Rent control is just a zombie that will never die, huh? It always seems that society needs to relearn the hard way on how price controls lead to shortages and rationing, after the older generations that learned it the hard way before die off, and new, younger generations take over.
I really wish that that those who are so angry over landlords jacking up prices would realize that landlords would lose so much leverage to do so with increased competition via increased hous8jg supply.
I think we're in a holding pattern where mayors run on it because it is in fact popular and sounds nice to people. Then, when they enter office they realize it's A) Not a good idea so they propose a very watered down idea or don't do it. Or B) Realize that due to issues with home rule/how the mayoral powers are constructed they literally can't.
This is an optimistic take. In NYC about half the rental stock is subject to some form of rent control (either controlled or regulated) and the conditions of those controls have only gotten stricter over time (most notably in 2017). It's not an exaggeration to say that the predictably bad effects of these progressive laws has resulted in the very likely election of a yet more progressive mayor who is promising to enact even worse policies with predictably worse effects!
Much more accurate to say that they're difficult to enact at first but once implemented they ratchet only one way.
Don't forget the quieter, easier to sneak by voters version - making eviction nearly unattainable. In DC, the general hostility towards landlords, covid-era exigencies, and a painfully backed up court system conspired to crank up the barriers to eviction for any cause. Council recently had to tweak their own tenant friendly laws because large building-owners were lurching towards bankruptcy, ironically threatening the affordability covenants the mayor touts as solving the housing problem. Homeowners roll their eyes at the suggestion to rent out a house or downstairs apartment - why take the risk of never being able to evict a tenant. QED, less housing.
See, if you're a smart and petty enemy even if you're ready to surrender right before Christmas you just wait a bit to throw up the middle finger at the victor.
I agree, but ugh, "if no one is allowed to make money renting, there will be fewer rentals and the ones that remain will be lower quality" seems so clear and obvious, borne out by repeated daily experience.
Locally the response is "housing is a human right, profiting from it should be illegal."
I explained the issue to a smart friend of mine and her response was, "But we have to do *something*." Yes, but not this! And then another friend in the room said "Marx said 'rent is theft'," and I nobly bit my tongue off and refrained from explaining what "rent" means in economics and that that she herself benefitted 100% from rent-seeking, while I inwardly pounded my head on the floor.
Look, you only have so many friends in life. They're kind-hearted women who would come hold your hand if your husband died. I can't alienate *everybody* or I'd be stuck being right and entirely alone.
>Rent control is just a zombie that will never die, huh?<
Same as tariffs. Same as immigration restrictionism. Same as all policies that sharply depart from liberalism (you know, the school of political economy that birthed the modern world, and gave us the enviable quality of life our ancestors could scarcely dream of, and which we seem determined to jettison as a planet).
Confiscatory or semi-confiscatory georgist taxes might do it. I don't see what else possibly could. Will Rogers was right that they're not making any more land. Provided society allows pieces of our planet to be an investable asset (as opposed to something we rent from the government), folks are going to engage in speculation.
I think your point about Coates conducts himself in general is good. However I think he is trying to have it both ways with the writer vs politician angle.
Ezra says he thinks Democrats should run pro life candidates in red states and Coates reprimands him for this on the basis that it would offend some people who don’t have access. To me this is tactics - Coates has a clear view on the kinds of candidates Dems can run and he would like that view enforced.
Similarly Ezra points to a culture of rejection and tent shrinking within the party that Coates rejects but then moves on to say that any kind of “hatred” means you shouldn’t engage with people and the cause of their disagreement is that Ezra is not enforcing this norm to a suitable degree.
Since Coates is a “writer” he doesn’t have to take responsibility for any dynamic or outcomes but he is engaging in politics.
Coates actually refuted Ezra’s point about running pro life candidates in red states as unsound due to pro choice ballot initiatives having successfully passed in red states. I’m all for a bigger tent but being pro choice should continue to be a pillar of the Democratic Party.
He refuted it poorly. There clearly are states and districts where it is unpopular and more districts where it is popular in a squishy moderate sense. But importantly he is engaging in strategic politics here not just speaking truth.
The strategic point is that in a very large country with high political stakes you need flexibility not pillars. Louisiana will continue to elect pro choice politicians, the question is will the be uniformly republican or more of a mix.
I'll also add, even on its own terms, Klein was making a bad argument. These referenda suggest that there are way more cross-pressured voters in red states who are pro-choice, but support the GOP for other reasons than vice versa.
Coates was right to point out how Ezra's particular strategy here made no sense, and he did talk about moderating on other issues that were important to him, so it's not like he threw out the broad idea of triangulation conceptually.
I think this speaks to the fact that "moderation" on particular issues is more difficult and less fruitful than some commentators, like Matt, suggest. I read his mea culpas in the column. If I was a cross pressured swing voters, would I actually believe any of them as sincere changes?
Moderation in select topics is necessary for Dems to win in certain areas, but abortion is a weird topic for either Klein or Matt to bring up.
I think "moderation" is less important than coalition-building. You don't need to say you've personally changed your mind on things. Instead, you just make deals with people whose views are known to genuinely be more moderate, and support them for certain offices. Show, don't tell. And on that note:
"Trump’s key strategy for winning rural votes has been saying things that they agree with, just as Barack Hussein Obama was able to win in places like Iowa and Ohio by saying things those voters agreed with." --> Even though I'm basically in agreement with this point, it's stated in a way that's almost lab-designed to drive away the partisan libs it's ostensibly intended to persuade. The point is not to agree. The point is to be willing to work alongside people you moderately disagree with.
I think that swing voters who are largely disengaged are very cynical about politicians' promises. So I agree about show-dont-tell.
Matt keeps bringing up rhetoric here, and citing Donald Trump's supposed moderation, but almost all of that is just lies and hot air. And when the lies are reveled, Trump does become less popular, like he did in his first term after he cut rich people's taxes after saying that he wanted to tax the rich. Trump also didn't moderate at all on abortion, to most people. He's doing everything past Republicans have done to restrict it.
He didn't moderate on abortion! Abortion used to be available in far more places and for far more people than it is now, and that is entirely thanks to the people Donald Trump placed on the Supreme Court. 'Most people' are categorically correct in their understanding of this topic if they understand that; my fear is they don't.
Florida ran their referendum during the 2024 election and it came in at 57%. Kamala Harris received 43% of the vote in that state.
ETA: Turns out lots of states had similar initiatives during the 2024 general election. Who knew! (I'm not being sarcastic, I just looked it up.) Some results:
Arizona: 61.6% (Harris 46.7%)
Missouri: 51.6% (Harris 40.1%)
Montana: 57.76% (Harris 38.5%)
Nevada: 64.3% (Harris 47.49%)
Only Nebraska and South Dakota saw measures lose by majorities.
TL;DR this is a place where I would strongly agree with Coates. The Republican framing is that abortion is unpopular. The data above strongly indicate that framing is false: if pro-choice initiatives are running up to 15 points better than Dem candidates in general elections, you need to be running towards those issues and not away from them. The job of a pundit is to build accurate framing, not to accede to inaccurate framing by your political opponents.
I don't think this is what Coates is saying. He's saying that women who need abortion access or trans people or other vulnerable people are in the coalition, and that we owe a duty of loyalty to them not to throw them under the bus. He also suggests that Ezra is wrong on the particular issue of abortion politics, but broadly he's saying that sticking together and maintaining solidarity in a losing cause in the short term is the right decision, which is in line with the rest of what he says in the discussion.
That whole framing of “throwing people under the bus” is a rhetorical shield to exempt one from both substantiating their positions and criticism.
It dehumanizes and delegitimizes people who have differing views on controversial subjects such youth gender medicine or the extent to which we should allow abortion access. All it communicates is there is only ONE correct position and if you disagree you aren’t even worthy of speaking.
This was the deep rhetorical hypocrisy being Coates’ words. He creates a rhetorical shield around his views such that one cannot even interrogate their foundations without being framed as a transgressor.
What else are you supposed to do if you believe something strongly? Gesture about how great the opposing position is blithely? These positions have real impacts, they're not at the level of talking about what chess opening is best, where i agree that it's not a constructive framework.
Everybody thinks there's one correct position and the other people are wrong on political issues, that's just how it works.
There 𝘢𝘳𝘦 some issues where it makes sense to act like there's only one reasonable side. But most of the time you need to have the wisdom and intelligence to recognize, first, that you might be wrong. Second, you need to realize that even if you're right, other people may have different interests, priorities and judgments.
You need to acknowledge that you're going to have to take an L sometimes. If you can't accept that, you are on a road that ends in violence.
My view is that people respond to candidates as human beings more than they respond to issues. This is why "strength" and "dominance" are so important to Trump, and why he keeps his promises even when they hurt him. People abhor weakness, and compromising on key values exudes it.
Genuine question: what promises has he kept despite the harm they cause him? I see Trump as someone who presents strength and dominance, as you say, but does so in fleeting fashion- that is to say, he's never bound by what he just said five minutes ago, and he will strongly and dominantly present himself tomorrow saying the exact opposite of what he said today if he thinks that doing so will benefit him. But I recognize that I'm biased about Trump's character due to my personal dislike of the man.
I don't think Trump cares at all about abortion, and would prefer to never talk about it. I think he thought the issue was politically toxic during 2024, and he ran like hell from it. But he made promises to his evangelical base and so we got Dobbs, and we'll get something even worse this term. Maybe the FDA will ban Mifepristone?
I also think a lot of the "hurt people in blue states" stuff is designed to appease his base, so they perceive him as a strongman. Even though at some level it just ensures that blue states send more Democrats to Congress. He could pivot to being a bipartisan President For Everyone at any time, and we'd probably carve his face into Mt. Rushmore we'd all be so relieved. But instead he'll keep the base happy.
The FDA just approved a generic version of Mifepristone, which has apparently infuriated pro-life groups. I also think he promised to do things like release the Epstein files, chastised Ukraine brutally in public comments for months only to turn around in the past month and stake out the exact opposite position, spent an entire campaign pretending to not know what Project 2025 is only to turn around and appoint it's creators to high level governmental positions and now publicly praise it within just the last week, etc. etc. etc.
I don't see any of the examples you cite as situations where Trump thinks keeping his promises hurts him but that he's honor bound not to change course. I think he believes that those promises are part of what has gotten him elected President twice and that they make him more popular with the part of the country he cares about. I think he (accurately) views politics as being split into different factions, and he couldn't care less about doing things that appeal to people that aren't his supporters, so he doesn't care about being viewed as a bipartisan President for all.
So I disagree with your premise, but appreciate you providing examples of where the argument comes from.
In addition to what Gordon says, the point is that Ezra agrees on the substance with Coates. Throwing people under the bus is about sacrificing vulnerable members of the coalition for the greater good, not about simply disagreeing.
There's a separate issue of whether anyone is allowed to disagree with how marginalized people see their situation, but I don't think that issue comes up in this conversation.
"Throwing people under the bus is about sacrificing vulnerable members of the coalition for the greater good, not about simply disagreeing"
This is misleading. No one here is advocating for throwing the vulnerable under the bus*.
People here advocate repudiating the stupidest, shrillest, loudest voices on X/Bluesky. It's a slow boring comments section commonplace that these people aren't significant, much less vulnerable members of the coalition.
* With one exception - some of the talk about the scary, chronic homeless population qualifies.
Lots of people think, including in this comments section, that we should be ok with banning gender affirming medical treatment for trans kids (people rarely want to ban it for cis kids), or banning third trimester abortion, in service of winning elections. Those are actual policy positions, not just Sister Souljah-ing Taylor Lorenz.
"Lots of people think, including in this comments section, that we should be ok with banning gender affirming medical treatment for trans kids..."
This is probably true of this comment section but I think viewing it as "throwing people under the bus" is a bit too cynical.
I think those commenters think that it is better for the kids not to get that kind of treatment. Not that it is worse for them but we should sacrifice them to win votes.
Sam, you are framing fairly common beliefs among voters (especially in the case of 3rd trimester abortions which were mostly banned under Casey) as beyond the pale and as unacceptable positions.
Using terms like “throwing vulnerable people under the bus” communicates that the speaker is declaring that even nuanced disagreement with a specific position is unacceptable. It dehumanizes other people for not holding a very specific set of beliefs. (Many of which are novel social positions advocated for by a minority of the population.)
Why is it the right decision? An anti-gun control, trans minimalist, abortion minimalist Democratic elected official is presumably still much more valuable than the Republican who would otherwise be in that position.
I mean, that's what Coates thinks, he goes over his position a lot in that podcast. Despite being consistently the most left wing person in these comments I stick around because I disagree with him about that specifically.
But Coates seemed fine with Obama essentially lying about his thoughts on gay marriage and said he understood that FDR couldn’t get black people all the way with the New Deal even though he probably personally wanted to.
A writer makes money by selling books or subscriptions. They can continue being a writer as long as they sell enough books and subscriptions.
A politician has to win elections to keep being a politician. Losing a single election often ends a political career and Richard Nixon is basically to only politician to bounce back from two straight Ls.
The categories writer and politician emerge from the tactics that are necessary to become and remain in each category.
On the flip side, what's the point of being an influential political writer? It's about more than selling books. You gain influence because people admire your thoughts. Politicians don't need influential thought leaders to tell them to compromise. They're hard-wired for compromise. They need influential thought leaders to sell them on values, strategic goals and a plan for achieving them.
Selling content is table stakes for being a political writer. A stringer for the AP or journeyman for the Austin Statesman who covers a state legislature is, in this sense, a political writer.
At the lower levels, the consuming motivation is just having a job and staying in the game. As you move up, you start to face questions of influence versus pay. Of course no one wants to subscribe to a stack whose writer is cynically bullshitting them and simulating agreement to maintain subscriptions. People want sincerity not calculation. That’s why Matt’s brand of “say smart things I think are true (and quietly soft pedal some inconvenient wedge issues)” works.
I think plenty of people would be happy to write chum for $200k/year. However, I think most people who are willing to pay for writing have good enough instincts to not pay for that.
Ezra and Matt are both famous and at the top of the field. When you're at the top of the field, and politicians are bragging about your endorsement in fundraising emails, you've moved beyond basic questions of survival and paying the bills. You have to ask hard questions like: "am I actually serving the people whose values I share?" and "Should I be opining on important questions of political strategy in widely-read venues?"
Because at that point in your career there are multiple ways to make money, and someone with principles and ethics should care a lot about whether they're doing good or harm.
I do not see Ezra as someone who is writing content because he wants to pay the bills. I think he genuinely wants to help bring the country back from Trump. I just worry that maybe he's not helping people, and maybe it's time to think hard about why that is. (I have some separate criticisms of Matt, but I say those all the time so it's dull.)
Ezra is very smart and gets the facts right, but he’s so ensconced within this professional upper middle class cocoon that he’ll never have much influence over moderates. The amount of energy he devotes to helping progressives work through their “big feelings” is almost farcical. The decarbonizatiob framework of Abundance is synecdoche for his recent career- it is driven by the proclivities of the liberal donor base, not by how real Americans think.
I think Ezra has a lot of influence. I think his NYT piece urging the Dems into a shutdown was the straw that broke the camel's back, and that's a good chunk of why we're in one. (To be clear, it was the right call: the important datapoint was "even Ezra Klein agrees".)
I don't know what to tell you about the decarbonization framework. Clearly we're going to decarbonize; Permian fields are already starting to run dry, we're not investing enough to maintain supplies for decades, low-carbon energy is becoming absurdly cheap. So if you're building any "framework" for the next two decades, you'd better adjust it to economic reality.
"However I think he is trying to have it both ways with the writer vs politician angle."
This was always my issue with the Colbert's, Stewarts, Penn and Teller, etc. type shows. At some point you are deep enough in the politics that you can't really retreat back to the sidelines.
Colbert and Stewart I get, but do Penn and Teller have a reputation for politics I am unaware of? Certainly stage magic lends itself less to being a pseudo-talking-head than late night comedy does
P&T are both highly principled libertarians, or at least they were back in their Bullshit! days. I believe that the modern Republican party has sent both of them somewhat left as they realized that they were the only principled ones.
Yes, definitely libertarian, but more of the South Park variety. I know they're huge fans of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Penn said that they were happy that they did the Scientology episode so they didn't have to, as Bullshit! fans were begging them to do an episode on it.
They had a show called Penn and Teller Bullshit which was a more Libertarian leaning type of what Jon Oliver kind of does. It was less straight forwardly political but they had some real misses over the years.
I see Coates as a pretty pure partisan for black identity and what he sees as the interests of Black Americans. Thats his unifying core. IOW, he’s not a pluralist - he tends to center one constituency, Black Americans, and to treat their historical and present safety, wealth, and dignity as the decisive test of American politics.And fundamentally he wants Democrats to align with that to much greater degree than is the case, even if it costs Democrats politically.
For Klein, he is much more of a pluralistic thinker and looks more at the big picture. I think that is fundamental basis of their disagreement.
One of the points that Andrea Pitzer made in her excellent piece [1] (which you should read!) is that *no pundit* is a professional politician. That's not their job. When it comes to advice like "you should moderate" or "you should compromise on your positions or values", politicians don't really need to be told this by pundits like Klein. Compromising values is kind of baked into their DNA.
The goal of the pundit class is to actually point the party in some useful direction other than simple advice like "compromise." To the extent that you don't have a useful message to offer other than "concede to the other side's framing", maybe it's time to step aside and let a younger generation of pundits try some new ideas.
Regarding the CTU's endorsement of Shakur: Lots of people like to fantasize about being an avenging and violent force for good. Dirty Harry, the Die Hard series, every Charles Bronson movie.
The problem with their endorsement is that they valorized an actual terrorist who was pursuing a bad, not good, political outcome. But in their defense, the terrorists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were warmly welcomed into Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago [edited], respectively, when the FBI decided to stop pursuing them.
I don't think racism infects our society anywhere near as much as Ta-Nahesi Coates believes, but I can understand how seeing the difference between how Black, violent 1970s radicals like Shakur are viewed versus how Dohrn, Ayers and other white, violent 1970s radicals are welcomed into respectable political positions might radicalize some CTU members.
The re integration of Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground, and others is mind blowing to me. No one is rehabilitating McVeigh or the Ruby Ridge idiots on the right, nor should they.
The Right quickly turned Kyle Rittenhouse into a mascot/keynote speaker and have rehabilitated Jan. 6 rioters, several of which were later re arrested for other crimes after being pardoned. Valorizing an elderly or dead criminal may be wrong, but none of the leftists mentioned are currently a threat to anyone, unlike the violent lunatics Trump and co. Released and constantly hold up as heroes.
I think there is possibly another more banal thing going on. Yes it seems like the Chicago Teachers Union chapter is run by people who seem to be to the left of even other leaders of the Teachers Union. But I think the other very real possibility is that a lot of orgs are run by older people who don’t put enough thought into who they put in charge of their social media platforms. So you end up with people running social media accounts who very possibly have ideas on certain topics that maybe shouldn’t be put on official Twitter feed.
Feel like something similar probably happened with the Libertarian party of NH. There was a while there where the Libertarian party of NH Twitter account was putting out a whole lot of no doubt about it Neo Nazi stuff. Now my “in the wild” experience with the Libertarians is it’s a mix of actual Cato reading principled libertarians…and absolute nutballs. Wouldn’t at all shock me if the Libertarian party hired one of these nutballs out of sorts of negligence
I’ll also note that I suspect there is a similar dynamic as to why super lefty DEI stuff ended up in various companies training materials. State X passed a law mandating DEI training. HR scrambles to comply, researches DEI experts and comes up with Robin DeAngelo and suddenly DeAnglelo’s quite frankly racist DEI stuff is out the wild.
I think Matt is being polite, and Coates is basically ridiculous. He’s a good prose writer of almost no substance, and him being fashionable (and difficult to safely criticize) was, in retrospect, a good leading indicator that we were cooked.
So much of what Coates did in that interview was frame his positions in such a way that even critiquing or disagreeing with him makes you a bad person.
That is not a helpful way to have discussions in a democrat society, especially when it comes to controversial subjects. It is the same form of dehumanizing that Coates criticizes others of.
Well said, and unusually useful for me. My town is in the midst of a budget crisis in which one side is justifying their incivility with Nazi comparisons ("there aren't two sides to the question of gas chambers").
He’s a nice person who is not terrible to hang out with. So they continue to hang out with him even if he’s not too bright.
ETA: he’s also a bit if a unicorn in that he’s a black guy with zero exposure to the black church. None. I can’t think of a less representative ADOS person. He’s been raised in a weird cocoon of black nationalism ensconced in a white enclave. So he naturally appeals to a certain liberal who doesn’t want to think that hard about how socially conservative the median black person in the states is.
Contrast this with Nicole Hannah jones, who is a vicious idiot who really no one wants around unless they are forced to have her around (plenty of examples of this on the right too- Mike pence is hanging around because people like him)
Something Ezra said once that stuck with me is that it's important to have multiple mental models and ways of thinking about the world. They're like tools in the tool belt, and you pick out the right one for the problem at hand.
Coates has a unique way of seeing the world that has a powerful internal logic to it, and his perspective is sometimes useful. The problem is that it's the only tool in his tool belt, and that's what makes him seem ridiculous.
I am sad that the author of One Billion Americans says that it's not going to fly. The immigration politics suck, and it is what it is, but I still hold faint hope that at some point Americans realize the tradeoff they're sowing by supporting more restrictionist measures. But it's also sad, as Matt's observed, that the natalist avenue has gone off some real bizarre paths, instead of just settling in of an increase child allowance, and then let the chips fall where they might.
The fertility rate really does not seem to be an affordability problem though, at least not in a way that a little extra child allowance will help (even though I’d take it!). Rich countries have fewer kids. It’s cultural. Hard to fix.
Liberalism is correct -- it's almost axiomatic that people should be free to pursue their own interests if they don't harm others -- but a society that emphasizes maximizing one's own happiness is going to have lower fertility.
Having kids is hard, expensive, draining, stressful. It does not pass any cost/benefit analysis, largely because it's orthogonal to cost/benefit analyses. Having kids is a lot bigger than one's own happiness, and as long as we have a society where people are free to pursue their own happiness, we'll have lower fertility.
I think I am already happier for having kids, and my kids are very young and one of them is very high needs. I expect the lifetime increase to my happiness as they age and have lives and children of their own to increase.
I think “kids are a drag” vibes are in fact a big part of the problem. Paying a mortgage is a drag but home ownership is (correctly!) seen as nice and a marker of things going well for you. Kids should be the same way, not some duty to discharge.
Yeah. Maybe there's no solution for this, but there are just so many guys out there who in their youth were reluctant to have children and only realized after the fact that they love being dads. If there were a way to communicate that to more young guys, it might at least make a small dent in the problem. Obviously, you'd need a different approach with young women.
I expected to love being a dad and I do love being a dad. But I don't know if it's made me *happier.*
It's 1000% given my life more meaning and purpose and I couldn't imagine a life without my kids, and they're infinitely more important to me than my personal happiness. But also my day-to-day would likely involve more pleasure and less stress if I didn't spend so much time and energy focusing on dinner negotiations and bedtime routines.
I don't want to go all Aristotle on you, but the additional meaning and purpose has shifted my happiness scale for the better: my floor is lower and my ceiling is higher.
I was reading that moms today spend 50% more time with their kids than in the 70s when they locked the kids outside so they could smoke and watch Days of Lives in peace. Even with costs the same if the time commitment had stayed at 1970s level that would mean more kids.
Absolutely true, at least if the parents in my local sphere are any indication. The amount of doting is toxic at times, it seems to me. But most of the kids are holding down good jobs and such, not sure if there are downstream effects to helicopter parenting.
It passes cost-benefit analysis if the elder care regime is weak. But the trend for outsourced (to government) provision of both healthcare and retirement funding support undermines the real benefit of having children (and grandchildren) who will care for you in old age. And you need more than one for risk mitigation.
Or to the extend that it is an affordability problem, the combination of fewer opportunities for child labor and more perceived need to invest in education makes the affordability problem so severe that politically plausible fixes won’t work.
If family businesses where children could meaningfully contribute from age 12 were common and if children could be given an interest or be apprenticed rather than needing an expensive education, fertility would increase.
Religious-nutter run Iran is having trouble with fertility... one of Russia's war aims is stealing Ukrainian children to turn into Russians to replenish their own supply (why they need to kill a 100k plus or so existing Russians to do it escapes me). It's happening basically everywhere except Nigeria.
The obvious solution is uterine replicators, but we don't have the tech or sufficient interest. Seems like a better use of resources for the rich pro-natalists than being laser focused on bigger LLMs.
I’m still in the camp of “too soon to see the effects” as far as this tariff stuff, immigration crack down and general policy chaos unleaded by Trump and yet his numbers on immigration have tanked anyway (even if Dems are still way worse).
Point being, if the real world effects of this immigration crackdown start being felt more 1-2 years from now, wouldn’t shock me if the pro immigration side has “a moment” again.
One billion Americans sounds kind of extreme though doesn’t it? That would take us to near-Chinese levels of density and very few people would like that. Even setting aside the “Great Replacement” type concerns. It strikes me as one of the most unpopular framings possible for more immigration.
The more popular framing is probably “it’s nice to have the freedom to go where you want and not that many people are probably going to actually move to your area.” Right-wing people complain that this is how the 1965 immigration reform was actually passed.
Anyone who wants more density should drive on the 405 in L.A. at rush hour (and now rush hour seems to be 5am to 10pm, lol). I suppose higher density would equate with more saturation with mass transit but still....
I think history shows that our melting pot has limits on how many new ingredients can be quickly added. That’s why I strongly support immigration that isn’t chaos or unfettered system gaming. The alternative is this toxic pendulum of backlash and counter backlash.
"But none of the identity-brained Democrats who believe it was desperately important to put a mediocre white man on the ticket to balance out Harris..."
So have we come around to agree that Walz was a dud?
His debate was bad and he didn't do much for the campaign — mainly because the Harris team kept his mouth shut. BUT I think we all memory hole the excitement he created when he first burst on the scene. He can be a good communicator, but I think if he really wants to change some minds and widen the tent, he needs to take on some heterodox positions. He refuses to do so, and will just return to being the governor of a blueish state. Which is totally fine.
My view of Walz is that he was a missed opportunity *precisely because* he generated all that base excitement. The reason why he generated that base excitement is that the base felt like they dodged a bullet: Harris could have chosen someone who would have been interpreted as signaling moderation, and by strategically backing a dark horse who was a white guy but did *not* signal moderation, they successfully strangled that idea in its crib. They were celebrating over their factional victory, but victory for their faction prevented Harris from scoring points with the general electorate.
I don't have a problem with Walz himself. He's ok. Not a great debater. Pretty decent speechifier.
This is the opposite of memory-holing, though. It's calling into question the judgement of people that were excited by his nomination. The excitement was not universal and was probably informed by a bad theory of politics.
Were voters excited or just Democratic party people who thought the "Republicans are weird" was an entire campaign strategy?
I can't say for sure but I feel like I thought he was a dud from the beginning, the Tim Kaine redux.
I remember some people being excited, I just think those people were kind of dumb and the type of people that think Walz appeals to "rural" voters more than he does.
Honestly, if I were Kamala Harris, I would have picked Andre Dickens, Mayor of Atlanta and would have him go on television and everywhere and tell everyone how much he loves cops and hates anti cop protestors. And his method of dealing with anti cop protests is calling them all criminals and having them arrested.
Attacking identity politics “for putting a mediocre white man on the ticket” is sort of too clever. First, this isn’t his identity politics typically operate. Second, VP choices don’t matter that much, Harris lost by too much for Shapiro to have bailed her out.
Harris sort of foregrounded this type of thinking in her comments about Pete and it is one of Matt's favorite bits.
I don't think the VP pick mattered much but I think the Walz fandom got a bit silly and I think these politicians coming out of seemingly nowhere to become the VP nominee is a sort of weird element of American politics that could use some though from the parties.
yeah as more of a centrist it's good that Shapiro wasn't the VP candidate because that would have just added more fuel to the progressive fire that Harris lost because she wasn't sufficiently leftwing.
Honestly, if I were Kamala Harris, I would have picked Andre Dickens, Mayor of Atlanta and would have him go on television and everywhere and tell everyone how much he loves cops and hates anti cop protestors. And his method of dealing with anti cop protests is calling them all criminals and having them arrested.
I think Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey type realignments are more interesting because, in some ways, their politics haven’t changed at all. There is an internal coherence to their politics focused on civil liberties and restrained foreign policy. But there is also just a contrarian disposition.
I read somewhere that Ezra Klein is like anti-Glenn Greenwald, in both good and bad ways. Ezra Klein is high trust, and rationalizes choices made by elites because he has an inherent belief in the power of elites. When something goes wrong, the “groups”, “the senate, filibuster” are to blame, not really powerful politicians. In all this election post mortem, have Ezra or people doing this professionally admitted that Kamala was just a stupid and unimpressive dud, didn’t have it in her to actually win?
GG, on the other hand, takes it to the other extreme. He instinct is to identify powerful entity in a fight and put all his weight to defend the least powerful, whether good/bad or how immoral. He has an inherent distrust of politicians.
"Ezra Klein is high trust, and rationalizes choices made by elites because he has an inherent belief in the power of elites. "
I don't read enough post-Weeds Ezra to know if this is true but it is notable that Ezra's biggest triumph in recent memory was realizing Biden was too old 3 months before all the other take-sters(and 3 years after the voters.
The Glenn Greenwald types seem to become defined but their enemies and their POV just sort of orbits around the people who criticize them.
Yeah I give Ezra high marks for that bold call (I thought the same but why couldn't most Democrats admit to this? Loyalty? Obtuseness? Ageism?), too bad few jumped on the bandwagon early to strategize a more coherent replacement candidate. It still boggles me that they put Biden on the debate stage with Trump.
Arguably the two of you aren't disagreeing. If his "instinct is to identify the powerful entity in a fight and put all his weight to defending the least powerful," then since the US is the most powerful country in the world it is therefore the ultimate source of evil in the world. Therefore, the overriding goal of all politics is to oppose the US and undermine its power. Therefore, since Putin is an opponent of the US, Putin is on the side of good and whatever is advantageous to him is also good. Likewise, since Trump is a bad president who is destroying the US from within, Trump is also on the side of good. A good president of the US, in contrast, would be evil.
I think he is just fundamentally opposed to the United States national security alliance system we have built up over the world and thinks we should just dismantle it.
GG and similar people have been ideologically consistent - they are anti-establishment and specifically against the US foreign policy establishment and federal law enforcement. The partisan valence of both switched sides as one effect of Trump’s disruption.
I feel Coates is a "truth teller" in the RFK jr or Candace Owens way, he firmly believes things that are ridiculous and obviously false. It used to be weird things about UFOs,now he limits to really dumb views on maths etc being racist.
It goes back to the point about terrorists, people on the centre left do seem to have a blindness to the most ridiculous and unpleasant people on their side.
Responding only to the opening of this post, which for some reason pissed me off lol.
I suppose I agree with Matt that Democrats should just go ahead and coalesce around Geoff Duncan as our best chance to win. Maybe that’s the end of the story.
But it’s awfully annoying as both a process and result, and I think “winners-first” advocates need to be a bit more careful in their pitches.
Matt says the mayor of the largest city in the state wouldn’t be a good nominee because of two reasons aside from general mayoral underperformance: 1) she wasn’t great at her job and 2) someone else, who happens to be a completely different black woman albeit with similar views/strategic positioning, has already lost twice. Relatedly, I happen to dislike Mayor Bottoms’ PA voiceovers in Hartsfield-Jackson. OK.
Is there anything in the post about how Duncan performed in his job as LG, which is probably 1/10th the job of Atlanta mayor? Or even what the fuck he has ever done professionally except bucking Trump and flip-flopping on fundamental values? It could be really great! But I don’t know either way and in my view it’s unseemly to just gloss over it.
Georgia isn’t Alabama. Trump is 1-1 in his last two elections there and the state has two Democratic Senators who’ve won multiple elections. As Matt points out, Sen. Warnock won by reaching out to Geoff Duncan types. However, he’s not literally Geoff Duncan — and Democrats in theory should have *more* room in non-federal elections.
“KLB bad, GD good” might be true, but I feel it’s a lazy, inappropriate way to make the case.
That quote was an admonishment, not an evaluation of the situation. Literally his entire premise was that GD is better. Which, he probably is! But I thought the argument was off-putting.
It's clear he doesn't think much of Bottoms ("Bottoms was not a particularly popular or successful mayor of Atlanta"), and I agree that would have been unsatisfying as an assessment of the race. I just think Matt was making a different kind of point.
Now I’m getting really pedantic. But I agree he was attempting to make a different kind of point. But instead he made this particular point in a very unsatisfying way that raised my hackles about how serious the actual project is being presented and can be convincing to folks like me and to my left.
I think it's just based on policy positioning. Matt claims (without citation, to your point) that Bottoms is criticizing Duncan for not being progressive enough. Assuming that's true, then clearly Bottoms is to the left of Duncan. Given that Abrams lost (narrowly) in 2018, during a blue wave election, it seems pretty obvious that we need a candidate who is more moderate rather than a candidate who is more progressive
That is all true. Personally, as someone who’s extremely sympathetic to running the more moderate viable candidate in statewide races in purple states, I don’t think it’s sufficient to say “well KCB is attacking GD from the left so GD should be the nominee.” This shit needs to mean more than that.
Taking a step back, I don’t think this specific race is necessarily the best example of my argument because I’m confident that GD is the best nominee. But it’s certainly not guaranteed and the flippancy around it PMO.
I don’t know! I need to do a lot more research to form an opinion either way. I admit that. But that’s sort of my point. When you’re trying to sell a Democratic electorate on foregoing a serious Democratic politician in favor of someone who discovered women’s bodily autonomy two seconds ago, it would be nice to at least hear about both their records and a more affirmative case. The tactical stuff only gets you so far.
You have to understand that in Matt's brain all of politics is taking positions on issues and voters have perfect knowledge of all those positions. Being rational people, they choose the person closest to their position. So if that's your starting point, then what Matt says makes perfect sense and is correct.
The first is arguably a fair representation, the second is clearly wrong. He’s always pounding the table for people to highlight their popular positions (Biden should talk more about the increase in oil production during his term) and downplay their unpopular ones. That explicitly recognizes that voters don’t know everything and you have to tell them (over and over again) the things you want them to know.
I remember seeing KLB do a couple of TV interviews a number of years ago and thought she did well in them. I liked her affect at the time. I have no other data to base an opinion on. But I do think the mayor thing is a fair point by Matt though. Not that she performed poorly as mayor (I have no idea) but just it's very common for big-city mayors to get tarnished in the eyes of voters elsewhere in the state simply because they were mayors of the state's biggest city.
Fair point by you though that Abrams is a different person from KLB. Just because KLB has a particular strategy vis-a-vis Duncan in the primary doesn't mean that she'd replicate Abrams' crappy strategy in the general.
It didn’t annoy me to the same degree—perhaps because I am primed to think Bottoms is no good based on progressive big city mayor who got famous during Floyd vibes.
But (I) I too would be really interested to hear more about the pros and cons of each of policy and (ii) your comment made me admit some bias to myself — a black lady who is progressive coded and involved in the Biden administration just feels bad to me — Kamala / woke era trauma? Racist assumptions? Maybe!
I don’t think there’s any doubt that a white man has a better shot than a black woman running statewide in GA. But I would like that case made explicitly (or not!) rather than just “Stacey Abrams lost.”
As an LA millennial, I can tell you Amanda and Sean are a certain species of middle-aged California lib who live extremely traditional middle-of-the-road lives but whose brains are cooked by the internet and think violent radicalism is sorta cool. I know dozens of people like this, suburban parents with normie office jobs who’ve never committed or suffered any real violence in their lives yet talk like they're in the Weather Underground after a drink or two. It’s all about fashionable rhetoric on Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok and nothing about what they’re actually capable of or what would be a good way to make policy into reality. It can be aggravating sometimes!
When I first heard about it I assumed it would merely repeal the state law outlawing rent control. Nope: it would limit annual rent increases in the covered dwellings to "not exceed the annual increase in Consumer Price Index or 5%, whichever is lower, in any 12-month period."
The mind boggles. The only way to make a profit in real dollars under those constraints is to cut costs every single year (itself an ominous prospect for renters). Why would anyone invest in rental units with so many superior alternatives?
On the bottom line dispute of Charlie Kirk's legacy (I think the broader disagreements between the two have been well known before Kirk's death and Matt analyzed it well), I think Ta-Nehisi did a valiant job of looking at the voluminous amount of work that Kirk left behind, from his tweets to recordings and reportings of his speeches, to come to the conclusion that he did, and I can see why he was pissed as Ezra for saying that Kirk "did politics exactly the right way" if those politics included bigotry. It's just such a tough needle to thread immediately after a subject is needlessly murdered, even if he felt that he didn't want Kirk to be martyred in an incorrect manner.
I mean, if someone’s public utterances include “I think the Civil Rights movement was a mistake,” I don’t need to trawl painstakingly through that person’s entire record to conclude “this person sure had some crappy views.”
Problem with people trying to argue with Kirk is that Kirk would say the facts lead to some outlandish conclusion and then his critics would just dismiss the evidence base because of the conclusion and he would nail them on that.
The proper way to deal with this type of rhetoric is to point out the wide jump to the conclusion. That the evidence is insufficient and that there needs to be another link or assumption (there usually is one and it’s not salient or it’s a bad assumption.)
The problem is, at a media event, this is way more boring than the outlandish conclusion, so it doesn't fit neatly into the idea of actual debate. Even if you defeated him in this way, it's not viral enough, which is why i don't think charlie kirk media events really resembled debates. You'll see Kirk studiously avoided debating people more familiar with the style of internet bloodsport because those people actually know how to be disingenuous in a way that goes viral.
JD Vance has no rizz. He may win the 2028 Republican nomination by default, but his number of devoted cultists will be much, much smaller than Trump's. And that means whatever version of Trumpism he adopts likely won't have as much support, initially, as Trump himself does.
Pessimistically, Vance seems like the Maduro to Trump's Chavez, or, more optimistically, Sheinbaum to Obrador. It's tough to follow a messy, charismatic populist.
I agree that Vance won't be as electorally successful as Trump, but if Vance takes office before 2028, he'll have the ability to use the levers of power in an Orbanian fashion before he ever has to face a primary or general electorate.
"wouldn’t the most honorable and politically prudent course of action for the Democratic Party have been for her to step aside? If she truly believed those identities were significant liabilities, why insist on running in what Democrats themselves framed as an existential contest against Trump?"
It seems like a mistake to take anything a politician says in a "Why I lost Book" seriously. It's constant excuse making.
Did you guys know that Frederick the Great was an avid flutist? I actually just found a piece by him in a baroque flute music book. It was a little odd, but I didn't have the accompaniment, so I couldn't hear it with the harmony.
He studied with a teacher named Johann Quantz. Quantz wrote (better) music, too. He also wrote a definitive guidebook on music performance during his time which is the seminal document for scholars to understand music from the baroque era. It's a bunch of stuff about how to perform trills correctly, when it's appropriate to add ornamental notes, how long a cadenza should be, etc. I have a copy under my couch somewhere.
France at that time period seemed unusually tolerant, Napoleon had an openly gay Minister of Justice Cambacérès, he made the occasionally joke about it but no more than about his heterosexual minister's sex lives. Louis XIVs brother and favourite general were openly gay and it wasn't seen as a huge deal.
Thank you very much for answering my question! I agree that it does seem like trends such as education polarization have been global and have even predates Trump. This one is more unique to America, but it also does seem that racial depolarization was/is bound to happen independent of Trump, and that would be overall good, although that's less easier to confirm until Trump is gone.
And I do agree that the cult phenomenon of Trump is something to account for. But I could see it going both ways. Without him, perhaps voter turnout goes down to the detriment of Republicans. But there could also be the possible liability of a savvy Republican taking some Trumpist cues while sanding off the edges of things like the corruption, and outperforming him. I'd be curious in some followup thought on this.
Something has to give for proper racial depolarization, namely having regime members being into ethnic cleansing. Donald Trump minus the legit fascists and white nationalists might've been able to do it (while still being extremely racist) but now? If we still have a country I think it can be done, eventually.
I'm having a little trouble making sense of this comment, but it's worth pointing out that racial depolarization has been moving along steadily in every election since 2012, and all signs are that it will continue for purely demographic reasons if nothing else.
The story with Hispanic voters is well-known, but the one for Black voters is still a bit under-discussed. If you split the Black vote along other demographics, the younger voters are far more "depolarized" politically than the older voters, and Black immigrants are less loyal to the Democratic party than Black non-immigrants.
It may be that the erosion of Black votes for the Democrats is less about individuals changing their mind and more about demographics, as less Democrat-voting groups grow and more loyal Democratic voter groups shrink.
Key members of the modern Republican party (Stephen Miller in particular but not exclusively) are actively hostile to all but a large but still narrow slice of the American population. There is good reason to believe that in that a bad economy plus that hostility will slow or at least temporarily reverse the existing trend. I wouldn't be saying this if we had President Nikki Haley who would not have hired all these ghouls (and thus I would expect to continue the trend), but here we are.
I'm not sure this sort of stuff filters down to voters in a way that would really impact how different demographics vote relatively to one another.
In other words, if a message of "Black voters, the Trump WH hates you" was credible and salient enough that it was reaching the broad public, then yes, I might expact racial depolarization to reverse.
But it would take a lot to get there. Witness how the typical Democrat took "Trump hates Hispanics" for granted as a key fact by 2020, yet the Hispanic vote broke hard for Trump.
Very few swingy voters, Black or otherwise, are tracking whatever it is Stephen Miller is saying or doing.
Rent control is just a zombie that will never die, huh? It always seems that society needs to relearn the hard way on how price controls lead to shortages and rationing, after the older generations that learned it the hard way before die off, and new, younger generations take over.
I really wish that that those who are so angry over landlords jacking up prices would realize that landlords would lose so much leverage to do so with increased competition via increased hous8jg supply.
I think we're in a holding pattern where mayors run on it because it is in fact popular and sounds nice to people. Then, when they enter office they realize it's A) Not a good idea so they propose a very watered down idea or don't do it. Or B) Realize that due to issues with home rule/how the mayoral powers are constructed they literally can't.
This is an optimistic take. In NYC about half the rental stock is subject to some form of rent control (either controlled or regulated) and the conditions of those controls have only gotten stricter over time (most notably in 2017). It's not an exaggeration to say that the predictably bad effects of these progressive laws has resulted in the very likely election of a yet more progressive mayor who is promising to enact even worse policies with predictably worse effects!
Much more accurate to say that they're difficult to enact at first but once implemented they ratchet only one way.
You forgot "rinse and repeat" lol.
Clearly real rent control has never been tried
Don't forget the quieter, easier to sneak by voters version - making eviction nearly unattainable. In DC, the general hostility towards landlords, covid-era exigencies, and a painfully backed up court system conspired to crank up the barriers to eviction for any cause. Council recently had to tweak their own tenant friendly laws because large building-owners were lurching towards bankruptcy, ironically threatening the affordability covenants the mayor touts as solving the housing problem. Homeowners roll their eyes at the suggestion to rent out a house or downstairs apartment - why take the risk of never being able to evict a tenant. QED, less housing.
Price controls are a very intuitively appealing idea, and will be with us always. Up there with “we will win the war by Christmas!”
We have always been at war with East Asia.
See, if you're a smart and petty enemy even if you're ready to surrender right before Christmas you just wait a bit to throw up the middle finger at the victor.
It's just very hard to explain to people that the solution to high rents isn't "make people stop raising rents."
The “everyone is twelve” theory of politics
I agree, but ugh, "if no one is allowed to make money renting, there will be fewer rentals and the ones that remain will be lower quality" seems so clear and obvious, borne out by repeated daily experience.
Locally the response is "housing is a human right, profiting from it should be illegal."
I explained the issue to a smart friend of mine and her response was, "But we have to do *something*." Yes, but not this! And then another friend in the room said "Marx said 'rent is theft'," and I nobly bit my tongue off and refrained from explaining what "rent" means in economics and that that she herself benefitted 100% from rent-seeking, while I inwardly pounded my head on the floor.
Look, you only have so many friends in life. They're kind-hearted women who would come hold your hand if your husband died. I can't alienate *everybody* or I'd be stuck being right and entirely alone.
>Rent control is just a zombie that will never die, huh?<
Same as tariffs. Same as immigration restrictionism. Same as all policies that sharply depart from liberalism (you know, the school of political economy that birthed the modern world, and gave us the enviable quality of life our ancestors could scarcely dream of, and which we seem determined to jettison as a planet).
The number of zombie ideas which just won't die are legion. Reaganite ideas on taxes, Marxism, you can make a long list.
"Reaganite Marxist," the unintended sequel to "California Uber Alles."
Rent control will die when housing prices stop skyrocketing, which will probably require a definancialization of the housing sector
Confiscatory or semi-confiscatory georgist taxes might do it. I don't see what else possibly could. Will Rogers was right that they're not making any more land. Provided society allows pieces of our planet to be an investable asset (as opposed to something we rent from the government), folks are going to engage in speculation.
I think your point about Coates conducts himself in general is good. However I think he is trying to have it both ways with the writer vs politician angle.
Ezra says he thinks Democrats should run pro life candidates in red states and Coates reprimands him for this on the basis that it would offend some people who don’t have access. To me this is tactics - Coates has a clear view on the kinds of candidates Dems can run and he would like that view enforced.
Similarly Ezra points to a culture of rejection and tent shrinking within the party that Coates rejects but then moves on to say that any kind of “hatred” means you shouldn’t engage with people and the cause of their disagreement is that Ezra is not enforcing this norm to a suitable degree.
Since Coates is a “writer” he doesn’t have to take responsibility for any dynamic or outcomes but he is engaging in politics.
Coates actually refuted Ezra’s point about running pro life candidates in red states as unsound due to pro choice ballot initiatives having successfully passed in red states. I’m all for a bigger tent but being pro choice should continue to be a pillar of the Democratic Party.
He refuted it poorly. There clearly are states and districts where it is unpopular and more districts where it is popular in a squishy moderate sense. But importantly he is engaging in strategic politics here not just speaking truth.
The strategic point is that in a very large country with high political stakes you need flexibility not pillars. Louisiana will continue to elect pro choice politicians, the question is will the be uniformly republican or more of a mix.
I'll also add, even on its own terms, Klein was making a bad argument. These referenda suggest that there are way more cross-pressured voters in red states who are pro-choice, but support the GOP for other reasons than vice versa.
Coates was right to point out how Ezra's particular strategy here made no sense, and he did talk about moderating on other issues that were important to him, so it's not like he threw out the broad idea of triangulation conceptually.
I think this speaks to the fact that "moderation" on particular issues is more difficult and less fruitful than some commentators, like Matt, suggest. I read his mea culpas in the column. If I was a cross pressured swing voters, would I actually believe any of them as sincere changes?
Moderation in select topics is necessary for Dems to win in certain areas, but abortion is a weird topic for either Klein or Matt to bring up.
I think "moderation" is less important than coalition-building. You don't need to say you've personally changed your mind on things. Instead, you just make deals with people whose views are known to genuinely be more moderate, and support them for certain offices. Show, don't tell. And on that note:
"Trump’s key strategy for winning rural votes has been saying things that they agree with, just as Barack Hussein Obama was able to win in places like Iowa and Ohio by saying things those voters agreed with." --> Even though I'm basically in agreement with this point, it's stated in a way that's almost lab-designed to drive away the partisan libs it's ostensibly intended to persuade. The point is not to agree. The point is to be willing to work alongside people you moderately disagree with.
I think that swing voters who are largely disengaged are very cynical about politicians' promises. So I agree about show-dont-tell.
Matt keeps bringing up rhetoric here, and citing Donald Trump's supposed moderation, but almost all of that is just lies and hot air. And when the lies are reveled, Trump does become less popular, like he did in his first term after he cut rich people's taxes after saying that he wanted to tax the rich. Trump also didn't moderate at all on abortion, to most people. He's doing everything past Republicans have done to restrict it.
He didn't moderate on abortion! Abortion used to be available in far more places and for far more people than it is now, and that is entirely thanks to the people Donald Trump placed on the Supreme Court. 'Most people' are categorically correct in their understanding of this topic if they understand that; my fear is they don't.
I would argue that off cycle ballot initiatives represent a different population than general elections.
Florida ran their referendum during the 2024 election and it came in at 57%. Kamala Harris received 43% of the vote in that state.
ETA: Turns out lots of states had similar initiatives during the 2024 general election. Who knew! (I'm not being sarcastic, I just looked it up.) Some results:
Arizona: 61.6% (Harris 46.7%)
Missouri: 51.6% (Harris 40.1%)
Montana: 57.76% (Harris 38.5%)
Nevada: 64.3% (Harris 47.49%)
Only Nebraska and South Dakota saw measures lose by majorities.
TL;DR this is a place where I would strongly agree with Coates. The Republican framing is that abortion is unpopular. The data above strongly indicate that framing is false: if pro-choice initiatives are running up to 15 points better than Dem candidates in general elections, you need to be running towards those issues and not away from them. The job of a pundit is to build accurate framing, not to accede to inaccurate framing by your political opponents.
But he could only make that point if he conceded that it's important to run candidates with popular views, a point he doesn't concede at all.
I don't think this is what Coates is saying. He's saying that women who need abortion access or trans people or other vulnerable people are in the coalition, and that we owe a duty of loyalty to them not to throw them under the bus. He also suggests that Ezra is wrong on the particular issue of abortion politics, but broadly he's saying that sticking together and maintaining solidarity in a losing cause in the short term is the right decision, which is in line with the rest of what he says in the discussion.
That whole framing of “throwing people under the bus” is a rhetorical shield to exempt one from both substantiating their positions and criticism.
It dehumanizes and delegitimizes people who have differing views on controversial subjects such youth gender medicine or the extent to which we should allow abortion access. All it communicates is there is only ONE correct position and if you disagree you aren’t even worthy of speaking.
This was the deep rhetorical hypocrisy being Coates’ words. He creates a rhetorical shield around his views such that one cannot even interrogate their foundations without being framed as a transgressor.
What else are you supposed to do if you believe something strongly? Gesture about how great the opposing position is blithely? These positions have real impacts, they're not at the level of talking about what chess opening is best, where i agree that it's not a constructive framework.
Everybody thinks there's one correct position and the other people are wrong on political issues, that's just how it works.
You are supposed to have a little humility.
There 𝘢𝘳𝘦 some issues where it makes sense to act like there's only one reasonable side. But most of the time you need to have the wisdom and intelligence to recognize, first, that you might be wrong. Second, you need to realize that even if you're right, other people may have different interests, priorities and judgments.
You need to acknowledge that you're going to have to take an L sometimes. If you can't accept that, you are on a road that ends in violence.
Indeed. At some level people should just say what they think without worrying too much about what others say or think.
The trick is of course that a politician shouldn’t be doing that every five minutes.
My view is that people respond to candidates as human beings more than they respond to issues. This is why "strength" and "dominance" are so important to Trump, and why he keeps his promises even when they hurt him. People abhor weakness, and compromising on key values exudes it.
Genuine question: what promises has he kept despite the harm they cause him? I see Trump as someone who presents strength and dominance, as you say, but does so in fleeting fashion- that is to say, he's never bound by what he just said five minutes ago, and he will strongly and dominantly present himself tomorrow saying the exact opposite of what he said today if he thinks that doing so will benefit him. But I recognize that I'm biased about Trump's character due to my personal dislike of the man.
I don't think Trump cares at all about abortion, and would prefer to never talk about it. I think he thought the issue was politically toxic during 2024, and he ran like hell from it. But he made promises to his evangelical base and so we got Dobbs, and we'll get something even worse this term. Maybe the FDA will ban Mifepristone?
I also think a lot of the "hurt people in blue states" stuff is designed to appease his base, so they perceive him as a strongman. Even though at some level it just ensures that blue states send more Democrats to Congress. He could pivot to being a bipartisan President For Everyone at any time, and we'd probably carve his face into Mt. Rushmore we'd all be so relieved. But instead he'll keep the base happy.
The FDA just approved a generic version of Mifepristone, which has apparently infuriated pro-life groups. I also think he promised to do things like release the Epstein files, chastised Ukraine brutally in public comments for months only to turn around in the past month and stake out the exact opposite position, spent an entire campaign pretending to not know what Project 2025 is only to turn around and appoint it's creators to high level governmental positions and now publicly praise it within just the last week, etc. etc. etc.
I don't see any of the examples you cite as situations where Trump thinks keeping his promises hurts him but that he's honor bound not to change course. I think he believes that those promises are part of what has gotten him elected President twice and that they make him more popular with the part of the country he cares about. I think he (accurately) views politics as being split into different factions, and he couldn't care less about doing things that appeal to people that aren't his supporters, so he doesn't care about being viewed as a bipartisan President for all.
So I disagree with your premise, but appreciate you providing examples of where the argument comes from.
In addition to what Gordon says, the point is that Ezra agrees on the substance with Coates. Throwing people under the bus is about sacrificing vulnerable members of the coalition for the greater good, not about simply disagreeing.
There's a separate issue of whether anyone is allowed to disagree with how marginalized people see their situation, but I don't think that issue comes up in this conversation.
"Throwing people under the bus is about sacrificing vulnerable members of the coalition for the greater good, not about simply disagreeing"
This is misleading. No one here is advocating for throwing the vulnerable under the bus*.
People here advocate repudiating the stupidest, shrillest, loudest voices on X/Bluesky. It's a slow boring comments section commonplace that these people aren't significant, much less vulnerable members of the coalition.
* With one exception - some of the talk about the scary, chronic homeless population qualifies.
Lots of people think, including in this comments section, that we should be ok with banning gender affirming medical treatment for trans kids (people rarely want to ban it for cis kids), or banning third trimester abortion, in service of winning elections. Those are actual policy positions, not just Sister Souljah-ing Taylor Lorenz.
"Lots of people think, including in this comments section, that we should be ok with banning gender affirming medical treatment for trans kids..."
This is probably true of this comment section but I think viewing it as "throwing people under the bus" is a bit too cynical.
I think those commenters think that it is better for the kids not to get that kind of treatment. Not that it is worse for them but we should sacrifice them to win votes.
Sam, you are framing fairly common beliefs among voters (especially in the case of 3rd trimester abortions which were mostly banned under Casey) as beyond the pale and as unacceptable positions.
Using terms like “throwing vulnerable people under the bus” communicates that the speaker is declaring that even nuanced disagreement with a specific position is unacceptable. It dehumanizes other people for not holding a very specific set of beliefs. (Many of which are novel social positions advocated for by a minority of the population.)
Why is it the right decision? An anti-gun control, trans minimalist, abortion minimalist Democratic elected official is presumably still much more valuable than the Republican who would otherwise be in that position.
I mean, that's what Coates thinks, he goes over his position a lot in that podcast. Despite being consistently the most left wing person in these comments I stick around because I disagree with him about that specifically.
When did the left-wing rankings come out? I want to know where I fall on that list.
But Coates seemed fine with Obama essentially lying about his thoughts on gay marriage and said he understood that FDR couldn’t get black people all the way with the New Deal even though he probably personally wanted to.
Sam, are you more left wing than Jesse Ewiak?
Dunno, seems hard to be sure. I did join the DSA and have a Bernie sticker in the 1990s though.
A writer makes money by selling books or subscriptions. They can continue being a writer as long as they sell enough books and subscriptions.
A politician has to win elections to keep being a politician. Losing a single election often ends a political career and Richard Nixon is basically to only politician to bounce back from two straight Ls.
The categories writer and politician emerge from the tactics that are necessary to become and remain in each category.
and if we want to be extra cynical about things, progressive losing and nihilism has definitely been good for Coates' career
On the flip side, what's the point of being an influential political writer? It's about more than selling books. You gain influence because people admire your thoughts. Politicians don't need influential thought leaders to tell them to compromise. They're hard-wired for compromise. They need influential thought leaders to sell them on values, strategic goals and a plan for achieving them.
Selling content is table stakes for being a political writer. A stringer for the AP or journeyman for the Austin Statesman who covers a state legislature is, in this sense, a political writer.
At the lower levels, the consuming motivation is just having a job and staying in the game. As you move up, you start to face questions of influence versus pay. Of course no one wants to subscribe to a stack whose writer is cynically bullshitting them and simulating agreement to maintain subscriptions. People want sincerity not calculation. That’s why Matt’s brand of “say smart things I think are true (and quietly soft pedal some inconvenient wedge issues)” works.
I think plenty of people would be happy to write chum for $200k/year. However, I think most people who are willing to pay for writing have good enough instincts to not pay for that.
Ezra and Matt are both famous and at the top of the field. When you're at the top of the field, and politicians are bragging about your endorsement in fundraising emails, you've moved beyond basic questions of survival and paying the bills. You have to ask hard questions like: "am I actually serving the people whose values I share?" and "Should I be opining on important questions of political strategy in widely-read venues?"
Because at that point in your career there are multiple ways to make money, and someone with principles and ethics should care a lot about whether they're doing good or harm.
I do not see Ezra as someone who is writing content because he wants to pay the bills. I think he genuinely wants to help bring the country back from Trump. I just worry that maybe he's not helping people, and maybe it's time to think hard about why that is. (I have some separate criticisms of Matt, but I say those all the time so it's dull.)
Ezra is very smart and gets the facts right, but he’s so ensconced within this professional upper middle class cocoon that he’ll never have much influence over moderates. The amount of energy he devotes to helping progressives work through their “big feelings” is almost farcical. The decarbonizatiob framework of Abundance is synecdoche for his recent career- it is driven by the proclivities of the liberal donor base, not by how real Americans think.
I think Ezra has a lot of influence. I think his NYT piece urging the Dems into a shutdown was the straw that broke the camel's back, and that's a good chunk of why we're in one. (To be clear, it was the right call: the important datapoint was "even Ezra Klein agrees".)
I don't know what to tell you about the decarbonization framework. Clearly we're going to decarbonize; Permian fields are already starting to run dry, we're not investing enough to maintain supplies for decades, low-carbon energy is becoming absurdly cheap. So if you're building any "framework" for the next two decades, you'd better adjust it to economic reality.
"However I think he is trying to have it both ways with the writer vs politician angle."
This was always my issue with the Colbert's, Stewarts, Penn and Teller, etc. type shows. At some point you are deep enough in the politics that you can't really retreat back to the sidelines.
Colbert and Stewart I get, but do Penn and Teller have a reputation for politics I am unaware of? Certainly stage magic lends itself less to being a pseudo-talking-head than late night comedy does
P&T are both highly principled libertarians, or at least they were back in their Bullshit! days. I believe that the modern Republican party has sent both of them somewhat left as they realized that they were the only principled ones.
Yes, definitely libertarian, but more of the South Park variety. I know they're huge fans of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Penn said that they were happy that they did the Scientology episode so they didn't have to, as Bullshit! fans were begging them to do an episode on it.
They had a show called Penn and Teller Bullshit which was a more Libertarian leaning type of what Jon Oliver kind of does. It was less straight forwardly political but they had some real misses over the years.
I believe Penn at least was pro-libertarian who turned hard away from Republicanism over the years.
There was a good recent piece in the New York Times about both of them.
I see Coates as a pretty pure partisan for black identity and what he sees as the interests of Black Americans. Thats his unifying core. IOW, he’s not a pluralist - he tends to center one constituency, Black Americans, and to treat their historical and present safety, wealth, and dignity as the decisive test of American politics.And fundamentally he wants Democrats to align with that to much greater degree than is the case, even if it costs Democrats politically.
For Klein, he is much more of a pluralistic thinker and looks more at the big picture. I think that is fundamental basis of their disagreement.
One of the points that Andrea Pitzer made in her excellent piece [1] (which you should read!) is that *no pundit* is a professional politician. That's not their job. When it comes to advice like "you should moderate" or "you should compromise on your positions or values", politicians don't really need to be told this by pundits like Klein. Compromising values is kind of baked into their DNA.
The goal of the pundit class is to actually point the party in some useful direction other than simple advice like "compromise." To the extent that you don't have a useful message to offer other than "concede to the other side's framing", maybe it's time to step aside and let a younger generation of pundits try some new ideas.
[1] https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/you-don-t-have-to-swallow-frogs
Regarding the CTU's endorsement of Shakur: Lots of people like to fantasize about being an avenging and violent force for good. Dirty Harry, the Die Hard series, every Charles Bronson movie.
The problem with their endorsement is that they valorized an actual terrorist who was pursuing a bad, not good, political outcome. But in their defense, the terrorists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were warmly welcomed into Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago [edited], respectively, when the FBI decided to stop pursuing them.
I don't think racism infects our society anywhere near as much as Ta-Nahesi Coates believes, but I can understand how seeing the difference between how Black, violent 1970s radicals like Shakur are viewed versus how Dohrn, Ayers and other white, violent 1970s radicals are welcomed into respectable political positions might radicalize some CTU members.
The thing about the CTU, is that they're run by edgy hard-left internet takesters, who also unfortunately are in charge of the education of 300k kids
The re integration of Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground, and others is mind blowing to me. No one is rehabilitating McVeigh or the Ruby Ridge idiots on the right, nor should they.
The Right quickly turned Kyle Rittenhouse into a mascot/keynote speaker and have rehabilitated Jan. 6 rioters, several of which were later re arrested for other crimes after being pardoned. Valorizing an elderly or dead criminal may be wrong, but none of the leftists mentioned are currently a threat to anyone, unlike the violent lunatics Trump and co. Released and constantly hold up as heroes.
Rittenhouse was obviously innocent. Whatever post acquittal public persona nonsense he may engage in not withstanding.
There's a prominent fascist of Twitter whose pfp is David Koresh wearing a maga hat. I think Vance follows him.
This is always the mistake of saying “never” or “no one.” There’s always someone.
Though they haven’t named a building at Baylor after Koresh yet, and all the weather underground guys got jobs at Columbia
The FBI and US Marshals were the idiots at Ruby Ridge.
Give it time...
Don't give the right any ideas
Ahem, that's the University of Illinois-Chicago. Let's not slander the U of C!
Though to be fair, he used to attend plenty of events in Hyde Park.
My apologies. Will edit.
I think there is possibly another more banal thing going on. Yes it seems like the Chicago Teachers Union chapter is run by people who seem to be to the left of even other leaders of the Teachers Union. But I think the other very real possibility is that a lot of orgs are run by older people who don’t put enough thought into who they put in charge of their social media platforms. So you end up with people running social media accounts who very possibly have ideas on certain topics that maybe shouldn’t be put on official Twitter feed.
Feel like something similar probably happened with the Libertarian party of NH. There was a while there where the Libertarian party of NH Twitter account was putting out a whole lot of no doubt about it Neo Nazi stuff. Now my “in the wild” experience with the Libertarians is it’s a mix of actual Cato reading principled libertarians…and absolute nutballs. Wouldn’t at all shock me if the Libertarian party hired one of these nutballs out of sorts of negligence
Did LPNH stop Nazi posting?
I’ll also note that I suspect there is a similar dynamic as to why super lefty DEI stuff ended up in various companies training materials. State X passed a law mandating DEI training. HR scrambles to comply, researches DEI experts and comes up with Robin DeAngelo and suddenly DeAnglelo’s quite frankly racist DEI stuff is out the wild.
NOT CTU members. Who knows what they think?
I appreciate the nuance in this take.
> people like to fantasize about being an avenging and violent force for good
I loved the CHH headline for this - "You'll Kill Marauders, But Will You Change a Diaper?"
https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/youll-kill-marauders-but-will-you
I think Matt is being polite, and Coates is basically ridiculous. He’s a good prose writer of almost no substance, and him being fashionable (and difficult to safely criticize) was, in retrospect, a good leading indicator that we were cooked.
So much of what Coates did in that interview was frame his positions in such a way that even critiquing or disagreeing with him makes you a bad person.
That is not a helpful way to have discussions in a democrat society, especially when it comes to controversial subjects. It is the same form of dehumanizing that Coates criticizes others of.
Well said, and unusually useful for me. My town is in the midst of a budget crisis in which one side is justifying their incivility with Nazi comparisons ("there aren't two sides to the question of gas chambers").
When I am feeling less generous I tend to frame it as “taking victims and using them as rhetorical human shields like Hamas.”
Definitely not a polite thing to say, but this is the type of linguistic nihilism these people engage in.
He’s a nice person who is not terrible to hang out with. So they continue to hang out with him even if he’s not too bright.
ETA: he’s also a bit if a unicorn in that he’s a black guy with zero exposure to the black church. None. I can’t think of a less representative ADOS person. He’s been raised in a weird cocoon of black nationalism ensconced in a white enclave. So he naturally appeals to a certain liberal who doesn’t want to think that hard about how socially conservative the median black person in the states is.
Contrast this with Nicole Hannah jones, who is a vicious idiot who really no one wants around unless they are forced to have her around (plenty of examples of this on the right too- Mike pence is hanging around because people like him)
I like how Kendi has fallen off so much he doesn’t even get a mention.
NHJ is on her way there but Howard is too embarrassed to face up to the fact that she is stealing their money, unlike BU and Kendi
I think Matt, and other writers, sincerely like and respect Coates and his thinking.
Personally I have never seen the appeal of his work but I don't think they are just being "polite" with the way they engage with him.
You may be right. I just don’t get it though.
I think a lot of it is that he’s very good as an essayist even if those essays are largely just navel-gazing.
Something Ezra said once that stuck with me is that it's important to have multiple mental models and ways of thinking about the world. They're like tools in the tool belt, and you pick out the right one for the problem at hand.
Coates has a unique way of seeing the world that has a powerful internal logic to it, and his perspective is sometimes useful. The problem is that it's the only tool in his tool belt, and that's what makes him seem ridiculous.
I am sad that the author of One Billion Americans says that it's not going to fly. The immigration politics suck, and it is what it is, but I still hold faint hope that at some point Americans realize the tradeoff they're sowing by supporting more restrictionist measures. But it's also sad, as Matt's observed, that the natalist avenue has gone off some real bizarre paths, instead of just settling in of an increase child allowance, and then let the chips fall where they might.
The fertility rate really does not seem to be an affordability problem though, at least not in a way that a little extra child allowance will help (even though I’d take it!). Rich countries have fewer kids. It’s cultural. Hard to fix.
Liberalism is correct -- it's almost axiomatic that people should be free to pursue their own interests if they don't harm others -- but a society that emphasizes maximizing one's own happiness is going to have lower fertility.
Having kids is hard, expensive, draining, stressful. It does not pass any cost/benefit analysis, largely because it's orthogonal to cost/benefit analyses. Having kids is a lot bigger than one's own happiness, and as long as we have a society where people are free to pursue their own happiness, we'll have lower fertility.
I think I am already happier for having kids, and my kids are very young and one of them is very high needs. I expect the lifetime increase to my happiness as they age and have lives and children of their own to increase.
I think “kids are a drag” vibes are in fact a big part of the problem. Paying a mortgage is a drag but home ownership is (correctly!) seen as nice and a marker of things going well for you. Kids should be the same way, not some duty to discharge.
Yeah. Maybe there's no solution for this, but there are just so many guys out there who in their youth were reluctant to have children and only realized after the fact that they love being dads. If there were a way to communicate that to more young guys, it might at least make a small dent in the problem. Obviously, you'd need a different approach with young women.
I expected to love being a dad and I do love being a dad. But I don't know if it's made me *happier.*
It's 1000% given my life more meaning and purpose and I couldn't imagine a life without my kids, and they're infinitely more important to me than my personal happiness. But also my day-to-day would likely involve more pleasure and less stress if I didn't spend so much time and energy focusing on dinner negotiations and bedtime routines.
I don't want to go all Aristotle on you, but the additional meaning and purpose has shifted my happiness scale for the better: my floor is lower and my ceiling is higher.
I was reading that moms today spend 50% more time with their kids than in the 70s when they locked the kids outside so they could smoke and watch Days of Lives in peace. Even with costs the same if the time commitment had stayed at 1970s level that would mean more kids.
Absolutely true, at least if the parents in my local sphere are any indication. The amount of doting is toxic at times, it seems to me. But most of the kids are holding down good jobs and such, not sure if there are downstream effects to helicopter parenting.
Other than we're going extinct at the rate we're going.
And I wonder how much more times dads spend with their kids vs the 1970s
It passes cost-benefit analysis if the elder care regime is weak. But the trend for outsourced (to government) provision of both healthcare and retirement funding support undermines the real benefit of having children (and grandchildren) who will care for you in old age. And you need more than one for risk mitigation.
Card B has it right: https://nypost.com/2025/09/10/sports/cardi-b-admits-she-wants-more-kids-as-stefon-diggs-romance-blooms/
Or to the extend that it is an affordability problem, the combination of fewer opportunities for child labor and more perceived need to invest in education makes the affordability problem so severe that politically plausible fixes won’t work.
If family businesses where children could meaningfully contribute from age 12 were common and if children could be given an interest or be apprenticed rather than needing an expensive education, fertility would increase.
Religious-nutter run Iran is having trouble with fertility... one of Russia's war aims is stealing Ukrainian children to turn into Russians to replenish their own supply (why they need to kill a 100k plus or so existing Russians to do it escapes me). It's happening basically everywhere except Nigeria.
The obvious solution is uterine replicators, but we don't have the tech or sufficient interest. Seems like a better use of resources for the rich pro-natalists than being laser focused on bigger LLMs.
It is notable that western memes about fertility can't be stopped by the Iranian or North Korean regimes.
I’m still in the camp of “too soon to see the effects” as far as this tariff stuff, immigration crack down and general policy chaos unleaded by Trump and yet his numbers on immigration have tanked anyway (even if Dems are still way worse).
Point being, if the real world effects of this immigration crackdown start being felt more 1-2 years from now, wouldn’t shock me if the pro immigration side has “a moment” again.
We saw it in Trump's first term.
One billion Americans sounds kind of extreme though doesn’t it? That would take us to near-Chinese levels of density and very few people would like that. Even setting aside the “Great Replacement” type concerns. It strikes me as one of the most unpopular framings possible for more immigration.
The more popular framing is probably “it’s nice to have the freedom to go where you want and not that many people are probably going to actually move to your area.” Right-wing people complain that this is how the 1965 immigration reform was actually passed.
Matt argued in the book that it would be more like France style density, even after taking Alaska out of the equation.
"That would take us to near-Chinese levels of density and very few people would like that."
No one lives in Manhattan - it's too crowded.
Anyone who wants more density should drive on the 405 in L.A. at rush hour (and now rush hour seems to be 5am to 10pm, lol). I suppose higher density would equate with more saturation with mass transit but still....
I think we will get there eventually.
I think history shows that our melting pot has limits on how many new ingredients can be quickly added. That’s why I strongly support immigration that isn’t chaos or unfettered system gaming. The alternative is this toxic pendulum of backlash and counter backlash.
"But none of the identity-brained Democrats who believe it was desperately important to put a mediocre white man on the ticket to balance out Harris..."
So have we come around to agree that Walz was a dud?
His debate was bad and he didn't do much for the campaign — mainly because the Harris team kept his mouth shut. BUT I think we all memory hole the excitement he created when he first burst on the scene. He can be a good communicator, but I think if he really wants to change some minds and widen the tent, he needs to take on some heterodox positions. He refuses to do so, and will just return to being the governor of a blueish state. Which is totally fine.
My view of Walz is that he was a missed opportunity *precisely because* he generated all that base excitement. The reason why he generated that base excitement is that the base felt like they dodged a bullet: Harris could have chosen someone who would have been interpreted as signaling moderation, and by strategically backing a dark horse who was a white guy but did *not* signal moderation, they successfully strangled that idea in its crib. They were celebrating over their factional victory, but victory for their faction prevented Harris from scoring points with the general electorate.
I don't have a problem with Walz himself. He's ok. Not a great debater. Pretty decent speechifier.
This is the opposite of memory-holing, though. It's calling into question the judgement of people that were excited by his nomination. The excitement was not universal and was probably informed by a bad theory of politics.
[Edit: "infoamed"?]
It's worth revisiting Matt's total lack of enthusiasm about the pick: https://www.slowboring.com/p/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-tim-walz
Yeah this is how I feel.
The people who were excited and thought Walz had a ton of appeal are people whose political judgement I don't really trust.
Were voters excited or just Democratic party people who thought the "Republicans are weird" was an entire campaign strategy?
I can't say for sure but I feel like I thought he was a dud from the beginning, the Tim Kaine redux.
I remember some people being excited, I just think those people were kind of dumb and the type of people that think Walz appeals to "rural" voters more than he does.
Honestly, if I were Kamala Harris, I would have picked Andre Dickens, Mayor of Atlanta and would have him go on television and everywhere and tell everyone how much he loves cops and hates anti cop protestors. And his method of dealing with anti cop protests is calling them all criminals and having them arrested.
Attacking identity politics “for putting a mediocre white man on the ticket” is sort of too clever. First, this isn’t his identity politics typically operate. Second, VP choices don’t matter that much, Harris lost by too much for Shapiro to have bailed her out.
Harris sort of foregrounded this type of thinking in her comments about Pete and it is one of Matt's favorite bits.
I don't think the VP pick mattered much but I think the Walz fandom got a bit silly and I think these politicians coming out of seemingly nowhere to become the VP nominee is a sort of weird element of American politics that could use some though from the parties.
yeah as more of a centrist it's good that Shapiro wasn't the VP candidate because that would have just added more fuel to the progressive fire that Harris lost because she wasn't sufficiently leftwing.
Honestly, if I were Kamala Harris, I would have picked Andre Dickens, Mayor of Atlanta and would have him go on television and everywhere and tell everyone how much he loves cops and hates anti cop protestors. And his method of dealing with anti cop protests is calling them all criminals and having them arrested.
No man who loves Crazy Taxi as much as Coach Walz could be a dud.
I think Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey type realignments are more interesting because, in some ways, their politics haven’t changed at all. There is an internal coherence to their politics focused on civil liberties and restrained foreign policy. But there is also just a contrarian disposition.
I read somewhere that Ezra Klein is like anti-Glenn Greenwald, in both good and bad ways. Ezra Klein is high trust, and rationalizes choices made by elites because he has an inherent belief in the power of elites. When something goes wrong, the “groups”, “the senate, filibuster” are to blame, not really powerful politicians. In all this election post mortem, have Ezra or people doing this professionally admitted that Kamala was just a stupid and unimpressive dud, didn’t have it in her to actually win?
GG, on the other hand, takes it to the other extreme. He instinct is to identify powerful entity in a fight and put all his weight to defend the least powerful, whether good/bad or how immoral. He has an inherent distrust of politicians.
"Ezra Klein is high trust, and rationalizes choices made by elites because he has an inherent belief in the power of elites. "
I don't read enough post-Weeds Ezra to know if this is true but it is notable that Ezra's biggest triumph in recent memory was realizing Biden was too old 3 months before all the other take-sters(and 3 years after the voters.
The Glenn Greenwald types seem to become defined but their enemies and their POV just sort of orbits around the people who criticize them.
Yeah I give Ezra high marks for that bold call (I thought the same but why couldn't most Democrats admit to this? Loyalty? Obtuseness? Ageism?), too bad few jumped on the bandwagon early to strategize a more coherent replacement candidate. It still boggles me that they put Biden on the debate stage with Trump.
Glenn Greenwald only takes whatever political position is advantageous to Putin.
Arguably the two of you aren't disagreeing. If his "instinct is to identify the powerful entity in a fight and put all his weight to defending the least powerful," then since the US is the most powerful country in the world it is therefore the ultimate source of evil in the world. Therefore, the overriding goal of all politics is to oppose the US and undermine its power. Therefore, since Putin is an opponent of the US, Putin is on the side of good and whatever is advantageous to him is also good. Likewise, since Trump is a bad president who is destroying the US from within, Trump is also on the side of good. A good president of the US, in contrast, would be evil.
I think he is just fundamentally opposed to the United States national security alliance system we have built up over the world and thinks we should just dismantle it.
He is just a proponent of authoritarian imperialism because Western liberalism supposedly derailed the Soviet’s global communist imperial ambitions.
I think a better way to put it is that Ezra thinks in terms of systems and incentives.
GG and similar people have been ideologically consistent - they are anti-establishment and specifically against the US foreign policy establishment and federal law enforcement. The partisan valence of both switched sides as one effect of Trump’s disruption.
I feel Coates is a "truth teller" in the RFK jr or Candace Owens way, he firmly believes things that are ridiculous and obviously false. It used to be weird things about UFOs,now he limits to really dumb views on maths etc being racist.
It goes back to the point about terrorists, people on the centre left do seem to have a blindness to the most ridiculous and unpleasant people on their side.
Eh I’d push back on that and say Coates is perfectly pleasant despite basically being wrong about everything
I don't think Owens or RFK are unpleasant in person.
Responding only to the opening of this post, which for some reason pissed me off lol.
I suppose I agree with Matt that Democrats should just go ahead and coalesce around Geoff Duncan as our best chance to win. Maybe that’s the end of the story.
But it’s awfully annoying as both a process and result, and I think “winners-first” advocates need to be a bit more careful in their pitches.
Matt says the mayor of the largest city in the state wouldn’t be a good nominee because of two reasons aside from general mayoral underperformance: 1) she wasn’t great at her job and 2) someone else, who happens to be a completely different black woman albeit with similar views/strategic positioning, has already lost twice. Relatedly, I happen to dislike Mayor Bottoms’ PA voiceovers in Hartsfield-Jackson. OK.
Is there anything in the post about how Duncan performed in his job as LG, which is probably 1/10th the job of Atlanta mayor? Or even what the fuck he has ever done professionally except bucking Trump and flip-flopping on fundamental values? It could be really great! But I don’t know either way and in my view it’s unseemly to just gloss over it.
Georgia isn’t Alabama. Trump is 1-1 in his last two elections there and the state has two Democratic Senators who’ve won multiple elections. As Matt points out, Sen. Warnock won by reaching out to Geoff Duncan types. However, he’s not literally Geoff Duncan — and Democrats in theory should have *more* room in non-federal elections.
“KLB bad, GD good” might be true, but I feel it’s a lazy, inappropriate way to make the case.
I thought Matt was arguing that GD's viability was a good sign, not that he was clearly a better candidate than Bottoms.
"Democrats opening their hearts to ex-Republicans without demanding that they disavow everything they’ve ever said or done is how you expand the tent"
That quote was an admonishment, not an evaluation of the situation. Literally his entire premise was that GD is better. Which, he probably is! But I thought the argument was off-putting.
It's clear he doesn't think much of Bottoms ("Bottoms was not a particularly popular or successful mayor of Atlanta"), and I agree that would have been unsatisfying as an assessment of the race. I just think Matt was making a different kind of point.
Now I’m getting really pedantic. But I agree he was attempting to make a different kind of point. But instead he made this particular point in a very unsatisfying way that raised my hackles about how serious the actual project is being presented and can be convincing to folks like me and to my left.
Fair. Anyone that reads the comments know I'll quibble hard when the point is important enough to me.
I think it's just based on policy positioning. Matt claims (without citation, to your point) that Bottoms is criticizing Duncan for not being progressive enough. Assuming that's true, then clearly Bottoms is to the left of Duncan. Given that Abrams lost (narrowly) in 2018, during a blue wave election, it seems pretty obvious that we need a candidate who is more moderate rather than a candidate who is more progressive
That is all true. Personally, as someone who’s extremely sympathetic to running the more moderate viable candidate in statewide races in purple states, I don’t think it’s sufficient to say “well KCB is attacking GD from the left so GD should be the nominee.” This shit needs to mean more than that.
Taking a step back, I don’t think this specific race is necessarily the best example of my argument because I’m confident that GD is the best nominee. But it’s certainly not guaranteed and the flippancy around it PMO.
Weird for matt to make the common mistake of assuming a black machine city politician is liberal. He doesn’t with Bowser.
Black city politics are their own thing.
Was Bottoms that bad? Or did she just get dealt maybe the worst structural situation to have to deal with BLM? Just no good choices for her
I don’t know! I need to do a lot more research to form an opinion either way. I admit that. But that’s sort of my point. When you’re trying to sell a Democratic electorate on foregoing a serious Democratic politician in favor of someone who discovered women’s bodily autonomy two seconds ago, it would be nice to at least hear about both their records and a more affirmative case. The tactical stuff only gets you so far.
You have to understand that in Matt's brain all of politics is taking positions on issues and voters have perfect knowledge of all those positions. Being rational people, they choose the person closest to their position. So if that's your starting point, then what Matt says makes perfect sense and is correct.
The first is arguably a fair representation, the second is clearly wrong. He’s always pounding the table for people to highlight their popular positions (Biden should talk more about the increase in oil production during his term) and downplay their unpopular ones. That explicitly recognizes that voters don’t know everything and you have to tell them (over and over again) the things you want them to know.
I remember seeing KLB do a couple of TV interviews a number of years ago and thought she did well in them. I liked her affect at the time. I have no other data to base an opinion on. But I do think the mayor thing is a fair point by Matt though. Not that she performed poorly as mayor (I have no idea) but just it's very common for big-city mayors to get tarnished in the eyes of voters elsewhere in the state simply because they were mayors of the state's biggest city.
Fair point by you though that Abrams is a different person from KLB. Just because KLB has a particular strategy vis-a-vis Duncan in the primary doesn't mean that she'd replicate Abrams' crappy strategy in the general.
It didn’t annoy me to the same degree—perhaps because I am primed to think Bottoms is no good based on progressive big city mayor who got famous during Floyd vibes.
But (I) I too would be really interested to hear more about the pros and cons of each of policy and (ii) your comment made me admit some bias to myself — a black lady who is progressive coded and involved in the Biden administration just feels bad to me — Kamala / woke era trauma? Racist assumptions? Maybe!
I don’t think there’s any doubt that a white man has a better shot than a black woman running statewide in GA. But I would like that case made explicitly (or not!) rather than just “Stacey Abrams lost.”
As an LA millennial, I can tell you Amanda and Sean are a certain species of middle-aged California lib who live extremely traditional middle-of-the-road lives but whose brains are cooked by the internet and think violent radicalism is sorta cool. I know dozens of people like this, suburban parents with normie office jobs who’ve never committed or suffered any real violence in their lives yet talk like they're in the Weather Underground after a drink or two. It’s all about fashionable rhetoric on Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok and nothing about what they’re actually capable of or what would be a good way to make policy into reality. It can be aggravating sometimes!
The 2026 Massachusetts rent control ballot question is abysmal. [https://www.mass.gov/doc/25-21-an-initiative-petition-to-protect-tenants-by-limiting-rent-increases/download]
When I first heard about it I assumed it would merely repeal the state law outlawing rent control. Nope: it would limit annual rent increases in the covered dwellings to "not exceed the annual increase in Consumer Price Index or 5%, whichever is lower, in any 12-month period."
The mind boggles. The only way to make a profit in real dollars under those constraints is to cut costs every single year (itself an ominous prospect for renters). Why would anyone invest in rental units with so many superior alternatives?
Don’t increase rent, just subdivide units residents are renting every so often.
Tenement living for all.
On the bottom line dispute of Charlie Kirk's legacy (I think the broader disagreements between the two have been well known before Kirk's death and Matt analyzed it well), I think Ta-Nehisi did a valiant job of looking at the voluminous amount of work that Kirk left behind, from his tweets to recordings and reportings of his speeches, to come to the conclusion that he did, and I can see why he was pissed as Ezra for saying that Kirk "did politics exactly the right way" if those politics included bigotry. It's just such a tough needle to thread immediately after a subject is needlessly murdered, even if he felt that he didn't want Kirk to be martyred in an incorrect manner.
I mean, if someone’s public utterances include “I think the Civil Rights movement was a mistake,” I don’t need to trawl painstakingly through that person’s entire record to conclude “this person sure had some crappy views.”
Problem with people trying to argue with Kirk is that Kirk would say the facts lead to some outlandish conclusion and then his critics would just dismiss the evidence base because of the conclusion and he would nail them on that.
The proper way to deal with this type of rhetoric is to point out the wide jump to the conclusion. That the evidence is insufficient and that there needs to be another link or assumption (there usually is one and it’s not salient or it’s a bad assumption.)
The problem is, at a media event, this is way more boring than the outlandish conclusion, so it doesn't fit neatly into the idea of actual debate. Even if you defeated him in this way, it's not viral enough, which is why i don't think charlie kirk media events really resembled debates. You'll see Kirk studiously avoided debating people more familiar with the style of internet bloodsport because those people actually know how to be disingenuous in a way that goes viral.
Kirk was smart enough to mostly argue with vicious idiots who never quite got that you had to do that.
To win an argument you have to be polite and eventually get the opponent to agree with you on some point.
JD Vance has no rizz. He may win the 2028 Republican nomination by default, but his number of devoted cultists will be much, much smaller than Trump's. And that means whatever version of Trumpism he adopts likely won't have as much support, initially, as Trump himself does.
He's gonna have to push Trump down the stairs if he's seriously hoping to be president in 2029...
Pessimistically, Vance seems like the Maduro to Trump's Chavez, or, more optimistically, Sheinbaum to Obrador. It's tough to follow a messy, charismatic populist.
Has Sheinbaum been better than Obrador?
I agree but there are lots of Romney voters who backed Clinton, Biden and Harris who won't hate Vance in the same way.
But does he have aura?
If you have to ask if someone has aura, that means they don't.
Viktor Orban has no rizz either.
I agree that Vance won't be as electorally successful as Trump, but if Vance takes office before 2028, he'll have the ability to use the levers of power in an Orbanian fashion before he ever has to face a primary or general electorate.
"wouldn’t the most honorable and politically prudent course of action for the Democratic Party have been for her to step aside? If she truly believed those identities were significant liabilities, why insist on running in what Democrats themselves framed as an existential contest against Trump?"
It seems like a mistake to take anything a politician says in a "Why I lost Book" seriously. It's constant excuse making.
Did you guys know that Frederick the Great was an avid flutist? I actually just found a piece by him in a baroque flute music book. It was a little odd, but I didn't have the accompaniment, so I couldn't hear it with the harmony.
He studied with a teacher named Johann Quantz. Quantz wrote (better) music, too. He also wrote a definitive guidebook on music performance during his time which is the seminal document for scholars to understand music from the baroque era. It's a bunch of stuff about how to perform trills correctly, when it's appropriate to add ornamental notes, how long a cadenza should be, etc. I have a copy under my couch somewhere.
Voltaire makes that point, though largely as a joke about Frederick's sexuality.
I didn't know that!
That's funny. I always associate Voltaire with gay culture because of Leonard Bernstein's Candide. https://youtu.be/HnJIMSy-o4k?si=EbBfhRhwmzJiLOzB
The fascinating thing about Candide is that he makes jokes about how stupid Creationists are, this is almost a century before Darwin published.
France at that time period seemed unusually tolerant, Napoleon had an openly gay Minister of Justice Cambacérès, he made the occasionally joke about it but no more than about his heterosexual minister's sex lives. Louis XIVs brother and favourite general were openly gay and it wasn't seen as a huge deal.
Thank you very much for answering my question! I agree that it does seem like trends such as education polarization have been global and have even predates Trump. This one is more unique to America, but it also does seem that racial depolarization was/is bound to happen independent of Trump, and that would be overall good, although that's less easier to confirm until Trump is gone.
And I do agree that the cult phenomenon of Trump is something to account for. But I could see it going both ways. Without him, perhaps voter turnout goes down to the detriment of Republicans. But there could also be the possible liability of a savvy Republican taking some Trumpist cues while sanding off the edges of things like the corruption, and outperforming him. I'd be curious in some followup thought on this.
Something has to give for proper racial depolarization, namely having regime members being into ethnic cleansing. Donald Trump minus the legit fascists and white nationalists might've been able to do it (while still being extremely racist) but now? If we still have a country I think it can be done, eventually.
I'm having a little trouble making sense of this comment, but it's worth pointing out that racial depolarization has been moving along steadily in every election since 2012, and all signs are that it will continue for purely demographic reasons if nothing else.
The story with Hispanic voters is well-known, but the one for Black voters is still a bit under-discussed. If you split the Black vote along other demographics, the younger voters are far more "depolarized" politically than the older voters, and Black immigrants are less loyal to the Democratic party than Black non-immigrants.
It may be that the erosion of Black votes for the Democrats is less about individuals changing their mind and more about demographics, as less Democrat-voting groups grow and more loyal Democratic voter groups shrink.
Key members of the modern Republican party (Stephen Miller in particular but not exclusively) are actively hostile to all but a large but still narrow slice of the American population. There is good reason to believe that in that a bad economy plus that hostility will slow or at least temporarily reverse the existing trend. I wouldn't be saying this if we had President Nikki Haley who would not have hired all these ghouls (and thus I would expect to continue the trend), but here we are.
Who knows where we go from here?
I'm not sure this sort of stuff filters down to voters in a way that would really impact how different demographics vote relatively to one another.
In other words, if a message of "Black voters, the Trump WH hates you" was credible and salient enough that it was reaching the broad public, then yes, I might expact racial depolarization to reverse.
But it would take a lot to get there. Witness how the typical Democrat took "Trump hates Hispanics" for granted as a key fact by 2020, yet the Hispanic vote broke hard for Trump.
Very few swingy voters, Black or otherwise, are tracking whatever it is Stephen Miller is saying or doing.
I read this morning that the 2024 election was the least racially polarized since Nixon.
First or second Nixon election?