>I don’t think it’s a big mystery why progressives keep deluding themselves into thinking that they can use economic policy to avoid the need to come to terms with public opinion on cultural issues — it’s because progressives themselves prioritize cultural issues over economic ones.<
A simple yet profound insight.
Matt really has a gift for unwrapping things that seem obvious after he explains them. But weren't at all obvious the moment before you read the explanation.
In the aughts I was at probably a dozen educated left/center-left social events where people led with "What's the Matter With Kansas," shaking their heads sadly to "Why do working-class people vote against their own economic interests (and against us)?" I pointed out, "But we vote for our values and against our economic self-interest, why wouldn't you expect working class people to do the same?" Over 90% of the time, I got a few seconds blank stare, and then some version of "But it's different because our cultural values are good and theirs are bad." I think very, very few people on the left can get past the framework of "Democrats are for empathy and helping people, while Republicans are selfish and want to limit people." We're still living down "deplorables" and "cling to their guns or religion." I don't know why--maybe because this is the shockingly explicit stereotype you hear from national media and teachers/professors--but I know it's a major barrier to winning a majority.
I mean I was in Colorado when they tried to run a cake baker out of business in a Disney cartoon villain manner, and there will be replies to this comment defending it.
Revealed preference is to shoot the survivors of the defeated enemy in the culture war, and people won’t forget it.
I don't defend the morality of it (it's awful; indeed, I wouldn't knowingly patronize a shop with such a policy) nor the practicality of it (it's a lousy way to run a business) but I do defend the legality of it. Offering a service that involves creative input is fundamentally different from, say, managing apartments, and I believe a first amendment carve-out is appropriate, at least if the business is sufficiently small.
I think we need to very tightly define accommodations so a mob can’t enlist the power of the state to close you if you don’t serve someone who wants to jam kale in their dick hole in the middle of the sales floor.
And I neither will defend the morality of the cake baker nor would I patronize a place, but it’s clear both sides want to make the other side dig their own grave then bury them in it in the cruelest way possible.
Indeed yes - the urbane metropolitans Prog. Left although secular to me carries a large dollop of a kind of secular "convert the heathen" quasi religious thinking.
It is definately a major barrier to winning outside of urbane metros where the Ds have increasingly become cantonised.
On the other hand, you never hear these types of stories on the Democratic side to their own voters because the worst thing Democrats do is marginally increase taxes or cost of living for people who can afford it and mostly don’t particularly care. So in that sense Democrats do not vote against their self-interest in a significant way even though they may be willing to sacrifice some amount of personal economic gain to make things better for others.
I think this was pretty clear all along. Americans are extremely rich, no one really cares that much if they are 10% richer or poorer.
Theoretically “cultural” issues should have more room for win-win because they aren’t as zero-sum (if we tax A to fund B, that is zero sum; if we let A get married and don’t put LGBT or immigration related obstacles in the way, that doesn’t actually hurt B or prevent B from also getting married). But a lot of people on cultural issues want to restrict and hurt others *even for no benefit to themselves* like we saw in the debate about people getting green cards to their spouses. If someone is like “I want to tax you more so that I can pay less,” I think people would see that as fine, they understand it’s self-interested and we can compromise. If someone’s like “I want to separate you from your partner/spouse even though I gain no material benefit from doing so but just for lulz” people are much more likely to see that as malicious and evil rather than simply self-interest (even if a zero-sum nature) that they can find ground to compromise with.
It seems the two paragraphs here are in tension. When you write of a conservative saying “I want to separate you from your partner/spouse even though I gain no material benefit from doing so but just for lulz”, the word "material" does a lot of work. The actual conservative presumably cares a great deal about traditional values on sexuality and marriage, and is likely to be skeptical of immigration as well. The fact that allowing something would have no immediate economic cost is not going to override strongly held opinions on cultural issues. Not for a conservative, and not for anyone else for that matter (except possibly a minute number of die hard libertarians).
I mean...money and circumstances often override cultural issues for everyone on the material world? Pro-life folks get abortions, anti-corporate people work for corporations?
It just doesn't usually change their underlying cultural position, or their voting habits.
Yeah, I think it's better generally to have a political moral ethic that goes "I want others to be free to do what they want regardless of whether it helps me" than "I want others to be free to do what I want regardless of whether it helps me," but both perspectives are non-economic and value-based. And we all probably have a bit of both.
One could argue we shouldn't compromise with the latter instinct, but that's a values call. At least in Slow Boring land, politics is about working with these preexisting values, not steamrolling them with self-identified economic right-ness.
Well I guess I don't have the same definition of rich. Sure, everybody can be called rich if you pick the right comparison. In my mind to be rich is a social thing so if you are near the bottom of your society you ain't rich. How many Americans are nearer the top than the bottom? How many feel like they have a lot of control?
I think it's important to avoid over-generalizations here. While some progressives may legitimately do prioritize cultural issues over economic ones, there are plenty of others that prioritize economic issues. Lumping every progressive politician into one big bucket, and saying "this is where all their priorities are" is far too simplistic.
On the free speech point, it's important to recognize that Matt, and also his audience, is _also_ more interested in left factional disputes than doing stories about Republicans being bad about free speech. That's why there are numerous stories from moderates at the NYT about left illiberalism on college campuses but fewer about Republicans. That's why the Letter on Justice and Open Debate was signed not just by Matt but also by tons of other free speech types, but there's no comparable letter about Republicans.
Additionally, there is also the point that Matt made on a podcast recently, which is that a big issue that gets censored is criticism of Israel, which most center-left commentators don't want to be vocal about. But to my point, Matt couldn't remember any episodes of this off-hand, while I would be surprised if he struggled similarly with remembering left factional censorship incidents.
If it's the one I'm thinking of, the Banh mi story was IIRC back in ~2016 or so back when "cultural appropriation" was getting into full swing and college campuses seemed to be ground zero for it, and it was called to my attention by a libertarian type who would _also_ of course be talking about the jailed over FB meme now.
The only Oberlin story I remember is how a dumb college administrator endorsed a set of slanderous and defamatory claims against a local bakery by student activists (and endorsed boycotting and cutting school contracts with said business.)
This was after a student of a particular phenotype was confronted for shoplifting a wine bottle, ran, and then was chased by a staff member. The student and his friends beat up the staff member. This was all treated as a racist incident. (My friend who went to Oberlin says Oberlin was in the wrong but the owners were indeed racists. I still can’t get over how stupid the school was in terms of exposing itself to liability .)
"I still can’t get over how stupid the school was in terms of exposing itself to liability."
To me, this is an essential part of understanding the "oppressed by progressives" narrative. While the MAGA view drastically overstates the situation, it's also true that a tremendous number of institutions over the 2010 to 2021 timeframe that had lawyers (and, in the case of law firms, literally were lawyers) and other experts who could advise them increasingly openly acted as though various laws (statutory and common law) didn't apply to them so long as they were pursuing "noble" goals and could dispense with even the fig leaf of impartiality.
It wasn’t until 2022 that I started to realize “oh there is nothing I can do to be good enough in the eyes of these people. I am immutably guilty by phenotype and liable for the transgression committed by other people. Huh?”
I am so glad this type of nonsense is on the decline. It’s just so adversarial and unhelpful (and kind of cover for being mean/bullying.)
Re: the first paragraph, this is true, but I don't think anyone should view it as surprising or hypocritical.
Any reasonable theory of change suggests that center-left writers will have more influence on their own side, and that legal action / support for FIRE is the best way to fight abuses by small-town red state sheriffs.
Sadly, even if the NYT or NPR cared enough to make a big stink about Bushart's shameful mistreatment, they'd risk polarizing it and magnifying the sheriff's support. (They should still report on it, of course, but as partisan organs, they're likely to achieve more if the reporting is restrained).
I don't think that view of the politics is right. Obviously the maga base isn't going to drop their views over this, but they aren't the only people. There are lots of cross pressured people who don't like left wing censoriousness, and who potentially didn't vote for Dems because of it, and who also would dislike right wing censorship if it was widely publicized.
I think your conclusion is correct, but I think the relevant actors have lost the ability publicize these events widely without raising suspicion about the veracity/fairness of their own coverage. Worse, they usually end up converting issues into exclusively leftist causes instead of merely creating broader awareness.
The ICE presence in Minneapolis is probably the strongest counter-example, but that was buttressed by vivid, crowd-sourced social media coverage. It might even be fair to say the numerous social media posts were a bigger factor than the media coverage. Plus the events in MN were ongoing and dramatic in a way that Bushart's jailing was not.
I do not think this is the correct diagnosis. Instead, I think Matt, the NYT Ed board, the Atlantic, etc believe that eg rural Kentucky sherrifs and the Ball State University administration are dumb, uninteresting, and unimportant for the broader direction of the country, and their audience is mostly not interested in their conduct because we don't live in those places, attend those universities, or interact with people on either side of dumb Facebook posts about Charlie Kirk.
Yeah I read that as the premise of the question. FIRE still has a lot of credibility because they point this out. But it’s obvious that anti-Israel is the most censored viewpoint in the US, even for campus deplatforming according to FIRE’s data: https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/under-fire. And there are the anti-boycott laws and people literally thrown in jail or deported for it, which don’t apply to any other viewpoint. People who talk about free speech and ignore this one viewpoint don’t have much credibility, and it’s why a lot of people have stopped listening to centrist “free speech” people who seem to think students complaining about dining hall food is a free speech violation but are fine with the federal government jailing people for writing student paper op-eds critical of Israel.
Right, and to the larger point, it's true that unless it's about Israel, there's less audience interest and less writer interest in questions of free speech from the center as well. Matt clearly has the correct view about this, but also has said that basically he cares more about left wing social pressure at Harvard than right wing explicit censorship at regional universities in red states.
The Left's illiberalism tends to receive more attention than the Right's because the Right has fewer opportunities to exercise illiberalism outside of government. Within government, however, the Right's illiberal tendencies are well documented.
The Right doesn't control important institutions outside of the church; everything else is left-leaning and, the Left has been more willing to marginalize or exclude people who fall outside its ideological orthodoxy.
"outside of government" is very much along the lines of "other than the shooting, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play". As we have seen, control of government lets you control media, universities, scientific research, law firms, etc.
"control of government lets you control media, universities, scientific research, law firms, etc."
This is overstated. The Trump administration has abused its powers, and I don't want to minimize how bad that's been or how bad it could become.
The administration has made institutions think twice before crossing them, and threaten to do worse, but they do not in any sense "control media, universities, law firms, or scientific research in the US." For every organization that succumbed to their bullying, ten have stood up and loudly denounced them.
'Control media' is obviously overstating the case, but I don't think there's ever been a situation quite like this CBS situation before? The US is not Hungary though, I think we can agree.
Lots of people have said mean things about Trump, that's true. But the actual behavior of our leading institutions has been to compromise with the lawless demands made by Trump.
All of which has been well documented and criticized by the center-left. However, Trump is only attacking those organizations because of either Trump's personal vindictiveness or those institutions being biased against the Right.
The reason moderates have been criticizing the Left's illiberalism more is because the Left controls almost every important facet of American life.
Well...I mean, if we accept that Trump's personal vindictiveness comes from anyone refusing to sycophanticly beg to suck his dick, what you've just said is, Trump attacks any organization which doesn't agree with him and uses the power of the state to attempt to force them to agree with him...that's a lot worse than even the worst woke excesses, which could indeed be bad. Being fired sucks. Being jailed/deported is worse.
Except I suspect that, on a day-to-day basis, a very large percentage of Americans feel more oppressed/antagonized by their employer's policies, local community institutions, popular media, etc. than anything "the government" is directly doing to them.
And in the church, not being a little illiberal is a straight path to an empty church. As churches get a little more flexible in their theology, their membership craters.
The difference between those two things is that government is the more powerful institution by leaps and bounds. That's the illiberalism that is truly dangerous.
It's also worth noting that illiberalism outside of government action probably isn't even definitionally accurate. Being censorious towards people in the private sector is distasteful but not illegal, it's not actually contrary to free speech. The government censoring someone, or scaring people into censoring themselves is the thing that is the actual breech of the right to which we are all entitled.
It’s interesting I just don’t think people who read the NYT and so on are all that exposed to the right’s illiberalism. Big exception to this is university campuses, where you have state legislators being vexatious litigants against like, Texas A&M. That does seem to get into the news, and it should.
I'm going to extract this discussion from implicit views of what would be good/bad Dem politics and simply point out that the left factional coverage is more interesting than the Rightist press alternative. Lots of people prefer the partisan coverage, but that doesn't change the quality of the material. The straight partisanship that doesn't acknowledge the issues with their side is just lower quality reporting.
Right, also the people who want to jail everyone who said mean stuff about Charlie Kirk are idiots who have no good arguments and aren't in the social circles of people who read this substack.
Just to add to the "some Arab states acted in good faith towards their Jews but outflow happened anyway" endpoint, Tunisia is an even stronger example than Morocco.
Habib Bourguiba, the first president of the Tunisian republic tried to maintain his Jewish population, and his own foreign policy was strikingly "moderate" on Israel (at least compared to Nasser or Gaddafi). He tried to make Jews safe in Tunisia. Also, in 1965, he went to the then Jordanian-controlled West Bank, and urged Arabs there to accept the 1947 partition and negotiate rather than fight, and he was nearly stoned to death for it. He even boycotted the Khartoum conference of the three noes. He even floated that Jordan should be Palestine, which infuriated King Hussein.
None of it mattered. The Tunisian Jews went from over 100K in 1940s to a few thousand by the 1980s, with no formal state expulsion. The drops cluster exactly where you'd expect if Israel was the trigger:
Tunisia had anti-Jewish riots after Suez in 1956, destroying synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish quarters. Tunisia also had attacks on Jewish businesses and the main Tunisian synagogue after the 6 Day war in 1967.
Bourguiba's good faith couldn't hold Tunisian Jews in Tunisia when popular hostility to Zionism ran that hot and Tunisian Jews got the short end of the stick for it.
Some readings on Tunisia if interested:
The Economic & Geopolitical History of Tunisia, Part 2: Banker Imperialism, French Rule, and the Road to Independence
The fact that some arab leaders tried to quell tensions but jews were pogromed out around the Arab world anyway is actually a stronger reason for zionism to exist than the other way around. "Israel being the trigger" only is true because of the violent reaction of the average Arab population deciding to take their anger out on their Jewish neighbors.
Agree with everything you said, it is interesting. But attacking Synagogues of native Jews who don't want to emigrate to Israel isn't hostility to Zionism, calling it pro-Zionism would be odd but accurate.
This is a great point. In this case, anti-Zionism was anti-Semitism for the Tunisian public. They equated Jews and Israel regardless of whether the local Jews were Zionist or not.
Matt writes: "There is definitely a difference between climate donors leaning on Chuck Schumer to whip a vote about whether or not to allow California to ban gasoline-powered cars and a member taking an envelope of cash from an oil company to vote a certain way on that measure."
The hypothetical oil company needs a better General Counsel. Envelope of cash went out of fashion decades ago. Do it the right way: Hire associates and others in the member's orbit, buy products & services from the same people, donate to the member's foundation, offer them a lucrative job after they leave office.
C'mon, hypothetical oil company, get with the program and be a little creative!
One funny side plot of this administration is more junior politicals who don’t have DC experience learning there really aren’t just envelopes of cash. Gotta work for a bit before you can get to K street
Some of the new lobby groups are able to play with the straight up extractive groups but it’s telling that none of the traditional firms want to play that game (because lobbyists DO go to prison! Real prison!)
The best part is the corruption rube Goldberg machine is what "climate donors leaning on Chuck Schumer" means in reality. Coming to terms with the fact that Democrats and Republicans(the pre Trump variety) are, and always have been, corrupt needs to happen. Just because technocraric corruption is technically legal and has a more legitimate "feel" than hocking shitcoins on Twitter doesn't mean it isnt corruption.
There was a great video from The Onion a few years ago where a Trump voting man admits he made a mistake after reading 800 pages of queer feminist theory. You can understand why progressives try to keep the conversation on economics after watching it.
This is mockable but Democrats really should blow up stories of people voting for Trump for cultural reasons that totally blew up in their faces. Recently there was a “smart” tech guy on Twitter talking about how all the smart tech guys actually support Trump but then he got impacted by the new green card rule and everyone was mocking him for it. There have also been many news stories of Trump supporters who regret their vote after their spouses were deported that we should highlight, but the tech guy one really took the cake on vitality because he’s supposed to be genius yet couldn’t figure out one of the most fundamental facts of US politics.
There should be things like that. When we say people who vote for Trump are doing so against self-interest it should not be thought of as “you have to read 800 pages of arcane feminist theory” to understand, but rather very specific concrete things Trump did to people for no good reason that often impacts his own supporters.
On a few of the left v center political points here, I think there's a real chance of sleepwalking into disaster for progressive and centrist Dem candidates alike. There's an assumption due to the points MY mentions that Maine is easily winnable. There's an assumption of an anti trump blue wave backlash taking the House and tightening up the Senate. And trump's bungles on tariffs and Iran have dampened conservative enthusiasm, further playing into the narrative.
But I'd frame the issue less as a focus on factional Dem-on-Dem infighting trying to capitalize on that belief, and moreso the risk being that there's no affirmative policy case being made at all. The issue that Dems have to confront going into the summer is they have to make some sort of actual case, and if it's all Israel/billionaires being bad then that's again not an affirmative case about what you actually want to do when you govern. Tax billionaires for what? To fund what? Reform foreign policy commitments to whom? Why? For what purpose? These are unanswered questions in the primary fights thus far.
Why isn’t that an actual policy case? The policies that follow are cutting military aid and diplomatic cover to Israel and raising taxes on billionaires. Given the size of the deficit the higher taxes don’t really need to be funding anything else. The why is also blatantly obvious—Israel is doing morally bad things with the money and diplomatic cover we provide, and billionaires have reaped a disproportionate untaxed benefit from our recent stonks-based economy so should pay a fair share.
The question of military aid begs the question of military risk, pretends that we get nothing for the support of allies, and is no different than saying we should not fund Ukraine without any follow up in terms of how an emboldened Russia (or in Israels case terrorist groups) would impact the US. It's treated as an end to the question that it is not, in fact, an end to at all.
Taxing billionaires to get a fair share of what? Who is not getting a fair share, and of what? Do you want to just redistribute their cash to everyone? To fund what? If we liquidated every billionaire in their entirety it to would not put a dent in the overall debt and/of deficit level. Youre begging all the same questions.
You’re just disagreeing on the merits of the first question, which is fine, but I think it’s an argument you’ll lose. No one can seriously look at some nuisance terrorist groups and conclude they are a greater evil than a superpower that has invaded multiple neighbors, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and put millions into concentration camp-like conditions.
Again we all have to pay taxes to support the general operations of the government. We are just saying that billionaires who have achieved a lion’s share of the wealth should pay more. We can paper over disagreements over how the taxes should be spent because even if we can’t reach any agreement on that higher taxes would at least reduce the national debt, which is a worthy goal.
Right. And more broadly, it's not a crazy lesson to draw from the Biden and Trump presidencies that votes want someone who doesn't do any moon shot policies. You can just sit there and manage things!
Yeah literally “does nothing but reverses Trump’s policies, raises taxes on billionaires, and stops funding/diplomacy for Israel” would be a major win. Otherwise just govern competently but forgettably like it’s still 2015. That would unite progressives and most moderates I think.
I don’t get it. Democrats certainly have an affirmative case! Sure, there’s disagreement between the centrists/moderates and progressives, but broadly speaking, the party wants:
1. To improve material conditions for Americans; “abundance”
2. To have a government that isn’t blatantly breaking tons of rules/isn’t run by a guy who denies election results and enriches himself
3. To try to repair our relationships with our allies/our standing in the world.
I dunno, I get just a little suspicious when people say “I just don’t know what the Democrats STAND FOR” when 2024!Trump had zero policy details and a bunch of completely unrealistic promises. Worked for him!
Many progressives fundamentally care more about winning factional battles than winning power. AOC is a clear exception. Mamdani’s recent betrayal is not a good sign.
I think MY is dead on in the foreign policy opening. I'm a pretty long time skeptic of the way in which the US-Israel relationship has been handled, and while I think it's good that more people are starting to understand the problems with this I just don't think it's the issue people think it is. Foreign policy is a low voter priority and the particulars of Israel/Palestine are an important but also eccentric interest. Hopefully now that the Israelis have finally gotten their dream of dragging America into an unpopular, pointless war this will naturally start to correct.
Meanwhile I think foreign policy is otherwise among the more defensible aspects of the Biden administration. He held NATO together during the biggest crisis in Europe in generations. He kept Ukraine in the fight in the early days when its survival was most in doubt (and really it's a travesty that we've wound down our support). We got out of Afghanistan, which while unfortunately messy, was something the American people had voted for multiple times only to be rebuffed by the blob and undue caution from preceding administrations.
We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater over the weird affinity a subgroup has for Islamist tinged politics and indeed doing so is probably counter productive in other ways.
Whichever party talks the most about I-P in 2028 is probably going to be primarily defining itself as the annoying party by doing so. Being the less annoying party is going to be an asset in 2028.
It’s the student gov party that won’t let you talk about funding club sports because they want endless Palestine motions, and then you end up fucking up and not funding club sports OR the annual spring party, and you have a student revolt and the state government takes all your funding ability away.
Yep, monomaniacal preoccupation with the jews is a major intellectual and political liability whether you're Students for Justice in Palestine, Commentary magazine, or Tucker Carlson.
That's part of it, but it's also the issue that's the most unpleasant to publicly discuss no matter your view. People who like to discuss it are weird and unpleasant.
I went into a little more detail in a top level comment but I think we look back on Biden's Ukraine policy far too fondly. He had to get dragged along every step of the way slowly and excruciatingly, and a lot of good men died because he and his administration were staffed by cowards who thought the term "nuclear threat" was a magic incantation that meant they had to stop doing whatever they were doing. Jake Sullivan in particular.
I understand those for whom this is much more directly personal may feel that way, but the responsibility to the American people, its treaty allies, and the role of the US in the global order (or what's left of it) is too big to immediately give on Ukrainian maximalist wishes in such a way. That's particularly the case when NATO members for whom this is all much closer were divided and conflicted.
I'd have been in favor of much more generosity and aggressive support once the Ukrainians showed the world that they were willing to fight for their country (and indeed would be much more aggressive if it were my call currently, on that basis). But responsible statecraft doesn't work that way. Ultimately all people have to secure their own future on their own terms.
I would look at it the opposite way, where American wavering led to the authoritarian regimes of the world- primarily Russia, but notable China and Iran as well- to feel comfortable being much bolder when it came to unilateral changes to the postwar world order. I'm not saying that it would be responsible to start shipping ballistic missiles or stealth fighters to the Ukrainians on day one, or even at all. But the correct response to threats of nuclear deployment isn't to back down, it's to show that those threats are empty and stay the course. Submitting, constantly, to nuclear blackmail only ensures that it'll happen again.
I don't think Biden's approach is beyond criticism but you're taking for granted that there was a consensus at the top level of the NATO alliance from the outset which there wasn't. Of the important members only the UK was all in from the beginning, with Paris and Berlin waffling, and a general strategic dearth of hardware, ammunition and materiel reserves (to say nothing of production) across the continent. Even setting up logistics takes time and the worst thing that could've happened in the moment was fracturing the alliance or members feeling like they were exposed by virtue of giving up their own strategic reserves, which were already down to the bone.
With 20/20 hindsight I think it's fair to say it could've been done better and should have been done much more decisively but (a) that doesn't fall completely on America, and (b) the slow but steady aid to Ukraine was enough to keep them in the fight at the most pivotal moments and buy them important breathing room while they developed their own defense industry. I think the Biden administration is due credit for that and to say otherwise is revisionism, maybe bordering on ingratitude to the US for the help it provided.
I would say that the authoritarian-minded leaders of Russia, China, and Iran--and, to some extent, the willingness of those governed--were the primary causal factors of the bold, authoritarian actions of these nations.
The waffling on Himars and other systems made no sense and still doesn’t. Also the pressuring Ukraine to mount a costly tank counter-offensive was a US mistake.
That's an incredibly uncharitable characterization. It's true that Joe Biden opposed *particular* proposals with respect to aiding Ukraine. He didn't greenlight every plan, every tactic and every weapons system. And rightly so. The key was to strike a balance: stymying Russia while not getting Nato inserted a hot war with a nuclear state.
But Joe Biden energetically, forcefully and successfully rallied the free world into a multi-faceted defense of Ukraine involving economic aid, large-scale flow of munitions, intelligence sharing, diplomatic efforts, and sanctions against Moscow.
History will look kindly on Joe Biden's role in stopping Putin.
Had Trump won a second term in 2020, Ukraine by now would no longer be a country.
I think both of these things can be largely true. Biden was great at the optics and coalition building aspects of the political angle. Him visiting Kyiv during wartime was genuinely impressive. That said, I think saying that the balance between stymying Russia and not getting NATO into a hot war was well struck is absurd. I've lost count of how many times Russia drew a "nuclear red line" and then quietly did nothing. Things like American weapons not being able to be used on Russian soil despite logistics networks being concentrated there were entirely unforced errors that the US IC itself was screaming about for years. Russia referred to as nuclear red lines, just off the top of my head: providing targeting intel in occupied territories, including all four "annexed" oblasts, providing sat intel within the Russian Federation, providing MANPADs, providing SAM systems, providing armored vehicles, providing tanks, providing ammunition for the Bradleys, providing TOW missiles (which worked, we still don't have them), providing fighter jets, providing spare parts for those jets, providing weapons for the jets, training the pilots in NATO countries, hotlapping the Black Sea with NATO AWACs aircraft, allowing American weapons to be used on Crimea, allowing American weapons to be used on Russian territory, cutting access to SWIFT, cutting Nordstream II (which the Americans didn't even do, lol), detaining shadow fleet tankers, and bombing Russian energy infrastructure. Given that they've followed through on none of it, I think timidity is a very fair charge to level.
Has Trump been worse? 100%. That's why I voted against him twice, having been too young the first time around, and I have much worse things to say about Elbridge Colby than anyone in the Biden admin. But the paragraph I was talking about was centered on the Biden era of this conflict, and I think that era was the one that will ultimately ensure we need to fight a much wider conflict in this decade against emboldened revisionist powers.
>We got out of Afghanistan, which while unfortunately messy,<
It wasn't *that* messy. Seriously.
Given the enormous scale of the operation—and the fact that pullouts (eg Dunkirk, Saigon) inevitably involve elements of chaos—the optics were always going to be messy.
But casualties were remarkably light given that (AFAIK) it was the single largest airborne evacuation in history. It was actually a *triumph* of American logistics capacity and operational expertise under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
Mind you, I know what you mean, I truly do. But the Afghanistan departure strikes me as one of the most successful episodes of right wing ref working ever. Why the hell didn't Democrats have Joe's back on this? Why the hell isn't the spin I've just put on it (highly factual spin at that) at least *competing* with the "disaster" meme that got going from day one of that operation.
+1000 I continue to believe the intellectually honest position is that the Afghanistan withdrawal was almost flawlessly executed given the circumstances. The US suffered roughly 6 times as many casualties in the withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975 and that was a more "leisurely" withdrawal in terms of both the timeframe for completing it and the security risks involved.
I’m very afraid that Israel/Palestine is going to seriously weaken the Democratic Party in the run up to 2028 and I don’t know what to do about it. I think a big problem is that pro-Palestinian activists - the part of that group that are genuinely motivated by sympathy for Palestinian suffering and not just anti-Semitic - really think this is South Africa 2.0 and a relatively small amount of pressure from the world will get Israel to shape up and “do the right thing”. But Israel is not South Africa, it’s way more powerful and what we are actually dealing with is something more akin to China and the Uyghurs. Pro-Israel types will sometimes go around asking “why aren’t the kids protesting China” like it’s some kind of gotcha, but it’s not: it’s not productive to try to mildly pressure a powerful country like China, behavioral change will only come from massive (likely military) pressure or the country itself voluntarily deciding to change course. Unfortunately I think that’s also true with Israel.
I think Matt is right that we should just disengage but even that’s going to be really challenging, with continual, un-productive pressure from activists to keep upping the ante after every move. Cut off the military and financial aid? Ok great now we need to ban all arms sales. Ban the arm sales? Now we need a full on trade ban, etc etc. Meanwhile you have an actual resurgence of capital A anti-semitism doing things like defacing synagogues and other Jewish institutions thousands of miles away from Israel which only serves to empower the Israeli right: “see- the rest of the world hates us. We aren’t safe anywhere but at least here in Israel the military will fight to protect you”.
We’re just going to rip ourselves apart for zero benefit to the Palestinians (arguably an enraged Israel may behave even worse) and open the door to further Republican gains. Someone talk me off the ledge!
The difference between China and the Ughyurs and Israel Palestine is that if China suddenly left the Ughyurs alone I don’t think anything at all happens to the Chinese.
While the Palestinians have clearly been fighting a war against Jews / Israel for over 100 years. Palestinian Nelson Mandela never showed up.
In both cases the oppressed group did terrorism that killed a few thousand people but was never powerful enough to seriously threaten the country.
Mandela Nelson himself was the leader of the armed/terrorist wing of the ANC (and was on US terror ban lists until 2008 or so). He only became peaceful and worked on reconciliation after his side had ultimately won. So you don’t know who the Palestinian Mandela would be because they have never gotten to the stage of reconciliation.
"He only became peaceful and worked on reconciliation after his side had ultimately won."
That is not true. Mandela agreed to a meaningful ceasefire in August 1990. He then worked to bring apartheid to an end over the next few years, successfully, even in the face of ongoing violence against ANC activists.
"In August [1990], Mandela—recognising the ANC's severe military disadvantage—offered a ceasefire, the Pretoria Minute, for which he was widely criticised by MK activists."
Yes, this is it in a nutshell. This issue is not a priority for 95% of the country, but the hardcore left and right are never going to shut up about it even if events move in their desired direction. It’s a problem.
And Israel is not as powerful as China. If there really were global sanctions it would its prosperity, which depends on global trade. and fold quickly.
The camps closed because the CCP has effectively enslaved the large majority of prime-age Uighur men in faraway locations, forced an increasing number of the women into marriages with Han men, and adopted out an unconscionable fraction of children with living parents to Han families.
The Uighur birth rate is now estimated at below 0.3, they will be extirpated as Beijing wants, just a hair more slowly than the Nazis had the patience for.
I beg you, at least make the most basic stab at not being a tankie-level useful idiot.
I mean…. This is happening in a few places. I think Sri Lanka too! Slow motion ethnic cleansing is something a state can do if they want to try hard enough.
Citation? I googled Uyghur birth rate .3 and didn’t see any results at all. And there are actually Western tourists and media who go to Xinjiang now (while Israel is still not letting foreign media into Gaza and banning it from the West Bank). They talk to Uyghurs and it does seem like a lot of young men are missing, and the ones that are left look very soft and non-threatening, which is bad! But disproves the idea that Uyghurs are being eliminated. Their living conditions seem way better than what’s in Gaza. When I was in Shanghai recently, I went to a Uyghur restaurant run by people who I assume were Uyghurs based on dress and language. They were there, they existed. They might’ve been oppressed or discriminated against but they were not a figment of my imagination. How many Gazans run restaurants in Tel Aviv?
People have stopped talking about the Uyghur situation and polls show consistent improvement in opinions of China globally since 2019 because there’s simply no good evidence for the most outlandish claims (compared to what Israel is doing which can be seen from satellite imagery and social media videos made by Israeli soldiers themselves bragging about it) while it looks like China has closed most of the camps which is what triggered the international outrage.
The missing young men are the answer you’re looking for, dude. You cannot sustain a people without them.
Multiple people have reached the ~0.3 TFR conclusion. In 2018 Xinjiang’s TFR was 1.85, widely understood to be broken between a Han TFR of around 1.7 and a Uighur/Kazakh one of 2.0.
Since then the SAR’s fertility has fallen to under 0.8. Surely *some* of that is disruption to Han fertility from the economic and social dislocation of first imprisoning a quarter of the population and then enslaving two-thirds of that quarter. But the majority of the change is understood to be on the part of Uighur households.
If, conservatively, Han fertility in Xinjiang has fallen by more than the countrywide average, then it’s around 1.1 today, which means that the SAR-level figures require minority group fertility to be below 0.5. The Hui and Kazakhs haven’t been subject to what the Uighurs have, which guarantees that most of that fertility decline is coming from them.
China is more effectively concealing it, it hasn’t stopped or changed its behavior in any meaningful way. Imprisoning ~4-6 million Uighurs in camps gave way to enslaving virtually the entire prime-age male population, no later than 2020-22.
There will be Palestinians in a century, because while Israel is brutal and barbaric in dealing with them, it isn’t seeking to wipe them out. We now this because it has the means and hasn’t done it.
There will not be Uighurs, because the Party-state has decided there should not be.
Biden’s support for Ukraine was a genuinely great accomplishment but even as a non-interventionist I think the Afghan withdrawal was a mistake. It really is what killed Biden’s popularity and presidency in the polls. There weren’t that many US soldiers there to begin with and they weren’t committing that many war crimes so it wasn’t really that big of a deal compared to later foreign policy crises. Although withdrawal polled well in the abstract, people obviously didn’t like it when they saw the mess. So that’s something popularism needs to take into account—what polling says is not what might actually happen when people see real results.
>Don’t be a sucker around this stuff. The oligarchy doesn’t care whether or not people pay their bus fare, but it loves when Democrats attract a soft-on-crime reputation that discredits them electorally.<
This can be added to your political yellow sticky collection, next to the one about how the voters you really need to convert are 50-something non-college customer service reps living outside Grand Rapids.
What would really help Democrats is if they got elected a bunch of county judges that didn't keep letting violent and career criminals back out on the streets. Stories about unnecessarily-released criminals committing more crime do a lot of reputational damage.
On the one hand, true; on the other hand, (1) it's a really big country with lots of judges and national media can promote coverage of the wackiest judge they can find and (2) in many of the cases where judges get dinged over releasing people (whether by the right or, much less frequently, by the left, usually in connection with domestic violence and sexual assault cases), my two cents as a (admittedly, non-criminal) lawyer is that the judge actually acted reasonably or at least consistently with the law.
It is an unfortunate reality that if you let out exactly zero people who proceed to reoffend, your policies were needlessly and damagingly harsh. Much as though the "best" amount of fraud in a large, complex system is not exactly zero--you are spending much more to hunt down the last nanofraud than the actual cost of the last nanofraud.
I appreciate that Mamdani tightened the mayors' control over NYC schools at the expense of locals elections. Rather than take the path of throwing up his hands and bleating, "Why are you mad at me that the schools suck ass? I don't control those."
The senator is a good actor. You have to appear sincere and convincing in what you say, truly inhabit the role you are playing, sometimes improvise and go off script.
Like, the idea of bravery I previously subscribed to re Graham would have him keeping his dignity, calling out Trump, and effectively ending his political career and influence. Instead he has chosen to publicly debase himself to retain some influence, and maybe he's doing that knowingly for the good of the country, even though we all think less of him now.
*If* that's true -- and it's a big if -- then that's an incredibly couragous thing to do.
And you don’t NEED to do it to keep your seat in SC. Tim Scott is doing fine! In fact he’s accumulated a ton of power as a guy who is extremely reasonable on financial services in secret Congress.
"And what they are interested in is primarily D-on-D primaries in blue states and districts. They very extensively covered Chris Rabb’s successful primary win in Philadelphia and did a lot to amplify his attacks on his opponent."
I think this is downstream of MY spending too much time on Twitter. I didn't even know Rabb's name before this line, but I had heard about the arrest over the Facebook post. The fallout of 2020 has let MY let the most annoying lefties in media take up too much of his headspace.
After every election investigating why some people voted for you and why some people didn't vote for you, seems like a basic bit of political competence.
I agree, but I think doing that is always going to be hard.
A significant number of people in the US are going to vote against whoever is in power (the president's party almost always loses seats in midterms). That's a hard thing to work around because, on the one hand, you don't want the report to just say "we didn't do anything wrong, people just vote against those in power"/"we got voted into power simply because people voted against the other party". But on the other hand you also don't want the report to say "people voted against us because we didn't push hard enough on PROGRESSIVE CAUSE X"/"people voted for us because we campaigned on PROGRESSIVE CAUSE X".
Polling will only be so helpful for this. Small changes in the wording of polls can cause meaningful changes in the results, and beyond that, I'm guessing that a non-trivial number of people first choose who to vote for and then find justifications afterwards.
It's going to be really hard to tease out how much of the vote was due to baseline votes against who was in power and how much was due to things the party actually did. That's not to say that we shouldn't try the exercise --- just that we shouldn't treat the results as gospel.
I think the point about how voters view corruption is an important one. A good example is the Obama DOJ settling contestable legal suits against corporate interests and then demanding that the corporate interests pay settlements to various advocacy groups that were often aligned with progressives (e.g. https://www.cato.org/blog/justice-department-revives-slush-fund-settlements). Depending on how you feel about the cases, the settlements, and the groups, this either looks like a "Obama settlement slush fund" or normal operation by an independent DOJ.
Presumably the way for Democrats to address these kinds of corruption issues going forward would be to gore their own ox first and then pass a broader change to the law.
If you go up to a random person on the street and ask them about this, they would respond "what dafuq are you talking about?" Being down a Cato rabbit hole is not a good way of understanding how voters feel about a topic.
I agree that a random person on the street doesn't know about this example, but people have such a wide definition of corruption that if you campaign on an anti-corruption message, you have to tread really lightly. The fact that the Obama stuff didn't blow up doesn't mean that something similar won't blow up in the future --- especially if you're making a big deal about cleaning up corruption.
I am old enough to remember when the public was outraged we withdrew from Afghanistan in a slightly embarrassing fashion and they were so mad that Biden's presidency never recovered. But starting and losing a war with Iran, shrug.
The problem (as I believe I flagged here at the start of the present Iran conflict), is that, absent a ground invasion, there's no way that the conflict would generate sufficient American casualties and footage of American military personnel suffering to ever be perceived as a "loss" by the general American public. To understand why it's a "loss" requires at least 5 to 10 minutes of learning about the Persian Gulf region and navigation through the Straits of Hormuz and, if you tried to explain that to the average American (especially after them being immersed in almost 50 years of near continuous bipartisan anti-Iran messaging in mainstream media), you're going to get something like the cabinet meeting scene in "Idiocracy" where one of the cabinet members just keeps screaming, "F@ggot!" over and over each time Luke Wilson's character tries to explain why the country's crops are failing.
I remember when people went crazy about Obama sending Iran $400 million in cash after not losing a war. It's crazy that many people are going to bend over and take it when we hand over even more money after losing a war.
All for electoral post mortems, and agree that it should be a regular prescriptive occurrence. But an “autopsy” report where we all know the “cause of death” and light on a plan of action forward, is genuinely not helpful and I think became media red net. I question whether Ken Martin is truly serious about turning the ship around so to speak.
A lot of left-of-center folks, including Matt, overrate how unified and coordinated conservative media and the conservative base are. Look at Candace Owens attacking Erica Kirk, for one example, or sniping between Ben Shapiro and anti-Israel conservatives.
Electorally, we just had an example of the right shooting itself in the foot with factional infighting in Texas. They knocked out a stronger incumbent for an extremely flawed candidate in Paxton. And Paxton was the favorite in the run-off even before Trump's endorsement, by the way, which signals there's lots of interest among the GOP rank and file for factional infighting in primaries.
>I don’t think it’s a big mystery why progressives keep deluding themselves into thinking that they can use economic policy to avoid the need to come to terms with public opinion on cultural issues — it’s because progressives themselves prioritize cultural issues over economic ones.<
A simple yet profound insight.
Matt really has a gift for unwrapping things that seem obvious after he explains them. But weren't at all obvious the moment before you read the explanation.
In the aughts I was at probably a dozen educated left/center-left social events where people led with "What's the Matter With Kansas," shaking their heads sadly to "Why do working-class people vote against their own economic interests (and against us)?" I pointed out, "But we vote for our values and against our economic self-interest, why wouldn't you expect working class people to do the same?" Over 90% of the time, I got a few seconds blank stare, and then some version of "But it's different because our cultural values are good and theirs are bad." I think very, very few people on the left can get past the framework of "Democrats are for empathy and helping people, while Republicans are selfish and want to limit people." We're still living down "deplorables" and "cling to their guns or religion." I don't know why--maybe because this is the shockingly explicit stereotype you hear from national media and teachers/professors--but I know it's a major barrier to winning a majority.
I mean I was in Colorado when they tried to run a cake baker out of business in a Disney cartoon villain manner, and there will be replies to this comment defending it.
Revealed preference is to shoot the survivors of the defeated enemy in the culture war, and people won’t forget it.
re: the cake baker
I don't defend the morality of it (it's awful; indeed, I wouldn't knowingly patronize a shop with such a policy) nor the practicality of it (it's a lousy way to run a business) but I do defend the legality of it. Offering a service that involves creative input is fundamentally different from, say, managing apartments, and I believe a first amendment carve-out is appropriate, at least if the business is sufficiently small.
I think we need to very tightly define accommodations so a mob can’t enlist the power of the state to close you if you don’t serve someone who wants to jam kale in their dick hole in the middle of the sales floor.
And I neither will defend the morality of the cake baker nor would I patronize a place, but it’s clear both sides want to make the other side dig their own grave then bury them in it in the cruelest way possible.
Could have gone my whole day without that mental image.
Respectfully, there is a particular anatomical act you can perform on yourself.
(Actually, I mean this quite disrespectfully.)
Indeed yes - the urbane metropolitans Prog. Left although secular to me carries a large dollop of a kind of secular "convert the heathen" quasi religious thinking.
It is definately a major barrier to winning outside of urbane metros where the Ds have increasingly become cantonised.
Republicans voting against self-interest doesn’t just mean economic issues but also means things like this: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-voter-regrets-ballot-after-fiancees-ice-detention/. There are so many stories of Republicans doing things like this to their own voters that it spawned the whole Leopards-Eating-Faces-Party meme.
On the other hand, you never hear these types of stories on the Democratic side to their own voters because the worst thing Democrats do is marginally increase taxes or cost of living for people who can afford it and mostly don’t particularly care. So in that sense Democrats do not vote against their self-interest in a significant way even though they may be willing to sacrifice some amount of personal economic gain to make things better for others.
I think this was pretty clear all along. Americans are extremely rich, no one really cares that much if they are 10% richer or poorer.
Theoretically “cultural” issues should have more room for win-win because they aren’t as zero-sum (if we tax A to fund B, that is zero sum; if we let A get married and don’t put LGBT or immigration related obstacles in the way, that doesn’t actually hurt B or prevent B from also getting married). But a lot of people on cultural issues want to restrict and hurt others *even for no benefit to themselves* like we saw in the debate about people getting green cards to their spouses. If someone is like “I want to tax you more so that I can pay less,” I think people would see that as fine, they understand it’s self-interested and we can compromise. If someone’s like “I want to separate you from your partner/spouse even though I gain no material benefit from doing so but just for lulz” people are much more likely to see that as malicious and evil rather than simply self-interest (even if a zero-sum nature) that they can find ground to compromise with.
It seems the two paragraphs here are in tension. When you write of a conservative saying “I want to separate you from your partner/spouse even though I gain no material benefit from doing so but just for lulz”, the word "material" does a lot of work. The actual conservative presumably cares a great deal about traditional values on sexuality and marriage, and is likely to be skeptical of immigration as well. The fact that allowing something would have no immediate economic cost is not going to override strongly held opinions on cultural issues. Not for a conservative, and not for anyone else for that matter (except possibly a minute number of die hard libertarians).
I mean...money and circumstances often override cultural issues for everyone on the material world? Pro-life folks get abortions, anti-corporate people work for corporations?
It just doesn't usually change their underlying cultural position, or their voting habits.
Yeah, I think it's better generally to have a political moral ethic that goes "I want others to be free to do what they want regardless of whether it helps me" than "I want others to be free to do what I want regardless of whether it helps me," but both perspectives are non-economic and value-based. And we all probably have a bit of both.
One could argue we shouldn't compromise with the latter instinct, but that's a values call. At least in Slow Boring land, politics is about working with these preexisting values, not steamrolling them with self-identified economic right-ness.
Americans are extremely rich. Hey! That would be a great campaign slogan! You'd be sure to get lots of votes, it the words lots meant almost none.
I mean it's definitely not something people like to hear, but it's also definitely true.
Well I guess I don't have the same definition of rich. Sure, everybody can be called rich if you pick the right comparison. In my mind to be rich is a social thing so if you are near the bottom of your society you ain't rich. How many Americans are nearer the top than the bottom? How many feel like they have a lot of control?
Americans love dunking on European. If I have to see that stupid European heat deaths vs. American gun deaths one more time.
I think it's important to avoid over-generalizations here. While some progressives may legitimately do prioritize cultural issues over economic ones, there are plenty of others that prioritize economic issues. Lumping every progressive politician into one big bucket, and saying "this is where all their priorities are" is far too simplistic.
On the free speech point, it's important to recognize that Matt, and also his audience, is _also_ more interested in left factional disputes than doing stories about Republicans being bad about free speech. That's why there are numerous stories from moderates at the NYT about left illiberalism on college campuses but fewer about Republicans. That's why the Letter on Justice and Open Debate was signed not just by Matt but also by tons of other free speech types, but there's no comparable letter about Republicans.
Additionally, there is also the point that Matt made on a podcast recently, which is that a big issue that gets censored is criticism of Israel, which most center-left commentators don't want to be vocal about. But to my point, Matt couldn't remember any episodes of this off-hand, while I would be surprised if he struggled similarly with remembering left factional censorship incidents.
I never heard about that Bah mi story but I know about the jailed over a FB meme story. Maybe I am more normie that most here?
If it's the one I'm thinking of, the Banh mi story was IIRC back in ~2016 or so back when "cultural appropriation" was getting into full swing and college campuses seemed to be ground zero for it, and it was called to my attention by a libertarian type who would _also_ of course be talking about the jailed over FB meme now.
The jailed over FB meme was extremely recent.
The only Oberlin story I remember is how a dumb college administrator endorsed a set of slanderous and defamatory claims against a local bakery by student activists (and endorsed boycotting and cutting school contracts with said business.)
This was after a student of a particular phenotype was confronted for shoplifting a wine bottle, ran, and then was chased by a staff member. The student and his friends beat up the staff member. This was all treated as a racist incident. (My friend who went to Oberlin says Oberlin was in the wrong but the owners were indeed racists. I still can’t get over how stupid the school was in terms of exposing itself to liability .)
"I still can’t get over how stupid the school was in terms of exposing itself to liability."
To me, this is an essential part of understanding the "oppressed by progressives" narrative. While the MAGA view drastically overstates the situation, it's also true that a tremendous number of institutions over the 2010 to 2021 timeframe that had lawyers (and, in the case of law firms, literally were lawyers) and other experts who could advise them increasingly openly acted as though various laws (statutory and common law) didn't apply to them so long as they were pursuing "noble" goals and could dispense with even the fig leaf of impartiality.
It wasn’t until 2022 that I started to realize “oh there is nothing I can do to be good enough in the eyes of these people. I am immutably guilty by phenotype and liable for the transgression committed by other people. Huh?”
I am so glad this type of nonsense is on the decline. It’s just so adversarial and unhelpful (and kind of cover for being mean/bullying.)
Re: the first paragraph, this is true, but I don't think anyone should view it as surprising or hypocritical.
Any reasonable theory of change suggests that center-left writers will have more influence on their own side, and that legal action / support for FIRE is the best way to fight abuses by small-town red state sheriffs.
Sadly, even if the NYT or NPR cared enough to make a big stink about Bushart's shameful mistreatment, they'd risk polarizing it and magnifying the sheriff's support. (They should still report on it, of course, but as partisan organs, they're likely to achieve more if the reporting is restrained).
I don't think that view of the politics is right. Obviously the maga base isn't going to drop their views over this, but they aren't the only people. There are lots of cross pressured people who don't like left wing censoriousness, and who potentially didn't vote for Dems because of it, and who also would dislike right wing censorship if it was widely publicized.
I'm not sure which part you're disagreeing with.
I think your conclusion is correct, but I think the relevant actors have lost the ability publicize these events widely without raising suspicion about the veracity/fairness of their own coverage. Worse, they usually end up converting issues into exclusively leftist causes instead of merely creating broader awareness.
The ICE presence in Minneapolis is probably the strongest counter-example, but that was buttressed by vivid, crowd-sourced social media coverage. It might even be fair to say the numerous social media posts were a bigger factor than the media coverage. Plus the events in MN were ongoing and dramatic in a way that Bushart's jailing was not.
I do not think this is the correct diagnosis. Instead, I think Matt, the NYT Ed board, the Atlantic, etc believe that eg rural Kentucky sherrifs and the Ball State University administration are dumb, uninteresting, and unimportant for the broader direction of the country, and their audience is mostly not interested in their conduct because we don't live in those places, attend those universities, or interact with people on either side of dumb Facebook posts about Charlie Kirk.
I agree those are all contributing factors.
Yeah I read that as the premise of the question. FIRE still has a lot of credibility because they point this out. But it’s obvious that anti-Israel is the most censored viewpoint in the US, even for campus deplatforming according to FIRE’s data: https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/under-fire. And there are the anti-boycott laws and people literally thrown in jail or deported for it, which don’t apply to any other viewpoint. People who talk about free speech and ignore this one viewpoint don’t have much credibility, and it’s why a lot of people have stopped listening to centrist “free speech” people who seem to think students complaining about dining hall food is a free speech violation but are fine with the federal government jailing people for writing student paper op-eds critical of Israel.
Right, and to the larger point, it's true that unless it's about Israel, there's less audience interest and less writer interest in questions of free speech from the center as well. Matt clearly has the correct view about this, but also has said that basically he cares more about left wing social pressure at Harvard than right wing explicit censorship at regional universities in red states.
The Left's illiberalism tends to receive more attention than the Right's because the Right has fewer opportunities to exercise illiberalism outside of government. Within government, however, the Right's illiberal tendencies are well documented.
The Right doesn't control important institutions outside of the church; everything else is left-leaning and, the Left has been more willing to marginalize or exclude people who fall outside its ideological orthodoxy.
"outside of government" is very much along the lines of "other than the shooting, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play". As we have seen, control of government lets you control media, universities, scientific research, law firms, etc.
"control of government lets you control media, universities, scientific research, law firms, etc."
This is overstated. The Trump administration has abused its powers, and I don't want to minimize how bad that's been or how bad it could become.
The administration has made institutions think twice before crossing them, and threaten to do worse, but they do not in any sense "control media, universities, law firms, or scientific research in the US." For every organization that succumbed to their bullying, ten have stood up and loudly denounced them.
'Control media' is obviously overstating the case, but I don't think there's ever been a situation quite like this CBS situation before? The US is not Hungary though, I think we can agree.
Lots of people have said mean things about Trump, that's true. But the actual behavior of our leading institutions has been to compromise with the lawless demands made by Trump.
I think you're way off on your 10 to 1 ratio. I actually think it might run the other way. And that's without taking into account the chilling effect.
Even Bushart, the Charlie Kirk/FB guy, says he plans to stay off of Facebook and not post political stuff any more. That's how intimidation works.
All of which has been well documented and criticized by the center-left. However, Trump is only attacking those organizations because of either Trump's personal vindictiveness or those institutions being biased against the Right.
The reason moderates have been criticizing the Left's illiberalism more is because the Left controls almost every important facet of American life.
'the Left controls almost [every?] important facet of American life'
No it doesn't.
Thanks for pointing out my typo. Appreciate it!
Well...I mean, if we accept that Trump's personal vindictiveness comes from anyone refusing to sycophanticly beg to suck his dick, what you've just said is, Trump attacks any organization which doesn't agree with him and uses the power of the state to attempt to force them to agree with him...that's a lot worse than even the worst woke excesses, which could indeed be bad. Being fired sucks. Being jailed/deported is worse.
Except I suspect that, on a day-to-day basis, a very large percentage of Americans feel more oppressed/antagonized by their employer's policies, local community institutions, popular media, etc. than anything "the government" is directly doing to them.
And in the church, not being a little illiberal is a straight path to an empty church. As churches get a little more flexible in their theology, their membership craters.
The difference between those two things is that government is the more powerful institution by leaps and bounds. That's the illiberalism that is truly dangerous.
It's also worth noting that illiberalism outside of government action probably isn't even definitionally accurate. Being censorious towards people in the private sector is distasteful but not illegal, it's not actually contrary to free speech. The government censoring someone, or scaring people into censoring themselves is the thing that is the actual breech of the right to which we are all entitled.
It’s interesting I just don’t think people who read the NYT and so on are all that exposed to the right’s illiberalism. Big exception to this is university campuses, where you have state legislators being vexatious litigants against like, Texas A&M. That does seem to get into the news, and it should.
I'm going to extract this discussion from implicit views of what would be good/bad Dem politics and simply point out that the left factional coverage is more interesting than the Rightist press alternative. Lots of people prefer the partisan coverage, but that doesn't change the quality of the material. The straight partisanship that doesn't acknowledge the issues with their side is just lower quality reporting.
Right, also the people who want to jail everyone who said mean stuff about Charlie Kirk are idiots who have no good arguments and aren't in the social circles of people who read this substack.
Just to add to the "some Arab states acted in good faith towards their Jews but outflow happened anyway" endpoint, Tunisia is an even stronger example than Morocco.
Habib Bourguiba, the first president of the Tunisian republic tried to maintain his Jewish population, and his own foreign policy was strikingly "moderate" on Israel (at least compared to Nasser or Gaddafi). He tried to make Jews safe in Tunisia. Also, in 1965, he went to the then Jordanian-controlled West Bank, and urged Arabs there to accept the 1947 partition and negotiate rather than fight, and he was nearly stoned to death for it. He even boycotted the Khartoum conference of the three noes. He even floated that Jordan should be Palestine, which infuriated King Hussein.
None of it mattered. The Tunisian Jews went from over 100K in 1940s to a few thousand by the 1980s, with no formal state expulsion. The drops cluster exactly where you'd expect if Israel was the trigger:
Tunisia had anti-Jewish riots after Suez in 1956, destroying synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish quarters. Tunisia also had attacks on Jewish businesses and the main Tunisian synagogue after the 6 Day war in 1967.
Bourguiba's good faith couldn't hold Tunisian Jews in Tunisia when popular hostility to Zionism ran that hot and Tunisian Jews got the short end of the stick for it.
Some readings on Tunisia if interested:
The Economic & Geopolitical History of Tunisia, Part 2: Banker Imperialism, French Rule, and the Road to Independence
https://yawboadu.substack.com/p/the-economic-and-geopolitical-history-663
Tunisia Part 3: Habib Bourguiba – Founding Father, Secular Strongman, & Arab Maverick
https://yawboadu.substack.com/p/tunisia-part-3-habib-bourguiba-founding
The fact that some arab leaders tried to quell tensions but jews were pogromed out around the Arab world anyway is actually a stronger reason for zionism to exist than the other way around. "Israel being the trigger" only is true because of the violent reaction of the average Arab population deciding to take their anger out on their Jewish neighbors.
It’s wasn’t political hostility towards Jews but public hostility and violence toward Jews that made them emigrate/flee.
Agree with everything you said, it is interesting. But attacking Synagogues of native Jews who don't want to emigrate to Israel isn't hostility to Zionism, calling it pro-Zionism would be odd but accurate.
This is a great point. In this case, anti-Zionism was anti-Semitism for the Tunisian public. They equated Jews and Israel regardless of whether the local Jews were Zionist or not.
Matt writes: "There is definitely a difference between climate donors leaning on Chuck Schumer to whip a vote about whether or not to allow California to ban gasoline-powered cars and a member taking an envelope of cash from an oil company to vote a certain way on that measure."
The hypothetical oil company needs a better General Counsel. Envelope of cash went out of fashion decades ago. Do it the right way: Hire associates and others in the member's orbit, buy products & services from the same people, donate to the member's foundation, offer them a lucrative job after they leave office.
C'mon, hypothetical oil company, get with the program and be a little creative!
One funny side plot of this administration is more junior politicals who don’t have DC experience learning there really aren’t just envelopes of cash. Gotta work for a bit before you can get to K street
That’s what insider trading is for, lol.
Some of the new lobby groups are able to play with the straight up extractive groups but it’s telling that none of the traditional firms want to play that game (because lobbyists DO go to prison! Real prison!)
Tom Homan is still kicking it old-school.
Yes, and I think voters rightly see how both examples are very similar.
The best part is the corruption rube Goldberg machine is what "climate donors leaning on Chuck Schumer" means in reality. Coming to terms with the fact that Democrats and Republicans(the pre Trump variety) are, and always have been, corrupt needs to happen. Just because technocraric corruption is technically legal and has a more legitimate "feel" than hocking shitcoins on Twitter doesn't mean it isnt corruption.
There was a great video from The Onion a few years ago where a Trump voting man admits he made a mistake after reading 800 pages of queer feminist theory. You can understand why progressives try to keep the conversation on economics after watching it.
https://youtu.be/lpzVc7s-_e8?si=5OAXYeHprgFvrwBx
This is mockable but Democrats really should blow up stories of people voting for Trump for cultural reasons that totally blew up in their faces. Recently there was a “smart” tech guy on Twitter talking about how all the smart tech guys actually support Trump but then he got impacted by the new green card rule and everyone was mocking him for it. There have also been many news stories of Trump supporters who regret their vote after their spouses were deported that we should highlight, but the tech guy one really took the cake on vitality because he’s supposed to be genius yet couldn’t figure out one of the most fundamental facts of US politics.
There should be things like that. When we say people who vote for Trump are doing so against self-interest it should not be thought of as “you have to read 800 pages of arcane feminist theory” to understand, but rather very specific concrete things Trump did to people for no good reason that often impacts his own supporters.
Trump only serves the interests of one person.
Only if you don’t have comments sections and burn r/politics to the ground first.
Otherwise we all know what will happen.
On a few of the left v center political points here, I think there's a real chance of sleepwalking into disaster for progressive and centrist Dem candidates alike. There's an assumption due to the points MY mentions that Maine is easily winnable. There's an assumption of an anti trump blue wave backlash taking the House and tightening up the Senate. And trump's bungles on tariffs and Iran have dampened conservative enthusiasm, further playing into the narrative.
But I'd frame the issue less as a focus on factional Dem-on-Dem infighting trying to capitalize on that belief, and moreso the risk being that there's no affirmative policy case being made at all. The issue that Dems have to confront going into the summer is they have to make some sort of actual case, and if it's all Israel/billionaires being bad then that's again not an affirmative case about what you actually want to do when you govern. Tax billionaires for what? To fund what? Reform foreign policy commitments to whom? Why? For what purpose? These are unanswered questions in the primary fights thus far.
Why isn’t that an actual policy case? The policies that follow are cutting military aid and diplomatic cover to Israel and raising taxes on billionaires. Given the size of the deficit the higher taxes don’t really need to be funding anything else. The why is also blatantly obvious—Israel is doing morally bad things with the money and diplomatic cover we provide, and billionaires have reaped a disproportionate untaxed benefit from our recent stonks-based economy so should pay a fair share.
The question of military aid begs the question of military risk, pretends that we get nothing for the support of allies, and is no different than saying we should not fund Ukraine without any follow up in terms of how an emboldened Russia (or in Israels case terrorist groups) would impact the US. It's treated as an end to the question that it is not, in fact, an end to at all.
Taxing billionaires to get a fair share of what? Who is not getting a fair share, and of what? Do you want to just redistribute their cash to everyone? To fund what? If we liquidated every billionaire in their entirety it to would not put a dent in the overall debt and/of deficit level. Youre begging all the same questions.
Sulla like proscription sounds nice but it would destroy so much wealth and value at the same time.
You’re just disagreeing on the merits of the first question, which is fine, but I think it’s an argument you’ll lose. No one can seriously look at some nuisance terrorist groups and conclude they are a greater evil than a superpower that has invaded multiple neighbors, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and put millions into concentration camp-like conditions.
Again we all have to pay taxes to support the general operations of the government. We are just saying that billionaires who have achieved a lion’s share of the wealth should pay more. We can paper over disagreements over how the taxes should be spent because even if we can’t reach any agreement on that higher taxes would at least reduce the national debt, which is a worthy goal.
Right. And more broadly, it's not a crazy lesson to draw from the Biden and Trump presidencies that votes want someone who doesn't do any moon shot policies. You can just sit there and manage things!
Neither of these are moonshot policies. They're simply base anger manifest towards no functional end.
Yeah literally “does nothing but reverses Trump’s policies, raises taxes on billionaires, and stops funding/diplomacy for Israel” would be a major win. Otherwise just govern competently but forgettably like it’s still 2015. That would unite progressives and most moderates I think.
I don’t get it. Democrats certainly have an affirmative case! Sure, there’s disagreement between the centrists/moderates and progressives, but broadly speaking, the party wants:
1. To improve material conditions for Americans; “abundance”
2. To have a government that isn’t blatantly breaking tons of rules/isn’t run by a guy who denies election results and enriches himself
3. To try to repair our relationships with our allies/our standing in the world.
I dunno, I get just a little suspicious when people say “I just don’t know what the Democrats STAND FOR” when 2024!Trump had zero policy details and a bunch of completely unrealistic promises. Worked for him!
Agreed. Trump bad might get you over the finish line, but it also might not ( it certainly didn't in 2024)
Maybe try and be a majority party
Many progressives fundamentally care more about winning factional battles than winning power. AOC is a clear exception. Mamdani’s recent betrayal is not a good sign.
Tired: Martin O'Malley would have won.
Wired: Michael Bennet would have won.
Inspired: Carcetti would have climbed the ladder of Chaos.
Look it up kids.
For a Person Experiencing Westernness, you’re up early!
(Li’l Velociraptor had a mercifully rare middle of the night wake-up; she’s asleep now and I’m going to sleep too)
Yeah, I had a bad night's sleep too, trying to see if I can recoup some time too.
So would Hickenlooper.
I think MY is dead on in the foreign policy opening. I'm a pretty long time skeptic of the way in which the US-Israel relationship has been handled, and while I think it's good that more people are starting to understand the problems with this I just don't think it's the issue people think it is. Foreign policy is a low voter priority and the particulars of Israel/Palestine are an important but also eccentric interest. Hopefully now that the Israelis have finally gotten their dream of dragging America into an unpopular, pointless war this will naturally start to correct.
Meanwhile I think foreign policy is otherwise among the more defensible aspects of the Biden administration. He held NATO together during the biggest crisis in Europe in generations. He kept Ukraine in the fight in the early days when its survival was most in doubt (and really it's a travesty that we've wound down our support). We got out of Afghanistan, which while unfortunately messy, was something the American people had voted for multiple times only to be rebuffed by the blob and undue caution from preceding administrations.
We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater over the weird affinity a subgroup has for Islamist tinged politics and indeed doing so is probably counter productive in other ways.
Whichever party talks the most about I-P in 2028 is probably going to be primarily defining itself as the annoying party by doing so. Being the less annoying party is going to be an asset in 2028.
It’s the student gov party that won’t let you talk about funding club sports because they want endless Palestine motions, and then you end up fucking up and not funding club sports OR the annual spring party, and you have a student revolt and the state government takes all your funding ability away.
Yep, monomaniacal preoccupation with the jews is a major intellectual and political liability whether you're Students for Justice in Palestine, Commentary magazine, or Tucker Carlson.
That's part of it, but it's also the issue that's the most unpleasant to publicly discuss no matter your view. People who like to discuss it are weird and unpleasant.
I went into a little more detail in a top level comment but I think we look back on Biden's Ukraine policy far too fondly. He had to get dragged along every step of the way slowly and excruciatingly, and a lot of good men died because he and his administration were staffed by cowards who thought the term "nuclear threat" was a magic incantation that meant they had to stop doing whatever they were doing. Jake Sullivan in particular.
I understand those for whom this is much more directly personal may feel that way, but the responsibility to the American people, its treaty allies, and the role of the US in the global order (or what's left of it) is too big to immediately give on Ukrainian maximalist wishes in such a way. That's particularly the case when NATO members for whom this is all much closer were divided and conflicted.
I'd have been in favor of much more generosity and aggressive support once the Ukrainians showed the world that they were willing to fight for their country (and indeed would be much more aggressive if it were my call currently, on that basis). But responsible statecraft doesn't work that way. Ultimately all people have to secure their own future on their own terms.
I would look at it the opposite way, where American wavering led to the authoritarian regimes of the world- primarily Russia, but notable China and Iran as well- to feel comfortable being much bolder when it came to unilateral changes to the postwar world order. I'm not saying that it would be responsible to start shipping ballistic missiles or stealth fighters to the Ukrainians on day one, or even at all. But the correct response to threats of nuclear deployment isn't to back down, it's to show that those threats are empty and stay the course. Submitting, constantly, to nuclear blackmail only ensures that it'll happen again.
I don't think Biden's approach is beyond criticism but you're taking for granted that there was a consensus at the top level of the NATO alliance from the outset which there wasn't. Of the important members only the UK was all in from the beginning, with Paris and Berlin waffling, and a general strategic dearth of hardware, ammunition and materiel reserves (to say nothing of production) across the continent. Even setting up logistics takes time and the worst thing that could've happened in the moment was fracturing the alliance or members feeling like they were exposed by virtue of giving up their own strategic reserves, which were already down to the bone.
With 20/20 hindsight I think it's fair to say it could've been done better and should have been done much more decisively but (a) that doesn't fall completely on America, and (b) the slow but steady aid to Ukraine was enough to keep them in the fight at the most pivotal moments and buy them important breathing room while they developed their own defense industry. I think the Biden administration is due credit for that and to say otherwise is revisionism, maybe bordering on ingratitude to the US for the help it provided.
I would say that the authoritarian-minded leaders of Russia, China, and Iran--and, to some extent, the willingness of those governed--were the primary causal factors of the bold, authoritarian actions of these nations.
The waffling on Himars and other systems made no sense and still doesn’t. Also the pressuring Ukraine to mount a costly tank counter-offensive was a US mistake.
Agree but besides the point.
That's an incredibly uncharitable characterization. It's true that Joe Biden opposed *particular* proposals with respect to aiding Ukraine. He didn't greenlight every plan, every tactic and every weapons system. And rightly so. The key was to strike a balance: stymying Russia while not getting Nato inserted a hot war with a nuclear state.
But Joe Biden energetically, forcefully and successfully rallied the free world into a multi-faceted defense of Ukraine involving economic aid, large-scale flow of munitions, intelligence sharing, diplomatic efforts, and sanctions against Moscow.
History will look kindly on Joe Biden's role in stopping Putin.
Had Trump won a second term in 2020, Ukraine by now would no longer be a country.
I think both of these things can be largely true. Biden was great at the optics and coalition building aspects of the political angle. Him visiting Kyiv during wartime was genuinely impressive. That said, I think saying that the balance between stymying Russia and not getting NATO into a hot war was well struck is absurd. I've lost count of how many times Russia drew a "nuclear red line" and then quietly did nothing. Things like American weapons not being able to be used on Russian soil despite logistics networks being concentrated there were entirely unforced errors that the US IC itself was screaming about for years. Russia referred to as nuclear red lines, just off the top of my head: providing targeting intel in occupied territories, including all four "annexed" oblasts, providing sat intel within the Russian Federation, providing MANPADs, providing SAM systems, providing armored vehicles, providing tanks, providing ammunition for the Bradleys, providing TOW missiles (which worked, we still don't have them), providing fighter jets, providing spare parts for those jets, providing weapons for the jets, training the pilots in NATO countries, hotlapping the Black Sea with NATO AWACs aircraft, allowing American weapons to be used on Crimea, allowing American weapons to be used on Russian territory, cutting access to SWIFT, cutting Nordstream II (which the Americans didn't even do, lol), detaining shadow fleet tankers, and bombing Russian energy infrastructure. Given that they've followed through on none of it, I think timidity is a very fair charge to level.
Has Trump been worse? 100%. That's why I voted against him twice, having been too young the first time around, and I have much worse things to say about Elbridge Colby than anyone in the Biden admin. But the paragraph I was talking about was centered on the Biden era of this conflict, and I think that era was the one that will ultimately ensure we need to fight a much wider conflict in this decade against emboldened revisionist powers.
>We got out of Afghanistan, which while unfortunately messy,<
It wasn't *that* messy. Seriously.
Given the enormous scale of the operation—and the fact that pullouts (eg Dunkirk, Saigon) inevitably involve elements of chaos—the optics were always going to be messy.
But casualties were remarkably light given that (AFAIK) it was the single largest airborne evacuation in history. It was actually a *triumph* of American logistics capacity and operational expertise under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
Mind you, I know what you mean, I truly do. But the Afghanistan departure strikes me as one of the most successful episodes of right wing ref working ever. Why the hell didn't Democrats have Joe's back on this? Why the hell isn't the spin I've just put on it (highly factual spin at that) at least *competing* with the "disaster" meme that got going from day one of that operation.
It still pisses me off.
+1000 I continue to believe the intellectually honest position is that the Afghanistan withdrawal was almost flawlessly executed given the circumstances. The US suffered roughly 6 times as many casualties in the withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975 and that was a more "leisurely" withdrawal in terms of both the timeframe for completing it and the security risks involved.
South Vietnam has *a fucking coastline*!
Look I think the level of flak was unfair and as I said I think the decision was the right one, but it is what it is.
I’m very afraid that Israel/Palestine is going to seriously weaken the Democratic Party in the run up to 2028 and I don’t know what to do about it. I think a big problem is that pro-Palestinian activists - the part of that group that are genuinely motivated by sympathy for Palestinian suffering and not just anti-Semitic - really think this is South Africa 2.0 and a relatively small amount of pressure from the world will get Israel to shape up and “do the right thing”. But Israel is not South Africa, it’s way more powerful and what we are actually dealing with is something more akin to China and the Uyghurs. Pro-Israel types will sometimes go around asking “why aren’t the kids protesting China” like it’s some kind of gotcha, but it’s not: it’s not productive to try to mildly pressure a powerful country like China, behavioral change will only come from massive (likely military) pressure or the country itself voluntarily deciding to change course. Unfortunately I think that’s also true with Israel.
I think Matt is right that we should just disengage but even that’s going to be really challenging, with continual, un-productive pressure from activists to keep upping the ante after every move. Cut off the military and financial aid? Ok great now we need to ban all arms sales. Ban the arm sales? Now we need a full on trade ban, etc etc. Meanwhile you have an actual resurgence of capital A anti-semitism doing things like defacing synagogues and other Jewish institutions thousands of miles away from Israel which only serves to empower the Israeli right: “see- the rest of the world hates us. We aren’t safe anywhere but at least here in Israel the military will fight to protect you”.
We’re just going to rip ourselves apart for zero benefit to the Palestinians (arguably an enraged Israel may behave even worse) and open the door to further Republican gains. Someone talk me off the ledge!
The difference between China and the Ughyurs and Israel Palestine is that if China suddenly left the Ughyurs alone I don’t think anything at all happens to the Chinese.
While the Palestinians have clearly been fighting a war against Jews / Israel for over 100 years. Palestinian Nelson Mandela never showed up.
In both cases the oppressed group did terrorism that killed a few thousand people but was never powerful enough to seriously threaten the country.
Mandela Nelson himself was the leader of the armed/terrorist wing of the ANC (and was on US terror ban lists until 2008 or so). He only became peaceful and worked on reconciliation after his side had ultimately won. So you don’t know who the Palestinian Mandela would be because they have never gotten to the stage of reconciliation.
"He only became peaceful and worked on reconciliation after his side had ultimately won."
That is not true. Mandela agreed to a meaningful ceasefire in August 1990. He then worked to bring apartheid to an end over the next few years, successfully, even in the face of ongoing violence against ANC activists.
"In August [1990], Mandela—recognising the ANC's severe military disadvantage—offered a ceasefire, the Pretoria Minute, for which he was widely criticised by MK activists."
Among others, that was followed by:
- The 1991 Sobeking Massacre [https://sahistory.org.za/dated-event/sebokeng-massacre-mourners-leaves-more-30-dead-and-40-more-injured]
- The 1992 Boipatong Massacre [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boipatong_massacre]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#End_of_apartheid_and_elections]
Yes, this is it in a nutshell. This issue is not a priority for 95% of the country, but the hardcore left and right are never going to shut up about it even if events move in their desired direction. It’s a problem.
International pressure worked even on China with respect to Uyghurs: https://dominotheory.com/why-the-xinjiang-camps-closed/
And Israel is not as powerful as China. If there really were global sanctions it would its prosperity, which depends on global trade. and fold quickly.
The camps closed because the CCP has effectively enslaved the large majority of prime-age Uighur men in faraway locations, forced an increasing number of the women into marriages with Han men, and adopted out an unconscionable fraction of children with living parents to Han families.
The Uighur birth rate is now estimated at below 0.3, they will be extirpated as Beijing wants, just a hair more slowly than the Nazis had the patience for.
I beg you, at least make the most basic stab at not being a tankie-level useful idiot.
I mean…. This is happening in a few places. I think Sri Lanka too! Slow motion ethnic cleansing is something a state can do if they want to try hard enough.
Citation? I googled Uyghur birth rate .3 and didn’t see any results at all. And there are actually Western tourists and media who go to Xinjiang now (while Israel is still not letting foreign media into Gaza and banning it from the West Bank). They talk to Uyghurs and it does seem like a lot of young men are missing, and the ones that are left look very soft and non-threatening, which is bad! But disproves the idea that Uyghurs are being eliminated. Their living conditions seem way better than what’s in Gaza. When I was in Shanghai recently, I went to a Uyghur restaurant run by people who I assume were Uyghurs based on dress and language. They were there, they existed. They might’ve been oppressed or discriminated against but they were not a figment of my imagination. How many Gazans run restaurants in Tel Aviv?
People have stopped talking about the Uyghur situation and polls show consistent improvement in opinions of China globally since 2019 because there’s simply no good evidence for the most outlandish claims (compared to what Israel is doing which can be seen from satellite imagery and social media videos made by Israeli soldiers themselves bragging about it) while it looks like China has closed most of the camps which is what triggered the international outrage.
The missing young men are the answer you’re looking for, dude. You cannot sustain a people without them.
Multiple people have reached the ~0.3 TFR conclusion. In 2018 Xinjiang’s TFR was 1.85, widely understood to be broken between a Han TFR of around 1.7 and a Uighur/Kazakh one of 2.0.
Since then the SAR’s fertility has fallen to under 0.8. Surely *some* of that is disruption to Han fertility from the economic and social dislocation of first imprisoning a quarter of the population and then enslaving two-thirds of that quarter. But the majority of the change is understood to be on the part of Uighur households.
If, conservatively, Han fertility in Xinjiang has fallen by more than the countrywide average, then it’s around 1.1 today, which means that the SAR-level figures require minority group fertility to be below 0.5. The Hui and Kazakhs haven’t been subject to what the Uighurs have, which guarantees that most of that fertility decline is coming from them.
China is more effectively concealing it, it hasn’t stopped or changed its behavior in any meaningful way. Imprisoning ~4-6 million Uighurs in camps gave way to enslaving virtually the entire prime-age male population, no later than 2020-22.
There will be Palestinians in a century, because while Israel is brutal and barbaric in dealing with them, it isn’t seeking to wipe them out. We now this because it has the means and hasn’t done it.
There will not be Uighurs, because the Party-state has decided there should not be.
I think there is some dispute as to whether China has appreciably improved its behavior in Xinjiang: https://x.com/alisonkilling/status/2060237604004528313?s=46
Biden’s support for Ukraine was a genuinely great accomplishment but even as a non-interventionist I think the Afghan withdrawal was a mistake. It really is what killed Biden’s popularity and presidency in the polls. There weren’t that many US soldiers there to begin with and they weren’t committing that many war crimes so it wasn’t really that big of a deal compared to later foreign policy crises. Although withdrawal polled well in the abstract, people obviously didn’t like it when they saw the mess. So that’s something popularism needs to take into account—what polling says is not what might actually happen when people see real results.
Cue Tony Blair on single issue polling.
I'm not sure that's really applicable here. Even doing the popular thing isn't going to be popular if you fuck it up in the execution.
>Don’t be a sucker around this stuff. The oligarchy doesn’t care whether or not people pay their bus fare, but it loves when Democrats attract a soft-on-crime reputation that discredits them electorally.<
This can be added to your political yellow sticky collection, next to the one about how the voters you really need to convert are 50-something non-college customer service reps living outside Grand Rapids.
What would really help Democrats is if they got elected a bunch of county judges that didn't keep letting violent and career criminals back out on the streets. Stories about unnecessarily-released criminals committing more crime do a lot of reputational damage.
On the one hand, true; on the other hand, (1) it's a really big country with lots of judges and national media can promote coverage of the wackiest judge they can find and (2) in many of the cases where judges get dinged over releasing people (whether by the right or, much less frequently, by the left, usually in connection with domestic violence and sexual assault cases), my two cents as a (admittedly, non-criminal) lawyer is that the judge actually acted reasonably or at least consistently with the law.
It is an unfortunate reality that if you let out exactly zero people who proceed to reoffend, your policies were needlessly and damagingly harsh. Much as though the "best" amount of fraud in a large, complex system is not exactly zero--you are spending much more to hunt down the last nanofraud than the actual cost of the last nanofraud.
Then maybe Democrats could benefit by changing the relevant laws and sentencing guidelines.
I appreciate that Mamdani tightened the mayors' control over NYC schools at the expense of locals elections. Rather than take the path of throwing up his hands and bleating, "Why are you mad at me that the schools suck ass? I don't control those."
Trying to paint Lindsey Graham as a responsible actor of any sorts is mind blowing to me
The senator is a good actor. You have to appear sincere and convincing in what you say, truly inhabit the role you are playing, sometimes improvise and go off script.
it is a really provocative idea.
Like, the idea of bravery I previously subscribed to re Graham would have him keeping his dignity, calling out Trump, and effectively ending his political career and influence. Instead he has chosen to publicly debase himself to retain some influence, and maybe he's doing that knowingly for the good of the country, even though we all think less of him now.
*If* that's true -- and it's a big if -- then that's an incredibly couragous thing to do.
And you don’t NEED to do it to keep your seat in SC. Tim Scott is doing fine! In fact he’s accumulated a ton of power as a guy who is extremely reasonable on financial services in secret Congress.
But of course this is a collective action problem, and we don't usually view the folks who decide to go along to get along on those as courageous?
"And what they are interested in is primarily D-on-D primaries in blue states and districts. They very extensively covered Chris Rabb’s successful primary win in Philadelphia and did a lot to amplify his attacks on his opponent."
I think this is downstream of MY spending too much time on Twitter. I didn't even know Rabb's name before this line, but I had heard about the arrest over the Facebook post. The fallout of 2020 has let MY let the most annoying lefties in media take up too much of his headspace.
After every election investigating why some people voted for you and why some people didn't vote for you, seems like a basic bit of political competence.
I have a compelling alternative.
1. State that you did not lose, and instead won the election
2. File lawsuits to stop vote counting and invalidate mail-in ballots
3. Lobby secretaries of state to find you the missing 11,780 votes
4. Lobby state legislators to appoint alternative set of electors
5. Actually file fake list of electors with Congress and the National Archives
6. Pressure to VP to not certify the vote
7. Gather supporters to persuade the VP and Congress to not certify
8. Some years pass
9. Win 312 Electoral College votes
I agree, but I think doing that is always going to be hard.
A significant number of people in the US are going to vote against whoever is in power (the president's party almost always loses seats in midterms). That's a hard thing to work around because, on the one hand, you don't want the report to just say "we didn't do anything wrong, people just vote against those in power"/"we got voted into power simply because people voted against the other party". But on the other hand you also don't want the report to say "people voted against us because we didn't push hard enough on PROGRESSIVE CAUSE X"/"people voted for us because we campaigned on PROGRESSIVE CAUSE X".
Polling will only be so helpful for this. Small changes in the wording of polls can cause meaningful changes in the results, and beyond that, I'm guessing that a non-trivial number of people first choose who to vote for and then find justifications afterwards.
It's going to be really hard to tease out how much of the vote was due to baseline votes against who was in power and how much was due to things the party actually did. That's not to say that we shouldn't try the exercise --- just that we shouldn't treat the results as gospel.
I think the point about how voters view corruption is an important one. A good example is the Obama DOJ settling contestable legal suits against corporate interests and then demanding that the corporate interests pay settlements to various advocacy groups that were often aligned with progressives (e.g. https://www.cato.org/blog/justice-department-revives-slush-fund-settlements). Depending on how you feel about the cases, the settlements, and the groups, this either looks like a "Obama settlement slush fund" or normal operation by an independent DOJ.
Presumably the way for Democrats to address these kinds of corruption issues going forward would be to gore their own ox first and then pass a broader change to the law.
If you go up to a random person on the street and ask them about this, they would respond "what dafuq are you talking about?" Being down a Cato rabbit hole is not a good way of understanding how voters feel about a topic.
I agree that a random person on the street doesn't know about this example, but people have such a wide definition of corruption that if you campaign on an anti-corruption message, you have to tread really lightly. The fact that the Obama stuff didn't blow up doesn't mean that something similar won't blow up in the future --- especially if you're making a big deal about cleaning up corruption.
So are Americans really OK with Trump losing a war with Iran and then handing them a bunch of cash?
I am old enough to remember when the public was outraged we withdrew from Afghanistan in a slightly embarrassing fashion and they were so mad that Biden's presidency never recovered. But starting and losing a war with Iran, shrug.
The problem (as I believe I flagged here at the start of the present Iran conflict), is that, absent a ground invasion, there's no way that the conflict would generate sufficient American casualties and footage of American military personnel suffering to ever be perceived as a "loss" by the general American public. To understand why it's a "loss" requires at least 5 to 10 minutes of learning about the Persian Gulf region and navigation through the Straits of Hormuz and, if you tried to explain that to the average American (especially after them being immersed in almost 50 years of near continuous bipartisan anti-Iran messaging in mainstream media), you're going to get something like the cabinet meeting scene in "Idiocracy" where one of the cabinet members just keeps screaming, "F@ggot!" over and over each time Luke Wilson's character tries to explain why the country's crops are failing.
Sadly I think we both know the answer to that
If Fox News says it's OK, enough of the relevant people will support it to not damage Trump's standing with his base that badly.
I remember when people went crazy about Obama sending Iran $400 million in cash after not losing a war. It's crazy that many people are going to bend over and take it when we hand over even more money after losing a war.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/02/us-sent-400-million-in-cash-to-iran-as-prisoners-were-freed-wsj-reports.html
All for electoral post mortems, and agree that it should be a regular prescriptive occurrence. But an “autopsy” report where we all know the “cause of death” and light on a plan of action forward, is genuinely not helpful and I think became media red net. I question whether Ken Martin is truly serious about turning the ship around so to speak.
Ken Martin would need to find the wheel first before we can have a conversation about steering it.
A lot of left-of-center folks, including Matt, overrate how unified and coordinated conservative media and the conservative base are. Look at Candace Owens attacking Erica Kirk, for one example, or sniping between Ben Shapiro and anti-Israel conservatives.
Electorally, we just had an example of the right shooting itself in the foot with factional infighting in Texas. They knocked out a stronger incumbent for an extremely flawed candidate in Paxton. And Paxton was the favorite in the run-off even before Trump's endorsement, by the way, which signals there's lots of interest among the GOP rank and file for factional infighting in primaries.