is not Ted Williams giving up a baseball career to fly fighter planes in Korea.
Wait, are you saying that Anthony Fauci, who has been one of the few public health figures to ever learn anything and change his mind and improve policy, both regarding hiv and later other diseases, is *not* a dedicated public servant?
I don't think you intended it this way, but this has a very "damned by faint praise" vibe to it. I do concur that, whatever his failings, he's certainly a dedicated public servant.
A lot of people have unrealistic expectations of what expertise and skill can do, and so they are incredibly disappointed by real experts with real skill, and say that they should be eliminated. I want to preserve a realistic expectation of the real value they provide.
Correct. I am saying that "dedicated public servant" implies some level of personal sacrifice in serving the public, but for whatever positive attributes he has, he is in his career because he wants to be in charge of people and things.
Wow you know approximately nothing about Fauci, incredibly. Barely perusing his wiki page would get you a better view and you couldn’t be bothered to even do that.
Thanks to the blanket pardon I guess we’ll never get an investigation into whether he was actually covering up illegally-funded research or whether he was enacting a Saddam-style coverup of nothing just because he doesn’t think public records rules apply to people as important as him, so I guess his Wikipedia article can remain unsullied.
"I am saying that "dedicated public servant" implies some level of personal sacrifice in serving the public"
Huh? "Personal sacrifice" like what? Wearing sackcloth and ashes? A vow of poverty? A pathological aversion to being "in charge of people and things"? (how would anybody be a senior public servant without being in charge of anything?)
I'm not saying Fauci's policy judgement is beyond criticism but I'm genuinely trying to figure out what you expect here.
It's clear to me that Congress *should* move to severely curtail presidential pardon powers, make clear that as an institution they will fight executive impoundment tooth and nail, and also pass legislation clarifying that the executive has to enforce laws they pass (tiktok ban being a clarifying example of how much contempt the executive branch has developed for the article one branch), or some other means if limiting the broadening scope of executive orders.
>It's clear to me that Congress *should* move to severely curtail presidential pardon powers,
Congress does not have this power. It is one of the very few cases where not even the most pro-legislative jurist would allow them to do this, because the Constitution pretty much says in plain language that the President "shall have" the power to grant pardons in any and all federal cases except impeachment cases.
That's crazy talk, Jacob! Next, you'll be suggesting that members of Congress should introduce bills to pare back some of the dozens of statutes giving Presidents broad emergency powers that those same members of Congress complained about Trump abusing last time he was in office!
"...pass legislation clarifying that the executive has to enforce laws they pass..."
1) Who would enforce that legislation?
2) (More importantly) it's impossible for every bit of legislation to be enforced everywhere. We will never catch everyone violating speeding laws, and there's that "3 felony a day" meme that certainly has a kernel of truth. Functional government will always require some form of prosecutorial discretion, but it depends on good-faith cooperation between politicians and justice types who may not agree about everything. That is what we are lacking, and I don't know how to get it (back).
I don't like the pardons. But when Trump says he's going to pursue his enemies for retribution then you just have to take him seriously. There's no way to do it later, outside of the current window. The optimal behavior from the recipients would be to lash out angrily about receiving them while still being protected and that's what they're doing. Biden's feelings can absorb the ingratitude.
So RIP rule of law, but taking legal harassment off the table is the right move. And the public proved that it currently DGAF about rule of law in the election so there's no norm to protect. The pardons won't be an issue in 2028.
Spare me the outrage. Agent Orange ran explicitly on punishing his political enemies and using the justice system against them. Does anyone think Kash Patel will tell him, “but Mr. President, that’s unethical/illegal”?
Would you trust Kash Patel not to try to ruin these people's lives? Isn't it worth a mass to offer them some protections from the stated and desired wishes for persecution coming from Trump appointees?
Accusing Biden of undermining the justice system in view of the incoming administration is truly to focus on the mote and not the plank in one's eye.
President Trump didn't even do this upon his departure 4 years ago. But we can be sure he will do so in 4 years, and will use the same justification and same language Biden used today.
It is a bad decision, and one I suspect die hard partisans will come to regret.
Consider that perhaps Trump didn’t do it because the risk of bad-faith prosecution of his family members by more normal people who, unlike him, are not avatars of vindictive mendacious narcissism, was very low.
I'm fine if Trump pardons his family. Because no Democratic President would launch a baseless prosecution of them. And if they did commit chargeable crimes, I'm hoping state AGs would step up to fill the void.
This trying to draw an equivalence between Trump and Biden is really something. Trump is sui generis in a bad, bad, bad way. The threat of him calls for unprecedented actions, like Biden just took.
"President Trump didn't even do this upon his departure 4 years ago."
A simple explanation for this is as follows: Republicans are far more likely to engage in weaponized abuse (see definition below) of the justice system to punish their political enemies than Democrats are, and *both sides know this*. Trump didn't feel any need to pardon his family because Biden's FBI nominee was not going to be anyone even remotely like Kash Patel.
("Weaponized abuse" = initiation of prosecution based on reasons other than objective evaluations of evidence and understandings of the law and precedent).
Donald Trump has promised to lock up his political enemies and nominated people with explicit enemies lists. That’s really very dark stuff.
What’s far more bleak is that the entire conservative movement, including supposed libertarians and conservative legal scholars, have embraced the idea that President Trump is constitutionally entitled to direct the entirety of the DOJ’s resources to punishment of Trump’s political enemies.
I think the absolute surety that people have that this is because of Trump and not because of bad behavior on the part of at least some of the people Biden pardoned is a large assumption. I get why people are making that assumption, but I think we are better off at least holding judgment until after Biden's been out of office for a bit and some of the dirty laundry can be aired. Matt has made the point that this administration has been the most lead proof in memory. It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't something to air out.
Today’s pardons open the door for the Supreme Court to curtail the President’s pardon power, such as by holding that unless the person receiving a preemptive pardon admits some guilt, there’s nothing to pardon. It’s one thing for the president himself to have limited immunity, but it’s quite another to extend that to allowing the President to give anyone working for him a license to violate any federal law with impunity.
In the presidential immunity decision, seeing ahead to trump’s return to office, the Court, basically said they were anticipating and trying to prevent a vicious cycle where Presidents prosecute their predecessors. That same logic could justify the court invalidating these preemptive pardons of people who admit no wrongdoing. The Court might use Biden’s actions today to preemptively trim Trump’s ability to supersize this practice.
This assumes, of course, that the Trump administration actually tries to prosecute one of these people despite the preemptive pardons, so that there is a live case for the courts to rule on.
I think Allan’s argument is that because the power only extends to “Offences,” you can’t pardon in the absence of a conviction or admission of guilt. It’s similiar to how the Court read the term “cases and controversies” to preclude issuing advisory opinions.
Otherwise, your position is that the President couldn’t constitutionally pardon a wrongly convicted person, which would be news to nearly everyone with even a superficial knowledge of the subject.
Well, nothing in the text you quoted defines what a "pardon" is. For that you have to look outside the text. Is any attempt by the President to relieve someone of the consequences of violating a federal law allowed, so long as the President remembers to slap the label "pardon" onto it? No, obviously not. I'm certainly haven't read all Supreme Court's or the English cases defining the scope of what is or isn't a valid presidential or royal pardon, but there are limits. For example, it's generally understood that even if the President calls it a "pardon" an attempt by the President to immunize future lawbreaking isn't a valid pardon. And the degree of specificity required for a valid pardon is also unclear -- in Burdick v. US the Court said a pardon isn't effective unless accepted by the recipient, and that a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it". How specific does that confession need to be to be a valid acceptance of a pardon? etc. etc.
I think this is overall well-put, except that I’m not sure I agree with this:
“ Is any attempt by the President to relieve someone of the consequences of violating a federal law allowed, so long as the President remembers to slap the label "pardon" onto it?”
I would argue that this pretty clearly *is* allowed under the pardon power as I presently understand it.
It wouldn’t be a valid pardon if on day one of the President’s term the president gave someone a document that said, I hereby pardon any offenses against the United States that you may commit between today and January 20, 2029. And I’m pretty sure if I read all the US and English cases I could come up with other examples that don’t involve future conduct…..
I think that prospective pardons may ineffective, but I read your statement as referring to past offenses. Also, one could presumably issue an illegal order to an executive officer with the promise of a pardon, and then just issue that pardon, so I’m not sure it isn’t a distinction without a difference. Would be interested to know of any examples that don’t involve future conduct (and granting that non-criminal consequences like lack of granting a security clearance on the basis of a since- pardoned offense would be out of scope.)
I mean, the 10th Circuit specifically answered this question. Accepting a pardon does not require any admission of guilt. And there is no historical record supporting your assertion. Even the Supreme Court’s dicta on the subject doesn’t suggest an actual legal requirement of an admission-it merely provides an explanation that some people might choose not to accept a pardon because other people might view that as the decision of a guilty person. This isn’t even a close question of law.
Yes, but it doesn’t adopt entirely fictional positions adopted by loons.
So it goes Allen Thoen < 10th Circuit < Supreme Court.
Given that we only have your unhinged ramblings and the 10th Circuit’s well reasoned opinion (which discusses the dicta on the subject from the Supreme Court), we’re squarely in a world where no person with actual knowledge of the subject believes that accepting a pardon requires some sort of confession to a crime.
The definition of pardon is well known, and is unchanged from the time the Constitution was written. A pardon for a future transgression is illogical and not really worth discussing.
It’s actually pretty clear that accepting a pardon does not require admitting anything. Nothing in the constitution suggests that, and the DOJ itself has explicit guidelines for granting pardons in cases of wrongful conviction.
I wish I agreed with you, but I think they (Trump and Biden) are both right! The criminal justice system in this country was not built to handle the phenomenon of ultra-partisan, ultra-high-profile criminal cases. Once a case reaches that point, everyone involved's incentives change dramatically. Prosecutors start imagining the star power of being the prosecutor on such a high-profile case, and the adoration they will get for owning a disfavored enemy of the other side. Jurors bring their own partisan perspective, analyzing the case from the perspective of its political impact rather than its mere substance. Judges especially (and we've seen this a lot with the Trump cases) are either extreme partisans with a preferred outcome, or else they are desperately afraid of becoming a hate topic on one side or the other's partisan media. Pretty much the only person involved in the trial whose only incentive is still doing their job correctly is the defense attorney.
I mean, Biden sadly might not be wrong here: "Effectively, Biden is saying the criminal justice system cannot be trusted to deliver justice for politically-connected people." But it's not just politically-connected people who cannot rely upon an objective criminal justice system that has become undermined and politicized.
But then he also, as you said, subverted that same justice system by reaching over and giving his own son a pardon. That is so indefensible I almost consider it treasonous. He really betrayed every Americans' trust with that outrageous breach of duty.
I'm not arguing against the idea that prosecutors can act in ways that are politicized. I think that is wrong, as I've stated on these pages many times. But prosecutors act on the priorities of the politician who appoints them.
But Biden has done something worse with these actions. He is saying the ultimate end of the justice system -- a jury of your peers deciding a case and a judge administering a sentence -- cannot be trusted. That is the part that is most corrosive to the justice system.
The problem is that he is only ratifying the claim that his successor has made - Trump has specifically *campaigned* on making the justice system a tool of partisan warfare, with no interest in whether or not crimes were committed, and all Biden is doing with this specific set of pardons is lamenting that and agreeing that Trump is planning to destroy the justice system.
"all Biden is doing with this specific set of pardons is lamenting that and agreeing that Trump is planning to destroy the justice system."
That may be some of what he is doing. But we are making assumptions when we say its all he is doing. Biden has been president for four years in the most leak proof administration in memory. Are you that certain there hasn't been at least some shady stuff going on here?
He's not just protecting against a conviction (which is unlikely), but more against the *prosecution*, which can be incredibly costly and damaging in and of itself.
But Trump has been explicit that his priority is prosecuting his political opponents. He plainly doesn’t care if even a plausible crime is implicated-he never bothers to even suggest it matters.
And the legal position of conservative legal scholars today is that Trump has the explicit constitutional authority to require the DOJ to investigate and prosecute his political enemies. What will be interesting is if he has prosecutions initiated in single judge divisions of the Northern District of Texas to ensure only MAGA judges decide these cases.
I'm not usually one to worry about setting precedent that enables Trump, because I don't think he feels bound by precedent in any case. But I'll admit to not feeling great about Biden's preemptive pardons today. I think it makes it meaningfully more likely that at some point Trump just gives everyone in his administration a preemptive pardon and tells them to go wild.
And maybe he was going to do that anyway. But he didn't last time, and he might not have this time, but for Biden planting an idea in his head.
Trump has at various points made explicit threats to use the justice department against these people. I don't think the pre-emptive pardon was the right move, but I find it understandable. Harrassing prosecution is tremendous detriment even if ultimately the jury system doesn't ultimately go along.
But, it's the wrong move ultimately because it's a normal breaking expansion of an ultimately dangerous presidential power.
He didn't say any of that. Those pardons are because Trump has specifically promised to weaponize our justice system against them. Even if they weren't convicted, the harassment would be the point, and these pardons seak to circumvent that. There is an enourmous gulf between "Trump will harass these specific people" and "our justice system can't be trusted at all".
To be fair, Trump has explicitly promised politically motivated prosecutions and conservative legal thinkers have taken the position that he’s entitled to bring those cases. Difficult spot to be in as a nation.
Alright, now that it's all over, I have to ask, who was actually calling the shots the last four years? Joe Biden obviously outsourced a lot of thinking to "the groups," but specifically who? Was Jill Biden influential? What just happened for four years?
I don't understand why he didn't include Trump in the pardons.* Demos has spoken, so let's just flush and start with a fresh bowl. It would take the wind out of the vengeance sails, highlight how petty, childish and very-online MAGA is, blunt criticism of the other pardons, provide contrast to the J6 thugs Trump says he'll pardon and focus the opposition on the here and now.
* I mean other than the fact that he surrounded by people who think that Kamala lost because she didn't go too far enough with the threat to democracy rhetoric.
A really good way to include Trump would be to pardon Trump for a specific set of charges, or a specific set of years, while still leaving Jan 6 unpardoned.
This is what's most frustrating about contemporary American politics: most voters seem to be amazingly incurious at best and genuinely not care at worst about actual policy.
Like, I'm a progressive, but I'm totally in agreement with some of Trump's animal instincts on being tough on China, supporting American manufacturing, shaking the Europeans and other allies out of their free-rider-ism and strategic drift, and even the need for a more rule-of-law-based immigration regime. But what's the actual policy!?
It's like, "LOL, who cares! We're WINNING!!!:
Because the other aspect of it is that there's a range of policy options that we can go with here. Let's say we're *actually* going to deport illegal immigrants. That's something that's already happened under every American president, Democrat or Republican, during my lifetime, btw. But if we're *REALLY* gonna do it big? Like, to the tune of millions of resident undocumented? Well, how, exactly? It's a pretty big job, as anyone could understand examining it for more than two seconds. I might suggest that cracking down on workplaces that knowingly hire undocumented immigrants is the most optimal way to channel limited enforcement resources toward higher deportation outcomes. But that's not something that Republicans are going to be interested in, I expect, since it may just affect their own businesses or at least inconvenience an economy that currently runs on the back of undocumented farm workers, restaurant bussers/cooks, yard-workers, home healthcare aids, construction crews, etc.
And, if we aren't going to do that, well, we're probably going to need to be super-maxxing the funding and capacity of the DHS/ICE, the long-backlogged immigration courts and the overcrowded containment facilities we already have. That's gonna cost us! So, where's the money coming from? More taxes? Nah! We'll just use magic to pretend that it gets paid for by nixing some progressive program that doesn't actually cost very much and therefore could never shake lose sufficient funding, right?
Which shows that they're not actually so serious about this mass deportation thing. If you value something, you plan for it, pay for it, and bear the other costs, too (including labor shortages). We don't value this enough to actually do all that, so we don't really value this, in practice. So, that's just one issue, but allegedly of primary importance. But has anyone even done the homework?
I could go on about any other MAGA bugbear that a Conservative might want, but that just bores people. They want the emotional thrill of sayin' stuff without having to dedicate the frustrating effort required to actually make it happen in reality. Trump is the same. He has no patience for details. And he just fires people who tell him confounding information like, "Mr. President, we can either have this thing or that thing, but not both..." So, not that much gets done. Except for nominating judges, cutting taxes, and firing off tweets. That stuff is easy!
+1. Even in “serious” policy circles, I have come across many, many people who pride themselves on their “big picture” focus. One needs to consider that, of course. But in my experience that usually means “I find attention to detail tedious and don’t want to do it.”
As Matt has often explored, this is something that leads Democratic leaders to lean on and have their paths be dictated by "The Groups." If you don't have the time or prioritized strategic focus to parse details and get the execution right, you might just outsource it all to a committee of people who care about siloed details that they are self-interested in, making for an unwieldy, inefficient, and often contradictory and self-defeating monster of a policy. The "Everything Bagel Approach to Liberalism."
By contrast, you could say that the prime goals is X (e.g. an optimal and politically sustainable, long-term strategy to meet the treaty-bound commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement and to mitigate damage to the United States from likely Climate Change scenarios in the decades to come). That requires difficult trade-offs and a lot of don't-let-the-perfect-be-the-enemy-of-the-good policy drafting. And it requires a solid vision and a compelling "Why?" for everyone who is going to be pulled into this objective. Like, sorry, team, but DEI is secondary to this initiative because WE'RE TRYING TO SAVE THE FUCKING WORLD FOR PEOPLE OF ALL GENDERS AND COLORS. And, yeah, btw, I'm gonna need you to stop pretending that your own favorite solution to this mega-problem is the only one, instead of one of many, so nuclear wolves, y'all gonna sit down with the solar lambs and BE NICE because we're gonna get this done together, fam, and we will allow zero whining on our way to winning! *CUE SIGNATURE POWER CHORD*
Or, if it's Trump, it's saying, I'm going to rid the country of them illegals at all costs! And that means that I need a Patriotic American Fee to pay for Our Nation's Finest deportation force, that I need y'all to be patient with some short-term inflation, and that we should *relish* that sacrifices and difficulties and criticisms we face in actually doing this because it means that we're different and better than the squishies who didn't have the nerve to do this before!
This kind of focus (at least rhetorically) has almost become right-coded today. But it was in evidence with lions of liberalism like FDR. It's how you get the big stuff done!
While I agree with the don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good in theory––one of the ways I think about big picture vs detail oriented is big picture is focused on outcome while detail is focused on process. At the end of the day, getting the outcome that is necessary to resolve the issue is what matters most. I think ironically so much of the details(as you mentioned above gets outsourced to the groups and the outcome gets watered-down so no one is happy). For me the issue is its not enough to be detail-oriented unless the details will actually lead to the desired outcome. I absolutely believe in trade-offs but politically they end up tanking administrations unless those trade-offs are calibrated to a public that is pissed-off at the status quo. At a certain point you get to the Thomas Sewell quote: "There are no solutions, only trade-offs" at which point the public flips the table and says "solve the fucking problem or get the fuck out." That is where we are now. The problem is there are no FDRs and i'm not sure FDR could get what he accomplished today because of 1) the political environment today and 2)the reality that he was only able to go as big as he did because of the true direness of the Great Depression/World War II which was really 1000 times worse than any of the problems were dealing with today.
I agree with you on process v outcome and the need for calibration of tradeoffs. Part of my frustration as a policy person nominally on the leftish side (I have never identified as a "progressive") is the insistence of some on the left on pursuing outcomes that are nearly or actually impossible to achieve, often in an ahistorical fashion. To get "there" from "here," you need to figure out what might be a workable path. Often that requires knowledge and consideration of the details.
My comment above might suggest otherwise, but I don't think the big picture and the details are mutually exclusive. I've just seen numerous examples where more attention to detail might have avoided an unfortunate outcome.
Absolutely my belief is that what is needed is both and type thinking rather than either or type thinking in order to create the outcome you want. The details need to be worked out and aligned with the overall goal to ensure the best outcome. The problem so often is that the incentives/motivations(as well as the cognitive models) of outcome oriented vs detail oriented people are often not aligned or in opposition.
I know. I can't even take my own household full of conscientious and progressive people to take Climate Change all that seriously, much less most anyone else out there, so it's clearly something we're just not going to solve.
(Until it gets so bad-ly bad that we don't have much control over the mitigation anymore and just have to do a all-hands-on-deck effort at desperate adaptation).
I guess I'll be able to say "I told you so," at least. But, the Prophet Jeremiah didn't feel much satisfaction at being right about the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah. And it's lonely among the chorus of those who have told us that we're headed towards doom in our lifetimes.
My (non-US) experience is similar, although I'd add that there are a lot of people who are reasonably good at one or the other, they just don't talk to each other anywhere near often enough! So you have bureaucrats who know their policy areas (the law, tradeoffs, stakeholders, interests, history etc.) inside out, but they rarely interact deeply with political types with ambition of delivering particular outcomes. It's when you get teams comprised of both types (or more rarely where you get an exceptional workaholic politician who does both) that real change is doable.
Yes. It is incredibly frustrating. I live in a blue city, and on this side of the aisle it is very similar. Our mayor is stepping down. So far we have four candidates. So far I have heard them talk about how bad crime, housing costs, losing businesses has been under the current mayor. (Some of these claims, when I looked them up, weren't even true.) OK, fine. But how do YOU propose to fix these complicated issues? Time will tell as we get closer to the election, but so far the electorate doesn't seem to care about the answers.
So you’re saying that turning government into a reality TV show was a bad idea? I don’t know man, the ratings are great and advertisers are making a killing.
"I'm totally in agreement with some of Trump's animal instincts on being tough on China, supporting American manufacturing, shaking the Europeans and other allies out of their free-rider-ism and strategic drift, and even the need for a more rule-of-law-based immigration regime. But what's the actual policy!?"
Canadian here. Fair points. Internally there is a lot of criticism from the Canadian conservatives towards Trudeau/Liberal party for being lax on immigration and defence. (and the Liberals are set to get walloped in the next election for those reasons among others). OK! But when Trump repeatedly muses about turning us into the 51st state (and believe me every time Trump says that it's front page news up here. It pisses us off.), we're all like "whoa, what's this really about? What does he really want?" It actually makes us *less* likely to do as he asks, because we don't think those requests are in good faith. The Liberals are 20 points underwater right now but might actually get re-elected if Trump keeps running his mouth like this.
"NATO allies should spend more on defence". OK, sure. Then Trump goes an talks about invading Greenland, the territory of a NATO ally! So now we're all wondering "is there still a NATO? Who are our allies and who are our enemies, really?" From up here it looks like our number one enemy is now the United States of America.
“Republicans have pivoted to working on budget reconciliation instructions that will make all of TCJA permanent and offset the cost by repealing most or all of the IRA climate funding, and also cutting student loans and various programs for the poor.”
Every time a liberal says this we need to scream that these numbers DO NOT ADD UP. JCT estimated that ALL IRA green energy credits were about $400 billion. The extension of the current TCJA * with no new cuts * is estimated to be $3.4 TRILLION. And they want new cuts, ranging from this dumb tips idea, to partially or fully reinstating the SALT deduction cap, to removing the corporate alternative minimum tax, and to (of course) defunding the IRS funding from the IRA, which * costs money *.
The republicans are the party of fiscal irresponsibility.
The full 10 percent tariff on everything - LOL - gives you a trillion dollars over ten years. And that doesn’t take into account the revenue you lose from the ensuing economic contraction.
Tariffs don't work that way. If tariffs go to up to 30% then it becomes uneconomical for many goods to be imported and so they won't be. That means tariff revenue starts falling. So you raise them to 40% which means even more goods won't be imported and revenue falls again.
They do not care about making up the lost revenue. The Senate parliamentarian may force them to make these expire after a ten year window, but other than that, they don't care about the deficit at all.
For purposes of complying with the rules of budget reconciliation, they can pretend that their tax cuts will pay for themselves with economic growth, thereby, at least on paper, not adding anything to the deficit, even though, we all know that argument to be bullshit.
I think that's correct. However, with the supreme court we have, the constitution effectively means whatever the Republican party says it means. And, if the Republican party decides in 2028 that the two-term limit doesn't apply to Trump, then the Supreme Court will affirm that, and that's what it will mean. (Of course, that exemption would not apply to any future Democratic president).
Neither side takes the constitution seriously anymore. The Republicans have captured the courts, but Biden's ERA stunt shows that prominent Democrats are now willing to make a farce of the amendment process. Passing the ERA is better than what Trump might want to do, sure, but the highest law of the land needs to operate in a Lawful rather than Chaotic manner.
I agree with you, but the argument would be based on the "One Weird Trick" certain people trotted out for Clinton and Obama in the past that the 22nd Amendment only forbids being *elected* to the presidency twice.
My money’s on this, or a Latin America-style family dynasty thing - President Ivanka with the not-so-subtle understanding that daddy is running the show behind the scenes.
I think this is overblown. DeSantis didn't even nominate the Trump-preferred family member to the Florida Senate seat that opened up with Rubio moving into the Secretary of State role.
Lol you have no idea what this conversation is about, then.
FYI, it’s absolutely plausible that SCOTUS would declare that, a la their 14A decision, 22A likewise has no enforcing body — IE the states cannot unilaterally DQ an unqualified candidate.
Given my historical druthers, I wish 22A had been 3-4 terms, not 2. And under such circumstances, I believe Obama would have been an historically good president through the last 8 years of crisis.
I’d refuse to back him now, because that is just not the constitutional order we forking live under.
Is that what you wanted me to say? Because it’s true!
But to the original point, it’s super forking obvious that *this* SCOTUS would happily abnegate 22A under their 14A precedent.
I would be UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY to be wrong on this point. Until I am proven suchly, I will reserve my forking right to bear arms, because I would happily take them up to oppose an unconstitutional third Trump term.
I don't really understand what you are saying here, and what your argument for not voting obama if he becomes eligible is. What I am saying is that being the party who vocally stands up for norms hasn't worked out well for democrats and a 'show not tell' approach might work better to illustrate what happens when a particular norm is not in place anymore.
I put that out as one of my hot takes back in November and December; that Trump doesn’t survive his term. The man doesn’t do anything to take care of himself.
But go back and compare clips of him from 2015 to now. I mean in 2015 he sounded like a crazy person compared to a normal politician. But he sounds down right coherent compared to now.
I'm pretty skeptical Vance could win in 2028. Trump will likely be unpopular, thermostatic public opinion plus being a lame duck will take a toll, and Vance is a below replacement level politician in terms of electoral appeal.
I think it's a mistake to underestimate Vance. This is a guy who's managed to bootstrap himself into being the VP. And I think the Vance we see in 2028 won't be the same one we saw in 2024, 2022, or 2016.
Sure, but none of that involved being popular with the general public. It was all through working elite circles. His approval is underwater now in what should be a honeymoon period, and he badly underperformed other Ohio Republicans in 2022.
Fair point. The same was said of Harris and she flamed out in the end. Maybe Vance will have the same fate (even a good chance - winning the presidency is hard), but I do think he's more savvy than she is.
I think it's really hard to say. I agree, the highest point of Trump's presidency is probably today, and that thermostatic public opinion will favor Democrats, and also that the track record of vice presidents running for president is, quite frankly, not all that good.
But, on the other hand, Democrats themselves have their own problems. They have no clear frontrunner to run in 2028, and they still have a lot of reckoning to do to figure out what they stand for. 2028 will also feature another moderate vs. progressive primary battle which could make the whole party look bad. And, yes, I agree with James C. that underestimating Vance is a mistake.
What about Vance's debate performance? I thought it was really shockingly good given what negative media coverage of the Vance VP pick had led me to expect
Really it's most members of Congress who win by about as much as you'd expect, instead of by impressive margins. The problem is most of them don't have much of a profile because of their generic-ness. On the Republican side, an example might be someone like Thom Tillis or Roger Marshall.
Nixon might be the president most like Trump we've had in the modern era (minus a lot of hard intelligence). Nixon died of a stroke at 82... LONG after he'd exited the White House. That would get Trump only to Year Three in his second term.
I guess his track record of being extremely fat and gorging on unhealthy food and not yet dying can kind of convince you that he'll just live forever. But most of his acolytes and most fervent supporters are certainly not known for their hale lifespans, either, so why haven't any of them kind of contended with the fact that there's statistically much more than a 50/50 chance he dies in office?
That's another point. He is going to get as old as Biden is right now, in 4 years. Who is going to be running the government if he diminishes the way Biden did?
Has he shown any interest in continuing to run anything? He gathers lots and lots of leadership titles, but how much does he actually run any of his companies?
It's funny to me that Matt appears to be the only prominent writer to point out what is extremely obvious - Trump has effectively marketed himself as a rogue chaos agent who will buck convention, but when rubber meets the road will only do so to personally enrich himself and his cronies, and otherwise defaults to typical right wing policy.
Democrats are cripplingly addicted to process and it's functionally paralyzed blue states from doing anything to address their issues on housing, crime, energy, transit, and a myriad of other quality of life issues. Someone coming into office who disregards process could make real tangible achievements in people's lives. It could force democrats to counterpunch and show their own ability to govern. But he won't. He'll use it to eliminate tax burdens and enforcement on oligarchs and car dealership owners by putting the screws to the poor, and that's about it.
And Americans voted for this. They saw it the first time and said "yes, this is good actually" so I have very little interest in protesting and marching and shaking my fist in anger this time around. We'll see how it ultimately plays out but all the horrors and degradations of the next four years feel like fait accompli at this point.
I think the best way to describe Trump's cabinet is it is the "looks great on TV cabinet." Trump is assembling his Celebrity Apprentice cast again. Trump watches a ton of TV, and wants to see his people on TV talking about and defending him. So they have to look asthetically pleasing. After Matt Gaetz dropped his bid for AG, there was a lot of fear Trump would nominate Ken Paxton. Trump instead nominated Pam Bondi, who looks miles better than ogre Paxton. Trump is assembling his team of TV avengers, and I have no idea what this means for actual policy.
I do not know enough about Bondi to know how terrible she will be, but Paxton is an absolute criminal. If he is ever AG, we should assume that the worst that is possible is the likeliest thing to happen.
I really like the Richard Hanania article you linked. I know Hanania is kind of considered a persona non grata in a lot of center-left/left circles, but I think his writing has been very insightful, especially recently. He’s a little trollish but I think he genuinely has a lot of interesting things to say. Any chance you guys would do a podcast or something like that together?
I like Richard's writing as well and I think he is especially insightful about intra-right issues, but I think it would be incredibly unwise for Matt to do a podcast with him, except maybe if they were both guests on a third party's show. Richard is a racist in a very sincere and forthright sense, i.e., that he genuinely believes black people are an inferior race. He has a whole article about how he doesn't talk about it anymore that makes clear that he still believes all the race stuff he used to write and just finds it less politically relevant and not useful to discuss.
Noah Smith did a podcast with him and it was very useful in showing that Hanania simply hadn't thought through his positions and constantly had to concede that maybe he didn't have a good argument.
What podcast? Sounds interesting. I feel like Hannia doesn’t actually believe the race/IQ stuff and just uses it to get attention that his more normal writing wouldn’t get on its own.
He's a smart bigot. And that, at least, I can work with. Many of his priors are way off (especially when it comes to his cringe-y notions around gender essentialism or IQ), but that is something that intelligent people can debate. Unfortunately, his unquestioning attitude about many of those priors crowds out a lot of the good in his essays, limiting the total insight I can get from following him and rendering a lot of his logical argumentation really unimpressive. I just want to shake him and be like, "You're better than this. Just turn around for one second and re-examine some things from the root with some intellectual humility!"
But, fine, he also actually genuinely believes things. Which makes him much less of a grifter than most of the MAGAverse. I may not agree with those things (see above point about his priors), but I respect that he advocates for them in good faith. Even if he's wrong and a little (or a lot) intellectually sloppy.
Hanania writes like a lot of lefty guys i know- in fact reading him kinda clued him into why stuff from my end of things is so grating if you don't agree with it. It's the sort of baseline trolling that comes out through his work that makes it almost unreadable if you're not already in line with what he likes, right down to his terminology. You never know if he's positing something seriously or just trolling.
* Do a few workplace raids, talk about it all the time, but not actually increase deportations much if at all
* Levy some tariffs, talk about it all the time, but not fundamentally change much
* Let TikTok stay because it’s what the people want
* Make a deal in Ukraine by conceding territory to Russia, claim he brought peace; somehow make a similar deal for Israel
* Prosecute people he doesn’t like, claim he is holding Biden and Hillary accountable
* DOGE will continuously surface the most ridiculous examples of government inefficiency but not actually do anything
All of this will be for show, he will talk about how he is saving the day, all without actually doing that much. His base will think he’s crushing it because they won’t actually look at anything serious like the line plots of deportations over time, and anytime anything doesn’t go the way he wants, he’ll blame woke Democrats. Meanwhile hardcore Republicans will pass some tax cuts and then JD Vance will run in 2028. If the economy is going good, he will win.
And that will all be awesome as long as absolutely nothing dangerous happens in the world or the global economy, which it absolutely will. Remember the pandemic? The world isn't getting more boring.
1) It's crazy (but, not really, if you know America) that America elected the human equivalent of a Twitter feed as President. He's going to loot the country and wreck a bunch of stuff, and that'll sure show those annoying liberals on my Facebook feed!
2) It's crazy (but not really, if you know America) that the Democratic party continues to specialize in schoolmarming and fecklessness in the face of (1).
My prediction is that Republicans will not succeed in repealing most of the IRA. They’ll probably be able to repeal the EV mandate but I don’t think they’ll be able to repeal the big tax credits. Too much money in red districts.
The world in which interest rates are hovering at 8% because we've finally hit the wall and we're crowding out private investment will be... unfun.
Unlike the early 90's, there won't be any low-hanging fruit to cut to goose the economy, and it's unlikely that there's either an AI-driven productivity revolution or a mini baby boom on the way.
The worst-case for the next half-century is a series of bounces between left-Peronism and right-Peronism.
Disagree re: likelihood of AI-driven productivity boom, although I think a high likelihood in those scenarios that aren’t just straight up extinction is that, like horses, whatever marginal product humans contribute is less than the combination of transaction costs required to employ them and the minimum resources needed for their upkeep.
We're already seeing a massive energy revolution plus whatever happens with AI. Managed well, there's a vast amount of wealth coming down the pike. (Managed poorly we're all screwed.)
Not sure if you are interested or have the time, but I found your long discussion on nuclear power interesting and was curious if you have looked at discussions around wind power such as here:
A.D. seems to have hit it… just looking at the numbers they’re very favorable to gas, using the combined averages of even very old wind turbines and gas prices downstream of s momentary glut in the US market waiting for LNG export capacity to come online.
I don’t think wind is the lynchpin here, solar PV will go further before the scale and improvement curves go flat and we also see PV cells continuing to last decades beyond their originally forecasted lifespans.
I hope we can figure out nuclear as it’ll be a huge help, but sufficiently cheap batteries seem more likely at this point; even the Koreans are only cranking out nuclear plants able to compete with current prices with a bit of financing subsidy.
Yeah, nuclear seems to have run into many of the issues that hinder large projects across the world. I was somewhat surprised by your optimism with lithium ion batteries. The sheer scale of material needed seems daunting unless we can figure out other materials. The research & development around iron batteries seems interesting as a way to alleviate much of that.
The mandate is the least consequential part, since basic economic factors will make it impossible to continue selling ICE vehicles past 2035 anyway. I was always bemused by people objecting strongly to that requirement when it always seemed to me like just putting a label on what is going to happen anyway.
Have you seen the curves for both energy density and price/scale for lithium-ion batteries lately?
By 2035 they're going to whip ICEVs like a rented mule for basically all ground transport use cases, in conjunction with 800V and 1.2kV architectures.
90% odds that by then a mid-market EV will cost $40,000 (in 2023 real terms) new, drive 450-650 miles on a charge anywhere in the lower 48, take 15 minutes to charge 5%-95%, last for 500,000 miles with 10-15% battery degradation, and cost half as much as an ICEV to fuel.
Will ICEVs still exist? Absolutely. Will they be manufactured? Yes, in dwindling quantities. Will the people buying them be doing so based on rational appraisal of their benefits and costs relative to EVs? No. It'll be the "I like VROOM VROOM noises" folks and the "I don't wan' the gubmint trackin' mah cahr" folks.
And the latter will knuckle under as the infrastructure to keep one running dies off for lack of scale.
The main obstacle to this future is not subsidies or the lack thereof, but building infrastructure, which is likely to still see bipartisan movement on permitting this coming term.
Musk wanting the IRA dead to kneecap trailing competitors in the US and a shitload of deregulation so he can build a ton of charging infrastructure is an entirely rational business move in the medium term.
You think batteries will get that good? Isn’t fast charging bad for them?
What about our ability to get the lithium and rare earths needed? I admit I’m not an expert in this field, I just don’t necessarily see batteries getting that good by 2035. And even when they do there will be a long lag in adoption. People will have to see EVs routinely lasting 300k+ miles like Honda Accords do before they’ll trust them like that.
We have a long way off (like, not in my lifetime) before gas stations start to fall, especially for trucking.
I'm not too concerned about supply of lithium. Everything I've read says the world actually has plenty of lithium, with at lot of it actually sitting right here in the United States, the backlog is simply the mining capacity to pull it out of the ground and the processing capacity to turn the ore into usable battery material. Also, as existing EVs reach end of life, their batteries will get recycled (yes, EV battery recycling companies already exist), adding even more material to the supply chain.
Yes, there will be a bit of a lag in adoption. Like you said, there is no shortcut to prove that a particular car will actually last 20 years under real-world conditions without actually waiting 20 years. But, it will happen.
However, there are also other factors that will push EV ownership rates forward. One critical one, I think will be impact of AI on charging. Right now, if you can't charge at home, you have to rely on fast chargers like gas stations. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem where, in order to have gas-station-like convenience, you need a gas-station-like density of fast chargers. But, without a critical mass of EV drivers who can't charge at home, it won't be economical to build that many fast chargers.
How does AI break this cycle? Well, if your car is able to drive itself, it will be able to drive itself to be charged, which means the charger doesn't have to be on your way anymore, since it's no longer taking up your time getting to it. The result will be a model where you park at home, go to sleep, and, while you're in bed, the car drives itself a few miles to a big charging hub set up in some industrial area, where power is cheap and there's lots of parking spaces that can be leased for cheap late at night. The car then charges itself on level 2 for a few hours (with an option to fast charge if really need need it done sooner and are willing to pay more), drives back home, and by the time you wake up in the morning, it's back at your home parking space, charged. With the range that future EVs would have by this point, this process would likely only be necessary about once every week or two, depending on the length of the commute.
The effect on this will be huge because one of the most common objections to EV ownership, that it takes too much time if you can't charge at home, will become instantly obsolete.
Dunno how old you are but as someone in their (shudders) mid-30’s… I’d bet wildly against this for myself.
No one buys a car because it lasts 300k miles. Niche used car buyers pay more for the brands with a reputation of doing so reliably, sure, but they’re both rare and adaptable.
I’ve put 60k miles on an EV in three years and a couple months and the only maintenance tasks have been tire replacement, mostly due to punctures, and alignment.
I have no doubt that even with present-day batteries it’ll be ticking along at the 10-year mark with functional range even as I work it to death.
Nah, normal people buy cars for reliability and expect to run them into the ground. This is why accords, Camrys, and F-150s are so popular. And right now folks don’t expect EVs to last even 100k miles without serious battery life issues. (Which is why my hybrid came with a 100k miles warranty on the hybrid parts of the car)
I mean, to the extent that it’s good for the environment, especially the American environment, I hope you’re right.
Once the battery technology matures, it's just a hell of a lot easier to manufacture a couple of good brushless electric motors and hook them up to a battery than to build a precision internal combustion engine.
And firms are going to keep pushing the batteries long past the point where they're "good enough" for passenger EVs because freight, agriculture, construction, and a bunch of other big industries will need way better batteries to electrify their equipment, which manufacturers will pursue knowing that they can also defray fixed costs by selling into the passenger car market.
It’s already come to pass with the Chinese able to build an EV for between 1/3 and 1/2 of an equivalent ICE vehicle. If the ICE RAV4 is $40k they aren’t going to be selling any when the EV version is $20k.
In fairness a portion of that advantage is that their ICEVs always sucked, but yes, in the long run we should expect that kind of cost convergence.
Honestly I’m unconvinced the Chinese “force mass adoption of a 2.5th generation product” strategy is really optimal even from a climate perspective, because the 4th generation stuff is just going to be mind-blowing, but their infrastructure roll-out should be a model since we’re spending money on it anyway.
I suspect you're right, but what then does a Budget Reconciliation look like? Lots of gimmicks and flim flam to kick the can past this administration and into the next so that we pretend it's budget neutral over 10 years? I think the answer to that is yes, but it's going to require a hell of a magic act.
I'm seeing numerous articles about how Trump is dominating this or that country's politics. Denmark. Britain. Greenland. Canada. Israel. Germany. Mexico. Maybe even China.
Is it maybe the case that the global power and influence of the United States of America has actually never been quite so great? Did even Dwight Eisenhower bestride the planet like our new president does? Should I as an effete, cosmopolitan liberal take some kind of perverse pride in this state of affairs?
Probably not. It's likely going to be a shit show. But I'm trying to look for silver linings.
For better or worse, America remains the greatest (most politically important) country in the world, and every other country is right to pay attention to us.
I think America would retain that status no matter who won, so I am sad that it had to be him (unless I’m talking to Europeans in which case he’s not that bad and they should be more worried about *insert country-relevant far-right party* which is worse)
Should a cosmopolitan liberal take “perverse pride” in our new POS (President Orange Snake) saying crazy shit and making us look like a bunch of idiot assholes in the eyes of the civilized world?
I deeply hate the Republican Party, but I appreciate that President Trump has shown most Americans that the world has not moved on from the nation-state Leviathan as THE political institution of our times.
Every other nation moves in their own interests. United States’ liberals have become reluctant to deal with it, I think. Or just presumed it was done. Maybe it was Iraq.
A lot of the world is zero sum, sadly. The Democratic Party or our “left” or “liberals” seem to have a difficult time when the USA nakedly pursues its self interests. I don’t think that’s true in other places, it’s a privilege our left-wing gives itself due to our place of relative power.
"No president has ever really tried to do [mass deportations], because to make it work at scale would, by definition, involve large economic disruptions."
"Disruption" is pretty close to sane washing the mass deportation idea. "Disruption" is deadweight loss as resources and consumption are shifted around in less productive ways. A tax on net CO2 emissions with large long term net benefits would be "disruptive." Remove hundreds of thousands of people from the labor force and you are talking real money, an economic loss of the order of the Fed refusing to keep inflation up to target after the financial crisis.
You don't expect "Conservatives" to point out the economic losses (if they even understand them) from Trumps deficits + tariffs+ deportations policies. Gaining power and those lovely tax cuts make a little economic stagnation worthwhile. Where were the Progressives?
Yup, arguments along the lines of "but the economy" don't work for immigration any more because anti-immigration sentiment in the west is no longer motivated by economic reasoning. People motivated by law and order, assimilation or outright racism don't care that it will hurt the economy because they either don't value it that highly or don't believe claims that it will hurt the economy to the extent argued. The closest would be job security fears but most of that comes from people who feel that their jobs are on the verge of or have already been taken by immigrants so they also don't care if the economy is healthier if they perceive it as being at the cost of their livelyhood.
Voters have always been motivated by factors other than economics, it isn't the only issue. But it is important to remember that the economic debate is still live and people oppose immigration because they believe it is bad for the economy.
I had this exact conversation with someone yesterday. I am pretty close to being an open borders guy, but open borders is not the current law, and "we should ignore laws when it is economically convenient to do so" is not an argument worthy of respect.
I don’t see anything in Thomas’s comment or in current policy that suggests ignoring immigration law. “Maximal, disruptive enforcement” and “total lack of enforcement” are not the only two options.
We do enforce immigration laws, just like we enforce speed limits. The fact that many people speed regardless does not mean we are ignoring the speed limit.
Seems like it in Seattle and Memphis, at least. Driving on the Memphis freeways can feel a little like GTA sometimes, but I get it. Not enough cops, too many folks with guns. But when you’re going 90 and folks are flying past it’s like whaaa?
It depends on how complete a picture of the world you think you want to or have to make in your argument. "Mass deportations would cause tremendous economic loss for our country" is a good argument in and of itself against doing mass deportations. It doesn't answer the question what should we do about all the people here illegally.
One very reasonable answer to that is let's just make them legal. Then you can have a great discussion about malum prohibitum vs malum in se. You could also have a discussion about whether making current residents legal would exacerbate the problem to something worse, or allow for a better outcome because you could better focus resources.
A direct answer to your question is federal laws regarding marijuana, we are currently ignoring them for all intents and purposes. We can debate the wisdom of that, but it is the status quo.
It is not that unusual, and surely not illogical, to stop enforcing laws when we see that enforcing them doesn't make sense or is more harmful than enforcing them would be. The next logical step is adjusting the law to conform to our better understanding of what we want to achieve. We just can't seem to get to that second point, but that failure doesn't dictate that we return instead to doing something that doesn't make sense to do.
I hear what you're saying but I think it's important to understand that the argument you're making has lost, decisively, multiple times, on the merits. At best the economic case is viewed as an abstraction while the disorder is something very real and visible, as are the challenges around assimilation. And that's to say nothing of the just plain emotional reactions to obvious unfairness, flouting of the rule of law, and damage to the value of citizenship done by mass illegal immigration.
We can also have a long conversation about the diminishing returns of hardcore enforcement of laws against fare evasion or shoplifting but I think we at SB have come around to the fact that there is more to this than the economics. People will not trust the government to do the things it should if they do not feel they can trust it to manage the responsibilities it has already taken on. And they certainly won't trust it if they feel the state is prioritizing the interests of big business or foreign nationals, regardless of whether they really think its right try to throw all of the low level agricultural workers or irregular unskilled laborers out of the country.
Marijuana does provide an interesting counter example but I think it may be the exception that proves the rule. Public opinion about marijuana has changed radically over the last 30 years. Nothing like that has happened with illegal entry or working without being authorized.
Briefly, I would say that I don't think the argument has lost, especially on the merits. People went ape shit when we had a little more than a year of supply chain disruption and inflation. On the merits, the economic consequences of mass deportation would be multiples of that. Whether people believe that is irrelevant to it being factually accurate. The politicians saying we should do mass deportation are in no way telling people it will cost them anything at all.
I also think the disorder most people see and care about is the border, not all the people peacefully living among us. Most people don't see Jorge and Juan (actual people) who live in the barn tending the horses of the hobby horse farm next to me, as signs of disorder, nor do they view all the short, polite brown guys in the back of the house at my favorite restaurant as disorder. If they really thought those things were bad it would be easy for them to directly express it in ways that would change at least those local businesses' practices, but they don't.
It's easy to say "oh voters don't care about an abstraction like the economy, they care about those evil illegals living illegally among us!" Wait till crops rot in the fields because there aren't enough workers to pick them, and meat becomes unaffordable because so many slaughterhouse workers got deported. Voters will change their tune right quick.
Not to mention that if you want cheaper housing, deporting half of your construction workforce is [Tony Stark voice] not a great plan.
Try turning the position you're taking into an affirmative argument.
'Without illegal labor our economy will be harmed. Big industries like farming and construction will want for workers. Projects will slow down. Fruit will rot on the vines. Our GDP growth will be less than it might have been, as will our tax revenues. Some goods and services will likely be pricier as a result.
For those reasons Americans need to be ready to tolerate numbers of illegal entrants in the 7 figures who will remain in the country on an indefinite basis. And if they are concerned about possible ripple effects the solution is to grant legal status or even citizenship to all of them, not just those here today, but those that come tomorrow, and the day after.'
Now ask if you honestly believe there is a popular constituency for that position. Even when fruit rots on the vines, and it may well. Maybe I am wrong about this but I just don't see it.
Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to see agribusiness raids, not really. A few high profile raids in cities with high cruelty per immigrant ratio to encourage self deportation, I think. Maximum noise. But Americans aren’t going to pick the crops or work in the meatpacking industry for minimum wage. I don’t even think Stephen Miller cares so much about immigrants if they’re as close to actual slave labor as possible.
Now local cops are going to be more and more empowered to start deporting people, though. When I was down in MS for the holidays there were multiple news reports about the local sheriff’s department preparing to round people up. But this will mostly just be deporting those arrested for other crimes, with the occasional roadblock to fuck with people. It was disgusting hearing about it on the news, but totally expected.
It would be easy to express? How? By no longer buying food? Refusing to enter buildings?
I fully agree that the voters are fickle and inchoate. But I will also say they just did the absolute easiest thing to express their views on it. I think we need to adapt to that reality, and consider other ways to manage economic growth in a way more consistent with voter sentiments, not double down on one that people keep not wanting.
The other argument I'm going to suggest retiring is references to the 'brown guys' and similar such appeals. Because they're starting to materially alter their voting habits too.
> It would be easy to express? How? By no longer buying food? Refusing to enter buildings?
If people actually cared about this to the extent you claim, there would be a market for "crops picked by legal Americans!".
My MIL, on paper, is hugely anti-illegal immigrant. She also lives right next a farm that employs gads of Mexican migrant workers and she is as pleasant as could be to them and would likely feel extreme guilt if they were rounded up.
The thing people are *most* mad about is not illegal immigrants per se. It's the *migrants*. If Trump did nothing else except keep doing the exact same thing Biden did, and reject asylum seekers outright, people would move on pretty quickly.
There was a weird moment during that fateful debate between him and Biden in June where I actually believed Trump was being mostly honest. I found the quote:
"And I’ll tell you something – I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be under indictment because I wouldn’t have been his political appoint – you know, opponent. Because he indicted me because I was his opponent.
I wish he was a great president. I would rather have that.
I wouldn’t be here. I don’t mind being here, but the only reason I’m here is he’s so bad as a president that I’m going to make America great again. We’re going to make America great again."
It doesn't quite come through from the text alone but he sounded very tired when he said it. My take from it is that his motivation for round 2 is not and never has been policy.* It's to stay out of prison, which he has most likely succeeded in doing.
*My suspicion about round 1 remains that it was a publicity stunt that got out of control but I doubt we will ever know the truth about that one way or the other.
These contortions to sanewash Trump are frustrating in the extreme. There is zero credibility to anything that guy has said. There is shrinking evidence of any good faith in anything Republicans say.
And I don't mean randos online that say crazy things. I mean top levels of the republican party. Zero accountability.
What?
It wasn't a weird moment of honesty during the debate. It was a grifter using a classic grift. And you are propping it up with some credulity in ways that flat out don't make sense.
Ah, I see. Magic works like 'sane washing' and 'grift' in lieu of a point.
Not magic. It is a grift to say "I don't want to be the one doing these things." A classic one. "I wouldn't hurt you if you'd behave" level.
It would be one thing if you had occasional lies. You would be struggling to find honest statements. Hard.
In what way do you think "he's said things like that and clearly not meant them before" isn't a rebuttal to you quoting him and saying he is honest? Similarly, in what way is pointing out that people ascribe way more thought to Trump's words than he has ever been shown to give them not a rebuttal?
So we can expect Trump to resign office immediately after taking the oath today and gratefully retire to Mar a Lago?
In other words, what you quote there demonstrates for the nth time that everything Trump says is bullshit.
"So we can expect Trump to resign office immediately after taking the oath today and gratefully retire to Mar a Lago?"
"The Orange Cincinnatus" will be the sobriquet bestowed upon him by history.
I sincerely hope he doesn't "retire" the same way that Julius Caesar did although to be able to call him the "Orange Julius" is somewhat tempting.
Cincinnatus Bengal?
Or Marius? What he did to the followers of Sulla? :(
I meant if Trump immediately resigned the presidency as Marc Robbins suggested. Cincinnatus was famous for supposedly having promptly retired when the crisis that he was summoned to deal with was over.
Marius also eventually resigned and then un-resigned
Ah, OK, thanks. Roman history really isn't my forte at all.
I repeat: what?
Why do you think that him using an effective political line is an insight into his soul? Of course he wanted to be President, he wanted to continue being President so much that he denied the election results last time out and tried to fraudulently stay in office.
I guess we wouldn't be here if Biden had pardoned trump on day one? Or if he had pushed Garland to be aggressive with the prosecutions. Funny stuff.
Garland and Fani Willis should go down in infamy as two of the worst prosecutors in American history. They had 4 years and they fucked this up, plain and simple.
Fani Willis let the easiest case fall apart in the stupidest way possible (OK maybe the documents case was equally a slam dunk, but that was DOA when Judge Cannon got it).
Whoa whoa whoa....Alvin Bragg's decision to create a novel felony prosecution solely to go after a former president of the other party (whose approval ratings then shot up, helping him secure the R nomination before going on to win the Presidency) has to at least warrant him a spot on the podium, if not the gold medal.
Hard to do that. Say what you will about the legal theories in play. He at least got a conviction in his case.
Which came with zero penalties whatsoever and helped him win the presidency. The very definition of a Pyrrhic victory.
ETA: let’s also not praise him for obtaining a conviction in a case that never should have been brought in the first. I despise Trump, but there is a 0% chance that this case would have been brought against Michael Bloomberg, Mark Cuban, or anyone other than Donald Trump. If you’re abusing the power of your office to bring charges against political opponents then obtaining a conviction in a sham case is not a point in your favor.
If you handed me, a dog on the internet, a Manhattan jury pool then I could put Trump behind bars for murder
Garland is amongst the biggest cucks of all time. He botched the easiest layup of all time.
Wouldn’t have worked. Had a bunch of state cases.
So he finally found a line that took you in.
No, he wasn’t being honest. He’s a conman. He’s conning you.
How can I have been conned by someone I didn't vote for or ever supported?
I understand a lot of emotions today but no need for all of this projection.
Edit to add if it wasn't clear, I think he should be in prison. Unfortunately the people (at least nominally) on our side lacked the competence to achieve that.
didn't he say 'we will be back' the moment he stopped being president in 2021?
The world is at its most precarious point in many decades and nobody is even pretending to be in charge. It's not ideal.
I think this is the most surreal aspect of all this. The MAGA crew talk with dark tones all the time about how everything's Apocalyptic and terrible and yet seem to take risk very unseriously, in practice. Fine, even if you don't buy into Climate Change being a real thing, take your pick off all the other "polycrisis" type stuff going down right now! Wouldn't you want a very buttoned-up crew of people with actual plans and experience going in to address it all?
Like, we're really going to have a Fox News host run the entire Department of Defense when we're arguably in Cold War 2.0!? Even if you like and agree with the guy, he just doesn't have anywhere near the chops for that gig! Most of us wouldn't, either!
And, fine, maybe we can charitably consider Trump's chaotic energy something needed to "stir things up" when the old way isn't working. And maybe his Madman Theory will make our enemies fear us. But what evidence do we have (and, again, he literally did this job once already) that he's got the bite to backup the bark? Trump just got owned time after time in foreign affairs. He planned to but didn't end the war in Afghanistan. North Korea played him. China played him. Russia played him. He messed up the pandemic response (which, lest we forget, is largely why he wasn't serving his second term as president in 2021, instead of 2025). In all those four years, he couldn't even build that most hyped up symbol, The Wall. So where's the juice!?
Even if you're absolutely convinced that Biden sucked every bit as much or more, well, is that really an endorsement. That Trump couldn't do a lot of stuff that Biden, the ostensibly "weak, senile, bitchmade, traitorous, etc." Democrat couldn't do? Trump's supposed to be the superhero here! You can't even find a reference point for how great and powerful he must be! And yet...
These are not serious people
I like David Frum's characterization: clowns with flamethrowers. Unserious people can do a lot of damage.
Frum is a neocon, warmonger and is partially responsible for the Iraq war. I’m not sure why anyone gives a shit what that guy has to say. He should be in jail, instead of a 5 million dollar house in Bethesda.
I mean, you're not wrong, but it still is unsatisfying to me. Trump's MAGA crew aren't all shiftless losers (though many of them are just base grifters). Maybe the Republicans are now "the stupid party," but they also have among them tens of millions of Americans among them who are successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and (increasingly) tech titans. People who are able to use their brains and effect change and progress in their own lives.
And even among the less conventionally successful who place their hopes in Trump, isn't there a large population of Conservative Americans who ostensibly take their own lives and affairs very seriously, doing exactly the stuff that you have to do to be effective in any domain, public or private? Like, you can't even run a church bake sale with such feckless preparation! You just can't be an adult and be this unserious without your life just falling apart. And most people are at least semi-functional. So it just doesn't add up for me.
I think this fits in with what JVL of the Bulwark wrote recently: support for Trump is a sign of a decadent society where people don't have skin in the game/they don't think a Trump presidency will have negative consequences for *them*. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/did-the-elites-really-fail-us
They are just serious grifters
Distrust of experts is a classic American problem. Andrew Jackson's campaign song in the 1820s was "The Hunters of Kentucky", a song mythologizing his untrained country boy riflemen in the Battle of New Orleans who didn't actually contribute to the battle's victory. This vein of our culture is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
This totally makes sense, but I'm going to apply the reality test to it: do most Americans in their daily lives really disregard expertise? I don't mean in specific, politicized domains like public health. I mean EVERYTHING. People do go to the doctor (and Americans are even willing to pay many multiples of what the average global citizen for the privilege!). They wouldn't hire their idiot cousin to build the bridge they use daily. Nor are they going to step onto the top of a rocket that's not got an army of PhDs with notepads around it.
They say there are no atheists in the foxhole, but in my experience, there are not that many expertise skeptics when the issue is life or death. So why when it comes to governance, which REALLY matters, actually, people are just like "LOL, WHATEVS!"
Yes, they do. There is a reason you have commercials advertising products “invented by a mom” and movies like Dave exist. People really do like to imagine that the world isn’t so complex, that in fact it is the experts who are wrong.
Much like disregarding expertise feels personally costly when you're badly injured but not so when being asked to take a vaccine for a disease you don't think you'll get, it may also feel costly when you think functional government is personally important to you and not costly when you don't. Most of these people seem to not understand that government administers many functions of their everyday life so efficiently that it is effectively invisible to them.
Lots of patients ignore their course of care prescribed by doctor. Lots.
"Like, we're really going to have a Fox News host run the entire Department of Defense when we're arguably in Cold War 2.0!? Even if you like and agree with the guy, he just doesn't have anywhere near the chops for that gig! Most of us wouldn't, either!"
I think the key to understanding this crew is that when they use the word "we" they are not actually talking about the de jure United States, its de jure institutions, and its de jure citizenry. To them their "nation" - their "United States" - comprises only a certain subset of this country, and their main enemy isn't China or Russia or any other foreign regime. Their main enemy is liberalism, whether foreign or domestic. If their nation is facing a crisis, the crisis is the threat of liberalism. If they need plans and experience, the plans and experience they need are ones that can combat and defeat liberalism.
How did China "play him"? Trump's administration singularly changed the direction of >20 years of trade policy - to such a degree - that it became a bipartisan position and subsequently Biden only strengthened the trade barriers. China is in an emphatically worse position now than in 2015.
Again, I think Trump was right that the China-US status quo wasn't tenable. But it's actually doing something about it that he failed utterly on his own terms. Here let me examine the much-discussed economic war between the two countries during the meat of his term:
Look up the Great Trade War of 2018-2020 and the time Trump got Xi to promise him a bunch of stuff that... just didn't happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war
Specifically, Trump came back from his first May 2018 Washington summit with the Chinese with a "Mission Accomplished" grin, announcing that the Chinese are gonna buy all our soybeans and the trade deficit disappears. Says the same thing later in December. They meet again the next June at the G20. Trump pretends they had another deal in August at G7. Then they're gonna by the soybeans again in October. The in January 2020, we're back again with the soybean-buying, in the form of the US–China Phase One trade deal struck in Washington to take effect in Feb. By the end of 2020, the deal is declared a total failure.
The Chinese never intended to buy all those soybeans. It never made any sense. After two years of meetings and all the self-congratulation and false-starts. They played and embarrassed him. And they'll do it again and again and again for the next four years. The trade deficit with China is now the biggest it ever has been. I won't be surprised if, for all the "decoupling" bluster, that deficit will only grow further.
As I've talked before with all the nonsense around China's EVs, Reuters has great reporting on China. Here's how impactful the Round I tariffs were, "Trump's tariffs of 25% on $370 billion of Chinese imports helped reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China from $418 billion in 2018 to $279 billion in 2023." That was and still is - because factories as still shifting as a result of Biden's continuity / acceleration - a MASSIVE impact.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-upended-trade-once-aims-do-so-again-with-new-tariffs-2025-01-16/
That article is a devastating indictment of the Trump trade war. If that's what you consider winning, I don't know what losing might look like.
I am perfectly open to the argument that Trump blew up the bad Republican consensus on China trade, and then Biden did intelligent things with it. Unfortunately what Trump was actually bad, and now he's back to do more of it.
Losing looks a lot like China right now. Again -- this thread goes back to Geoffrey G saying (1) "China played Trump" and (2) "he failed utterly on his own terms". That's just not true. China's share of US trade deficit has dropped from ~ 50% in 2015 to 25% last year has shifted out of China to Mexico and Vietnam. That's a great global development, even if it was Trump who got the ball rolling.
Keep in mind that prior to Trump's first election the establishment trade policy plan was TPP, which was very clearly an effort at Chinese economic containment.
The Bernie/Trump pincer movement killed that, but it's clear that elite consensus was already shifting towards hostility to China; they just thought that tariffs were a stupid way to do it, because tariffs are usually stupid.
You're right about this, David, and since Trump was the one who initiated the policy change, you can't ignore his role. Yet given how belligerent China has become under Xi, I strongly doubt that any President would have continued the previous policies.
We are going to lose thousands of Americans in Okinawa to missile strikes under Trump aren’t we. Sigh.
The Fox News host went to Princeton and Harvard, he’s clearly not an idiot…
As we've seen, Republican sentiment tanks during Democratic administrations, and vice versa. But the world keeps turning. With a few notable exceptions, I think the president has a limited ability to steer events, and the idea of someone being in charge is mostly a cope.
I agree that this is disturbingly true.
But another thing to keep in mind is that "Black Swan" type events, in particular, have high contingency. That is to say that they can often hinge on a single variable. And that single variable can be in the power of a political leader and their policy. Even if it's inadvertent.
That's especially true when you widen the lens to the pre-causes of events and their resolutions. The COVID vaccines were possible because some people got grant funding years back to conduct mRNA research, a then-backwater of science. A series of leaders said "yes" enough time that that research got funded.
Specifically, in 2008-2010, DARPA had launched the biotechnology research program ADEPT to develop emerging technologies for the US military. That was under the Obama Administration. But it was certainly in the planning stages under Bush, when his people likely saw it as something salient to the GWOT and defense against pathogen-based WMDs. That DARPA then awarded a $25 million grant to Moderna that eventually led to a mRNA COVID vaccine is thanks to decisions made a whole generation earlier for totally different intended outcomes.
And, of course, some key decisions (and key mistakes) both prolonged and worsened the pandemic, but also foreshortened the vaccine development. Trump also signed off on Operation Warp Speed. Would he do that today, given the politicization of vaccines since? Probably not! That's contingency!
Duck
I said something the day after the election that was, basically, we just need to focus on what he and his administration actually do and respond precisely to that rather than chasing around his rambling bullshit, shitposting, and trolling. Resistance this time around means responding effectively to the pieces on the board and not exhausting ourselves via hyperventilation before anything has actually happened.
So ends the worst period of waiting. Now it gets real. Now we will have specific things to respond to.
I think the "watch what he does not what he says" mantra has maybe gone too far. In every other walk of life, people try to anticipate actions by powerful actors.
In addition, discourse is a big part of how policy develops, especially for Trump, who is pretty purely motivated by what he can get away with. Countries around the world right now are trying to signal there will be pushback to Trump's bullying instincts, to nip in the bud trade wars.
So for sure there is a need to pick battles. But there is no need to be purely reactive.
The problem with responding to what he says in order to deter his actions is that it requires too much precision, judgment, and discretion. Actions have consequences; words may or may not be meaningful. Does anyone doubt that in a month (a week?) no one will ever be talking about Greenland again? Or that it was simply a way for Trump to draw attention to himself, change the subject and rile people up? We react far too much to his words, like kittens chasing a laser pointer. Let's try ignoring those words and just focus on actions for a while and see how it goes.
I recommend Democrats resist resisting in a way that frames much of what Trump pursues in nefarious ways. He’s a bully, etc. I saw some framing like that around Greenland. If we can make a deal with them why shouldn’t we (being the US). Framing it as bad comes off as anti-American.
Make counter arguments to the masses. Trump is bad in every thing he does is an argument that. Argue on the merits now.
I’m ready for some real policy debates. Let’s hear it.
As Binya said below, if you're simply reacting, you're too slow. You must anticipate a dangerous adversary's likely moves and counter them. That means parsing out a lot of the ranting and zone-flooding-of-shit for where the sucker punch is coming. At least if you have the agency to do something about it, as most democratic citizens do more than they realize, in ways big and small.
Trump is unpredictable, but he also at least tries to do much of what he says. When he hits resistance, he often quietly folds. But that requires deterrence, as in the military sphere. You don't want to be a soft target.
SNL's MSNBC Cold Opening this week, while not really very funny, nailed this critique.
The extent to which Biden has acted to undermine the justice system in his final days has astonished me.
In issuing the pardon for his son, he accuses his own Justice Department of pursuing a politically-motivated prosecution and then says the jury system cannot be trusted to deliver a judgement in the case of a politically-connected person like his son.
This morning, he has issued preemptive pardons for Fauci, Milley and the January 6 commission, while stating that he doesn't believe they have committed any crimes. Effectively, Biden is saying the criminal justice system cannot be trusted to deliver justice for politically-connected people.
These are the same bogus and irresponsible talking points Trump has used in his defense against criminal charges in state and federal courts. I think they are both wrong.
Another view is that this is false equivalence. The reason Trump was, unprecedentedly for a former president, indicted for so many things, convicted of a felony and held civilly liable for assault is that he engaged in cosmically more criminal and tortious activity than any of his predecessors. Biden would appear to be convinced, with good reason, that Trump will not rest until the rule of law in the United States is utterly dead and that his MAGA courts will be his accomplices, so that this is the only way to ensure that his admittedly deadbeat son is not jailed for the 54-year sentencing guideline maximum he could otherwise face and that innocent public servants who would otherwise incur, at a minimum, million-dollar legal bills, and maybe worse, do not become Pam Bondi's political prisoners. Sadly I find it difficult to believe that this is unreasonable or unrealistic. Believe bad people with power when they tell you what they are going to do.
That last part really is key. Neither Biden nor any of his advisers campaigned or even made noise about going after Trump or his people, quibble about the details, but even in NY the legal process was used in a normal way, by normal, albeit as always flawed, human beings.
That simply isn't the case with Trump or the people he is appointing. He really has said these people should be prosecuted for doing exactly what was their job under the Constitution, and he has said he'll appoint people who will do that, AND he's nominated people who themselves have publicly stated that's what they'll do or what should happen.
Trump lies so consistently about everything that it does make it near impossible to predict his actual behaviors. That's really abnormal in human beings, so the people that Trump is appointing probably are not pathological liars in the same way Trump is. If Kash Patel, soon to be head of the FBI, says all these people should be investigated and prosecuted it's probable that he means it. There is no real check on his ability to immiserate and persecute people, even if maybe the court system would eventually not allow them to be imprisoned.
I don't like what Biden is choosing, but I think he is facing a Hobbesian choice. Trump and his minions are going to under cut the rule of law by abusing their power, and Biden is empowered to mitigate that harm. The cost of that mitigation is a possible undermining of the perception of the integrity of the Justice Department.
This makes zero sense. If Trump creates frivilous prosecutions it would backfire on him when they are thrown our of court. Biden has helped Trump by casting suspicion on all the people he pardoned, and he severely damaged the country: 1. by giving credence to Trump's dangerous libels against the justic system 2. creating a terrible precedent where people in power can expect impunity granted to them by the president. This encourages criminal behavior by people in charge who will prioritize loyalty to potus over the rule of all . EXACTALY teh precedent you don't want set just before Trump returns to power! Our only hope is that SCOTUS declares preemptive pardons unconstitutional.
How does a case being thrown out backfire on Trump? He issues a statement, by which I mean he sends out a Tweet denouncing these out of control judges. Somewhat more soberly the Justice department issues a statement that says we believe the judge made a mistake in this case and we're going to examine all our options including appeal on these charges or bringing separate charges.
All of which is sort of beside the point, because the punishment is really in the investigation. If the federal government comes after you, your life is turned upside down and put on a hellish hold. All of your time and all of your money will be consumed with dealing with it.
The FBI will subpoena every electronic record and every piece of paper you have ever touched. Every employer you've ever had will turn over your file. Everyone you've ever written a check to, including nieces and nephews on their birthdays, will have to go to an FBI office and give a statement, where they'll be asked all sorts of terrible questions having nothing to do with anything. "Did Uncle TH ever touch you inappropriately?" Then they'll ask your siblings and their spouses the same questions. Every colleague you work with now or have worked with in the past will be interviewed by the FBI. Every volunteer group you've ever been part of, same thing. And the FBI will ask them terrible questions, and sooner or later, everyone but maybe your closest family members and friends will decide seeing you isn't worth the hassle, and will also start to wonder, well if the FBI is checking doesn't that mean they have something? Maybe, three years and all your retirement savings later you'll get a judge to throw out he charges, or worse have to go to trial and hope it ends well.
I strongly disagree. The people targeted have a serious public profile. They have the means to defend themselves and they very very easily crowdfund much more. Yes, it won't be comfy and cosy for them, but the life of a public servant at the upper echelons of society isn't supposed to be comfy and cosy. The inconvenience of undergoing and thwarting a frivolous investigation is the *least* they could to fight for democracy, if it is indeed on the line as they claim. Previous generations of leaders went to prison, suffered bodily harm and died in the cause of freedom. But this generations of leaders are cowards who talk the talk but won't lift a finger to actually protect the institutions of this country. Instead they actually join in in ruining these very institutions because they put their own momentary comfort above their country and its future.
"Yes, it won't be comfy and cosy for them, but the life of a public servant at the upper echelons of society isn't supposed to be comfy and cosy."
Whoa, no. This is completely wrong. Senior public servants should not expect that they are signing up for a life of living hell just for doing their jobs if the other party gets into power. You can't have a public service like that.
Which judges do you have in mind as candidates for throwing indictments out of court? - Matthew Kacsmaryk? Aileen Cannon? James Ho? One of the several MAGA hacks on the Supreme Court? Actually I hope you are right, but doesn't it really hinge on what one thinks is likely to happen in the new administration? If you think that Trump is an incompetent, incurious, grifting buffoon, who will simply try a bunch of performative stunts with little long-term impact on the rude good health of American democracy, then of course the Biden pardons just look plumb silly. But if you think there's a risk that the toxic combination of the Stephen Miller/Claremont Review types whispering in his ear and Heil Elon and the other tech zillionaires high on Ayn Rand and the Classic Comix version of Nietzsche helping him out actually ends with Pinochet mood music, political opponents in outdoor detention in major urban stadiums or pitched out of helicopters, with the rest of the MAGA panoply of sadism front and center, then I get it. Obviously the latter is extreme and hopefully unlikely, but Biden was clearly worried about the risk, and after yesterday's charming spectacle, if I were him, I wouldn't bet the safety of innocent civil servants and patriotic military officers against it, let alone that of my son.
+100000
I'm not a lawyer but I don't think a pardon guarantees that you don't get hassled by Justice, the FBI, or even Congress. At the most, you can hope a judge would throw out any warrants or indictments eventually.
Yes, this is a huge factor in why I think a lot of these pardons were mistakes. If someone is already willing to pursue a frivolous prosecution against a party, a pardon is not going to prevent them from pursuing that prosecution if they want to waste the resources on it.
If only we had a way to prevent the executive branch from convicting its enemies. Some sort of separation of powers would have helped, and if, on top of that, we also made sure the power to convict would be in the hands of ordinary citizens then that would have been great? But we don't have all that, so clearly we need to give total impunity to people in power so they literally cannot be held accountable for anything they did while in office. All that is surely very democratic and totally justified /s
It's really poor to ignore the justifications given for actions then rail against motives you appear to have made up. Biden explicitly said he is concerned about the harms of meritless prosecutions. Not convictions.
Do you disagree with that? Specifically in a case where a President who is himself a convicted felon nominates an FBI director with an enemies list, on which these individuals were included? Whose AG nominee holds much of her wealth in the President's meme stock?
Should nothing be done to prevent a justice system run by such people to torment people as much as they can, on the premise that so long as people are ultimately exonerated, the time and money spent defending themselves is irrelevant?
EDIT: I was reminded Fauci is already the victim of harassment including death threats which have led to arrests. Arrests the Kash Patel FBI might not be so interested in making. Does this dedicated public servant deserve no protection?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/biden-pardons-fauci-milley
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/03/anthony-fauci-covid-19-threats-harassment
I’d like to make a dismissive wanking gesture in the direction of the phrase “this dedicated public servant.” At best, he is a self-aggrandizing bureaucratic empire builder who is dumb enough to explain to the New York Times exactly how he lies to the public; at worst, he lied to Congress about funding programs they prohibited and covered it up. This is not Ted Williams giving up a baseball career to fly fighter planes in Korea.
Wait, are you saying that Anthony Fauci, who has been one of the few public health figures to ever learn anything and change his mind and improve policy, both regarding hiv and later other diseases, is *not* a dedicated public servant?
I don't think you intended it this way, but this has a very "damned by faint praise" vibe to it. I do concur that, whatever his failings, he's certainly a dedicated public servant.
A lot of people have unrealistic expectations of what expertise and skill can do, and so they are incredibly disappointed by real experts with real skill, and say that they should be eliminated. I want to preserve a realistic expectation of the real value they provide.
Correct. I am saying that "dedicated public servant" implies some level of personal sacrifice in serving the public, but for whatever positive attributes he has, he is in his career because he wants to be in charge of people and things.
Wow you know approximately nothing about Fauci, incredibly. Barely perusing his wiki page would get you a better view and you couldn’t be bothered to even do that.
Thanks to the blanket pardon I guess we’ll never get an investigation into whether he was actually covering up illegally-funded research or whether he was enacting a Saddam-style coverup of nothing just because he doesn’t think public records rules apply to people as important as him, so I guess his Wikipedia article can remain unsullied.
"I am saying that "dedicated public servant" implies some level of personal sacrifice in serving the public"
Huh? "Personal sacrifice" like what? Wearing sackcloth and ashes? A vow of poverty? A pathological aversion to being "in charge of people and things"? (how would anybody be a senior public servant without being in charge of anything?)
I'm not saying Fauci's policy judgement is beyond criticism but I'm genuinely trying to figure out what you expect here.
It's clear to me that Congress *should* move to severely curtail presidential pardon powers, make clear that as an institution they will fight executive impoundment tooth and nail, and also pass legislation clarifying that the executive has to enforce laws they pass (tiktok ban being a clarifying example of how much contempt the executive branch has developed for the article one branch), or some other means if limiting the broadening scope of executive orders.
Will it do that? Lol no
>It's clear to me that Congress *should* move to severely curtail presidential pardon powers,
Congress does not have this power. It is one of the very few cases where not even the most pro-legislative jurist would allow them to do this, because the Constitution pretty much says in plain language that the President "shall have" the power to grant pardons in any and all federal cases except impeachment cases.
They can, however, propose an amendment.
That's crazy talk, Jacob! Next, you'll be suggesting that members of Congress should introduce bills to pare back some of the dozens of statutes giving Presidents broad emergency powers that those same members of Congress complained about Trump abusing last time he was in office!
"...pass legislation clarifying that the executive has to enforce laws they pass..."
1) Who would enforce that legislation?
2) (More importantly) it's impossible for every bit of legislation to be enforced everywhere. We will never catch everyone violating speeding laws, and there's that "3 felony a day" meme that certainly has a kernel of truth. Functional government will always require some form of prosecutorial discretion, but it depends on good-faith cooperation between politicians and justice types who may not agree about everything. That is what we are lacking, and I don't know how to get it (back).
I don't like the pardons. But when Trump says he's going to pursue his enemies for retribution then you just have to take him seriously. There's no way to do it later, outside of the current window. The optimal behavior from the recipients would be to lash out angrily about receiving them while still being protected and that's what they're doing. Biden's feelings can absorb the ingratitude.
So RIP rule of law, but taking legal harassment off the table is the right move. And the public proved that it currently DGAF about rule of law in the election so there's no norm to protect. The pardons won't be an issue in 2028.
Spare me the outrage. Agent Orange ran explicitly on punishing his political enemies and using the justice system against them. Does anyone think Kash Patel will tell him, “but Mr. President, that’s unethical/illegal”?
Would you trust Kash Patel not to try to ruin these people's lives? Isn't it worth a mass to offer them some protections from the stated and desired wishes for persecution coming from Trump appointees?
Accusing Biden of undermining the justice system in view of the incoming administration is truly to focus on the mote and not the plank in one's eye.
Joe Biden just pardoned his entire family for any crime committed for the past 11 years.
Good for him.
I wouldn’t trust Trump as far as I could throw him. And given his avoirdupois boy that isn’t very far.
President Trump didn't even do this upon his departure 4 years ago. But we can be sure he will do so in 4 years, and will use the same justification and same language Biden used today.
It is a bad decision, and one I suspect die hard partisans will come to regret.
Consider that perhaps Trump didn’t do it because the risk of bad-faith prosecution of his family members by more normal people who, unlike him, are not avatars of vindictive mendacious narcissism, was very low.
You’re so close to an insight here
I'm fine if Trump pardons his family. Because no Democratic President would launch a baseless prosecution of them. And if they did commit chargeable crimes, I'm hoping state AGs would step up to fill the void.
This trying to draw an equivalence between Trump and Biden is really something. Trump is sui generis in a bad, bad, bad way. The threat of him calls for unprecedented actions, like Biden just took.
"We had to destroy the village to protect it"
Joe Biden himself (back before The Decline) said it best, when asked about preemptive pardons for adult children:
"It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks (at) us as a nation of laws and justice"
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-election-news-12-03-20#h_d58f958cc30c727786086bc83e861f84
Trump literally pardoned one of his in laws. Biden pardoned his son. Both were bad.
"President Trump didn't even do this upon his departure 4 years ago."
A simple explanation for this is as follows: Republicans are far more likely to engage in weaponized abuse (see definition below) of the justice system to punish their political enemies than Democrats are, and *both sides know this*. Trump didn't feel any need to pardon his family because Biden's FBI nominee was not going to be anyone even remotely like Kash Patel.
("Weaponized abuse" = initiation of prosecution based on reasons other than objective evaluations of evidence and understandings of the law and precedent).
The one person who had any say in it is likely to be dead, so I doubt he'll regret anything.
Donald Trump has promised to lock up his political enemies and nominated people with explicit enemies lists. That’s really very dark stuff.
What’s far more bleak is that the entire conservative movement, including supposed libertarians and conservative legal scholars, have embraced the idea that President Trump is constitutionally entitled to direct the entirety of the DOJ’s resources to punishment of Trump’s political enemies.
I think the absolute surety that people have that this is because of Trump and not because of bad behavior on the part of at least some of the people Biden pardoned is a large assumption. I get why people are making that assumption, but I think we are better off at least holding judgment until after Biden's been out of office for a bit and some of the dirty laundry can be aired. Matt has made the point that this administration has been the most lead proof in memory. It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't something to air out.
Today’s pardons open the door for the Supreme Court to curtail the President’s pardon power, such as by holding that unless the person receiving a preemptive pardon admits some guilt, there’s nothing to pardon. It’s one thing for the president himself to have limited immunity, but it’s quite another to extend that to allowing the President to give anyone working for him a license to violate any federal law with impunity.
In the presidential immunity decision, seeing ahead to trump’s return to office, the Court, basically said they were anticipating and trying to prevent a vicious cycle where Presidents prosecute their predecessors. That same logic could justify the court invalidating these preemptive pardons of people who admit no wrongdoing. The Court might use Biden’s actions today to preemptively trim Trump’s ability to supersize this practice.
This assumes, of course, that the Trump administration actually tries to prosecute one of these people despite the preemptive pardons, so that there is a live case for the courts to rule on.
“…[the president] shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States…”
Where’s the wiggle room there for the textualist Supreme Court to rule that there are limits to a power that is so very clear?
I think Allan’s argument is that because the power only extends to “Offences,” you can’t pardon in the absence of a conviction or admission of guilt. It’s similiar to how the Court read the term “cases and controversies” to preclude issuing advisory opinions.
Allen’s argument is that he believes it is important that Fauci be made to suffer by any means his conspiracy addled mind can conjure.
Otherwise, your position is that the President couldn’t constitutionally pardon a wrongly convicted person, which would be news to nearly everyone with even a superficial knowledge of the subject.
Well, nothing in the text you quoted defines what a "pardon" is. For that you have to look outside the text. Is any attempt by the President to relieve someone of the consequences of violating a federal law allowed, so long as the President remembers to slap the label "pardon" onto it? No, obviously not. I'm certainly haven't read all Supreme Court's or the English cases defining the scope of what is or isn't a valid presidential or royal pardon, but there are limits. For example, it's generally understood that even if the President calls it a "pardon" an attempt by the President to immunize future lawbreaking isn't a valid pardon. And the degree of specificity required for a valid pardon is also unclear -- in Burdick v. US the Court said a pardon isn't effective unless accepted by the recipient, and that a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it". How specific does that confession need to be to be a valid acceptance of a pardon? etc. etc.
I think this is overall well-put, except that I’m not sure I agree with this:
“ Is any attempt by the President to relieve someone of the consequences of violating a federal law allowed, so long as the President remembers to slap the label "pardon" onto it?”
I would argue that this pretty clearly *is* allowed under the pardon power as I presently understand it.
It wouldn’t be a valid pardon if on day one of the President’s term the president gave someone a document that said, I hereby pardon any offenses against the United States that you may commit between today and January 20, 2029. And I’m pretty sure if I read all the US and English cases I could come up with other examples that don’t involve future conduct…..
I think that prospective pardons may ineffective, but I read your statement as referring to past offenses. Also, one could presumably issue an illegal order to an executive officer with the promise of a pardon, and then just issue that pardon, so I’m not sure it isn’t a distinction without a difference. Would be interested to know of any examples that don’t involve future conduct (and granting that non-criminal consequences like lack of granting a security clearance on the basis of a since- pardoned offense would be out of scope.)
I mean, the 10th Circuit specifically answered this question. Accepting a pardon does not require any admission of guilt. And there is no historical record supporting your assertion. Even the Supreme Court’s dicta on the subject doesn’t suggest an actual legal requirement of an admission-it merely provides an explanation that some people might choose not to accept a pardon because other people might view that as the decision of a guilty person. This isn’t even a close question of law.
Supreme Court > Tenth Circuit, as you know. And it overrules/disregards circuit court opinions all the time.
Yes, but it doesn’t adopt entirely fictional positions adopted by loons.
So it goes Allen Thoen < 10th Circuit < Supreme Court.
Given that we only have your unhinged ramblings and the 10th Circuit’s well reasoned opinion (which discusses the dicta on the subject from the Supreme Court), we’re squarely in a world where no person with actual knowledge of the subject believes that accepting a pardon requires some sort of confession to a crime.
So perhaps you should read instead of writing.
https://casetext.com/case/lorance-v-commandant-1
The definition of pardon is well known, and is unchanged from the time the Constitution was written. A pardon for a future transgression is illogical and not really worth discussing.
It's pretty easy to imagine a scenario where the question of whether accepting a pardon entails admitting guilt as well:
1. Fauci accepts Biden's pardon but does not admit guilt.
2. Some right leaning outlet reports this as "We now have definitive proof that Fauci's handling of Covid was fully criminal."
3. Fauci sues for libel.
I don’t think Fauci wants to open himself up to discovery.
So I am out of the loop on this. What is Fauci's alleged crime? Not asking sarcastically. I genuinely didn't know he was suspected of any wrongdoing.
You’d have to ask Biden.
Yeah, that's possible, but he also strikes me as someone who is a true believer in his own righteousness and is not unconcerned with his legacy.
It’s actually pretty clear that accepting a pardon does not require admitting anything. Nothing in the constitution suggests that, and the DOJ itself has explicit guidelines for granting pardons in cases of wrongful conviction.
I wish I agreed with you, but I think they (Trump and Biden) are both right! The criminal justice system in this country was not built to handle the phenomenon of ultra-partisan, ultra-high-profile criminal cases. Once a case reaches that point, everyone involved's incentives change dramatically. Prosecutors start imagining the star power of being the prosecutor on such a high-profile case, and the adoration they will get for owning a disfavored enemy of the other side. Jurors bring their own partisan perspective, analyzing the case from the perspective of its political impact rather than its mere substance. Judges especially (and we've seen this a lot with the Trump cases) are either extreme partisans with a preferred outcome, or else they are desperately afraid of becoming a hate topic on one side or the other's partisan media. Pretty much the only person involved in the trial whose only incentive is still doing their job correctly is the defense attorney.
I mean, Biden sadly might not be wrong here: "Effectively, Biden is saying the criminal justice system cannot be trusted to deliver justice for politically-connected people." But it's not just politically-connected people who cannot rely upon an objective criminal justice system that has become undermined and politicized.
But then he also, as you said, subverted that same justice system by reaching over and giving his own son a pardon. That is so indefensible I almost consider it treasonous. He really betrayed every Americans' trust with that outrageous breach of duty.
I'm not arguing against the idea that prosecutors can act in ways that are politicized. I think that is wrong, as I've stated on these pages many times. But prosecutors act on the priorities of the politician who appoints them.
But Biden has done something worse with these actions. He is saying the ultimate end of the justice system -- a jury of your peers deciding a case and a judge administering a sentence -- cannot be trusted. That is the part that is most corrosive to the justice system.
The problem is that he is only ratifying the claim that his successor has made - Trump has specifically *campaigned* on making the justice system a tool of partisan warfare, with no interest in whether or not crimes were committed, and all Biden is doing with this specific set of pardons is lamenting that and agreeing that Trump is planning to destroy the justice system.
"all Biden is doing with this specific set of pardons is lamenting that and agreeing that Trump is planning to destroy the justice system."
That may be some of what he is doing. But we are making assumptions when we say its all he is doing. Biden has been president for four years in the most leak proof administration in memory. Are you that certain there hasn't been at least some shady stuff going on here?
He's not just protecting against a conviction (which is unlikely), but more against the *prosecution*, which can be incredibly costly and damaging in and of itself.
But Trump has been explicit that his priority is prosecuting his political opponents. He plainly doesn’t care if even a plausible crime is implicated-he never bothers to even suggest it matters.
And the legal position of conservative legal scholars today is that Trump has the explicit constitutional authority to require the DOJ to investigate and prosecute his political enemies. What will be interesting is if he has prosecutions initiated in single judge divisions of the Northern District of Texas to ensure only MAGA judges decide these cases.
I'm not usually one to worry about setting precedent that enables Trump, because I don't think he feels bound by precedent in any case. But I'll admit to not feeling great about Biden's preemptive pardons today. I think it makes it meaningfully more likely that at some point Trump just gives everyone in his administration a preemptive pardon and tells them to go wild.
And maybe he was going to do that anyway. But he didn't last time, and he might not have this time, but for Biden planting an idea in his head.
Trump has at various points made explicit threats to use the justice department against these people. I don't think the pre-emptive pardon was the right move, but I find it understandable. Harrassing prosecution is tremendous detriment even if ultimately the jury system doesn't ultimately go along.
But, it's the wrong move ultimately because it's a normal breaking expansion of an ultimately dangerous presidential power.
“We had to burn the village to save it.”
He didn't say any of that. Those pardons are because Trump has specifically promised to weaponize our justice system against them. Even if they weren't convicted, the harassment would be the point, and these pardons seak to circumvent that. There is an enourmous gulf between "Trump will harass these specific people" and "our justice system can't be trusted at all".
To be fair, Trump has explicitly promised politically motivated prosecutions and conservative legal thinkers have taken the position that he’s entitled to bring those cases. Difficult spot to be in as a nation.
Alright, now that it's all over, I have to ask, who was actually calling the shots the last four years? Joe Biden obviously outsourced a lot of thinking to "the groups," but specifically who? Was Jill Biden influential? What just happened for four years?
I don't understand why he didn't include Trump in the pardons.* Demos has spoken, so let's just flush and start with a fresh bowl. It would take the wind out of the vengeance sails, highlight how petty, childish and very-online MAGA is, blunt criticism of the other pardons, provide contrast to the J6 thugs Trump says he'll pardon and focus the opposition on the here and now.
* I mean other than the fact that he surrounded by people who think that Kamala lost because she didn't go too far enough with the threat to democracy rhetoric.
A really good way to include Trump would be to pardon Trump for a specific set of charges, or a specific set of years, while still leaving Jan 6 unpardoned.
This is what's most frustrating about contemporary American politics: most voters seem to be amazingly incurious at best and genuinely not care at worst about actual policy.
Like, I'm a progressive, but I'm totally in agreement with some of Trump's animal instincts on being tough on China, supporting American manufacturing, shaking the Europeans and other allies out of their free-rider-ism and strategic drift, and even the need for a more rule-of-law-based immigration regime. But what's the actual policy!?
It's like, "LOL, who cares! We're WINNING!!!:
Because the other aspect of it is that there's a range of policy options that we can go with here. Let's say we're *actually* going to deport illegal immigrants. That's something that's already happened under every American president, Democrat or Republican, during my lifetime, btw. But if we're *REALLY* gonna do it big? Like, to the tune of millions of resident undocumented? Well, how, exactly? It's a pretty big job, as anyone could understand examining it for more than two seconds. I might suggest that cracking down on workplaces that knowingly hire undocumented immigrants is the most optimal way to channel limited enforcement resources toward higher deportation outcomes. But that's not something that Republicans are going to be interested in, I expect, since it may just affect their own businesses or at least inconvenience an economy that currently runs on the back of undocumented farm workers, restaurant bussers/cooks, yard-workers, home healthcare aids, construction crews, etc.
And, if we aren't going to do that, well, we're probably going to need to be super-maxxing the funding and capacity of the DHS/ICE, the long-backlogged immigration courts and the overcrowded containment facilities we already have. That's gonna cost us! So, where's the money coming from? More taxes? Nah! We'll just use magic to pretend that it gets paid for by nixing some progressive program that doesn't actually cost very much and therefore could never shake lose sufficient funding, right?
Which shows that they're not actually so serious about this mass deportation thing. If you value something, you plan for it, pay for it, and bear the other costs, too (including labor shortages). We don't value this enough to actually do all that, so we don't really value this, in practice. So, that's just one issue, but allegedly of primary importance. But has anyone even done the homework?
I could go on about any other MAGA bugbear that a Conservative might want, but that just bores people. They want the emotional thrill of sayin' stuff without having to dedicate the frustrating effort required to actually make it happen in reality. Trump is the same. He has no patience for details. And he just fires people who tell him confounding information like, "Mr. President, we can either have this thing or that thing, but not both..." So, not that much gets done. Except for nominating judges, cutting taxes, and firing off tweets. That stuff is easy!
+1. Even in “serious” policy circles, I have come across many, many people who pride themselves on their “big picture” focus. One needs to consider that, of course. But in my experience that usually means “I find attention to detail tedious and don’t want to do it.”
As Matt has often explored, this is something that leads Democratic leaders to lean on and have their paths be dictated by "The Groups." If you don't have the time or prioritized strategic focus to parse details and get the execution right, you might just outsource it all to a committee of people who care about siloed details that they are self-interested in, making for an unwieldy, inefficient, and often contradictory and self-defeating monster of a policy. The "Everything Bagel Approach to Liberalism."
By contrast, you could say that the prime goals is X (e.g. an optimal and politically sustainable, long-term strategy to meet the treaty-bound commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement and to mitigate damage to the United States from likely Climate Change scenarios in the decades to come). That requires difficult trade-offs and a lot of don't-let-the-perfect-be-the-enemy-of-the-good policy drafting. And it requires a solid vision and a compelling "Why?" for everyone who is going to be pulled into this objective. Like, sorry, team, but DEI is secondary to this initiative because WE'RE TRYING TO SAVE THE FUCKING WORLD FOR PEOPLE OF ALL GENDERS AND COLORS. And, yeah, btw, I'm gonna need you to stop pretending that your own favorite solution to this mega-problem is the only one, instead of one of many, so nuclear wolves, y'all gonna sit down with the solar lambs and BE NICE because we're gonna get this done together, fam, and we will allow zero whining on our way to winning! *CUE SIGNATURE POWER CHORD*
Or, if it's Trump, it's saying, I'm going to rid the country of them illegals at all costs! And that means that I need a Patriotic American Fee to pay for Our Nation's Finest deportation force, that I need y'all to be patient with some short-term inflation, and that we should *relish* that sacrifices and difficulties and criticisms we face in actually doing this because it means that we're different and better than the squishies who didn't have the nerve to do this before!
This kind of focus (at least rhetorically) has almost become right-coded today. But it was in evidence with lions of liberalism like FDR. It's how you get the big stuff done!
While I agree with the don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good in theory––one of the ways I think about big picture vs detail oriented is big picture is focused on outcome while detail is focused on process. At the end of the day, getting the outcome that is necessary to resolve the issue is what matters most. I think ironically so much of the details(as you mentioned above gets outsourced to the groups and the outcome gets watered-down so no one is happy). For me the issue is its not enough to be detail-oriented unless the details will actually lead to the desired outcome. I absolutely believe in trade-offs but politically they end up tanking administrations unless those trade-offs are calibrated to a public that is pissed-off at the status quo. At a certain point you get to the Thomas Sewell quote: "There are no solutions, only trade-offs" at which point the public flips the table and says "solve the fucking problem or get the fuck out." That is where we are now. The problem is there are no FDRs and i'm not sure FDR could get what he accomplished today because of 1) the political environment today and 2)the reality that he was only able to go as big as he did because of the true direness of the Great Depression/World War II which was really 1000 times worse than any of the problems were dealing with today.
I agree with you on process v outcome and the need for calibration of tradeoffs. Part of my frustration as a policy person nominally on the leftish side (I have never identified as a "progressive") is the insistence of some on the left on pursuing outcomes that are nearly or actually impossible to achieve, often in an ahistorical fashion. To get "there" from "here," you need to figure out what might be a workable path. Often that requires knowledge and consideration of the details.
My comment above might suggest otherwise, but I don't think the big picture and the details are mutually exclusive. I've just seen numerous examples where more attention to detail might have avoided an unfortunate outcome.
Absolutely my belief is that what is needed is both and type thinking rather than either or type thinking in order to create the outcome you want. The details need to be worked out and aligned with the overall goal to ensure the best outcome. The problem so often is that the incentives/motivations(as well as the cognitive models) of outcome oriented vs detail oriented people are often not aligned or in opposition.
oof, i’d follow paragraph 2 to the ends of the earth, but apparently it’s just you and me who want it
I know. I can't even take my own household full of conscientious and progressive people to take Climate Change all that seriously, much less most anyone else out there, so it's clearly something we're just not going to solve.
(Until it gets so bad-ly bad that we don't have much control over the mitigation anymore and just have to do a all-hands-on-deck effort at desperate adaptation).
I guess I'll be able to say "I told you so," at least. But, the Prophet Jeremiah didn't feel much satisfaction at being right about the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah. And it's lonely among the chorus of those who have told us that we're headed towards doom in our lifetimes.
My (non-US) experience is similar, although I'd add that there are a lot of people who are reasonably good at one or the other, they just don't talk to each other anywhere near often enough! So you have bureaucrats who know their policy areas (the law, tradeoffs, stakeholders, interests, history etc.) inside out, but they rarely interact deeply with political types with ambition of delivering particular outcomes. It's when you get teams comprised of both types (or more rarely where you get an exceptional workaholic politician who does both) that real change is doable.
LOL I just wrote something kind of similar (at least that's what I had in mind) above in response to Jeffrey Zide! Totally agree!
Yes. It is incredibly frustrating. I live in a blue city, and on this side of the aisle it is very similar. Our mayor is stepping down. So far we have four candidates. So far I have heard them talk about how bad crime, housing costs, losing businesses has been under the current mayor. (Some of these claims, when I looked them up, weren't even true.) OK, fine. But how do YOU propose to fix these complicated issues? Time will tell as we get closer to the election, but so far the electorate doesn't seem to care about the answers.
So you’re saying that turning government into a reality TV show was a bad idea? I don’t know man, the ratings are great and advertisers are making a killing.
"I'm totally in agreement with some of Trump's animal instincts on being tough on China, supporting American manufacturing, shaking the Europeans and other allies out of their free-rider-ism and strategic drift, and even the need for a more rule-of-law-based immigration regime. But what's the actual policy!?"
Canadian here. Fair points. Internally there is a lot of criticism from the Canadian conservatives towards Trudeau/Liberal party for being lax on immigration and defence. (and the Liberals are set to get walloped in the next election for those reasons among others). OK! But when Trump repeatedly muses about turning us into the 51st state (and believe me every time Trump says that it's front page news up here. It pisses us off.), we're all like "whoa, what's this really about? What does he really want?" It actually makes us *less* likely to do as he asks, because we don't think those requests are in good faith. The Liberals are 20 points underwater right now but might actually get re-elected if Trump keeps running his mouth like this.
"NATO allies should spend more on defence". OK, sure. Then Trump goes an talks about invading Greenland, the territory of a NATO ally! So now we're all wondering "is there still a NATO? Who are our allies and who are our enemies, really?" From up here it looks like our number one enemy is now the United States of America.
“Republicans have pivoted to working on budget reconciliation instructions that will make all of TCJA permanent and offset the cost by repealing most or all of the IRA climate funding, and also cutting student loans and various programs for the poor.”
Every time a liberal says this we need to scream that these numbers DO NOT ADD UP. JCT estimated that ALL IRA green energy credits were about $400 billion. The extension of the current TCJA * with no new cuts * is estimated to be $3.4 TRILLION. And they want new cuts, ranging from this dumb tips idea, to partially or fully reinstating the SALT deduction cap, to removing the corporate alternative minimum tax, and to (of course) defunding the IRS funding from the IRA, which * costs money *.
The republicans are the party of fiscal irresponsibility.
The party of fiscal irresponsibility welcomes people from all across the political spectrum with free drinks and hors d'oeuvres.
My brother in Christ I will take a pass
Isn’t the idea to radically expand tariffs to make up for that lost revenue?
I mean that’s not what they’re telling business leaders, but that’s how they could thread that needle.
The full 10 percent tariff on everything - LOL - gives you a trillion dollars over ten years. And that doesn’t take into account the revenue you lose from the ensuing economic contraction.
So maybe he does 30%+ tariffs.
Tariffs don't work that way. If tariffs go to up to 30% then it becomes uneconomical for many goods to be imported and so they won't be. That means tariff revenue starts falling. So you raise them to 40% which means even more goods won't be imported and revenue falls again.
This is like when Homer tries raising the price of elephant rides to hundreds of dollars. https://youtu.be/HjOzg5uPQFE?si=LWL1UI3tW-zGOZG9
They do not care about making up the lost revenue. The Senate parliamentarian may force them to make these expire after a ten year window, but other than that, they don't care about the deficit at all.
They will care about inflation when it happens. We're long past the "run up the credit card with no consequences" phase of this cycle.
Well, technically they only care about it when a Dem is President.
For purposes of complying with the rules of budget reconciliation, they can pretend that their tax cuts will pay for themselves with economic growth, thereby, at least on paper, not adding anything to the deficit, even though, we all know that argument to be bullshit.
True. On the bright side, that combination of ideas is unlikely to make it through Congress, so we'll get a watered down version.
All the “Day 1 Lame Duck” stuff is a grave analytical error.
We will continue to get blindsided if we do not examine things from the possibility that he may be setting the stage for another coup attempt.
Or pull off a Putin/Medvedev: run for VP with Vance, have Vance resign shortly after the inauguration, become POTUS again.
I don’t think his ego can tolerate even a strategic self-abnegation like that.
Also very heavily dependent on trusting the other guy to follow through with the resignation.
The VP is constitutionally required to be someone who is constitutionally eligible to the presidency.
However, the Speaker of the House is not.
But I think the presidential succession act says that anyone ineligible to the presidency is skipped in the line of succession.
I think that's correct. However, with the supreme court we have, the constitution effectively means whatever the Republican party says it means. And, if the Republican party decides in 2028 that the two-term limit doesn't apply to Trump, then the Supreme Court will affirm that, and that's what it will mean. (Of course, that exemption would not apply to any future Democratic president).
Neither side takes the constitution seriously anymore. The Republicans have captured the courts, but Biden's ERA stunt shows that prominent Democrats are now willing to make a farce of the amendment process. Passing the ERA is better than what Trump might want to do, sure, but the highest law of the land needs to operate in a Lawful rather than Chaotic manner.
I agree with you, but the argument would be based on the "One Weird Trick" certain people trotted out for Clinton and Obama in the past that the 22nd Amendment only forbids being *elected* to the presidency twice.
My money’s on this, or a Latin America-style family dynasty thing - President Ivanka with the not-so-subtle understanding that daddy is running the show behind the scenes.
He might just wind up being senile, though.
I think this is overblown. DeSantis didn't even nominate the Trump-preferred family member to the Florida Senate seat that opened up with Rubio moving into the Secretary of State role.
I think he eats the Big Mac From God first.
What are the odds he can get the 22nd amendment repealed? Not zero.
Lol you have no idea what this conversation is about, then.
FYI, it’s absolutely plausible that SCOTUS would declare that, a la their 14A decision, 22A likewise has no enforcing body — IE the states cannot unilaterally DQ an unqualified candidate.
fine, we'll run our term limited president, too?
Not sure what you’re advocating for here.
obama is 15 years younger than trump, and if we remove term limits he could run for president again
Given my historical druthers, I wish 22A had been 3-4 terms, not 2. And under such circumstances, I believe Obama would have been an historically good president through the last 8 years of crisis.
I’d refuse to back him now, because that is just not the constitutional order we forking live under.
Is that what you wanted me to say? Because it’s true!
But to the original point, it’s super forking obvious that *this* SCOTUS would happily abnegate 22A under their 14A precedent.
I would be UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY to be wrong on this point. Until I am proven suchly, I will reserve my forking right to bear arms, because I would happily take them up to oppose an unconstitutional third Trump term.
I don't really understand what you are saying here, and what your argument for not voting obama if he becomes eligible is. What I am saying is that being the party who vocally stands up for norms hasn't worked out well for democrats and a 'show not tell' approach might work better to illustrate what happens when a particular norm is not in place anymore.
I agree with you on that point. I guess I misunderstood whatever the heck else you might have been saying.
I mean, it's like we're starting at maximum senile, i don't know where to go from there.
The odds JD Vance becomes president in the next four years are decent.
I put that out as one of my hot takes back in November and December; that Trump doesn’t survive his term. The man doesn’t do anything to take care of himself.
But go back and compare clips of him from 2015 to now. I mean in 2015 he sounded like a crazy person compared to a normal politician. But he sounds down right coherent compared to now.
Not least because “next four years” includes Inauguration Day 2029.
I'm pretty skeptical Vance could win in 2028. Trump will likely be unpopular, thermostatic public opinion plus being a lame duck will take a toll, and Vance is a below replacement level politician in terms of electoral appeal.
I think it's a mistake to underestimate Vance. This is a guy who's managed to bootstrap himself into being the VP. And I think the Vance we see in 2028 won't be the same one we saw in 2024, 2022, or 2016.
Vance's problem is that he's just not likeable. Say what you will about Trump, but many people just like him.
Sure, but none of that involved being popular with the general public. It was all through working elite circles. His approval is underwater now in what should be a honeymoon period, and he badly underperformed other Ohio Republicans in 2022.
Fair point. The same was said of Harris and she flamed out in the end. Maybe Vance will have the same fate (even a good chance - winning the presidency is hard), but I do think he's more savvy than she is.
I think it's really hard to say. I agree, the highest point of Trump's presidency is probably today, and that thermostatic public opinion will favor Democrats, and also that the track record of vice presidents running for president is, quite frankly, not all that good.
But, on the other hand, Democrats themselves have their own problems. They have no clear frontrunner to run in 2028, and they still have a lot of reckoning to do to figure out what they stand for. 2028 will also feature another moderate vs. progressive primary battle which could make the whole party look bad. And, yes, I agree with James C. that underestimating Vance is a mistake.
What about Vance's debate performance? I thought it was really shockingly good given what negative media coverage of the Vance VP pick had led me to expect
On that last point, who would you consider an example of the replacement level politician?
Really it's most members of Congress who win by about as much as you'd expect, instead of by impressive margins. The problem is most of them don't have much of a profile because of their generic-ness. On the Republican side, an example might be someone like Thom Tillis or Roger Marshall.
:(
23% per Social Security life expectancy tables.
Good baseline, but that's likely very divergent conditioning on his wealth and status.
that being said, hard to weigh
-on the one hand, wealth and medical resources dedicated to the President
-on the other hand, his awful diet and lack of exercise
Is 4:1 crazy odds that Vance assumes the presidency before Trump's term ends?
20% would be 4:1, so yeah, if somebody offers you 4:1, take it!
Nixon might be the president most like Trump we've had in the modern era (minus a lot of hard intelligence). Nixon died of a stroke at 82... LONG after he'd exited the White House. That would get Trump only to Year Three in his second term.
I guess his track record of being extremely fat and gorging on unhealthy food and not yet dying can kind of convince you that he'll just live forever. But most of his acolytes and most fervent supporters are certainly not known for their hale lifespans, either, so why haven't any of them kind of contended with the fact that there's statistically much more than a 50/50 chance he dies in office?
That's another point. He is going to get as old as Biden is right now, in 4 years. Who is going to be running the government if he diminishes the way Biden did?
Why would Elon stop running the government?
Has he shown any interest in continuing to run anything? He gathers lots and lots of leadership titles, but how much does he actually run any of his companies?
Elon Musk?
It's funny to me that Matt appears to be the only prominent writer to point out what is extremely obvious - Trump has effectively marketed himself as a rogue chaos agent who will buck convention, but when rubber meets the road will only do so to personally enrich himself and his cronies, and otherwise defaults to typical right wing policy.
Democrats are cripplingly addicted to process and it's functionally paralyzed blue states from doing anything to address their issues on housing, crime, energy, transit, and a myriad of other quality of life issues. Someone coming into office who disregards process could make real tangible achievements in people's lives. It could force democrats to counterpunch and show their own ability to govern. But he won't. He'll use it to eliminate tax burdens and enforcement on oligarchs and car dealership owners by putting the screws to the poor, and that's about it.
And Americans voted for this. They saw it the first time and said "yes, this is good actually" so I have very little interest in protesting and marching and shaking my fist in anger this time around. We'll see how it ultimately plays out but all the horrors and degradations of the next four years feel like fait accompli at this point.
I protested and was very politically active the first time but won't be the second time.
But I am going to donate to Dems and vote every election.
Probably, that was the most effective thing last time anyway. So I'm cutting the fat and only doing the effective part.
“ Someone coming into office who disregards process could make real tangible achievements in people's lives.”
I mean, this is essentially what happened with Napoleon III. Minus the wars and all.
Everyone loves the boulevards, the battle of Sedan notsomuch.
I think the best way to describe Trump's cabinet is it is the "looks great on TV cabinet." Trump is assembling his Celebrity Apprentice cast again. Trump watches a ton of TV, and wants to see his people on TV talking about and defending him. So they have to look asthetically pleasing. After Matt Gaetz dropped his bid for AG, there was a lot of fear Trump would nominate Ken Paxton. Trump instead nominated Pam Bondi, who looks miles better than ogre Paxton. Trump is assembling his team of TV avengers, and I have no idea what this means for actual policy.
I do not know enough about Bondi to know how terrible she will be, but Paxton is an absolute criminal. If he is ever AG, we should assume that the worst that is possible is the likeliest thing to happen.
I really like the Richard Hanania article you linked. I know Hanania is kind of considered a persona non grata in a lot of center-left/left circles, but I think his writing has been very insightful, especially recently. He’s a little trollish but I think he genuinely has a lot of interesting things to say. Any chance you guys would do a podcast or something like that together?
I like Richard's writing as well and I think he is especially insightful about intra-right issues, but I think it would be incredibly unwise for Matt to do a podcast with him, except maybe if they were both guests on a third party's show. Richard is a racist in a very sincere and forthright sense, i.e., that he genuinely believes black people are an inferior race. He has a whole article about how he doesn't talk about it anymore that makes clear that he still believes all the race stuff he used to write and just finds it less politically relevant and not useful to discuss.
He never disavowed the women shouldn’t vote stuff either!
Yeah, I think that podcast would be interesting, but it would damage Matt's influence among Democrats.
Matt really can't be seen in public with him: Hanania would have to have an entirely different kind of Sister Soulja moment first.
Noah Smith did a podcast with him and it was very useful in showing that Hanania simply hadn't thought through his positions and constantly had to concede that maybe he didn't have a good argument.
What podcast? Sounds interesting. I feel like Hannia doesn’t actually believe the race/IQ stuff and just uses it to get attention that his more normal writing wouldn’t get on its own.
My bad. It was Jeff Mauer's "I Might Be Wrong":
https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/imbw-audio-richard-hanania-doesnt
Which one?
Early onset Alzheimer speaking here. It wasn't Noah Smith; it was Jeff Mauer "Slow Boring" alumnus, at "I Might Be Wrong": https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/imbw-audio-richard-hanania-doesnt
I don't see why he shouldn't do a podcast with him though. Lots of people are genuinely bad but vote. I don't think you should refuse to talk to them.
He's a smart bigot. And that, at least, I can work with. Many of his priors are way off (especially when it comes to his cringe-y notions around gender essentialism or IQ), but that is something that intelligent people can debate. Unfortunately, his unquestioning attitude about many of those priors crowds out a lot of the good in his essays, limiting the total insight I can get from following him and rendering a lot of his logical argumentation really unimpressive. I just want to shake him and be like, "You're better than this. Just turn around for one second and re-examine some things from the root with some intellectual humility!"
But, fine, he also actually genuinely believes things. Which makes him much less of a grifter than most of the MAGAverse. I may not agree with those things (see above point about his priors), but I respect that he advocates for them in good faith. Even if he's wrong and a little (or a lot) intellectually sloppy.
Hanania writes like a lot of lefty guys i know- in fact reading him kinda clued him into why stuff from my end of things is so grating if you don't agree with it. It's the sort of baseline trolling that comes out through his work that makes it almost unreadable if you're not already in line with what he likes, right down to his terminology. You never know if he's positing something seriously or just trolling.
He’s going to do a vibes presidency:
* Do a few workplace raids, talk about it all the time, but not actually increase deportations much if at all
* Levy some tariffs, talk about it all the time, but not fundamentally change much
* Let TikTok stay because it’s what the people want
* Make a deal in Ukraine by conceding territory to Russia, claim he brought peace; somehow make a similar deal for Israel
* Prosecute people he doesn’t like, claim he is holding Biden and Hillary accountable
* DOGE will continuously surface the most ridiculous examples of government inefficiency but not actually do anything
All of this will be for show, he will talk about how he is saving the day, all without actually doing that much. His base will think he’s crushing it because they won’t actually look at anything serious like the line plots of deportations over time, and anytime anything doesn’t go the way he wants, he’ll blame woke Democrats. Meanwhile hardcore Republicans will pass some tax cuts and then JD Vance will run in 2028. If the economy is going good, he will win.
And that will all be awesome as long as absolutely nothing dangerous happens in the world or the global economy, which it absolutely will. Remember the pandemic? The world isn't getting more boring.
My thoughts on Inauguration Day:
1) It's crazy (but, not really, if you know America) that America elected the human equivalent of a Twitter feed as President. He's going to loot the country and wreck a bunch of stuff, and that'll sure show those annoying liberals on my Facebook feed!
2) It's crazy (but not really, if you know America) that the Democratic party continues to specialize in schoolmarming and fecklessness in the face of (1).
It's going to be a bumpy ride.
My prediction is that Republicans will not succeed in repealing most of the IRA. They’ll probably be able to repeal the EV mandate but I don’t think they’ll be able to repeal the big tax credits. Too much money in red districts.
The world in which interest rates are hovering at 8% because we've finally hit the wall and we're crowding out private investment will be... unfun.
Unlike the early 90's, there won't be any low-hanging fruit to cut to goose the economy, and it's unlikely that there's either an AI-driven productivity revolution or a mini baby boom on the way.
The worst-case for the next half-century is a series of bounces between left-Peronism and right-Peronism.
Disagree re: likelihood of AI-driven productivity boom, although I think a high likelihood in those scenarios that aren’t just straight up extinction is that, like horses, whatever marginal product humans contribute is less than the combination of transaction costs required to employ them and the minimum resources needed for their upkeep.
We're already seeing a massive energy revolution plus whatever happens with AI. Managed well, there's a vast amount of wealth coming down the pike. (Managed poorly we're all screwed.)
When solar+wind+batteries actually deliver energy at the time of demand at a marginal cost 20% lower than current grids I’ll call it a revolution.
Not sure if you are interested or have the time, but I found your long discussion on nuclear power interesting and was curious if you have looked at discussions around wind power such as here:
https://liberalandlovingit.substack.com/p/is-wind-energy-a-chimera?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A.D. seems to have hit it… just looking at the numbers they’re very favorable to gas, using the combined averages of even very old wind turbines and gas prices downstream of s momentary glut in the US market waiting for LNG export capacity to come online.
I don’t think wind is the lynchpin here, solar PV will go further before the scale and improvement curves go flat and we also see PV cells continuing to last decades beyond their originally forecasted lifespans.
I hope we can figure out nuclear as it’ll be a huge help, but sufficiently cheap batteries seem more likely at this point; even the Koreans are only cranking out nuclear plants able to compete with current prices with a bit of financing subsidy.
Yeah, nuclear seems to have run into many of the issues that hinder large projects across the world. I was somewhat surprised by your optimism with lithium ion batteries. The sheer scale of material needed seems daunting unless we can figure out other materials. The research & development around iron batteries seems interesting as a way to alleviate much of that.
See also a bunch of follow-up discussion here where I thought his numbers were off enough to change the result.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/friday-thread-a4e/comment/82470700
(TLDR new wind turbines _are_ worth it, older ones he's got more of an argument)
Thanks. That was an interesting discussion.
The mandate is the least consequential part, since basic economic factors will make it impossible to continue selling ICE vehicles past 2035 anyway. I was always bemused by people objecting strongly to that requirement when it always seemed to me like just putting a label on what is going to happen anyway.
"basic economic factors will make it impossible to continue selling ICE vehicles past 2035"
What? Did some new common sense drop?
Have you seen the curves for both energy density and price/scale for lithium-ion batteries lately?
By 2035 they're going to whip ICEVs like a rented mule for basically all ground transport use cases, in conjunction with 800V and 1.2kV architectures.
90% odds that by then a mid-market EV will cost $40,000 (in 2023 real terms) new, drive 450-650 miles on a charge anywhere in the lower 48, take 15 minutes to charge 5%-95%, last for 500,000 miles with 10-15% battery degradation, and cost half as much as an ICEV to fuel.
Will ICEVs still exist? Absolutely. Will they be manufactured? Yes, in dwindling quantities. Will the people buying them be doing so based on rational appraisal of their benefits and costs relative to EVs? No. It'll be the "I like VROOM VROOM noises" folks and the "I don't wan' the gubmint trackin' mah cahr" folks.
And the latter will knuckle under as the infrastructure to keep one running dies off for lack of scale.
The main obstacle to this future is not subsidies or the lack thereof, but building infrastructure, which is likely to still see bipartisan movement on permitting this coming term.
Musk wanting the IRA dead to kneecap trailing competitors in the US and a shitload of deregulation so he can build a ton of charging infrastructure is an entirely rational business move in the medium term.
You think batteries will get that good? Isn’t fast charging bad for them?
What about our ability to get the lithium and rare earths needed? I admit I’m not an expert in this field, I just don’t necessarily see batteries getting that good by 2035. And even when they do there will be a long lag in adoption. People will have to see EVs routinely lasting 300k+ miles like Honda Accords do before they’ll trust them like that.
We have a long way off (like, not in my lifetime) before gas stations start to fall, especially for trucking.
I'm not too concerned about supply of lithium. Everything I've read says the world actually has plenty of lithium, with at lot of it actually sitting right here in the United States, the backlog is simply the mining capacity to pull it out of the ground and the processing capacity to turn the ore into usable battery material. Also, as existing EVs reach end of life, their batteries will get recycled (yes, EV battery recycling companies already exist), adding even more material to the supply chain.
Yes, there will be a bit of a lag in adoption. Like you said, there is no shortcut to prove that a particular car will actually last 20 years under real-world conditions without actually waiting 20 years. But, it will happen.
However, there are also other factors that will push EV ownership rates forward. One critical one, I think will be impact of AI on charging. Right now, if you can't charge at home, you have to rely on fast chargers like gas stations. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem where, in order to have gas-station-like convenience, you need a gas-station-like density of fast chargers. But, without a critical mass of EV drivers who can't charge at home, it won't be economical to build that many fast chargers.
How does AI break this cycle? Well, if your car is able to drive itself, it will be able to drive itself to be charged, which means the charger doesn't have to be on your way anymore, since it's no longer taking up your time getting to it. The result will be a model where you park at home, go to sleep, and, while you're in bed, the car drives itself a few miles to a big charging hub set up in some industrial area, where power is cheap and there's lots of parking spaces that can be leased for cheap late at night. The car then charges itself on level 2 for a few hours (with an option to fast charge if really need need it done sooner and are willing to pay more), drives back home, and by the time you wake up in the morning, it's back at your home parking space, charged. With the range that future EVs would have by this point, this process would likely only be necessary about once every week or two, depending on the length of the commute.
The effect on this will be huge because one of the most common objections to EV ownership, that it takes too much time if you can't charge at home, will become instantly obsolete.
Dunno how old you are but as someone in their (shudders) mid-30’s… I’d bet wildly against this for myself.
No one buys a car because it lasts 300k miles. Niche used car buyers pay more for the brands with a reputation of doing so reliably, sure, but they’re both rare and adaptable.
I’ve put 60k miles on an EV in three years and a couple months and the only maintenance tasks have been tire replacement, mostly due to punctures, and alignment.
I have no doubt that even with present-day batteries it’ll be ticking along at the 10-year mark with functional range even as I work it to death.
Nah, normal people buy cars for reliability and expect to run them into the ground. This is why accords, Camrys, and F-150s are so popular. And right now folks don’t expect EVs to last even 100k miles without serious battery life issues. (Which is why my hybrid came with a 100k miles warranty on the hybrid parts of the car)
I mean, to the extent that it’s good for the environment, especially the American environment, I hope you’re right.
Indeed I have not seen the curves! I appreciate the detail.
Once the battery technology matures, it's just a hell of a lot easier to manufacture a couple of good brushless electric motors and hook them up to a battery than to build a precision internal combustion engine.
And firms are going to keep pushing the batteries long past the point where they're "good enough" for passenger EVs because freight, agriculture, construction, and a bunch of other big industries will need way better batteries to electrify their equipment, which manufacturers will pursue knowing that they can also defray fixed costs by selling into the passenger car market.
It’s already come to pass with the Chinese able to build an EV for between 1/3 and 1/2 of an equivalent ICE vehicle. If the ICE RAV4 is $40k they aren’t going to be selling any when the EV version is $20k.
In fairness a portion of that advantage is that their ICEVs always sucked, but yes, in the long run we should expect that kind of cost convergence.
Honestly I’m unconvinced the Chinese “force mass adoption of a 2.5th generation product” strategy is really optimal even from a climate perspective, because the 4th generation stuff is just going to be mind-blowing, but their infrastructure roll-out should be a model since we’re spending money on it anyway.
I suspect you're right, but what then does a Budget Reconciliation look like? Lots of gimmicks and flim flam to kick the can past this administration and into the next so that we pretend it's budget neutral over 10 years? I think the answer to that is yes, but it's going to require a hell of a magic act.
I think they’re going to blow up the deficit with tax cuts and spike prices with tariffs and it’s all going to blow up in their faces.
I'm seeing numerous articles about how Trump is dominating this or that country's politics. Denmark. Britain. Greenland. Canada. Israel. Germany. Mexico. Maybe even China.
Is it maybe the case that the global power and influence of the United States of America has actually never been quite so great? Did even Dwight Eisenhower bestride the planet like our new president does? Should I as an effete, cosmopolitan liberal take some kind of perverse pride in this state of affairs?
Probably not. It's likely going to be a shit show. But I'm trying to look for silver linings.
I mean, the first thing Obama did as president was go on a worldwide apology tour and win the Nobel Peace Prize.
For better or worse, America remains the greatest (most politically important) country in the world, and every other country is right to pay attention to us.
I think America would retain that status no matter who won, so I am sad that it had to be him (unless I’m talking to Europeans in which case he’s not that bad and they should be more worried about *insert country-relevant far-right party* which is worse)
Should a cosmopolitan liberal take “perverse pride” in our new POS (President Orange Snake) saying crazy shit and making us look like a bunch of idiot assholes in the eyes of the civilized world?
Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but no.
I guess should have employed the /s tag!
This is going to suck. Big time.
You probably should, a little.
I deeply hate the Republican Party, but I appreciate that President Trump has shown most Americans that the world has not moved on from the nation-state Leviathan as THE political institution of our times.
Every other nation moves in their own interests. United States’ liberals have become reluctant to deal with it, I think. Or just presumed it was done. Maybe it was Iraq.
>>United States’ liberals have become reluctant to deal with it, I think<<
I think "United States' liberals" simply have a very different conception of national interest than members of the MAGA movement. Very different.
Domestically, it’s true. But in foreign policy?
A lot of the world is zero sum, sadly. The Democratic Party or our “left” or “liberals” seem to have a difficult time when the USA nakedly pursues its self interests. I don’t think that’s true in other places, it’s a privilege our left-wing gives itself due to our place of relative power.
"No president has ever really tried to do [mass deportations], because to make it work at scale would, by definition, involve large economic disruptions."
"Disruption" is pretty close to sane washing the mass deportation idea. "Disruption" is deadweight loss as resources and consumption are shifted around in less productive ways. A tax on net CO2 emissions with large long term net benefits would be "disruptive." Remove hundreds of thousands of people from the labor force and you are talking real money, an economic loss of the order of the Fed refusing to keep inflation up to target after the financial crisis.
You don't expect "Conservatives" to point out the economic losses (if they even understand them) from Trumps deficits + tariffs+ deportations policies. Gaining power and those lovely tax cuts make a little economic stagnation worthwhile. Where were the Progressives?
Respectfully I think we need to come up with a new argument or at least retire this one.
What other duly enacted laws would we suggest not enforcing because doing so would have bad economic consequences?
It's not persuasive and is never going to be.
Yup, arguments along the lines of "but the economy" don't work for immigration any more because anti-immigration sentiment in the west is no longer motivated by economic reasoning. People motivated by law and order, assimilation or outright racism don't care that it will hurt the economy because they either don't value it that highly or don't believe claims that it will hurt the economy to the extent argued. The closest would be job security fears but most of that comes from people who feel that their jobs are on the verge of or have already been taken by immigrants so they also don't care if the economy is healthier if they perceive it as being at the cost of their livelyhood.
Voters have always been motivated by factors other than economics, it isn't the only issue. But it is important to remember that the economic debate is still live and people oppose immigration because they believe it is bad for the economy.
One speaks truth to power. And of course law and order is just a bogus as economic harm.
I had this exact conversation with someone yesterday. I am pretty close to being an open borders guy, but open borders is not the current law, and "we should ignore laws when it is economically convenient to do so" is not an argument worthy of respect.
I don’t see anything in Thomas’s comment or in current policy that suggests ignoring immigration law. “Maximal, disruptive enforcement” and “total lack of enforcement” are not the only two options.
We do enforce immigration laws, just like we enforce speed limits. The fact that many people speed regardless does not mean we are ignoring the speed limit.
Haven’t we stopped enforcing speed limits, though?
Not to my knowledge.
Seems like it in Seattle and Memphis, at least. Driving on the Memphis freeways can feel a little like GTA sometimes, but I get it. Not enough cops, too many folks with guns. But when you’re going 90 and folks are flying past it’s like whaaa?
It depends on how complete a picture of the world you think you want to or have to make in your argument. "Mass deportations would cause tremendous economic loss for our country" is a good argument in and of itself against doing mass deportations. It doesn't answer the question what should we do about all the people here illegally.
One very reasonable answer to that is let's just make them legal. Then you can have a great discussion about malum prohibitum vs malum in se. You could also have a discussion about whether making current residents legal would exacerbate the problem to something worse, or allow for a better outcome because you could better focus resources.
A direct answer to your question is federal laws regarding marijuana, we are currently ignoring them for all intents and purposes. We can debate the wisdom of that, but it is the status quo.
It is not that unusual, and surely not illogical, to stop enforcing laws when we see that enforcing them doesn't make sense or is more harmful than enforcing them would be. The next logical step is adjusting the law to conform to our better understanding of what we want to achieve. We just can't seem to get to that second point, but that failure doesn't dictate that we return instead to doing something that doesn't make sense to do.
I hear what you're saying but I think it's important to understand that the argument you're making has lost, decisively, multiple times, on the merits. At best the economic case is viewed as an abstraction while the disorder is something very real and visible, as are the challenges around assimilation. And that's to say nothing of the just plain emotional reactions to obvious unfairness, flouting of the rule of law, and damage to the value of citizenship done by mass illegal immigration.
We can also have a long conversation about the diminishing returns of hardcore enforcement of laws against fare evasion or shoplifting but I think we at SB have come around to the fact that there is more to this than the economics. People will not trust the government to do the things it should if they do not feel they can trust it to manage the responsibilities it has already taken on. And they certainly won't trust it if they feel the state is prioritizing the interests of big business or foreign nationals, regardless of whether they really think its right try to throw all of the low level agricultural workers or irregular unskilled laborers out of the country.
Marijuana does provide an interesting counter example but I think it may be the exception that proves the rule. Public opinion about marijuana has changed radically over the last 30 years. Nothing like that has happened with illegal entry or working without being authorized.
Briefly, I would say that I don't think the argument has lost, especially on the merits. People went ape shit when we had a little more than a year of supply chain disruption and inflation. On the merits, the economic consequences of mass deportation would be multiples of that. Whether people believe that is irrelevant to it being factually accurate. The politicians saying we should do mass deportation are in no way telling people it will cost them anything at all.
I also think the disorder most people see and care about is the border, not all the people peacefully living among us. Most people don't see Jorge and Juan (actual people) who live in the barn tending the horses of the hobby horse farm next to me, as signs of disorder, nor do they view all the short, polite brown guys in the back of the house at my favorite restaurant as disorder. If they really thought those things were bad it would be easy for them to directly express it in ways that would change at least those local businesses' practices, but they don't.
This.
It's easy to say "oh voters don't care about an abstraction like the economy, they care about those evil illegals living illegally among us!" Wait till crops rot in the fields because there aren't enough workers to pick them, and meat becomes unaffordable because so many slaughterhouse workers got deported. Voters will change their tune right quick.
Not to mention that if you want cheaper housing, deporting half of your construction workforce is [Tony Stark voice] not a great plan.
Try turning the position you're taking into an affirmative argument.
'Without illegal labor our economy will be harmed. Big industries like farming and construction will want for workers. Projects will slow down. Fruit will rot on the vines. Our GDP growth will be less than it might have been, as will our tax revenues. Some goods and services will likely be pricier as a result.
For those reasons Americans need to be ready to tolerate numbers of illegal entrants in the 7 figures who will remain in the country on an indefinite basis. And if they are concerned about possible ripple effects the solution is to grant legal status or even citizenship to all of them, not just those here today, but those that come tomorrow, and the day after.'
Now ask if you honestly believe there is a popular constituency for that position. Even when fruit rots on the vines, and it may well. Maybe I am wrong about this but I just don't see it.
Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to see agribusiness raids, not really. A few high profile raids in cities with high cruelty per immigrant ratio to encourage self deportation, I think. Maximum noise. But Americans aren’t going to pick the crops or work in the meatpacking industry for minimum wage. I don’t even think Stephen Miller cares so much about immigrants if they’re as close to actual slave labor as possible.
Now local cops are going to be more and more empowered to start deporting people, though. When I was down in MS for the holidays there were multiple news reports about the local sheriff’s department preparing to round people up. But this will mostly just be deporting those arrested for other crimes, with the occasional roadblock to fuck with people. It was disgusting hearing about it on the news, but totally expected.
It would be easy to express? How? By no longer buying food? Refusing to enter buildings?
I fully agree that the voters are fickle and inchoate. But I will also say they just did the absolute easiest thing to express their views on it. I think we need to adapt to that reality, and consider other ways to manage economic growth in a way more consistent with voter sentiments, not double down on one that people keep not wanting.
The other argument I'm going to suggest retiring is references to the 'brown guys' and similar such appeals. Because they're starting to materially alter their voting habits too.
> It would be easy to express? How? By no longer buying food? Refusing to enter buildings?
If people actually cared about this to the extent you claim, there would be a market for "crops picked by legal Americans!".
My MIL, on paper, is hugely anti-illegal immigrant. She also lives right next a farm that employs gads of Mexican migrant workers and she is as pleasant as could be to them and would likely feel extreme guilt if they were rounded up.
The thing people are *most* mad about is not illegal immigrants per se. It's the *migrants*. If Trump did nothing else except keep doing the exact same thing Biden did, and reject asylum seekers outright, people would move on pretty quickly.