When people are conned they do everything in their power to rationalize the conduct of the conman rather than admit they were lied and stolen from. They don’t want to feel complicit in being harmed and thus seek to blame others for their choices.
"He was just distracted by the antifa mob a few blocks away - even someone as strong as him could've been thrown off by how hateful those 'peaceful protesters' were! And do you think Joe Biden even *owns* a Bible? At least Trump took a stand for Christianity!"
I genuinely wonder how much a Biden campaign message of "Trump is actually scamming you because that's what he always has done" would resonate. The Pod Save America guys have previously noted (and they are not the only ones) that messages focusing on the corruption of Trump (as opposed to the racisms, the unhinged rants) does actually seem to reach swing voters.
As has been pointed out sort of by Matt in this post, it's actually not the case that Trump's racism, authoritarian tendencies and just general unhinged behavior hasn't harmed him. But sort of oddly to me, of all the different angles to take against Trump, the pure corruption of his entire life has been oddly muted from Democrats as far as I can tell.
Completely agree that Trump's scamming of "regular folks" is probably a much more effective attack strategy on his support base and enabling support base - let alone because it's still happening (Trump PAC donations that have almost entirely gone to his pockets and not to "Stop The Steal" efforts, campaigning, etc). The dirty tactics his PAC's take to default his supporters into recurring automatic donations, "doubling" amounts pledged in the fine print etc. Run some ads of former supporters and/or family members of supporters who were pushed into financial dire straits as a result of this aggressively scammy means of maximizing small donors out. Run ads of those who were ruined and defrauded by Trump U and other Trump investments. Small business former partners with Trump who were screwed. Etc.
Unlike his "sex scandals" and "threat to democracy", this kind of stuff hits at a core of Trump support that I see from many Trump supporters is that underneath his rough edges he's a "good guy" that really cares about America, his supporters, etc. And that's what justifies his rough edges, he's "fighting for us", "fighting for America", etc. There is a lot of denial about what a con-man Trump actually is, and that his supporters are his primary marks (and not other politicians or "the deep state").
One of the most effective attack campaigns I can recall is the one against Mitt Romney and Bain Capital from the 2012 campaign - that ironically emerged from the Republican primary (Newt Gingrich I think was the sponsor for this), that portrayed Mitt Romney as a cold blooded rich guy gleefully putting thousands of the types that would become the media depiction of Trump supporters out of work, and put a face to the forces that had been decimating all these "middle America" towns and regions. And it worked - not so much in the primary for Newt, but in the general election because the Obama campaign picked right up where this left off and used it as their primary attack on Romney, who did go on to lose a lot of the white working class base that had been tacking Republican (and who again, became the focus for the 2016 Trump campaign) as a result of this portrayal - and let's not forget what a massive lift this for Obama, who was otherwise running as an incumbent with lowered popularity running for re-election in the midst of a deep economic recession. I wonder if there's still juice to squeeze on his working class/middle class support to remind these folks that Trump is just another rich Republican scamming the base.
I’ve always wished everyone had gone this route instead of going all in on Russia. I don’t think most people even know about the corruption while he was in office.
Or over the "Access Hollywood" tape, part of Trump's "appeal" (for those he appealed to already) was that he was supposedly a "guy's guy" that gets the "hot chicks". The obsessing over that hot tape and trying to disqualify Trump because he's a pig only confirmed that image for those who already knew this about him and hated him already, or for those that already knew this about him and loved him already... IOW, it didn't really move the needle for anyone, not even Paul Ryan who removed his endorsement from Trump for all about 5 minutes until the polls showed that Trump was actually strengthened by the scandal in the Republican electorate.
I would add it was a particularly weak attack from Hillary Clinton, whose husband survived his own sex scandal strengthened, and with a heap ton of her assistance in painting the Ken Starr investigation and report as partisan motivated and that "sex scandals" of politicians were not politically disqualifying in the first place...
My theory on this is that a lot of leftists think all rich businessmen act exactly like Donald Trump does in a business context, so what is there to point out to anyone who says they respect business leaders?
I actually don’t think it’s just a “leftist” thing at all. I actually think tons of regular non leftist voters think tons of politicians take literal bags of money with dollar signs on them as bribes. And reality is there is just enough real life examples that I sort of get why; see Spiro Agnew and see Duke Cunningham.
But I bring up those examples because it’s not like voters just said “who cares” and it’s not like the GOP said “”witch hunt”. Both had to resign. So even in a world where voters think Trump level corruption is rampant, it’s not like people actually like it or don’t care.
That's politicians. I am referring to Trump during his pre-political business career. As Matt explained in this post, Trump was exceptionally corrupt compared to other businessmen, in a way that even say Jeff Bezos has never benn shown to be. I think a lot of leftists see no difference between the business career of Trump and Bezos, so they see no point in highlighting examples like the one Matt gave that show Trump is a very special scumbag.
That may very well be true, but that's an argument to not left "leftists" run all aspects of a campaign ; P this particular line of attack is to directly target Trump's base of support, the ones that think that Trump is a great businessman, "good guy with rough edges", "fighting for them", etc. There's such a vast and rich record - that is still ongoing - of how Trump screws his supporters and people like his supporters. It gets at the heart of how they otherwise justify Trump's "rough edges" because they think it's all in their service.
>When people are conned they do everything in their power to rationalize the conduct of the conman rather than admit they were lied and stolen from.<
I've always thought this explained at least some of the dynamic as to why so many less affluent folks vote for right wingers (not just Trump). It's a resentful nihilism born of deep, prideful, hurt. What's the matter with Kansas, and all that. If everybody voted using some reasonable facsimile of rational self-interest, Democrats would control 511 seats in Congress.
Nah, the point of “what’s the matter with Kansas” discourse is that people place value on more than just the legible but limited universe of government benefits. The “rational self-interest” angle takes a too-narrow view of what people place value on (heck, it’s why charity exists). Some people’s beliefs do, in fact, pay rent.
I think it’s also about respect. As someone wrote, poor whites with low education will rather vote for someone whose policies hurts them than on someone who looks down on them. One of Biden’s strengths is that he doesn’t seem to look down on uneducated white people yet he struggles for other reasons (part of them being his own party’s penchant for cultural elitism).
Nah. There's such a thing as "enlightened self-interest". You have to be extremely short-sighted to vote for authoritarianism. Just ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky how supporting an authoritarian leader in pursuit of riches worked out for him. (Obviously many of our elite _are_ this short-sighted. It doesn't change the fact that they're behaving in a willfully-ignorant, self-destructive manner.)
Personally I am a winner from the post-New-Deal regulated-capitalist order that has existed in America for the last almost-century. I want to preserve that order. Which means ensuring that we offer opportunity to as many people as possible, and tamp down on rich people engaging in Marie Antoinette antics that could inspire mobs with pitchforks and torches. I can afford to pay higher taxes to help ensure that nobody in my country lives in abject poverty. I can deal with having new apartment buildings that "change the character of my neighborhood" in order to jack up the housing supply to the point that the people whose services I rely on can afford to live close to their jobs. Etc.
Some rich people regarded FDR as "a traitor to his class". In fact, he was all that stood between them and a collapse of the system that might've seen mobs storming their mansions.
I don't think so. Upper middle class people aren't financially independent (they have to work). Republicans as a party are deeply committed to weakening the safety net. That doesn't seem to be in the interests of anyone who's not rich. Republicans have an extremely poor record on protecting the environment. Do UMC folks prefer dirty air? Many upper middle class Americans are LGBT. Many upper middle class Americans get abortions. Many upper middle class Americans don't want to bequeath a world to their grandchildren facing worst case climate change scenarios. Many upper middle class Americans have preexisting medication conditions. And so on.
Republicans lower taxes on the upper middle class.
If the environment, gay rights, and abortion are relevant to this discussion, then I'm not sure why you are so convinced that Republican voters don't actually have any self-interest in the things that Republicans do.
I've always understood the "what's the matter with Kansas" thesis to be that low income people often vote against their economic interests and in line with their culture war interests, and my thought is that the upper middle class is doing the same thing.
"Republicans lower taxes on the upper middle class."
Actually Trump's tax cut raised my taxes by around $3-4k per year, mainly because of the SALT limit. That's the case for many families with incomes in the mid six figures.
To be clear, I'm actually fine with that. If I were re-writing things I'd keep the SALT limit, and I'd put the Mortgage Interest deduction on a schedule to phase out over thirty years by phasing down the amount of principal it applies to (so you don't get windfall losses / gains on a mortgage that was taken out this year, but going forwards everyone can adjust).
But I do find it somewhat ironic that a lot of people who vote for Republicans on the "maybe they'll hurt other people but they'll help me" theory got burned.
"I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
I used to piss off a right-winger I worked with by saying, "I'd rather give taxes to the government for poor people than have those people break into my house and get it." He never really figured out how to respond and eventually just moved to the libertarian utopia of Idaho.
If everyone voted with rational self-interest, the Republican party would move leftward on some key issues, and things would get very tight again.
It is this precise dynamic of refusing to move just a TINY bit to the left (that is all it would take for lots of centrist voters) and instead faling into the "let's gaslight everyone, let's gerrymander everything, and win that way" that is killing us, and creating this maddening partisanship. The nation would be so much healthier if the party would try to appeal to the median voter instead of just doubling down on nutjobism.
I know it, huh? The nerve of me thinking that most people are misguided for voting GOP. Why, it's almost as if I think that Democratic policies are objectively better!
My initial reaction to this article was going to be "how about finding some people who trusted him but got ripped off to establish he's a grifter in a negative ad campaign?", but after reading this, I now worry that that could be daunting....
I feel like every other day the news has on someone who trusted Trump and used to work for him or support him and then got burned and now hate him. Whether it’s Michael Cohen or James Mattis or his former contractors or whoever.
I usually avoid Trump-focused posts, but I admire how Matt can take this topic that makes people on both sides insane and lay the facts out calmly, logically, and relentlessly to the devastating conclusion. Hard to argue with any of this! A perfect cheat sheet for engaging people you know who are considering voting for him. I’m glad it’s not paywalled.
It’s sickening how normal rules - legal, moral, logical - don’t apply to Trump. His voters don’t care, it’s truly like a suicide cult. Rapes don’t matter, scams don’t matter (the case you mention, Trump university etc), blasphemy doesn’t matter (”Trump bibles”), nothing matters. Absolutely he was right in claiming he could murder someone in cold blood and his so called ”Christian” base would lap it up like communion wine.
One of the sickest things he has said/done and that literally noone else would get away with is to criticize John McCain for ”getting caught” in Vietnam (enduring years of torture to protect other Americans) while Trump himself used his rich dad to escape the draft. That comment alone should have ended his career. It’s possible the most anti-American statement ever uttered by an American politician.
Very well said. McCain could be a sanctimonious windbag at times but Trump's treatment of him, particularly in regards to his former POW status, was horrific. An interesting through line to his comments regarding McCain were his pardons of war criminals late in his presidency. That whole episode I still feel is underdiscussed as one of the absolute lowest of lows of Trump's legacy.
This is all true, and maddeningly this is the kind of work the NY Times should have been doing in 2016 rather than finessing the nuances of state department IT. It's all super true, and my inner Brian Beutler has ideas about making content with all the hardworking contractors and other types Trump has stiffed over the years.
But my inner Beutler is also saying that at this stage in the game what we need to do more of is driving news cycles. The SOTU was the last cycle Biden really drove and it worked pretty well. It can't just be about Trump's background (and the guy is an inveterate scumbag) but it needs to be Biden getting out there.
Personally I think he needs to fire his entire White House comms staff and get a wartime consigliere who will let Biden be Biden. A proposed synthesis: Biden tours NY and holds press conferences on the street in front of Trump properties with contractors who were stiffed on work in that property.
Are there conservatives out there who find Beutler to be persuasive to them? I'm on his team but I get the feeling Beutler really only focuses on persuading those who already think Trump is terrible.
I don't think Beutler is going for conservatives necessarily, and I don't always agree with his theory of the political case. I think his insight around commanding news cycles and driving the narrative is correct, and probably one of the best things Biden can do to improve his standing. He needs to be driving things, not be driven.
Yeah, I think if I'm reading Beutler right, there's a reason that conservatives were able to get "tan suit" as a news story. It's the most absurdist consequence of conservative media speaking in one voice but because it is so absurd it's a great "brown M&M's" example of a wider phenomenon.
Basically, Democrats and left leaning media too often do not row in the same direction. Because there are so many different terrible and asinine things about Trump, none of his many terrible aspects end up driving news coverage for weeks or months on end. So it does stick with swing voters who are not reading the news everyday. You need Dem establishment and left leaning media to focus on Trump's corruption and authoritarianism together in order for that message to break through and pierce the consciousness of swing voters.
I have seen like a hundred instances of people talking about the tan suit metascandal but I have literally seen no one actually say it was scandalous that Obama wore a tan suit.
“US Representative Peter King…deemed the suit’s color combined with the subject of terrorism to be ‘unpresidential’…’There’s no way to excuse what the President did yesterday’”.
First, good example that random Congressmen/Congresswomen acting like idiots just for a few mentions on the news is depressingly not new.
But it’s why I made the “brown M&Ms" jibe. A lot of the commentary was mostly the form of late night jokes and yes most of it was pretty tame. But I think it’s worth bringing up because it’s a small but stupid thing that’s indicative of something much more important; the unity with which right wing media speaks combined with the need for “balance” does an enormous amount to help elevate non stories as stories if it’s harming democrats. And in 2016 I think we saw the ultimate example of why this is so important.
Yeah people just aren’t hearing enough about Trump being bad or it’s not consistent enough and they forget. That’s hilarious. If only leftists media in unison threw a sustained tantrum then middle of the roaders would finally understand. Yep.
I think his comms staff is bad, but his inner brain trust and his campaign people are pretty good. And I think you'll see him drive news cycles more and more the closer we get to the election when the news cycles will really count.
Do you think they’re keeping their powder dry now for some reason? Why wouldn’t they start driving news cycles now if they have the smarts and capacity to do it?
I have no idea what they're thinking subjectively, but I think there's a non-crazy argument to be made that too-early news cycles have little to no lasting effect and end up not mattering. Trump in 2016 probably didn't have a single good news cycle until October. In 2022, the Dems had horrible news cycle after horrible news cycle for the whole first half of the year, then came back to have a historically good midterm result for an incumbent party - obviously most of that was because of Dobbs, but even if that was outside the Dems' control, it still helps to show that timing matters a lot (plus there were other contributing factors as well like the passage of the IRA).
The Dems haven’t been “putting points on the board,” ie passing bills on stuff people actually care about. Unfortunately the things they care about tend to be immediate sugar high policies like hanging immigrants rather than slow boring ideas.
Well I suppose it could be “cancel student loan debt with one stroke of the pen” or “stop Israeli bombing without much thought to what’s supposed to happen next.”
Yeah I'm not trying to say they haven't gone after some sugar-high policies. I'm still just confused about hanging immigrants? Is there some kind of harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the WH or Dems?
As a kid who is from New England originally and culturally, but grew up in the Midwest, seeing people take Trump seriously on The Apprentice was a wild thing to behold, because I think if you come from the Northeast it's just kind of a given that the guy is a huckster and everyone knows it. Like, I grew up reading my dad's Bloom County compilations, and Trump was literally a running buffoon villain for large stretches of the run, in a way that was etched into my consciousness in like 1990 at age 7.
Having worked a real job for a few years before the show came out, it was comical to me that anyone thought business got done in any way similar to The Apprentice. It was obviously clownish, and Trump clearly didn't actually operate in the manner portrayed. There was nothing really interesting in making a sport of asinine "business deals". I didn't get how that show lasted more than the pilot. B-school mock shark tanks are more realistic.
I didn't think much of it for years, and now here we are
I remember when his Twitter feud with Rosie O’Donnell died down and I thought “finally, that guy is gone from the news and won’t be in my face any more”.
This. I was a kid when it was out but I watched it later on and was struck by a) how ludicrous it was a portrayal of anything resembling “business” and b) how much fun it was to watch. Trump in particular was entertaining once separated him from what he now represents politically.
Back in the 2000's I knew tons of evangelicals who never missed an episode of The Apprentice. I believe the popularity of the show is the reason he became president.
My job moved from NYC to Miami in February 2016, so just as Trump started blowing up in the primaries. A few different people asked me what New Yorkers through of Trump. My answer: They think he’s a buffoon.
It also feels weird that his affiliation with the Reform Party in the late 1990's was a signal that that party had no future post-Perot since Trump was not seen as a serious person, then he became president. It's not like he became better since the 90's (probably got worse), but the GOP fundamentally changed in that time.
It's not even like it was a thing for us as a family...it was moreso that my dad really liked it and bought the compilations and it was the early 90s, so entertainment options were much sparser. When I got bored in the summer, I'd go to my dad's bookshelf and grab Bloom County or the Martin Cruz Smith 'Arkady Renko' novels.
I did not know(at the time) whether Trump was a huckster( but watching Season 1 of the Apprentice I came away with the impression that he simply had good advisers and wasn't particular good at the job himself (different impression than huckster).
Apparently that was not the takeaway most people had.
One of the bizarre elements of the Trump phenomenon is how fake and irrelevant scandals crowd out real and clear bad things he has done.
Trump was a property developer in New York in the 70s and 80s so probably paid lots of bribes and associated with the Mafia but no one seems interested in digging despite Trump scandals being the dominant story for 8 years. I do wonder sometimes if there is some informal non aggression pact not to look into dodgy property deals. Obama got a cheap home from a developer who went to jail it didn't become a focus of right wing attention despite being more real than many stories they attacked him over.
"I do wonder sometimes if there is some informal non aggression pact not to look into dodgy property deals."
I think it's broader even than dodgy property deals. Something I've spent the last few years wondering is why it is every Democratic state AG, DA, etc. hasn't been engaging in maximum enforcement of labor and safety rules at every "Trump Organization" affiliated business location in their jurisdiction. I mean, I don't practice labor and employment law, I've just collaterally had to deal with those issues sometimes while representing other clients and also because I used to have an employment partner in the office next to me, but my strong takeaway is that even businesses that are making very sincere efforts to comply with all relevant federal and state employment laws are likely to have violations, so it seems really dubious to me that there aren't going to be easily discoverable issues with anything Trump touches.
The New York Times had a piece yesterday about how public officials are dealing with an increased level of death threats recently, which may be playing a role here as well.
A quick Google search shows that Politico, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, Yahoo News, the New York Daily News and Mother Jones all covered his mob ties in 2015-2016. The stories just didn't resonate with enough people. Clinton tried to use Tony Rezko as an attack on Obama in 2008, but that also didn't have much legs, in part of how small-bore that was (considering the fact that she focused on the purchase of 10 feet of land, which simply wasn't a big enough deal to matter to people).
Nobody cares what team he is on. He became President. Are you really claiming that if he had been the Democratic President that R's would not be up in arms about his past (and present) corruption? We are all aware that it is challenging to prosecute all white collar criminals and choices must be made. But we expect more from those in power.
It's not hard to do well in the stock market. Just diversify, and don't do dumb stuff like buy meme stocks, i.e. don't gamble. MoC have enough money that they have probably outsourced this stuff to financial advisors anyway, they're not day trading.
Judging from the right-wing replies to Matt's tweets this morning on this article, a knee-jerk response this argument will draw is "It doesn't matter because Biden is worse." It would be great to have a counterpart piece written in the same style laying out why Biden is OK and inflation isn't that bad.
Partisanship is frying people’s brains as usual. If you can’t see that a person like Trump should be kept as far away as possible from the WH - regardless of your ideological beliefs (or at least unless you are a fascist who loves corruption, cruelty and incompetence) - your brain has been fried
Some of my best friends genuinely believe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy and is more corrupt and racist than Trump is. Most of these people are lawyers at that! I can't comprehend it.
The final paragraph is true, but I think it only envisions the best-case scenario for the country.
Trump has likely backed himself into a corner where the “truly disastrous”, on day 1, is absolutely unavoidable. He will have to do at least several major, destabilizing things in the first few days of his presidency.
They will make us forget about the more mundanely scummy a character he is, and will stamp him as a far darker, more fearful character in American history. And contra many on this board, I do not regard them as mere “possibilities”, or “worst-case scenario”—I see them as written in stone if he wins the Electoral College.
We’ve heard them all before, but if you’ll bear with me, it’s worth reiterating the worst of it.
The two big ones: 1.) A Turkey-style purge of the federal workforce across all departments, starting with the Justice Department, and especially with regard to the crimes he’s charged with, and 2.) Using “loyal” elements of said workforce, likely augmented by allied state governments, local police, and almost certainly deputized militia, to launch a massive military crackdown on blue America.
Some may be reading this and going “Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, we know he wants to do that, big deal. No guarantee he will.”
Not “wants”. Needs to. Immediately. Yesterday.
We really do not fathom how cornered Trump is at the moment, legally and emotionally, and how determined he is to enact revenge. More to the point, how impatient he is to do so, and how little time he has for those who would urge him to “stand back and stand by” (as they say) once he had power again.
He likely sees extreme measures as not only necessary for his own self-preservation, but necessary to show everyone how “strong” he is—and how he’s not a, shall we say, certain perjorative associated with anatomy.
Moreover, he’s not wrong—he’s had to make promises to keep his key supporters on board these past years, and not moving on to some more promising aspiring autocrat.
If he can find enough loyal people inside and outside the federal government to at least attempt what he wants, it does not matter what the rules say. There is a reason he is also reportedly planning to make the (on-paper, unlimited) pardon power of the presidency a key tool of a second term.
We do not fathom how massive and traumatic those two things alone would be, and how they would dominate his presidency and global news from start to end.
We talk flippantly about him, for example, “making his cases go away”, as if that’s just something a president does by flipping a switch. As opposed to, say, mass chaos, a lot of armed men running through government buildings, forcibly escorting civil servants out, eliminating files, departments, people. Coup-level stuff—even after a legally-won election.
That is the scenario we’re facing—not, say, Trump signing a paper with a sharpie behind the Resolute Desk and beaming at the cameras.
And thats just the internal crackdown. There’s the external crackdown as well. It will likely be violent, deadly, historic, and the major global news story of 2025.
And again, it is likely inevitable on day 1, due both to Trump’s need for revenge and to show “strength”—but more importantly, to get a head start on his plans for mass roundup and deportation.
Whether Trump finds a country to eject millions of migrants to or not, he is absolutely determined to enact the parts of his plan within his control. He will, if he is president, make rounding up, putting in camps, and ostentatiously, openly, inflicting suffering on millions of people a top priority of his administration. Matt (and others) have speculated on Trump’s prioritization in the past, reasoning that we can’t read the future or his mind in granular detail needed—I would respectfully, based on what we know of Trump’s way of thinking and current circumstances, disagree on that.
I would submit that this aspect of Trump’s platform, by far the largest-scale short-term incarceration in American history if enacted, and almost certainly the cruelest promise he’s made, is genuinely something you can count on. It is the one thing, beyond a boundless ego and a lust for personal wealth, Trump genuinely believes in. Revenge. “Strength”. Showing nobody and no law and stop you from doing what you want to do. We can make all kinds of comforting excuses as to why he “can’t” do all this terrible stuff in our system —all of which would be likely moot in Trump’s first few weeks upon returning to power. Especially on the ground, in the short term.
Again, expect to see scenes you’re used to seeing in countries like Thailand, Turkey, Myanmar. Not, say, slightly more strict police law and order, like both his supporters and opponents alike still seem to be tacitly anticipating. More the proverbial “Things Fall Apart”/“Children of Men”-lite scenario.
All of this would likely happen in, ironically, an environment of mass lawlessness and impunity. Again, not only has he promised to use his pardon power to protect those who commit crimes on his behalf, allied governors are already at work doing the same. “Frontier justice” comes to mind, and if people do not see the possibilities inherent in a nation armed to the teeth and militias determined to affect partisan politics under the ultimate protection of the commander-in-chief, I promise you, Donald Trump does.
All of this, assuming it happens, would make the United States the subject of horrified headlines globally for months, if not years, and would likely push all the news about Gaza, Ukraine, and whatever else people care about off the front page. To be cheeky about it for a second, it would be as if David Sacks teamed up with David Duke and just started firing the American people right and left, as if our country writ large were a woke company in need of “purging”.
Also, all this, and its underrated likelihood in a second Trump term, for the reasons above, is why I caution some against spending too much time and energy pondering the ordinary policy and economic prospects of the man returning to power.
Inflation, health care, taxes, etc., though useful for engaging people politically (and possibly ending up what the election turns on) will ultimately not be what we remember about this era, nor the ultimate legacy of Trump, win or lose.
If he wins, all of them will likely recede into the background and seem quaint and small. More elemental, basic things will be front and center of mind.
Hopefully I’m wrong on this, of course.
And we can all go back to being mad at Joe Manchin or something. That would be nice.
Isn’t the usual response to this line of thinking to point out that the Clintons are seemingly corrupt? Or Pelosi’s oddly well timed stock trades? It’s not like they found a bunch of gold bars in Trump’s closet like that *changes tone* New Jersey Democrat! Or that all politicians are corrupt? Chicago politics is a byword for typical Democrat corruption, right? That’s been my experience whenever I bring up Trump’s corrupt, self-serving dealings with my pro-trump family. Everyone is corrupt and every politician will do things to harm me but Trump is corrupt and screws over people I don’t like so that’s an improvement over just being corrupt.
The key difference here, I think, is that most normie Dems I know would be fine with going after Pelosi, Clinton, et al., for their shady-looking shit in a way that Trumps voters would not be okay with. Like, in real life when this comes up, I'm always like, "Yes, investigate the people in office with shady business dealings, that is exactly what I want!"
The thing is that Trump voters do NOT want the law enforced equally, they want a lack of enforcement, equally.
It it true though that the Dem power structure has little interest in going after its own shady dealings, regardless of the thoughts of individual voters, and it’s not like Menendez was losing elections.
Compare how Democrats are treating Menendez to how Republicans treated Ken Paxton. (Although I'll grant that George Desantos was such an embarrassment and a clown that even the Republicans didn't want him around anymore.)
I'm not saying that the Democrats aren't better than the Republicans, but I would say that Menendez's general perception as a crook *long* predates the Democratic commitment to doing anything about it. Better late than never, but you don't get a ton of moral high ground points when such internal discipline as you do engage in is exceedingly belated and grudging.
At a minimum it suggests that the ex ante commitment is to stretching venality as far as it can go (while admittedly at least acknowledging a limit) instead of some sort of principled commitment to honorable conduct as the relevant standard.
It's not that I disagree, it's that I think people who like Trump don't care. Let me try another way of communicating what I think this mindset looks like.
Why should I care if Trump screws over people close to him? My boss screwed me over at work the other day and I'm not getting paid for some of my time worked. My ex-wife screwed me over and I'm sending her a chunk of my paycheck, or the government starts seizing my property and garnishing my pay. Schools screwed over my kid by spending more time on Black history month than on phonics. Everyone is constantly screwing everyone else to the point of it being a totally normal way the world works. Saying that Trump screws over people close to him and doesn't deliver on promises seems like a totally normal expectation of anyone I'd meet or interact with.
I’ve never heard it so well explained before. Many of the 1/6 protesters had backgrounds that featured a lot of setbacks - failed marriages, failed businesses, etc. It does seem they Trump appeals to people
who feel they have been screwed.
That said many of the stories involved some poor choices. A guy has an affair, wife leaves and takes half the money, his business hits a downturn and he lacks the capital to keep it going due to the divorce so loses the rest of his money and the business. But it’s easier to blame liberals or immigrants or ANTIFA than to blame himself for the ill considered decision to bang the new receptionist.
Perhaps the worst thing Trump and his Republican acolytes have done is to so salt the ground of American culture with cynicism and alienation that I'm not sure when we'll recover. War of all against all and nothing matters lol and all that crap.
There's a reason Obama and "Hamilton"-type optimism sounds so out of joint now. Trump has turned us into a bitter, divisive unhappy people. Nice job.
Trump didn't come out of nowhere. Obama was elected as the "hope and change" candidate, and there was broad euphoria among the left at his election. 8 years later, a lot of Americans felt disenchanted by that message.
I think that is often unfairly laid at his feet, but there was fertile ground for Trump's rhetoric as a result.
I don't know what made Americans so dyspeptic. But I do know that Trump and his acolytes are a flamethrower pointed at a bunch of gasoline-soaked rags.
I really think an underrated watershed moment is McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for his running mate back in '08. Certainly, the Clinton/Gingrich era already got us going down the hyperpartisan drain, but her rhetoric was REALLY harsh and low brow. Obama was a terrorist, Dems hated America, etc. The GOP has never really looked back from that. This is why I somewhat disagree with MY's take that patriotism is something the right gets right. If it were a patriotism genuinely rooted in a love for America and it's transformational history, then amen to that, that's great. But I think Reagan was kind of the last true exemplar of that on the right. Now much of right-of-center patriotism is pretty surface deep idol worship and/or dividing between real and self-hating Americans. I think there is a real opportunity for liberals to reclaim a more civic virtue/American values oriented version of patriotism.
Bibi Netanyahu should be seen as a cautionary tale about electing corrupt populists*. What we should learn from his 2023 term is that when a country with a lot of enemies see that weakness, they will try to create the circumstances of “something genuinely disastrous happens”.
We’re now in Cold War II and America has some powerful enemies. They won’t wait around for something disastrous to happen to America while Trump is at the helm - they will make that disaster happen.
*reporting on Netanyahu misleadingly tries to portray him as a war monger theocratic fascist, but in real life he’s just Trump in a country where security concerns are paramount.
This is one of the smartest takes I’ve seen on Trump. I hope your long tail, short tail prediction is the worst damage he can do before that final stroke (and may it come soon). Love your observation that HE is the snake! I know a lot about pathological narcissists but missed this obvious one. Projection is his one superpower, the key to his long con. I am in my 70s and ever since the late 60s, have leaned mostly left because of social justice issues, but Matt, you (and time) are nudging me more to the center left.
A functional political party would exploit having a buffoonish opponent by enacting controversial priorities that would eventually prove popular, for instance a public option or child allowances. However, the Democratic party is not functional. The political windfall Trump created in 2016 was squandered by nominating an unpopular warhorse who won her place on the national stage through marriage and kept it by tolerating serial infidelities. The 2024 windfall will likely be consumed by nominating an unpopular 82 year old who cant even consolidate the minority vote.
Trump is not the only elite politician who has failed to put country first, he’s just the most cartoonish and prominent example.
Irrational Hillary hatred is irrational. If 2016 Hillary had thematically and stylistically borne more similarity to 2008 Hillary, the outcome of the election would have been different. Also, Hillary won the popular vote in 2016, so it is simply a lie to state that the country rejected her always and forever. Something like 30,000 voters in MI/PA/WI rejected her for idiosyncratic reasons, and here we are.
Irrational Hilary hate is, as you note, irrational. However from a more substantive perspective she is fairly associated with 1. the 'neoliberal' triangulation of the 90s that's moment had passed and by 2016 had a somewhat tarnished legacy, and 2. her vote to support the Iraq invasion. Retail politics has never been her strong suit and I think it's fair to say she peaked at it when she got caught taking a shot of whiskey with West Virginia deplorables back in 2008. So while the case against her has become exaggerated in a lot of ways I think there's ample evidence she was both passed her prime and the wrong person for the moment. Suddenly the election is way closer than it had to be, thus allowing for all those other little flukes to change the outcome.
She won 3 million more votes than her opponent in 2016, fought Barack Obama to a statistical tie in 2008, and won two US Senate elections in New York. Hillary does not lack political skills. In 2016, she made the unfortunate choice to try to neutralize Bernie by leaning into identify politics. It is objectively false, however to state that the American people, at any time, have ever categorically rejected Hillary. It Has. Never. Happened.
We've been over this. Matt Y even wrote a post on how the Democratic Party can't just wave a magic wand and magically replace Biden with "the same, but more charismatic and 30 years younger."
You're to the right of me, so I'm sure you'll agree that Kamala Harris was not a good VP choice. That's the big dilemma for Biden: if he steps down, he's replaced by Harris, who is more unpopular than him. If he tries to replace Harris, he gets hit with "he's trying to get rid of the first Black female VP! How racist and sexist!"
I'm sure he picked her based on a combination of "it would be great to have the first-ever Black woman VP, both for historical reasons and to appeal to the base" and "she'll grow into the role."
If he picked a blank man (eg Warnock) who was actually descended from slaves (eg not Obama or Harris) he might do better with blacks. Biden’s weakness is with black men, and they don’t like Harris any more than I do
Biden couldn't have picked Warnock, he's a Senator from Georgia, and the Democrats need every single Senator they can get. If Warnock were the VP, we would have a Republican in the Senate in his place.
Agreed re: picking a Black descendant of slaves (man or woman) would have been good, assuming that person was likable (as Warnock is, afaik).
In the era of primaries, it is impossible for a party to intentionally choose its nominee, regardless of what the “Bernie would have won” people might say.
I think saying that Trump didn’t do anything to address the chaos of 2020 is a potentially powerful line of attack, but it requires liberals and the media to acknowledge that there was chaos in 2020, and it was harmful in many ways.
"Liberals need to remind everyone the ways in which Trump was responsible for the chaos of 2020-21 and for Dobbs."
What's nuts about this tact, at least according to the recent NY Times poll is that 20% of those polled think *Biden* was responsible for Dobbs (maybe the same thinking that he was POTUS when it happened, just like POTUS in charge is responsible for the economy, Trump had a "good" economy, Biden had a "bad" economy) : /
It isn't these fantastic conspiracies spun on MSNBC about Trump being a Russian agent, nor is it about Trump being another Hitler, nor about Trump being an authoritarian dictator.
No, the biggest problem with Trump is the plain old fashioned graft. The skimming money from campaigns and rallies, the billing of millions to government to stay in Mar a Lago, the invitation of foreign govts to funnel cash through his DC hotels etc. the selling of presidential pardons for cash etc
Why do we not hear more about the graft?
This is the part libs won't like. Trump's graft is a much more extreme version of the same kinds of buckraking that Bill Clinton engaged in when he was president. We know he traded questionable pardons for cash. We know the Clinton foundation is a magnet for huge sums of foreign cash. Does anyone doubt if Clinton owned a hotel in Little Rock he'd figure out a way to skim money from it in ways technically legal but are unseemly..
No one has found any laws broken but let's be honest, Biden was clearly setting himself up for a big payday as a reward for faithful service to the American empire. Clearly this is why Hunter Biden seemed so effective as a conduit for foreign cash.
Maybe we need to pay politicians a lot more and really crack down on this sort of thing.
I honestly think the country has become inured to this sort of buckraking and I think the press has become bored with it. It's yet another sign reforms are definitely needed.
> Biden was clearly setting himself up for a big payday as a reward for faithful service to the American empire.
I always find comments like this confusing. While you didn't specifically say this, many on the right believe Biden is incoherent and drooling on himself. But at the same time, there's this belief that he's a mastermind of a "crime family". Which is it? And when was this payday of his supposed to come? I believe Biden is still pretty sharp, but I don't think he has a lot of good years left. So what would be the point?
It's coming mainly via Hunter and a bunch of other shell companies they set up to make the money harder to trace. A lot of these deals were set in motion when Biden was VP in Obama II and had no intention of running for president again, in which case the matter would have been completely forgotten.
Not clear any of it would be illegal since no one has proved the quo in exhange for the quid. Still it stinks but it's routine behavior for officials in both parties.
You'd probably agree Biden has also declined at least somewhat since Obama II when he was informal emissary to Ukraine as that was 10 year ago or more. No?
Not sure bringing up the two narratives about Biden is quite the retort you seem to think. He set up large payday ten years ago and now is a much older man who is showing his age.
OK, so he set it all in motion but then decided circa 2019 that he would rather be president than enjoy the payoff.
I have my doubts. I think no one disputes Hunter was doing this, but I haven't seen anything convincing that Joe was involved. But I was mainly just trying to see what your theory was and if it could make sense (which I think it does).
Well let's assume Hunter can only do what he does by selling access to Joe or better still the ability to influence policy.
Hunter wouldn't have gotten a seat on Burisma's board with Joe being VP and we know there were large payments by Hunter to Joe.
Again, I don't think the press cares much about looking deeper into this and I'm not sure the country cares.either..for basically the same reasons that Trump's naked, shameless buckraking is the aspect of the man his enemies seem least concerned with.
The old ethics rules have basically broken down through a combination of clever lawyering and public apathy
I agree that Hunter was trading on his supposed access to Joe; that much is clear. The payments to Joe I believe have been disproven, fwiw. And in any case, if this was a scheme to get rich, it seems to have utterly failed as Hunter's main financial benefactor seems to be cutting him off:
The point about Trump being a con man is true, but I really don't think it will convince anybody who's considering supporting him because they already know that. Imagine you're in a war zone, who are you going to support?
1. The invading enemy who have been very vocal about the fact that they hate you and want to destroy everything about your lifestyle that you value.
2. The spineless local politician who says that the enemy isn't really that bad and if we point out to them they're not being very nice they'll stop.
3. The local mob boss. He's a criminal of course, but he also has guns and soldiers he's not afraid to use. He also claims to be a pillar of the community and he may feel some sort of obligation because the money you've been paying him is nominally for protection.
These are all bad choices, but 3 is not at all irrational.
It’s unbelievable, the degree to which Republican voters are driven by fear. Who is this “enemy” who is advancing and wants to destroy them and everything they value, to the point that Republicans feel that supporting a scumbag con artist is their best bet?
Is it ultra-woke college students?
Immigrants?
Homeless drug addicts?
It certainly isn’t Russia or China, given that Trump admires strongman autocrats and has praised Putin for his “genius” invasion of Ukraine.
Which of the above is such a fearsome enemy that it’s worth destroying our democracy for?
I know this isn't popular on the left, but many Republicans really genuinely believe that abortion is the murder of babies, and Trump was instrumental in stopping it.
Also, there were widespread riots in many cities across the US on the theory that one race needs to be subjugated in favor of another.
Also, children in schools are being forced into what is effectively a religion that teaches them that their country is evil and they would likely benefit from medical treatments that would sterilize them.
I'm sure you feel that they are wrong about all of those points, but just saying "why are you afraid of college students" is simply to fail to engage with what they actually believe, and in many cases have good reasons for believing.
I detest Trump for many reasons and want him to lose BIGLY, if I wanted to convince you to vote for Biden or at least refrain from voting for Trump, what could I do?
1. Abortion: I'm sorry, until humans invent artificial wombs, there will continue to be an irreconcilable conflict between the fetus/embryo and the mother, and since the mother, unlike the embryo/fetus, is a sentient human being with thoughts, feelings, goals, dreams, etc., I am firmly on the side of the mother. However, I would agree with you on reducing the overall number of abortions, only I would do it be reducing the DEMAND for abortions, not the SUPPLY. I.e., I would focus on comprehensive sex education, easily available and affordable contraceptives for everyone, and providing more social support for pregnant women so they don't feel compelled to have an abortion.
2. The riots were horrible, but their supporters were mostly far lefty online activists, not elected Democratic officials (a few elected Democrats support the riots, but also, some elected Republicans support fantasies of white Christians dominating America by force, so, pot, kettle). Biden himself has spoken out against riots and in favor of funding the police, repeatedly. If you would like elected Democrats to speak out more forcefully against riots and disorder, I'm in favor of that.
3. I don't want any schoolchildren to be taught that their country is evil. I love this country! I became a US citizen as an adult, by choice. FWIW, n = 1, but my son goes to public school in a solidly blue state (California) and he's never told us or brought home any school materials that indicate that "America is evil." Re: trans children, uhhhhhh it's complicated and I really don't want to get into it right now, I would say that if a child wants "social" gender transition (different pronouns, different clothes) they should be allowed to do so, but we should be super duper extra careful with puberty blockers (see the recent Cass report).
TL;DR: If Democratic politicians were to say, "Abortion is a sad choice and we should work to reduce it by promoting comprehensive sex ed and contraception; riots are bad; America is flawed but good and patriotism is good; let's support trans children but also be mindful of unintended consequences of rushing in with puberty blockers," would you be more likely to vote for Biden/Democrats?
1. Sorry, I find arguments of the form "this person is less than fully human and deserving of rights because they look different" absolutely repugnant. As to the irreconcilably conflict between mother and baby, you also have to look at the magnitude of the harms. Pregnancy is surely difficult, but it is also surely not as bad as being killed. In cases where the mother's life is endangered, I think abortion can be justified. As to reducing the quantity of abortions, I certainly agree, I just think that the traditional sexual morality of the west does a much better job of that than "have sex as promiscuously as you want, but also use a condom."
2. The riots are a symptom of a deeper cause. Have any prominent democrats condemned, say, Ibram X Kendi for being as deeply racicst as any KKK member, just in favor of a different race?
3. The correct way to treat trans children is as a private religious choice that parents can make. Similarly to a child going to school wearing a kippah: you can't mock them and have to make reasonable accommodations, but neither will teachers say that it is correct to wear one, and no teacher would dream of giving one of their students a secret Bar Mitzvah against their parents' wishes.
So, to get my vote, Democrats should say "It's clear that babies have rights at some point before birth, so we support aligning with most of Europe with a ban after 12 weeks. It is racist to treat people differently due to their race, so we will repeal any law or policy that does so. Transition is a private religious choice that parents may make, but schools have no business supporting it in an official capacity."
Again, thanks for a substantive answer, I do have to go to work now so don't have time for a long reply. I think we could actually come to an agreement on a fair number of things.
I just feel compelled to call you out on this: "this person is less than fully human and deserving of rights because they look different". That is NOT what I said above, I made it clear that the reason I don't think fetuses/embryos don't have rights is not that they "look different," it's that they're not sentient beings. Sentient = has thoughts, feelings, a conscious experience. Embryos don't have that; pregnant women do.
Also! You're invoking the specter of "promiscuous sex" as the reason for abortions, like "if those brazen sluts could keep their legs together, they wouldn't have to murder precious innocent babies." In reality, many abortions are for women who are already married/in committed relationships and either aren't ready (financially, emotionally) to have a baby right now, or already have as many children as they want/can afford. Promiscuity has nothing to do with those cases. I assume you don't want those women to say to their husbands/boyfriends, "Honey, no form of contraception is 100% perfect, so to make sure I don't have to murder an innocent unborn baby, let's never have penetrative sex again."
If a friend of mine loses her pregnancy in the fourth, fifth or sixth month of gestation, I would be complete asshole if I said "well, the fetus wasn't a sentient being, so it's death isn't a big deal".
Fair enough, I'm sorry I mischaracterized what you said. Still, I think the distinctions you're drawing are not all that important. For example, a person undergoing general anesthesia has no thoughts, feelings, or conscious experience, but it would still be wrong to kill them.
To the second part of this comment: No, I want them to say "Honey, no form of contraception is 100% perfect, so we'll be overjoyed with this new baby, a gift of infinite worth." As to abstaining from sex if you have an overwhelmingly pressing reason not to have a baby, yes, that is correct.
I fully agree with what "Democrats should say", the problem is that ones in office (or running for office) do NOT say those things. In blue states, schools will not even inform parents that their kid has "socially transitioned" at school, and laws have been passed (with unanimous support from the Democrats in the state legislatures) that declare that parental refusal of puberty blockers for their kid is the legal equivalent of child abuse.
Interesting to talk about riots! I had forgotten that there was actually a bit of violence, and that a few people died. Where I was in Texas, it was more vivid that this was a huge turnout of protests, larger than anything else in my lifetime, but violence was really not very visible.
Definitely weird to say that these people were protesting *for* racial subjugation, but I can see how some news coverage might have spun it that way to avoid making people think about existing racial subjugation.
Affirmative action, reparation payments, and "anti-racist" policies generally are straightforwardly hurting one race in order to benefit another, and a widespread government enforcement of them is, I think, fairly called racial subjugation. The disagreement is about whether this is justified or not, perhaps because there was racial subjugation going the other way in the past.
The claim is that these are counteracting *current* subconscious biases and enduring legacies of lower wealth and educational opportunities, and thus creating a closer-to-level playing field. I don't think many people (if any) are saying that there should be a period of actual *subjugation* that is justified in comparison to subjugation in another time period.
Really? “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Seems to me that Kendi is saying that current white people ought to be treated similarly to how black people were treated historically, which was certainly subjugation.
"...Children in schools are being forced into what is effectively a religion that teaches them that their country is evil..." So, you are arguing that the Republican belief that the country is evil (or half of it) is justified by the questionable assertion that this is being taught?
TL;DR: Conservatives/Republicans act like they're fighting for their lives in a zombie apocalypse; Liberals/Democrats act like they're living in a post-scarcity utopia.
Highly recommended reading regardless of where you are politically.
When people are conned they do everything in their power to rationalize the conduct of the conman rather than admit they were lied and stolen from. They don’t want to feel complicit in being harmed and thus seek to blame others for their choices.
Yes
Tell that to my Uncle who is now a proud owner of a Trump bible.
Just show him the picture of DJT holding the Bible upside down. Straight up Antichrist symbology.
"He was just distracted by the antifa mob a few blocks away - even someone as strong as him could've been thrown off by how hateful those 'peaceful protesters' were! And do you think Joe Biden even *owns* a Bible? At least Trump took a stand for Christianity!"
Biden literally attends the church my aunt goes to and has attended church more than any President since Carter.
I genuinely wonder how much a Biden campaign message of "Trump is actually scamming you because that's what he always has done" would resonate. The Pod Save America guys have previously noted (and they are not the only ones) that messages focusing on the corruption of Trump (as opposed to the racisms, the unhinged rants) does actually seem to reach swing voters.
As has been pointed out sort of by Matt in this post, it's actually not the case that Trump's racism, authoritarian tendencies and just general unhinged behavior hasn't harmed him. But sort of oddly to me, of all the different angles to take against Trump, the pure corruption of his entire life has been oddly muted from Democrats as far as I can tell.
Completely agree that Trump's scamming of "regular folks" is probably a much more effective attack strategy on his support base and enabling support base - let alone because it's still happening (Trump PAC donations that have almost entirely gone to his pockets and not to "Stop The Steal" efforts, campaigning, etc). The dirty tactics his PAC's take to default his supporters into recurring automatic donations, "doubling" amounts pledged in the fine print etc. Run some ads of former supporters and/or family members of supporters who were pushed into financial dire straits as a result of this aggressively scammy means of maximizing small donors out. Run ads of those who were ruined and defrauded by Trump U and other Trump investments. Small business former partners with Trump who were screwed. Etc.
Unlike his "sex scandals" and "threat to democracy", this kind of stuff hits at a core of Trump support that I see from many Trump supporters is that underneath his rough edges he's a "good guy" that really cares about America, his supporters, etc. And that's what justifies his rough edges, he's "fighting for us", "fighting for America", etc. There is a lot of denial about what a con-man Trump actually is, and that his supporters are his primary marks (and not other politicians or "the deep state").
One of the most effective attack campaigns I can recall is the one against Mitt Romney and Bain Capital from the 2012 campaign - that ironically emerged from the Republican primary (Newt Gingrich I think was the sponsor for this), that portrayed Mitt Romney as a cold blooded rich guy gleefully putting thousands of the types that would become the media depiction of Trump supporters out of work, and put a face to the forces that had been decimating all these "middle America" towns and regions. And it worked - not so much in the primary for Newt, but in the general election because the Obama campaign picked right up where this left off and used it as their primary attack on Romney, who did go on to lose a lot of the white working class base that had been tacking Republican (and who again, became the focus for the 2016 Trump campaign) as a result of this portrayal - and let's not forget what a massive lift this for Obama, who was otherwise running as an incumbent with lowered popularity running for re-election in the midst of a deep economic recession. I wonder if there's still juice to squeeze on his working class/middle class support to remind these folks that Trump is just another rich Republican scamming the base.
I’ve always wished everyone had gone this route instead of going all in on Russia. I don’t think most people even know about the corruption while he was in office.
Or over the "Access Hollywood" tape, part of Trump's "appeal" (for those he appealed to already) was that he was supposedly a "guy's guy" that gets the "hot chicks". The obsessing over that hot tape and trying to disqualify Trump because he's a pig only confirmed that image for those who already knew this about him and hated him already, or for those that already knew this about him and loved him already... IOW, it didn't really move the needle for anyone, not even Paul Ryan who removed his endorsement from Trump for all about 5 minutes until the polls showed that Trump was actually strengthened by the scandal in the Republican electorate.
I would add it was a particularly weak attack from Hillary Clinton, whose husband survived his own sex scandal strengthened, and with a heap ton of her assistance in painting the Ken Starr investigation and report as partisan motivated and that "sex scandals" of politicians were not politically disqualifying in the first place...
My theory on this is that a lot of leftists think all rich businessmen act exactly like Donald Trump does in a business context, so what is there to point out to anyone who says they respect business leaders?
I actually don’t think it’s just a “leftist” thing at all. I actually think tons of regular non leftist voters think tons of politicians take literal bags of money with dollar signs on them as bribes. And reality is there is just enough real life examples that I sort of get why; see Spiro Agnew and see Duke Cunningham.
But I bring up those examples because it’s not like voters just said “who cares” and it’s not like the GOP said “”witch hunt”. Both had to resign. So even in a world where voters think Trump level corruption is rampant, it’s not like people actually like it or don’t care.
That's politicians. I am referring to Trump during his pre-political business career. As Matt explained in this post, Trump was exceptionally corrupt compared to other businessmen, in a way that even say Jeff Bezos has never benn shown to be. I think a lot of leftists see no difference between the business career of Trump and Bezos, so they see no point in highlighting examples like the one Matt gave that show Trump is a very special scumbag.
I just don’t think that’s true.
Fair enough, agree to disagree then.
That may very well be true, but that's an argument to not left "leftists" run all aspects of a campaign ; P this particular line of attack is to directly target Trump's base of support, the ones that think that Trump is a great businessman, "good guy with rough edges", "fighting for them", etc. There's such a vast and rich record - that is still ongoing - of how Trump screws his supporters and people like his supporters. It gets at the heart of how they otherwise justify Trump's "rough edges" because they think it's all in their service.
No one wants to admit they were a sucker
>When people are conned they do everything in their power to rationalize the conduct of the conman rather than admit they were lied and stolen from.<
I've always thought this explained at least some of the dynamic as to why so many less affluent folks vote for right wingers (not just Trump). It's a resentful nihilism born of deep, prideful, hurt. What's the matter with Kansas, and all that. If everybody voted using some reasonable facsimile of rational self-interest, Democrats would control 511 seats in Congress.
Nah, the point of “what’s the matter with Kansas” discourse is that people place value on more than just the legible but limited universe of government benefits. The “rational self-interest” angle takes a too-narrow view of what people place value on (heck, it’s why charity exists). Some people’s beliefs do, in fact, pay rent.
I think it’s also about respect. As someone wrote, poor whites with low education will rather vote for someone whose policies hurts them than on someone who looks down on them. One of Biden’s strengths is that he doesn’t seem to look down on uneducated white people yet he struggles for other reasons (part of them being his own party’s penchant for cultural elitism).
I found Dying of Whiteness’s anecdotes to be unconvincing evidence for this broader assertion.
It can be that and that they are mistaken a lot what will benefit their material self-interest.
If everybody voted using some reasonable facsimile of rational self interest, most of the upper middle class would vote Republican.
Nah. There's such a thing as "enlightened self-interest". You have to be extremely short-sighted to vote for authoritarianism. Just ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky how supporting an authoritarian leader in pursuit of riches worked out for him. (Obviously many of our elite _are_ this short-sighted. It doesn't change the fact that they're behaving in a willfully-ignorant, self-destructive manner.)
Personally I am a winner from the post-New-Deal regulated-capitalist order that has existed in America for the last almost-century. I want to preserve that order. Which means ensuring that we offer opportunity to as many people as possible, and tamp down on rich people engaging in Marie Antoinette antics that could inspire mobs with pitchforks and torches. I can afford to pay higher taxes to help ensure that nobody in my country lives in abject poverty. I can deal with having new apartment buildings that "change the character of my neighborhood" in order to jack up the housing supply to the point that the people whose services I rely on can afford to live close to their jobs. Etc.
Some rich people regarded FDR as "a traitor to his class". In fact, he was all that stood between them and a collapse of the system that might've seen mobs storming their mansions.
I don't think so. Upper middle class people aren't financially independent (they have to work). Republicans as a party are deeply committed to weakening the safety net. That doesn't seem to be in the interests of anyone who's not rich. Republicans have an extremely poor record on protecting the environment. Do UMC folks prefer dirty air? Many upper middle class Americans are LGBT. Many upper middle class Americans get abortions. Many upper middle class Americans don't want to bequeath a world to their grandchildren facing worst case climate change scenarios. Many upper middle class Americans have preexisting medication conditions. And so on.
Republicans lower taxes on the upper middle class.
If the environment, gay rights, and abortion are relevant to this discussion, then I'm not sure why you are so convinced that Republican voters don't actually have any self-interest in the things that Republicans do.
I've always understood the "what's the matter with Kansas" thesis to be that low income people often vote against their economic interests and in line with their culture war interests, and my thought is that the upper middle class is doing the same thing.
"Republicans lower taxes on the upper middle class."
Actually Trump's tax cut raised my taxes by around $3-4k per year, mainly because of the SALT limit. That's the case for many families with incomes in the mid six figures.
To be clear, I'm actually fine with that. If I were re-writing things I'd keep the SALT limit, and I'd put the Mortgage Interest deduction on a schedule to phase out over thirty years by phasing down the amount of principal it applies to (so you don't get windfall losses / gains on a mortgage that was taken out this year, but going forwards everyone can adjust).
But I do find it somewhat ironic that a lot of people who vote for Republicans on the "maybe they'll hurt other people but they'll help me" theory got burned.
"I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
I used to piss off a right-winger I worked with by saying, "I'd rather give taxes to the government for poor people than have those people break into my house and get it." He never really figured out how to respond and eventually just moved to the libertarian utopia of Idaho.
If everyone voted with rational self-interest, the Republican party would move leftward on some key issues, and things would get very tight again.
It is this precise dynamic of refusing to move just a TINY bit to the left (that is all it would take for lots of centrist voters) and instead faling into the "let's gaslight everyone, let's gerrymander everything, and win that way" that is killing us, and creating this maddening partisanship. The nation would be so much healthier if the party would try to appeal to the median voter instead of just doubling down on nutjobism.
>If everyone voted with rational self-interest, the Republican party would move leftward on some key issues,<
True.
>and things would get very tight again.<
I dunno. Things have never been tighter. But it's an interesting thought. Maybe they'd get even tighter, who knows?
I mispoke a bit, I meant the popular vote, which republicans have won only once in about 30 years.
But I see your point, too, in the absence of extreme partisanship, you can get elections like when Reagan carried 49 states.
I know it, huh? The nerve of me thinking that most people are misguided for voting GOP. Why, it's almost as if I think that Democratic policies are objectively better!
My initial reaction to this article was going to be "how about finding some people who trusted him but got ripped off to establish he's a grifter in a negative ad campaign?", but after reading this, I now worry that that could be daunting....
Because even when those people speak out the people vested in the scam not being revealed disregard both their eyes and ears.
I feel like every other day the news has on someone who trusted Trump and used to work for him or support him and then got burned and now hate him. Whether it’s Michael Cohen or James Mattis or his former contractors or whoever.
I usually avoid Trump-focused posts, but I admire how Matt can take this topic that makes people on both sides insane and lay the facts out calmly, logically, and relentlessly to the devastating conclusion. Hard to argue with any of this! A perfect cheat sheet for engaging people you know who are considering voting for him. I’m glad it’s not paywalled.
The article will be read in full on swing state TV spots across the country. The ad buy will be expensive, but worth it.
Start a GoFundMe
It’s sickening how normal rules - legal, moral, logical - don’t apply to Trump. His voters don’t care, it’s truly like a suicide cult. Rapes don’t matter, scams don’t matter (the case you mention, Trump university etc), blasphemy doesn’t matter (”Trump bibles”), nothing matters. Absolutely he was right in claiming he could murder someone in cold blood and his so called ”Christian” base would lap it up like communion wine.
One of the sickest things he has said/done and that literally noone else would get away with is to criticize John McCain for ”getting caught” in Vietnam (enduring years of torture to protect other Americans) while Trump himself used his rich dad to escape the draft. That comment alone should have ended his career. It’s possible the most anti-American statement ever uttered by an American politician.
Trump ordered a whole plaza tear-gassed so that he could shuffle over and hold someone else’s Bible upside down.
The upside down crucifix being a literal symbol of the Antichrist and pagangelicals treat him as the messiah.
“He’s not the Messiah; he’s a very naughty boy!”
Must get my Monty Python reference in to lighten the mood, you know.
I agree completely with you and Joachim. It’s sickening and disgusting.
Very well said. McCain could be a sanctimonious windbag at times but Trump's treatment of him, particularly in regards to his former POW status, was horrific. An interesting through line to his comments regarding McCain were his pardons of war criminals late in his presidency. That whole episode I still feel is underdiscussed as one of the absolute lowest of lows of Trump's legacy.
This is all true, and maddeningly this is the kind of work the NY Times should have been doing in 2016 rather than finessing the nuances of state department IT. It's all super true, and my inner Brian Beutler has ideas about making content with all the hardworking contractors and other types Trump has stiffed over the years.
But my inner Beutler is also saying that at this stage in the game what we need to do more of is driving news cycles. The SOTU was the last cycle Biden really drove and it worked pretty well. It can't just be about Trump's background (and the guy is an inveterate scumbag) but it needs to be Biden getting out there.
Personally I think he needs to fire his entire White House comms staff and get a wartime consigliere who will let Biden be Biden. A proposed synthesis: Biden tours NY and holds press conferences on the street in front of Trump properties with contractors who were stiffed on work in that property.
Are there conservatives out there who find Beutler to be persuasive to them? I'm on his team but I get the feeling Beutler really only focuses on persuading those who already think Trump is terrible.
I don't think Beutler is going for conservatives necessarily, and I don't always agree with his theory of the political case. I think his insight around commanding news cycles and driving the narrative is correct, and probably one of the best things Biden can do to improve his standing. He needs to be driving things, not be driven.
Yeah, I think if I'm reading Beutler right, there's a reason that conservatives were able to get "tan suit" as a news story. It's the most absurdist consequence of conservative media speaking in one voice but because it is so absurd it's a great "brown M&M's" example of a wider phenomenon.
Basically, Democrats and left leaning media too often do not row in the same direction. Because there are so many different terrible and asinine things about Trump, none of his many terrible aspects end up driving news coverage for weeks or months on end. So it does stick with swing voters who are not reading the news everyday. You need Dem establishment and left leaning media to focus on Trump's corruption and authoritarianism together in order for that message to break through and pierce the consciousness of swing voters.
I have seen like a hundred instances of people talking about the tan suit metascandal but I have literally seen no one actually say it was scandalous that Obama wore a tan suit.
“US Representative Peter King…deemed the suit’s color combined with the subject of terrorism to be ‘unpresidential’…’There’s no way to excuse what the President did yesterday’”.
First, good example that random Congressmen/Congresswomen acting like idiots just for a few mentions on the news is depressingly not new.
But it’s why I made the “brown M&Ms" jibe. A lot of the commentary was mostly the form of late night jokes and yes most of it was pretty tame. But I think it’s worth bringing up because it’s a small but stupid thing that’s indicative of something much more important; the unity with which right wing media speaks combined with the need for “balance” does an enormous amount to help elevate non stories as stories if it’s harming democrats. And in 2016 I think we saw the ultimate example of why this is so important.
Yeah people just aren’t hearing enough about Trump being bad or it’s not consistent enough and they forget. That’s hilarious. If only leftists media in unison threw a sustained tantrum then middle of the roaders would finally understand. Yep.
I think his comms staff is bad, but his inner brain trust and his campaign people are pretty good. And I think you'll see him drive news cycles more and more the closer we get to the election when the news cycles will really count.
Do you think they’re keeping their powder dry now for some reason? Why wouldn’t they start driving news cycles now if they have the smarts and capacity to do it?
I have no idea what they're thinking subjectively, but I think there's a non-crazy argument to be made that too-early news cycles have little to no lasting effect and end up not mattering. Trump in 2016 probably didn't have a single good news cycle until October. In 2022, the Dems had horrible news cycle after horrible news cycle for the whole first half of the year, then came back to have a historically good midterm result for an incumbent party - obviously most of that was because of Dobbs, but even if that was outside the Dems' control, it still helps to show that timing matters a lot (plus there were other contributing factors as well like the passage of the IRA).
The Dems haven’t been “putting points on the board,” ie passing bills on stuff people actually care about. Unfortunately the things they care about tend to be immediate sugar high policies like hanging immigrants rather than slow boring ideas.
"tend to be immediate sugar high policies like hanging immigrants"
What is this about?
Well I suppose it could be “cancel student loan debt with one stroke of the pen” or “stop Israeli bombing without much thought to what’s supposed to happen next.”
Yeah I'm not trying to say they haven't gone after some sugar-high policies. I'm still just confused about hanging immigrants? Is there some kind of harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the WH or Dems?
I thought he meant that was an example of "stuff people actually care about"?
As a kid who is from New England originally and culturally, but grew up in the Midwest, seeing people take Trump seriously on The Apprentice was a wild thing to behold, because I think if you come from the Northeast it's just kind of a given that the guy is a huckster and everyone knows it. Like, I grew up reading my dad's Bloom County compilations, and Trump was literally a running buffoon villain for large stretches of the run, in a way that was etched into my consciousness in like 1990 at age 7.
Having worked a real job for a few years before the show came out, it was comical to me that anyone thought business got done in any way similar to The Apprentice. It was obviously clownish, and Trump clearly didn't actually operate in the manner portrayed. There was nothing really interesting in making a sport of asinine "business deals". I didn't get how that show lasted more than the pilot. B-school mock shark tanks are more realistic.
I didn't think much of it for years, and now here we are
I remember when his Twitter feud with Rosie O’Donnell died down and I thought “finally, that guy is gone from the news and won’t be in my face any more”.
This. I was a kid when it was out but I watched it later on and was struck by a) how ludicrous it was a portrayal of anything resembling “business” and b) how much fun it was to watch. Trump in particular was entertaining once separated him from what he now represents politically.
Back in the 2000's I knew tons of evangelicals who never missed an episode of The Apprentice. I believe the popularity of the show is the reason he became president.
My job moved from NYC to Miami in February 2016, so just as Trump started blowing up in the primaries. A few different people asked me what New Yorkers through of Trump. My answer: They think he’s a buffoon.
It also feels weird that his affiliation with the Reform Party in the late 1990's was a signal that that party had no future post-Perot since Trump was not seen as a serious person, then he became president. It's not like he became better since the 90's (probably got worse), but the GOP fundamentally changed in that time.
Oh boy, reading Bloom County with my family was also a ritual when I was a kid.
It's not even like it was a thing for us as a family...it was moreso that my dad really liked it and bought the compilations and it was the early 90s, so entertainment options were much sparser. When I got bored in the summer, I'd go to my dad's bookshelf and grab Bloom County or the Martin Cruz Smith 'Arkady Renko' novels.
I did not know(at the time) whether Trump was a huckster( but watching Season 1 of the Apprentice I came away with the impression that he simply had good advisers and wasn't particular good at the job himself (different impression than huckster).
Apparently that was not the takeaway most people had.
One of the bizarre elements of the Trump phenomenon is how fake and irrelevant scandals crowd out real and clear bad things he has done.
Trump was a property developer in New York in the 70s and 80s so probably paid lots of bribes and associated with the Mafia but no one seems interested in digging despite Trump scandals being the dominant story for 8 years. I do wonder sometimes if there is some informal non aggression pact not to look into dodgy property deals. Obama got a cheap home from a developer who went to jail it didn't become a focus of right wing attention despite being more real than many stories they attacked him over.
"I do wonder sometimes if there is some informal non aggression pact not to look into dodgy property deals."
I think it's broader even than dodgy property deals. Something I've spent the last few years wondering is why it is every Democratic state AG, DA, etc. hasn't been engaging in maximum enforcement of labor and safety rules at every "Trump Organization" affiliated business location in their jurisdiction. I mean, I don't practice labor and employment law, I've just collaterally had to deal with those issues sometimes while representing other clients and also because I used to have an employment partner in the office next to me, but my strong takeaway is that even businesses that are making very sincere efforts to comply with all relevant federal and state employment laws are likely to have violations, so it seems really dubious to me that there aren't going to be easily discoverable issues with anything Trump touches.
The New York Times had a piece yesterday about how public officials are dealing with an increased level of death threats recently, which may be playing a role here as well.
A quick Google search shows that Politico, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, Yahoo News, the New York Daily News and Mother Jones all covered his mob ties in 2015-2016. The stories just didn't resonate with enough people. Clinton tried to use Tony Rezko as an attack on Obama in 2008, but that also didn't have much legs, in part of how small-bore that was (considering the fact that she focused on the purchase of 10 feet of land, which simply wasn't a big enough deal to matter to people).
Nobody cares what team he is on. He became President. Are you really claiming that if he had been the Democratic President that R's would not be up in arms about his past (and present) corruption? We are all aware that it is challenging to prosecute all white collar criminals and choices must be made. But we expect more from those in power.
It's not hard to do well in the stock market. Just diversify, and don't do dumb stuff like buy meme stocks, i.e. don't gamble. MoC have enough money that they have probably outsourced this stuff to financial advisors anyway, they're not day trading.
Judging from the right-wing replies to Matt's tweets this morning on this article, a knee-jerk response this argument will draw is "It doesn't matter because Biden is worse." It would be great to have a counterpart piece written in the same style laying out why Biden is OK and inflation isn't that bad.
Partisanship is frying people’s brains as usual. If you can’t see that a person like Trump should be kept as far away as possible from the WH - regardless of your ideological beliefs (or at least unless you are a fascist who loves corruption, cruelty and incompetence) - your brain has been fried
Some of my best friends genuinely believe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy and is more corrupt and racist than Trump is. Most of these people are lawyers at that! I can't comprehend it.
Having convincing arguments and poor judgment is why they're lawyers and not judges, as far as their internal audience is concerned.
Heck someone in this comment section already asked about the "Biden crime family"
The final paragraph is true, but I think it only envisions the best-case scenario for the country.
Trump has likely backed himself into a corner where the “truly disastrous”, on day 1, is absolutely unavoidable. He will have to do at least several major, destabilizing things in the first few days of his presidency.
They will make us forget about the more mundanely scummy a character he is, and will stamp him as a far darker, more fearful character in American history. And contra many on this board, I do not regard them as mere “possibilities”, or “worst-case scenario”—I see them as written in stone if he wins the Electoral College.
We’ve heard them all before, but if you’ll bear with me, it’s worth reiterating the worst of it.
The two big ones: 1.) A Turkey-style purge of the federal workforce across all departments, starting with the Justice Department, and especially with regard to the crimes he’s charged with, and 2.) Using “loyal” elements of said workforce, likely augmented by allied state governments, local police, and almost certainly deputized militia, to launch a massive military crackdown on blue America.
Some may be reading this and going “Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, we know he wants to do that, big deal. No guarantee he will.”
Not “wants”. Needs to. Immediately. Yesterday.
We really do not fathom how cornered Trump is at the moment, legally and emotionally, and how determined he is to enact revenge. More to the point, how impatient he is to do so, and how little time he has for those who would urge him to “stand back and stand by” (as they say) once he had power again.
He likely sees extreme measures as not only necessary for his own self-preservation, but necessary to show everyone how “strong” he is—and how he’s not a, shall we say, certain perjorative associated with anatomy.
Moreover, he’s not wrong—he’s had to make promises to keep his key supporters on board these past years, and not moving on to some more promising aspiring autocrat.
If he can find enough loyal people inside and outside the federal government to at least attempt what he wants, it does not matter what the rules say. There is a reason he is also reportedly planning to make the (on-paper, unlimited) pardon power of the presidency a key tool of a second term.
We do not fathom how massive and traumatic those two things alone would be, and how they would dominate his presidency and global news from start to end.
We talk flippantly about him, for example, “making his cases go away”, as if that’s just something a president does by flipping a switch. As opposed to, say, mass chaos, a lot of armed men running through government buildings, forcibly escorting civil servants out, eliminating files, departments, people. Coup-level stuff—even after a legally-won election.
That is the scenario we’re facing—not, say, Trump signing a paper with a sharpie behind the Resolute Desk and beaming at the cameras.
And thats just the internal crackdown. There’s the external crackdown as well. It will likely be violent, deadly, historic, and the major global news story of 2025.
And again, it is likely inevitable on day 1, due both to Trump’s need for revenge and to show “strength”—but more importantly, to get a head start on his plans for mass roundup and deportation.
Whether Trump finds a country to eject millions of migrants to or not, he is absolutely determined to enact the parts of his plan within his control. He will, if he is president, make rounding up, putting in camps, and ostentatiously, openly, inflicting suffering on millions of people a top priority of his administration. Matt (and others) have speculated on Trump’s prioritization in the past, reasoning that we can’t read the future or his mind in granular detail needed—I would respectfully, based on what we know of Trump’s way of thinking and current circumstances, disagree on that.
I would submit that this aspect of Trump’s platform, by far the largest-scale short-term incarceration in American history if enacted, and almost certainly the cruelest promise he’s made, is genuinely something you can count on. It is the one thing, beyond a boundless ego and a lust for personal wealth, Trump genuinely believes in. Revenge. “Strength”. Showing nobody and no law and stop you from doing what you want to do. We can make all kinds of comforting excuses as to why he “can’t” do all this terrible stuff in our system —all of which would be likely moot in Trump’s first few weeks upon returning to power. Especially on the ground, in the short term.
Again, expect to see scenes you’re used to seeing in countries like Thailand, Turkey, Myanmar. Not, say, slightly more strict police law and order, like both his supporters and opponents alike still seem to be tacitly anticipating. More the proverbial “Things Fall Apart”/“Children of Men”-lite scenario.
All of this would likely happen in, ironically, an environment of mass lawlessness and impunity. Again, not only has he promised to use his pardon power to protect those who commit crimes on his behalf, allied governors are already at work doing the same. “Frontier justice” comes to mind, and if people do not see the possibilities inherent in a nation armed to the teeth and militias determined to affect partisan politics under the ultimate protection of the commander-in-chief, I promise you, Donald Trump does.
All of this, assuming it happens, would make the United States the subject of horrified headlines globally for months, if not years, and would likely push all the news about Gaza, Ukraine, and whatever else people care about off the front page. To be cheeky about it for a second, it would be as if David Sacks teamed up with David Duke and just started firing the American people right and left, as if our country writ large were a woke company in need of “purging”.
Also, all this, and its underrated likelihood in a second Trump term, for the reasons above, is why I caution some against spending too much time and energy pondering the ordinary policy and economic prospects of the man returning to power.
Inflation, health care, taxes, etc., though useful for engaging people politically (and possibly ending up what the election turns on) will ultimately not be what we remember about this era, nor the ultimate legacy of Trump, win or lose.
If he wins, all of them will likely recede into the background and seem quaint and small. More elemental, basic things will be front and center of mind.
Hopefully I’m wrong on this, of course.
And we can all go back to being mad at Joe Manchin or something. That would be nice.
I wish cash prediction markets were fully legal here. :(
I don't think it would be quite right to say Trump's fans are his biggest victims but they definitely are his biggest marks.
Isn’t the usual response to this line of thinking to point out that the Clintons are seemingly corrupt? Or Pelosi’s oddly well timed stock trades? It’s not like they found a bunch of gold bars in Trump’s closet like that *changes tone* New Jersey Democrat! Or that all politicians are corrupt? Chicago politics is a byword for typical Democrat corruption, right? That’s been my experience whenever I bring up Trump’s corrupt, self-serving dealings with my pro-trump family. Everyone is corrupt and every politician will do things to harm me but Trump is corrupt and screws over people I don’t like so that’s an improvement over just being corrupt.
The key difference here, I think, is that most normie Dems I know would be fine with going after Pelosi, Clinton, et al., for their shady-looking shit in a way that Trumps voters would not be okay with. Like, in real life when this comes up, I'm always like, "Yes, investigate the people in office with shady business dealings, that is exactly what I want!"
The thing is that Trump voters do NOT want the law enforced equally, they want a lack of enforcement, equally.
It it true though that the Dem power structure has little interest in going after its own shady dealings, regardless of the thoughts of individual voters, and it’s not like Menendez was losing elections.
Compare how Democrats are treating Menendez to how Republicans treated Ken Paxton. (Although I'll grant that George Desantos was such an embarrassment and a clown that even the Republicans didn't want him around anymore.)
I'm not saying that the Democrats aren't better than the Republicans, but I would say that Menendez's general perception as a crook *long* predates the Democratic commitment to doing anything about it. Better late than never, but you don't get a ton of moral high ground points when such internal discipline as you do engage in is exceedingly belated and grudging.
At a minimum it suggests that the ex ante commitment is to stretching venality as far as it can go (while admittedly at least acknowledging a limit) instead of some sort of principled commitment to honorable conduct as the relevant standard.
I agree that the Dems should have worked to toss Menendez out a long time ago.
No party is completely clean, but on net Dems are far better than Republicans.
Yep, my response whenever someone brings up "But Hunter Biden...." is "Hunter Biden is a scumbag and should be held accountable under the law."
It's not that I disagree, it's that I think people who like Trump don't care. Let me try another way of communicating what I think this mindset looks like.
Why should I care if Trump screws over people close to him? My boss screwed me over at work the other day and I'm not getting paid for some of my time worked. My ex-wife screwed me over and I'm sending her a chunk of my paycheck, or the government starts seizing my property and garnishing my pay. Schools screwed over my kid by spending more time on Black history month than on phonics. Everyone is constantly screwing everyone else to the point of it being a totally normal way the world works. Saying that Trump screws over people close to him and doesn't deliver on promises seems like a totally normal expectation of anyone I'd meet or interact with.
I’ve never heard it so well explained before. Many of the 1/6 protesters had backgrounds that featured a lot of setbacks - failed marriages, failed businesses, etc. It does seem they Trump appeals to people
who feel they have been screwed.
That said many of the stories involved some poor choices. A guy has an affair, wife leaves and takes half the money, his business hits a downturn and he lacks the capital to keep it going due to the divorce so loses the rest of his money and the business. But it’s easier to blame liberals or immigrants or ANTIFA than to blame himself for the ill considered decision to bang the new receptionist.
Well said, James.
Perhaps the worst thing Trump and his Republican acolytes have done is to so salt the ground of American culture with cynicism and alienation that I'm not sure when we'll recover. War of all against all and nothing matters lol and all that crap.
There's a reason Obama and "Hamilton"-type optimism sounds so out of joint now. Trump has turned us into a bitter, divisive unhappy people. Nice job.
“…salt the ground of American culture with cynicism and alienation…”
Trump was the result of that, not the originator.
Sure. Newt Gingrich was the originator of that, as of course we both totally agree, Ken.
Ted Kennedy, I think. May God torment his sinful soul.
"cling to guns and religion"
"basket of deplorables"
Trump didn't come out of nowhere. Obama was elected as the "hope and change" candidate, and there was broad euphoria among the left at his election. 8 years later, a lot of Americans felt disenchanted by that message.
I think that is often unfairly laid at his feet, but there was fertile ground for Trump's rhetoric as a result.
I don't know what made Americans so dyspeptic. But I do know that Trump and his acolytes are a flamethrower pointed at a bunch of gasoline-soaked rags.
I really think an underrated watershed moment is McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for his running mate back in '08. Certainly, the Clinton/Gingrich era already got us going down the hyperpartisan drain, but her rhetoric was REALLY harsh and low brow. Obama was a terrorist, Dems hated America, etc. The GOP has never really looked back from that. This is why I somewhat disagree with MY's take that patriotism is something the right gets right. If it were a patriotism genuinely rooted in a love for America and it's transformational history, then amen to that, that's great. But I think Reagan was kind of the last true exemplar of that on the right. Now much of right-of-center patriotism is pretty surface deep idol worship and/or dividing between real and self-hating Americans. I think there is a real opportunity for liberals to reclaim a more civic virtue/American values oriented version of patriotism.
I think the conclusion is incorrect.
Bibi Netanyahu should be seen as a cautionary tale about electing corrupt populists*. What we should learn from his 2023 term is that when a country with a lot of enemies see that weakness, they will try to create the circumstances of “something genuinely disastrous happens”.
We’re now in Cold War II and America has some powerful enemies. They won’t wait around for something disastrous to happen to America while Trump is at the helm - they will make that disaster happen.
*reporting on Netanyahu misleadingly tries to portray him as a war monger theocratic fascist, but in real life he’s just Trump in a country where security concerns are paramount.
This is one of the smartest takes I’ve seen on Trump. I hope your long tail, short tail prediction is the worst damage he can do before that final stroke (and may it come soon). Love your observation that HE is the snake! I know a lot about pathological narcissists but missed this obvious one. Projection is his one superpower, the key to his long con. I am in my 70s and ever since the late 60s, have leaned mostly left because of social justice issues, but Matt, you (and time) are nudging me more to the center left.
A functional political party would exploit having a buffoonish opponent by enacting controversial priorities that would eventually prove popular, for instance a public option or child allowances. However, the Democratic party is not functional. The political windfall Trump created in 2016 was squandered by nominating an unpopular warhorse who won her place on the national stage through marriage and kept it by tolerating serial infidelities. The 2024 windfall will likely be consumed by nominating an unpopular 82 year old who cant even consolidate the minority vote.
Trump is not the only elite politician who has failed to put country first, he’s just the most cartoonish and prominent example.
Irrational Hillary hatred is irrational. If 2016 Hillary had thematically and stylistically borne more similarity to 2008 Hillary, the outcome of the election would have been different. Also, Hillary won the popular vote in 2016, so it is simply a lie to state that the country rejected her always and forever. Something like 30,000 voters in MI/PA/WI rejected her for idiosyncratic reasons, and here we are.
Irrational Hilary hate is, as you note, irrational. However from a more substantive perspective she is fairly associated with 1. the 'neoliberal' triangulation of the 90s that's moment had passed and by 2016 had a somewhat tarnished legacy, and 2. her vote to support the Iraq invasion. Retail politics has never been her strong suit and I think it's fair to say she peaked at it when she got caught taking a shot of whiskey with West Virginia deplorables back in 2008. So while the case against her has become exaggerated in a lot of ways I think there's ample evidence she was both passed her prime and the wrong person for the moment. Suddenly the election is way closer than it had to be, thus allowing for all those other little flukes to change the outcome.
“If Hillary had been better at politics then she would have been a better politician” is tautologically true but I’m not sure how much it matters.
She won 3 million more votes than her opponent in 2016, fought Barack Obama to a statistical tie in 2008, and won two US Senate elections in New York. Hillary does not lack political skills. In 2016, she made the unfortunate choice to try to neutralize Bernie by leaning into identify politics. It is objectively false, however to state that the American people, at any time, have ever categorically rejected Hillary. It Has. Never. Happened.
If you’re proud of losing to Donald Trump, I don’t know what to tell you.
We've been over this. Matt Y even wrote a post on how the Democratic Party can't just wave a magic wand and magically replace Biden with "the same, but more charismatic and 30 years younger."
You're to the right of me, so I'm sure you'll agree that Kamala Harris was not a good VP choice. That's the big dilemma for Biden: if he steps down, he's replaced by Harris, who is more unpopular than him. If he tries to replace Harris, he gets hit with "he's trying to get rid of the first Black female VP! How racist and sexist!"
I'm sure he picked her based on a combination of "it would be great to have the first-ever Black woman VP, both for historical reasons and to appeal to the base" and "she'll grow into the role."
If he picked a blank man (eg Warnock) who was actually descended from slaves (eg not Obama or Harris) he might do better with blacks. Biden’s weakness is with black men, and they don’t like Harris any more than I do
Biden couldn't have picked Warnock, he's a Senator from Georgia, and the Democrats need every single Senator they can get. If Warnock were the VP, we would have a Republican in the Senate in his place.
Agreed re: picking a Black descendant of slaves (man or woman) would have been good, assuming that person was likable (as Warnock is, afaik).
Also, a funny typo in your comment: *blank* man
In the era of primaries, it is impossible for a party to intentionally choose its nominee, regardless of what the “Bernie would have won” people might say.
If you view the party as “all Democrats weighted by their influence” then the party, tautologically, chose the nominee
But not intentionally, and it's not the sort of thing that could really be affected by rational considerations.
One thing this article does well, and most liberals don't, is point out the ways in which already has been bad.
If you say, "Trump will be terrible", the response from swing voters is "You said that last time, but 2017-19 were fine".
Liberals need to remind everyone the ways in which Trump was responsible for the chaos of 2020-21 and for Dobbs.
I think saying that Trump didn’t do anything to address the chaos of 2020 is a potentially powerful line of attack, but it requires liberals and the media to acknowledge that there was chaos in 2020, and it was harmful in many ways.
"Liberals need to remind everyone the ways in which Trump was responsible for the chaos of 2020-21 and for Dobbs."
What's nuts about this tact, at least according to the recent NY Times poll is that 20% of those polled think *Biden* was responsible for Dobbs (maybe the same thinking that he was POTUS when it happened, just like POTUS in charge is responsible for the economy, Trump had a "good" economy, Biden had a "bad" economy) : /
This piece nails the biggest problem with Trump.
It isn't these fantastic conspiracies spun on MSNBC about Trump being a Russian agent, nor is it about Trump being another Hitler, nor about Trump being an authoritarian dictator.
No, the biggest problem with Trump is the plain old fashioned graft. The skimming money from campaigns and rallies, the billing of millions to government to stay in Mar a Lago, the invitation of foreign govts to funnel cash through his DC hotels etc. the selling of presidential pardons for cash etc
Why do we not hear more about the graft?
This is the part libs won't like. Trump's graft is a much more extreme version of the same kinds of buckraking that Bill Clinton engaged in when he was president. We know he traded questionable pardons for cash. We know the Clinton foundation is a magnet for huge sums of foreign cash. Does anyone doubt if Clinton owned a hotel in Little Rock he'd figure out a way to skim money from it in ways technically legal but are unseemly..
No one has found any laws broken but let's be honest, Biden was clearly setting himself up for a big payday as a reward for faithful service to the American empire. Clearly this is why Hunter Biden seemed so effective as a conduit for foreign cash.
Maybe we need to pay politicians a lot more and really crack down on this sort of thing.
I honestly think the country has become inured to this sort of buckraking and I think the press has become bored with it. It's yet another sign reforms are definitely needed.
> Biden was clearly setting himself up for a big payday as a reward for faithful service to the American empire.
I always find comments like this confusing. While you didn't specifically say this, many on the right believe Biden is incoherent and drooling on himself. But at the same time, there's this belief that he's a mastermind of a "crime family". Which is it? And when was this payday of his supposed to come? I believe Biden is still pretty sharp, but I don't think he has a lot of good years left. So what would be the point?
It's coming mainly via Hunter and a bunch of other shell companies they set up to make the money harder to trace. A lot of these deals were set in motion when Biden was VP in Obama II and had no intention of running for president again, in which case the matter would have been completely forgotten.
Not clear any of it would be illegal since no one has proved the quo in exhange for the quid. Still it stinks but it's routine behavior for officials in both parties.
You'd probably agree Biden has also declined at least somewhat since Obama II when he was informal emissary to Ukraine as that was 10 year ago or more. No?
Not sure bringing up the two narratives about Biden is quite the retort you seem to think. He set up large payday ten years ago and now is a much older man who is showing his age.
OK, so he set it all in motion but then decided circa 2019 that he would rather be president than enjoy the payoff.
I have my doubts. I think no one disputes Hunter was doing this, but I haven't seen anything convincing that Joe was involved. But I was mainly just trying to see what your theory was and if it could make sense (which I think it does).
Well let's assume Hunter can only do what he does by selling access to Joe or better still the ability to influence policy.
Hunter wouldn't have gotten a seat on Burisma's board with Joe being VP and we know there were large payments by Hunter to Joe.
Again, I don't think the press cares much about looking deeper into this and I'm not sure the country cares.either..for basically the same reasons that Trump's naked, shameless buckraking is the aspect of the man his enemies seem least concerned with.
The old ethics rules have basically broken down through a combination of clever lawyering and public apathy
I agree that Hunter was trading on his supposed access to Joe; that much is clear. The payments to Joe I believe have been disproven, fwiw. And in any case, if this was a scheme to get rich, it seems to have utterly failed as Hunter's main financial benefactor seems to be cutting him off:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/15/hunter-biden-legal-defense-kevin-morris-money-00158237
> and we know there were large payments by Hunter to Joe.
no there weren't lol. Jim Comer has been trying to trick people into believing this happened and apparently he convinced your stupid ass.
The point about Trump being a con man is true, but I really don't think it will convince anybody who's considering supporting him because they already know that. Imagine you're in a war zone, who are you going to support?
1. The invading enemy who have been very vocal about the fact that they hate you and want to destroy everything about your lifestyle that you value.
2. The spineless local politician who says that the enemy isn't really that bad and if we point out to them they're not being very nice they'll stop.
3. The local mob boss. He's a criminal of course, but he also has guns and soldiers he's not afraid to use. He also claims to be a pillar of the community and he may feel some sort of obligation because the money you've been paying him is nominally for protection.
These are all bad choices, but 3 is not at all irrational.
It’s unbelievable, the degree to which Republican voters are driven by fear. Who is this “enemy” who is advancing and wants to destroy them and everything they value, to the point that Republicans feel that supporting a scumbag con artist is their best bet?
Is it ultra-woke college students?
Immigrants?
Homeless drug addicts?
It certainly isn’t Russia or China, given that Trump admires strongman autocrats and has praised Putin for his “genius” invasion of Ukraine.
Which of the above is such a fearsome enemy that it’s worth destroying our democracy for?
I know this isn't popular on the left, but many Republicans really genuinely believe that abortion is the murder of babies, and Trump was instrumental in stopping it.
Also, there were widespread riots in many cities across the US on the theory that one race needs to be subjugated in favor of another.
Also, children in schools are being forced into what is effectively a religion that teaches them that their country is evil and they would likely benefit from medical treatments that would sterilize them.
I'm sure you feel that they are wrong about all of those points, but just saying "why are you afraid of college students" is simply to fail to engage with what they actually believe, and in many cases have good reasons for believing.
Thank you for a substantive answer.
I detest Trump for many reasons and want him to lose BIGLY, if I wanted to convince you to vote for Biden or at least refrain from voting for Trump, what could I do?
1. Abortion: I'm sorry, until humans invent artificial wombs, there will continue to be an irreconcilable conflict between the fetus/embryo and the mother, and since the mother, unlike the embryo/fetus, is a sentient human being with thoughts, feelings, goals, dreams, etc., I am firmly on the side of the mother. However, I would agree with you on reducing the overall number of abortions, only I would do it be reducing the DEMAND for abortions, not the SUPPLY. I.e., I would focus on comprehensive sex education, easily available and affordable contraceptives for everyone, and providing more social support for pregnant women so they don't feel compelled to have an abortion.
2. The riots were horrible, but their supporters were mostly far lefty online activists, not elected Democratic officials (a few elected Democrats support the riots, but also, some elected Republicans support fantasies of white Christians dominating America by force, so, pot, kettle). Biden himself has spoken out against riots and in favor of funding the police, repeatedly. If you would like elected Democrats to speak out more forcefully against riots and disorder, I'm in favor of that.
3. I don't want any schoolchildren to be taught that their country is evil. I love this country! I became a US citizen as an adult, by choice. FWIW, n = 1, but my son goes to public school in a solidly blue state (California) and he's never told us or brought home any school materials that indicate that "America is evil." Re: trans children, uhhhhhh it's complicated and I really don't want to get into it right now, I would say that if a child wants "social" gender transition (different pronouns, different clothes) they should be allowed to do so, but we should be super duper extra careful with puberty blockers (see the recent Cass report).
TL;DR: If Democratic politicians were to say, "Abortion is a sad choice and we should work to reduce it by promoting comprehensive sex ed and contraception; riots are bad; America is flawed but good and patriotism is good; let's support trans children but also be mindful of unintended consequences of rushing in with puberty blockers," would you be more likely to vote for Biden/Democrats?
1. Sorry, I find arguments of the form "this person is less than fully human and deserving of rights because they look different" absolutely repugnant. As to the irreconcilably conflict between mother and baby, you also have to look at the magnitude of the harms. Pregnancy is surely difficult, but it is also surely not as bad as being killed. In cases where the mother's life is endangered, I think abortion can be justified. As to reducing the quantity of abortions, I certainly agree, I just think that the traditional sexual morality of the west does a much better job of that than "have sex as promiscuously as you want, but also use a condom."
2. The riots are a symptom of a deeper cause. Have any prominent democrats condemned, say, Ibram X Kendi for being as deeply racicst as any KKK member, just in favor of a different race?
3. The correct way to treat trans children is as a private religious choice that parents can make. Similarly to a child going to school wearing a kippah: you can't mock them and have to make reasonable accommodations, but neither will teachers say that it is correct to wear one, and no teacher would dream of giving one of their students a secret Bar Mitzvah against their parents' wishes.
So, to get my vote, Democrats should say "It's clear that babies have rights at some point before birth, so we support aligning with most of Europe with a ban after 12 weeks. It is racist to treat people differently due to their race, so we will repeal any law or policy that does so. Transition is a private religious choice that parents may make, but schools have no business supporting it in an official capacity."
Again, thanks for a substantive answer, I do have to go to work now so don't have time for a long reply. I think we could actually come to an agreement on a fair number of things.
I just feel compelled to call you out on this: "this person is less than fully human and deserving of rights because they look different". That is NOT what I said above, I made it clear that the reason I don't think fetuses/embryos don't have rights is not that they "look different," it's that they're not sentient beings. Sentient = has thoughts, feelings, a conscious experience. Embryos don't have that; pregnant women do.
Also! You're invoking the specter of "promiscuous sex" as the reason for abortions, like "if those brazen sluts could keep their legs together, they wouldn't have to murder precious innocent babies." In reality, many abortions are for women who are already married/in committed relationships and either aren't ready (financially, emotionally) to have a baby right now, or already have as many children as they want/can afford. Promiscuity has nothing to do with those cases. I assume you don't want those women to say to their husbands/boyfriends, "Honey, no form of contraception is 100% perfect, so to make sure I don't have to murder an innocent unborn baby, let's never have penetrative sex again."
If a friend of mine loses her pregnancy in the fourth, fifth or sixth month of gestation, I would be complete asshole if I said "well, the fetus wasn't a sentient being, so it's death isn't a big deal".
Fair enough, I'm sorry I mischaracterized what you said. Still, I think the distinctions you're drawing are not all that important. For example, a person undergoing general anesthesia has no thoughts, feelings, or conscious experience, but it would still be wrong to kill them.
To the second part of this comment: No, I want them to say "Honey, no form of contraception is 100% perfect, so we'll be overjoyed with this new baby, a gift of infinite worth." As to abstaining from sex if you have an overwhelmingly pressing reason not to have a baby, yes, that is correct.
I fully agree with what "Democrats should say", the problem is that ones in office (or running for office) do NOT say those things. In blue states, schools will not even inform parents that their kid has "socially transitioned" at school, and laws have been passed (with unanimous support from the Democrats in the state legislatures) that declare that parental refusal of puberty blockers for their kid is the legal equivalent of child abuse.
> Have any prominent democrats condemned, say, Ibram X Kendi
He was just laughed out of true-blue Boston for being incompetent., so I think we're good here.
Interesting to talk about riots! I had forgotten that there was actually a bit of violence, and that a few people died. Where I was in Texas, it was more vivid that this was a huge turnout of protests, larger than anything else in my lifetime, but violence was really not very visible.
But it looks like there were in fact some deaths: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_during_the_2020%E2%80%9323_United_States_racial_unrest
Definitely weird to say that these people were protesting *for* racial subjugation, but I can see how some news coverage might have spun it that way to avoid making people think about existing racial subjugation.
Affirmative action, reparation payments, and "anti-racist" policies generally are straightforwardly hurting one race in order to benefit another, and a widespread government enforcement of them is, I think, fairly called racial subjugation. The disagreement is about whether this is justified or not, perhaps because there was racial subjugation going the other way in the past.
The claim is that these are counteracting *current* subconscious biases and enduring legacies of lower wealth and educational opportunities, and thus creating a closer-to-level playing field. I don't think many people (if any) are saying that there should be a period of actual *subjugation* that is justified in comparison to subjugation in another time period.
Really? “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Seems to me that Kendi is saying that current white people ought to be treated similarly to how black people were treated historically, which was certainly subjugation.
"...Children in schools are being forced into what is effectively a religion that teaches them that their country is evil..." So, you are arguing that the Republican belief that the country is evil (or half of it) is justified by the questionable assertion that this is being taught?
Your reference to a war zone reminded me of this classic essay by Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/
TL;DR: Conservatives/Republicans act like they're fighting for their lives in a zombie apocalypse; Liberals/Democrats act like they're living in a post-scarcity utopia.
Highly recommended reading regardless of where you are politically.