The aptly self-described "rising sophomore" at Harvard does her class justice by delivering a poorly reasoned piece full of bad assumptions and cynical reasoning.
First rhetorical mistake: you have assumed that a wolf is worse than a sheep as a leader, unless I'm misreading your intentions. It should be more obvious what you actually mean rather than relying on commonly understood cliches to make your point. And it's not obvious at all unless I assume that you're a leftist, as you have assumed your audience is. I think the real difference here between the wolf and the sheep is not which one eats the other, but that one prioritizes one set of values over another. It's not a difference in species, and even if that's an oversimplification of your verbiage, your own piece is an oversimplification of the relevant facts and personalities.
The next mistake is that you took one chart about what Republicans or likely Republicans think about Trump and deduced an entire mind-read about Vivek Ramaswamy's presidential candidate strategy. You couldn't possibly know what his underlying motives or strategy are, but you use the language of implied certainty to mislead the reader that you do.
"Where Trump pits his supporters against his opponents, Ramaswamy often speaks of unity — even while advocating for essentially the same policy positions as Trump." Trump's rhetoric divides Democrats and Republicans, but his policies prioritize all Americans. "America First" means everyone in America, even if you think that it unfairly leaves out people who aspire to be here through extra-legal means. One can like the policies and dislike the rhetoric, which is a big reason why Ramaswamy is gaining ground in the polls.
With regard to your allegation of Ramaswamy being "anti-trans," you use obviously cut segments of his words to paint a damning picture. It's like Buzzfeed-level nonsense. If transgenderism has anything to do with gender dysphoria, then yes, it most certainly is at least in part psychiatric in origin. If not, then it's just a social fad.
"Ramaswamy’s differences with Trump and DeSantis are purely cosmetic. He has almost the same views as Trump (and similar policies to DeSantis), but he presents the same extremist ideology as a unifying message in a seemingly respectful tone." What's extreme about it? That it's conservative or populist? Is it extreme because the Democrat state media apparatus no longer recognizes that conservatism is actually a mainstream political persuasion?
You have a high-status, middle-class career ahead of you writing for some legacy news site but I fail to understand how this piece qualified to be published on Slow Boring unless Matt has totally abandoned editorial discretion. I don't like his politics, either, but he doesn't misrepresent the other side the way you have. The purpose of good journalism is to exposit, not to obfuscate. You have done the latter, and I hope you'll do better.
VR: "I think he [Trump] was a good president. I agree with many, if not most, of his policies."
One big lesson to be learned from the Trump experiment is that there is more to being a good president than mere policy. There is a guy down the street from me - let's call him Bob. Bob would not make a good president, regardless of his policies.
It's not too difficult to separate out these concepts.
In fact, with regard to Trump, we can answer this question about whether he was a good president without considering any of his policies. Like many Republicans who agreed with almost all of his policies, one could even say that he was a very bad president, even the worst president ever - despite his policies.
One of the great bedrock conservative values is character. This idea that character is destiny.
I remember the day when even Rush Limbaugh publicly abandoned that idea in order to get behind Trump. If changing your opinion about a policy because of who supports it is defined as mental illness by VR, I wonder what he calls it when you suddenly and abruptly abandon the bedrock principles you have been championing for decades just to own the libs?
A sheep? The guy just slandered a plurality of the populace as mentally ill in that first quote of the article. Then he complained about people who "start to disagree with policies they otherwise would have agreed with just because he's the one advancing them." That goes both ways, but VR doesn't seem to mind when that door swings the other way. I don't see any costumes here at all. It is plain as day who VR is and what he is all about. Are people confused about this? Sheesh.
We could do worse than a polite and respectful version of Trump. I like that this guy will talk to and listen to anyone. I like that he says that he is committed to free speech. Other than the ridiculous proposal to raise the voting age to 25, his policies don't sound illiberal to me -- just b/c they differ from Maya's preferences -- as long as he advocates for them democratically and respects the democratic process.
This could be successful strategy for the GOP, but I don't know if it will appeal to most of them. For many in the GOP, I assume that Trump's divisiveness is the key to his appeal. They don't want him to politely work with persuadable people on the other side to get things done. They want him to rhetorically destroy the elites who have looked down on them for years even if that undermines his ability to actually accomplish anything politically. Owning the libs is its own reward.
After some reflection and debate in the comments I’ve finally put my finger on what irks me about this piece.
If the article was positioned as “Vivek Ramaswamy’s moderate tone vs. Trump doesn’t actually mean he’s any less dangerous in terms of eroding democratic norms” that would have been an interesting and unique take.
But if that’s the case Maya was trying to make, she should have focused on the evidence for it, e.g. saying he’d pardon Trump, being pro-Russia vs Ukraine, even wanting to raise the voting age to take the franchise away from a demographic that would largely vote against him. And based on those examples, maybe there really is something to the claim!
Instead, Maya wrapped that together with his views on things like abortion rights and climate change and other areas where he has pretty much adopted standard issue GOP policy, but Maya just disagrees with advocating for those policies. And then called all of it Trumpism, which really just muddles what Trumpism even is.
Maya, I’d love to see you take another crack at a more focused version of the article I laid out in the second paragraph - not just for Ramaswamy but for people like Scott and Haley too. Does their less-aggressive (than Trump) approach also belie demagoguery at the core? I’d be interested to have you find out!
Maya, it seems you're getting a lot of blowback here...and so I suppose I'm piling on. I may be naive, but I'm think Ramaswamy may be a "sheep in wolf's clothing".
I strongly suspect that he as enough ego that he wants to be respected and admired by people he considers to be his peers. If so, the MAGA pandering parts of his campaign are more tactical than foundational. If true, then he's side-step most of it IF he were to be elected.
I'm not ready to support him because, frankly, I can't tell if he's a sheep or a wolf. But, I do remain hopefully that he believes the best parts of his rhetoric and is only loosely (and cynically) attached to the worst parts.
This post feels to have been written from the very unhealthy mindset of wishing our opponents to be maximally terrible because that makes them less likely to actually get elected. A politician who has the same platform as Trump but doesn't vilify his opponents, engages in rational(ish) debate, and tells his followers to be more empathetic is genuinely better than Trump. A lot. That doesn't mean he is not bad, but he's bad in a much more conventional and predictable way that carries less tail risk.
I guess this goes back to the question of whether we honestly think Trump is a risk to the fabric of US democracy (a low-probability risk maybe, but still much unlike anyone before him) or just pretend we think so because that's a useful line of attack, but actually consider him business as usual. The Democratic party seems to be more on the latter side, with their campaign ads supporting Trumpist candidates and whatnot. That seems like a very irresponsible stance to me. Trump is willing and even eager to transgress any kind of boundary he encounters, and even though he isn't very competent at doing so, with some bad luck that can still cause all kinds of lasting harm. He also further radicalized both the radical right and the radical left, in very destructive directions. It's hard to imagine something like the defund the police movement happening under a more normally behaved leader, for example.
Restraining your rhetoric and reining in the emotions is not a feint; it's a genuine accomplishment of the more successful and stable liberal democracies, and it should be seen as something like multilateral disarmament - both sides agreeing to discard those tools which cause the most collateral damage, with the balance of powers not changing much in the end (and countries that were terrible not becoming less terrible) but the fallout from a conflict getting significantly reduced. It's a good thing if voters actually reward that.
I think this is one where I have to disagree, which doesn't happen too too often, I suppose. I think I disagree with the background premise that somehow oratory doesn't matter? Beyond individual policies, we should worry about the health of our political culture and democracy. And the framing of disagreeing respectfully, with similar end goals but different ideas of what they entail (compassion for trans people, disbelief in their treatment --- a stance which which, for the record, I think is wrong and bad) is much, much healthier than acrimony and cruelty. If the trans debate was framed in 'what is best for trans people', then we can debate. If it's framed in 'you care about trans people or do you hate them?' then it's not something you debate, but that you fight.
You might argue that he's not *actually* concerned about trans people, but it still matters that people generally have the debate framed in those terms for them, rather than so much support going to cruelty.
Also, in terms of threats to democracy, it seems important that people who want to launch a coup actually be able to go around saying that's what they want to do and build a core of support for that. If Vivek Ramaswamy's support is based on the pretense that he is respectfully debating what he sees as strong positions, then an attempt to suddenly turn that to autocratic revolt is less likely to work! (I need to find the links, but a couple of Astral Codex Ten's Dictator Book Review series's articles came to this conclusion --- most notably the Hitler one).
So yes, I'm worried about all these things. But oratory is important. If a revolt is going to be a revolt, building an organized movement that wants to revolt is important. And it's tough to do that and also base your credibility on being a nice democracy enthusiast who just believes that a lot of well-meaning people are wrong about important issues. Vivek Ramaswamy vs. Pete Buttigieg is different than Trump vs. (I don't know? Who's a big aggressive persona on the Democrat end? Sanders ig?) Sanders for more reasons than policy. And this is without even getting into poisonous oratory poisoning the well of non-contentious bipartisanship! Under Ramswamy, being a bipartisan Republican is good! When you're not selling out Republican goals. Under Trump, being a bipartisan Republican is terrible! Even when you're advancing Republican goals!
You know, I'm with many Republicans who thinks Trump's policies -- except for the budget -- were winners. Take a colder look at this. Since the Tea Party, a responsible minority - almost 49% of voters -- has grown to oppose the responsibility-free left wing. I'm as astonished as you but Trump's been their only voice until Ramaswamy. Then again, I don't let the Trump reality distortion field break my focus on policy.
After reading this, I still struggle to see why a Ramaswamy presidency would be “damaging to the country”. I understand that he’s a pretty conservative politician, and your viewpoint may be that conservatism is damaging, but then I still don’t see how ramaswamy is a uniquely damaging president, especially when you agree that he is more respectful and civil than the other candidates. Is there any reason why one shouldn’t interpret this piece as a blanket “conservatives are hurting the country” then(ironically, this is the same argument conservatives use for liberals...)
Vivek is inarguably a radical. Amongst other things he wants to abolish the FDA, department of education and IRS, while denying the results of the election and ceding Ukraine to Russia.
Maya's post is about the contrast between the very extreme and destructive positions Vivek takes on many issues ("the wolf") and the respectful and non-threatening rhetoric he uses to promote them ("the sheep").
According to Sara Longwell, in her focus groups "that Vivek guy" has been steadily rising in popularity among two-time Trump voters. It's interesting and somewhat counterintuitive that Vivek's "mild" manner is so popular with the base, given their delight in Trump's barely controlled combativeness, and their often stated preference for a "fighter." I don't know if that suggests that some "drama fatigue" has set in with the MAGA voters? And who knew that MAGA voters actually wanted so many "policies?"
I suggest that Maya write a Ramaswamy Part II essay dealing only with his policies and positions, which for many of us are the consequential issues. I think these could be broken down into five main ideas:
1. An end to federal government support for anything even vaguely "social justice" sounding: critical race theory, critical gender theory, affirmative action, etc.
2. An end to federal government support for climate change mitigation efforts.
3. Elimination of federal agencies charged with investigating federal crimes, collecting taxes, and supporting education.
4. Stepping back from a federal abortion ban.
5. Promotion of the Big Lie and the Deep State conspiracy theories, and pardoning and enabling their proponents, even if they have committed crimes.
Some parts of these positions would be popular generally (i.e. beyond the GOP), but most would not be, once voters understood their implications.
The aptly self-described "rising sophomore" at Harvard does her class justice by delivering a poorly reasoned piece full of bad assumptions and cynical reasoning.
First rhetorical mistake: you have assumed that a wolf is worse than a sheep as a leader, unless I'm misreading your intentions. It should be more obvious what you actually mean rather than relying on commonly understood cliches to make your point. And it's not obvious at all unless I assume that you're a leftist, as you have assumed your audience is. I think the real difference here between the wolf and the sheep is not which one eats the other, but that one prioritizes one set of values over another. It's not a difference in species, and even if that's an oversimplification of your verbiage, your own piece is an oversimplification of the relevant facts and personalities.
The next mistake is that you took one chart about what Republicans or likely Republicans think about Trump and deduced an entire mind-read about Vivek Ramaswamy's presidential candidate strategy. You couldn't possibly know what his underlying motives or strategy are, but you use the language of implied certainty to mislead the reader that you do.
"Where Trump pits his supporters against his opponents, Ramaswamy often speaks of unity — even while advocating for essentially the same policy positions as Trump." Trump's rhetoric divides Democrats and Republicans, but his policies prioritize all Americans. "America First" means everyone in America, even if you think that it unfairly leaves out people who aspire to be here through extra-legal means. One can like the policies and dislike the rhetoric, which is a big reason why Ramaswamy is gaining ground in the polls.
With regard to your allegation of Ramaswamy being "anti-trans," you use obviously cut segments of his words to paint a damning picture. It's like Buzzfeed-level nonsense. If transgenderism has anything to do with gender dysphoria, then yes, it most certainly is at least in part psychiatric in origin. If not, then it's just a social fad.
"Ramaswamy’s differences with Trump and DeSantis are purely cosmetic. He has almost the same views as Trump (and similar policies to DeSantis), but he presents the same extremist ideology as a unifying message in a seemingly respectful tone." What's extreme about it? That it's conservative or populist? Is it extreme because the Democrat state media apparatus no longer recognizes that conservatism is actually a mainstream political persuasion?
You have a high-status, middle-class career ahead of you writing for some legacy news site but I fail to understand how this piece qualified to be published on Slow Boring unless Matt has totally abandoned editorial discretion. I don't like his politics, either, but he doesn't misrepresent the other side the way you have. The purpose of good journalism is to exposit, not to obfuscate. You have done the latter, and I hope you'll do better.
Running for VP!
VR: "I think he [Trump] was a good president. I agree with many, if not most, of his policies."
One big lesson to be learned from the Trump experiment is that there is more to being a good president than mere policy. There is a guy down the street from me - let's call him Bob. Bob would not make a good president, regardless of his policies.
It's not too difficult to separate out these concepts.
In fact, with regard to Trump, we can answer this question about whether he was a good president without considering any of his policies. Like many Republicans who agreed with almost all of his policies, one could even say that he was a very bad president, even the worst president ever - despite his policies.
One of the great bedrock conservative values is character. This idea that character is destiny.
I remember the day when even Rush Limbaugh publicly abandoned that idea in order to get behind Trump. If changing your opinion about a policy because of who supports it is defined as mental illness by VR, I wonder what he calls it when you suddenly and abruptly abandon the bedrock principles you have been championing for decades just to own the libs?
#thatsnotconservative
A sheep? The guy just slandered a plurality of the populace as mentally ill in that first quote of the article. Then he complained about people who "start to disagree with policies they otherwise would have agreed with just because he's the one advancing them." That goes both ways, but VR doesn't seem to mind when that door swings the other way. I don't see any costumes here at all. It is plain as day who VR is and what he is all about. Are people confused about this? Sheesh.
We could do worse than a polite and respectful version of Trump. I like that this guy will talk to and listen to anyone. I like that he says that he is committed to free speech. Other than the ridiculous proposal to raise the voting age to 25, his policies don't sound illiberal to me -- just b/c they differ from Maya's preferences -- as long as he advocates for them democratically and respects the democratic process.
This could be successful strategy for the GOP, but I don't know if it will appeal to most of them. For many in the GOP, I assume that Trump's divisiveness is the key to his appeal. They don't want him to politely work with persuadable people on the other side to get things done. They want him to rhetorically destroy the elites who have looked down on them for years even if that undermines his ability to actually accomplish anything politically. Owning the libs is its own reward.
After some reflection and debate in the comments I’ve finally put my finger on what irks me about this piece.
If the article was positioned as “Vivek Ramaswamy’s moderate tone vs. Trump doesn’t actually mean he’s any less dangerous in terms of eroding democratic norms” that would have been an interesting and unique take.
But if that’s the case Maya was trying to make, she should have focused on the evidence for it, e.g. saying he’d pardon Trump, being pro-Russia vs Ukraine, even wanting to raise the voting age to take the franchise away from a demographic that would largely vote against him. And based on those examples, maybe there really is something to the claim!
Instead, Maya wrapped that together with his views on things like abortion rights and climate change and other areas where he has pretty much adopted standard issue GOP policy, but Maya just disagrees with advocating for those policies. And then called all of it Trumpism, which really just muddles what Trumpism even is.
Maya, I’d love to see you take another crack at a more focused version of the article I laid out in the second paragraph - not just for Ramaswamy but for people like Scott and Haley too. Does their less-aggressive (than Trump) approach also belie demagoguery at the core? I’d be interested to have you find out!
Maya, it seems you're getting a lot of blowback here...and so I suppose I'm piling on. I may be naive, but I'm think Ramaswamy may be a "sheep in wolf's clothing".
I strongly suspect that he as enough ego that he wants to be respected and admired by people he considers to be his peers. If so, the MAGA pandering parts of his campaign are more tactical than foundational. If true, then he's side-step most of it IF he were to be elected.
I'm not ready to support him because, frankly, I can't tell if he's a sheep or a wolf. But, I do remain hopefully that he believes the best parts of his rhetoric and is only loosely (and cynically) attached to the worst parts.
Just a note on the drones: we already use drones at the border.
This post feels to have been written from the very unhealthy mindset of wishing our opponents to be maximally terrible because that makes them less likely to actually get elected. A politician who has the same platform as Trump but doesn't vilify his opponents, engages in rational(ish) debate, and tells his followers to be more empathetic is genuinely better than Trump. A lot. That doesn't mean he is not bad, but he's bad in a much more conventional and predictable way that carries less tail risk.
I guess this goes back to the question of whether we honestly think Trump is a risk to the fabric of US democracy (a low-probability risk maybe, but still much unlike anyone before him) or just pretend we think so because that's a useful line of attack, but actually consider him business as usual. The Democratic party seems to be more on the latter side, with their campaign ads supporting Trumpist candidates and whatnot. That seems like a very irresponsible stance to me. Trump is willing and even eager to transgress any kind of boundary he encounters, and even though he isn't very competent at doing so, with some bad luck that can still cause all kinds of lasting harm. He also further radicalized both the radical right and the radical left, in very destructive directions. It's hard to imagine something like the defund the police movement happening under a more normally behaved leader, for example.
Restraining your rhetoric and reining in the emotions is not a feint; it's a genuine accomplishment of the more successful and stable liberal democracies, and it should be seen as something like multilateral disarmament - both sides agreeing to discard those tools which cause the most collateral damage, with the balance of powers not changing much in the end (and countries that were terrible not becoming less terrible) but the fallout from a conflict getting significantly reduced. It's a good thing if voters actually reward that.
What is Trump’s ideology?
I think this is one where I have to disagree, which doesn't happen too too often, I suppose. I think I disagree with the background premise that somehow oratory doesn't matter? Beyond individual policies, we should worry about the health of our political culture and democracy. And the framing of disagreeing respectfully, with similar end goals but different ideas of what they entail (compassion for trans people, disbelief in their treatment --- a stance which which, for the record, I think is wrong and bad) is much, much healthier than acrimony and cruelty. If the trans debate was framed in 'what is best for trans people', then we can debate. If it's framed in 'you care about trans people or do you hate them?' then it's not something you debate, but that you fight.
You might argue that he's not *actually* concerned about trans people, but it still matters that people generally have the debate framed in those terms for them, rather than so much support going to cruelty.
Also, in terms of threats to democracy, it seems important that people who want to launch a coup actually be able to go around saying that's what they want to do and build a core of support for that. If Vivek Ramaswamy's support is based on the pretense that he is respectfully debating what he sees as strong positions, then an attempt to suddenly turn that to autocratic revolt is less likely to work! (I need to find the links, but a couple of Astral Codex Ten's Dictator Book Review series's articles came to this conclusion --- most notably the Hitler one).
So yes, I'm worried about all these things. But oratory is important. If a revolt is going to be a revolt, building an organized movement that wants to revolt is important. And it's tough to do that and also base your credibility on being a nice democracy enthusiast who just believes that a lot of well-meaning people are wrong about important issues. Vivek Ramaswamy vs. Pete Buttigieg is different than Trump vs. (I don't know? Who's a big aggressive persona on the Democrat end? Sanders ig?) Sanders for more reasons than policy. And this is without even getting into poisonous oratory poisoning the well of non-contentious bipartisanship! Under Ramswamy, being a bipartisan Republican is good! When you're not selling out Republican goals. Under Trump, being a bipartisan Republican is terrible! Even when you're advancing Republican goals!
You know, I'm with many Republicans who thinks Trump's policies -- except for the budget -- were winners. Take a colder look at this. Since the Tea Party, a responsible minority - almost 49% of voters -- has grown to oppose the responsibility-free left wing. I'm as astonished as you but Trump's been their only voice until Ramaswamy. Then again, I don't let the Trump reality distortion field break my focus on policy.
After reading this, I still struggle to see why a Ramaswamy presidency would be “damaging to the country”. I understand that he’s a pretty conservative politician, and your viewpoint may be that conservatism is damaging, but then I still don’t see how ramaswamy is a uniquely damaging president, especially when you agree that he is more respectful and civil than the other candidates. Is there any reason why one shouldn’t interpret this piece as a blanket “conservatives are hurting the country” then(ironically, this is the same argument conservatives use for liberals...)
Ramaswamy is more accurately described as a grifter in hedge fund bro’s clothing.
Vivek is inarguably a radical. Amongst other things he wants to abolish the FDA, department of education and IRS, while denying the results of the election and ceding Ukraine to Russia.
Maya's post is about the contrast between the very extreme and destructive positions Vivek takes on many issues ("the wolf") and the respectful and non-threatening rhetoric he uses to promote them ("the sheep").
According to Sara Longwell, in her focus groups "that Vivek guy" has been steadily rising in popularity among two-time Trump voters. It's interesting and somewhat counterintuitive that Vivek's "mild" manner is so popular with the base, given their delight in Trump's barely controlled combativeness, and their often stated preference for a "fighter." I don't know if that suggests that some "drama fatigue" has set in with the MAGA voters? And who knew that MAGA voters actually wanted so many "policies?"
I suggest that Maya write a Ramaswamy Part II essay dealing only with his policies and positions, which for many of us are the consequential issues. I think these could be broken down into five main ideas:
1. An end to federal government support for anything even vaguely "social justice" sounding: critical race theory, critical gender theory, affirmative action, etc.
2. An end to federal government support for climate change mitigation efforts.
3. Elimination of federal agencies charged with investigating federal crimes, collecting taxes, and supporting education.
4. Stepping back from a federal abortion ban.
5. Promotion of the Big Lie and the Deep State conspiracy theories, and pardoning and enabling their proponents, even if they have committed crimes.
Some parts of these positions would be popular generally (i.e. beyond the GOP), but most would not be, once voters understood their implications.
Re: Longwell, where did you hear her say that? I have been waiting for a new episode of her podcast to drop for a while now.
She has said it several times recently to JVL on the Secret Podcast.