The ACLU folks, for better or for worse, have always been purists on civil liberties, regardless of political pragmatism - note their defense of the neo-Nazis marching in Skokie quite a few years ago. I think that’s fine, since that’s their role and someone has to do it, but I also think that their spokespeople should STFU when addressing others who have to navigate the real world.
1) It is stunning to me that in a 447 preceding comments, there are only 20 mentioned of "leader" or "leadership," including the title of Matt's post at the top of the page.
2) People seem not to want political leadership. Rather, they want military leadership. That is, they want victory over their foes—even total victory. But that's not what political leadership is or can be. What's that expression? The slow boring of hard boards? It is about incremental progress, which over time produces significant results (e.g., a new pathway from one side of the board the other). It's just a different kind of endeavor. Political leadership is more like a war of attrition than any other kind of war, though that is really a bad analogy.
3) In both military leadership and political leadership, the people being led are on OUR side, not the other side. Leaders in both case instill discipline, organization and strategy. The is the route to victory. And the non-leaders? Well, they've got to let the leaders cook...or, you know, lead. That means NOT undermining their efforts. Not chaos or anarchy.
4) If you are not willing to follow the decisions of someone one, someone who makes different strategic decisions that you would make, then you do not want leadership of ANY sort. You want to lead, yourself. Now, maybe you *would* be a better leader than current leadership. But there are likely reasons why you are not the leader. If you want to lead, try to become a leader. But if you are not willing to do that, or prove unsuccessful at doing that, and cannot accept a leader with different preferred strategies or tactic than you, then you do do not want a leader. Rather, you just want a puppet.
5) It basically comes down to vanity vs. humility. If you think that your preferred strategy or tactics are the only possible or acceptable route to success, than your vanity is a problem. If you cannot accept anything other than immediate and total victory, then you've got a maturity problem, too. In bot cases, you live in some fantasy land where things are easy and merely *wanting* something is enough to make it wise. On the other hand, we can recognize that things are complicated, the important things are usually hard, worth fighting for and require sustained efforts. We *can* recognize that our own instincts, preferences and impatience are not necessarily the best thinking or the best path to success. After all, in politics the goal is to convince people who think differently than we do. Understanding those different people and seeing the path to convince them is often a skill or ability that we lack, perhaps in this case and perhaps more generally.
This came in my "word-a-day" email today. It seemed appropriate for today's post.
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. -Emma Goldman, social activist (27 Jun 1869-1940)
I think I’m done here—not only are you enforcing pronoun rules in some misplaced sense of righteousness, but you are blind to what matters. Gender identity should not replace sex for any purpose. To allow it legal standing is to undermine the rule of law. Surprised that you don’t see it.
I don’t think anyone should tell anyone else which pronouns to use—I won’t dictate language usage either way.
Implicit in your ban on “misgendered” pronouns is your assumption that anyone who uses sex-based pronouns is motivated by animus instead of by a rational belief in the immutability of sex and concerns about iatrogenic harms, safeguarding losses, and women’s sex based rights.
Calling some perspectives bigotry is just a way to shut down dialogue.
Hi SB team, long time reader, first time commenter here. As with many occasional comments it's the case that I enjoy and learn from so much of what I read here, but now I'm writing with a complaint! Before that though--I work in education and read a lot about education policy, and the SB multi-part take on education reform's history was among the best I've read.
But the short commentary on Mike Lee's proposal to sell off public lands was highly misleading if not flat out wrong. Given his history, the GOP anti-environmental stances, and other current proposals and executive actions, it is simply naive to believe that his real goal was "to facilitate housing in the Mountain West" as the post put it. If that was truly the goal, a bill that would limit public lands transfers to small areas that would prioritize housing and be immediately adjacent to cities would be much more likely to get traction.
I'm sensitive to this issue for two reasons. First, the New York Times just had an article which framed the issue the same misleading way. Second, coastal city media seems to often misconstrue interior west issues. Those of us who live in the interior west, especially rural areas, see all too many cases of writers and podcasters who just don't seem to understand these huge areas of the country. For those of us who lean liberal, we have to admit too often to conservative locals that the media sound clueless!
Blown away by McBride's interview. As somebody who has trouble holding down his lunch whenever he sees someone saying "What Democrats have to do..." here is the rare case where somebody nailed it.
The thing is, McBride's message isn't for our leaders - it's for US. Liberals have to realize that WE are the ones losing. WE are the ones driving people away. WE are the ones working to keep the tent as small as possible. The base rages at leadership because they're often trying to do things right - to bore the boards - and the base just demands nonstop unproductive fighting. It's just as dysfunctional as the Republicans, just with massively better policy preferences.
Where the leaders fall short is explaining to us, with credibility, that we're being divisive idiots - McBride explains that well (and in much nicer language).
Really appreciated this. I also wrote about Sarah McBride’s interview with Ezra Klein—specifically the clarity and restraint she showed in the wake of the SCOTUS ruling. She’s not just showing maturity, she’s offering Democrats a better model for persuasion.
I question whether McBride has thought her position through. The idea that she is innately a woman seems like a hard sell to me. The progressive approach of saying that its all intersectional and solidarity is required and we have to profess that what's true in each silo of the movement is true has the better chance. I think that approach has failed and now we need to prove out that McBride's approach also is a loser.
Just very weird to think that throwing people contradictory gender signals isn't going to weird people out. The more convincing you are that you're the opposite sex the weirder it gets. The Amerian public may just be right. Live and let live, but approval isn't somethign that you can require of other people. Acceptance, yes. Safety, yes. Respect, yes. She actually said of lot of what I'm saying in the interview.
I listened to the Ezra Klein interview a few days ago and I'm really impressed with Sarah McBride. Her position is unenviable, but she's handling it intelligently, and it speaks volumes that she was willing to put herself there in the first place. I hope she goes far. The Democratic Party needs more people like her.
This reminds me of the progressive left’s current anger over all the democrats who voted against impeachment. Those who voted NO were exhibiting leadership; they knew that the impeachment is just meaningless table pounding the plays into Republicans hands (and also, this most recent particular basis for impeachment is a terrible one). But so many on the left just REALLY REALLY want to keep pounding the table.
Yeah, I remember being astounded that Reagan was able to index tax brackets. I was, as a young man, *super* impressed by that.
Seems to me what we need to do the next time we get a chance, is to try to monkey with the indexing formula: no indexing in deficit years. You wanna index rates, reduce the debt! Ideally, the index tweaking would be relegated to the Fed.
Candidate Mamdani would do well to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the truths of Matt's "Stationary Bandits of NYC" in fashioning his general election candidacy and his to-be-hoped-for mayoralty of NYC. Taxing the most heavily citizenry is a cul de sac at best on the road to reviving the liveliest city in the world.
Ezra’s discussion with Sarah McBride was amazing. They identified my own journey, as a squishy moderate who supported civil unions prior to gay marriage, to someone who now sees that as cowardly and shortsighted. That in turn convinced me that big asks from the trans movement should be accepted wholesale so I didn’t make that mistake again.
But of course, some of the takes *did* make me uncomfortable. There’s a YMCA in my city that has a pool, and there have been numerous complaints, and even protests because a trans woman with a fully male body uses the locker room stark naked, including the group showers. Some of the little girls who take swimming lessons there have never seen a naked man before. The Y’s position has been that they can’t take legal action, and instead has put up signs encouraging “modesty.”
There’s been another awful case where a person who has had numerous arrests masturbating around children now claims to be a trans woman and now hangs out leering in a women’s locker room. This person has made absolutely no effort to look or sound female. It’s a creepy dude taking advantage of the idea that simply identifying as a woman is enough.
I was also shocked to hear a trans woman suggest a compromise position on team sports, leaving it up to local control. She’s very impressive, and I hope Dem lawmakers use the spaces she’s created to moderate.
I'm in an ornery mood this morning, so I'm gonna write another "Do you know what time it is?" comment.
Matt Y is all "let's be reasonable and sensible and centrist and moderate and slowly, boringly, incrementally drill through the hard boards!" Sounds legit!
What he ignores is that four and a half years ago, the hard board labeled "the loser of an election concedes graciously" got set on fire and fed through a woodchipper.
Trump never paid any price - not legally, not politically - for inciting a violent riot to try to prevent the certification of Electoral College votes. People died. The Capitol was vandalized. We quite likely narrowly avoided the assassination of multiple members of Congress. Trump? After some brief words of condemnation, his entire party closed ranks behind him, and he sailed to the GOP nomination in 2024 and then won the general election.
What is to stop the next GOP POTUS candidate from doing the same in 2028? It's all upside, no downside! If he succeeds, heyyyy, he gets to be POTUS! If he fails, welp, he just gets to sit around for four years Xeeting about how badly and unfairly he's been robbed of his rightful win, stoking outrage among his followers that will help him get elected in 2032.
I mean, the one saving grace here is that Trump is old and will die soon, and none of his heirs apparent (Vance, Don Jr.) have his kind of charisma, but how much of a comfort is that? Are we 100% sure that MAGA derives its strength from Trump and will fall apart without him? I'm genuinely not sure.
Pretty much all discourse on Slow Boring is predicated on the belief that Democrats are the problem, if they would just go all Sister Souljah on those extremist lefty activists' asses, then the electorate will appreciate Democrats and turn away from Trump and vote for a Democratic POTUS in 2028, and all will be well!
There's no higher power or teacher figure coming to enforce the rules and make Donny go stand in the corner. The way to defeat him is to appeal to people in the middle and to the right of the middle who are queasy about Trump or Trumpism but find Democratic governance crazy and won't accept that either. There is no amount of complaining about whataboutism or stomping our feet about January 6 being worse that will fix the problem.
In a democracy, the voters *are* the higher power. There is a reason the Founding Fathers wrote about how this system of government is suitable only for a virtuous people.
Nonetheless, you did not address my concern. Fine, we do exactly as you say, we are very thoughtful and we appeal to people in the middle and we get enough of them to vote for Buttigieg over Vance in 2028.
And then Vance goes, "Psych! I don't accept this, the election was illegitimate and stolen" and he refuses to certify the Electoral College votes. And he promises to pardon anyone willing to use violence to help him win.
The ACLU folks, for better or for worse, have always been purists on civil liberties, regardless of political pragmatism - note their defense of the neo-Nazis marching in Skokie quite a few years ago. I think that’s fine, since that’s their role and someone has to do it, but I also think that their spokespeople should STFU when addressing others who have to navigate the real world.
1) It is stunning to me that in a 447 preceding comments, there are only 20 mentioned of "leader" or "leadership," including the title of Matt's post at the top of the page.
2) People seem not to want political leadership. Rather, they want military leadership. That is, they want victory over their foes—even total victory. But that's not what political leadership is or can be. What's that expression? The slow boring of hard boards? It is about incremental progress, which over time produces significant results (e.g., a new pathway from one side of the board the other). It's just a different kind of endeavor. Political leadership is more like a war of attrition than any other kind of war, though that is really a bad analogy.
3) In both military leadership and political leadership, the people being led are on OUR side, not the other side. Leaders in both case instill discipline, organization and strategy. The is the route to victory. And the non-leaders? Well, they've got to let the leaders cook...or, you know, lead. That means NOT undermining their efforts. Not chaos or anarchy.
4) If you are not willing to follow the decisions of someone one, someone who makes different strategic decisions that you would make, then you do not want leadership of ANY sort. You want to lead, yourself. Now, maybe you *would* be a better leader than current leadership. But there are likely reasons why you are not the leader. If you want to lead, try to become a leader. But if you are not willing to do that, or prove unsuccessful at doing that, and cannot accept a leader with different preferred strategies or tactic than you, then you do do not want a leader. Rather, you just want a puppet.
5) It basically comes down to vanity vs. humility. If you think that your preferred strategy or tactics are the only possible or acceptable route to success, than your vanity is a problem. If you cannot accept anything other than immediate and total victory, then you've got a maturity problem, too. In bot cases, you live in some fantasy land where things are easy and merely *wanting* something is enough to make it wise. On the other hand, we can recognize that things are complicated, the important things are usually hard, worth fighting for and require sustained efforts. We *can* recognize that our own instincts, preferences and impatience are not necessarily the best thinking or the best path to success. After all, in politics the goal is to convince people who think differently than we do. Understanding those different people and seeing the path to convince them is often a skill or ability that we lack, perhaps in this case and perhaps more generally.
This came in my "word-a-day" email today. It seemed appropriate for today's post.
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. -Emma Goldman, social activist (27 Jun 1869-1940)
> Good ideas are hard to come by.
Good ideas are easy to come by, but unpopular. What's hard is convincing people that good ideas are good.
I think I’m done here—not only are you enforcing pronoun rules in some misplaced sense of righteousness, but you are blind to what matters. Gender identity should not replace sex for any purpose. To allow it legal standing is to undermine the rule of law. Surprised that you don’t see it.
I don’t think anyone should tell anyone else which pronouns to use—I won’t dictate language usage either way.
Implicit in your ban on “misgendered” pronouns is your assumption that anyone who uses sex-based pronouns is motivated by animus instead of by a rational belief in the immutability of sex and concerns about iatrogenic harms, safeguarding losses, and women’s sex based rights.
Calling some perspectives bigotry is just a way to shut down dialogue.
Hi SB team, long time reader, first time commenter here. As with many occasional comments it's the case that I enjoy and learn from so much of what I read here, but now I'm writing with a complaint! Before that though--I work in education and read a lot about education policy, and the SB multi-part take on education reform's history was among the best I've read.
But the short commentary on Mike Lee's proposal to sell off public lands was highly misleading if not flat out wrong. Given his history, the GOP anti-environmental stances, and other current proposals and executive actions, it is simply naive to believe that his real goal was "to facilitate housing in the Mountain West" as the post put it. If that was truly the goal, a bill that would limit public lands transfers to small areas that would prioritize housing and be immediately adjacent to cities would be much more likely to get traction.
I'm sensitive to this issue for two reasons. First, the New York Times just had an article which framed the issue the same misleading way. Second, coastal city media seems to often misconstrue interior west issues. Those of us who live in the interior west, especially rural areas, see all too many cases of writers and podcasters who just don't seem to understand these huge areas of the country. For those of us who lean liberal, we have to admit too often to conservative locals that the media sound clueless!
Blown away by McBride's interview. As somebody who has trouble holding down his lunch whenever he sees someone saying "What Democrats have to do..." here is the rare case where somebody nailed it.
The thing is, McBride's message isn't for our leaders - it's for US. Liberals have to realize that WE are the ones losing. WE are the ones driving people away. WE are the ones working to keep the tent as small as possible. The base rages at leadership because they're often trying to do things right - to bore the boards - and the base just demands nonstop unproductive fighting. It's just as dysfunctional as the Republicans, just with massively better policy preferences.
Where the leaders fall short is explaining to us, with credibility, that we're being divisive idiots - McBride explains that well (and in much nicer language).
Don't persuade voters. Don't meet them where they are. Lie.
Really appreciated this. I also wrote about Sarah McBride’s interview with Ezra Klein—specifically the clarity and restraint she showed in the wake of the SCOTUS ruling. She’s not just showing maturity, she’s offering Democrats a better model for persuasion.
If helpful, here’s my take:
👉 https://alexvayslep.substack.com/p/what-a-trans-congresswoman-can-teach
I question whether McBride has thought her position through. The idea that she is innately a woman seems like a hard sell to me. The progressive approach of saying that its all intersectional and solidarity is required and we have to profess that what's true in each silo of the movement is true has the better chance. I think that approach has failed and now we need to prove out that McBride's approach also is a loser.
Just very weird to think that throwing people contradictory gender signals isn't going to weird people out. The more convincing you are that you're the opposite sex the weirder it gets. The Amerian public may just be right. Live and let live, but approval isn't somethign that you can require of other people. Acceptance, yes. Safety, yes. Respect, yes. She actually said of lot of what I'm saying in the interview.
I listened to the Ezra Klein interview a few days ago and I'm really impressed with Sarah McBride. Her position is unenviable, but she's handling it intelligently, and it speaks volumes that she was willing to put herself there in the first place. I hope she goes far. The Democratic Party needs more people like her.
This reminds me of the progressive left’s current anger over all the democrats who voted against impeachment. Those who voted NO were exhibiting leadership; they knew that the impeachment is just meaningless table pounding the plays into Republicans hands (and also, this most recent particular basis for impeachment is a terrible one). But so many on the left just REALLY REALLY want to keep pounding the table.
Yeah, I remember being astounded that Reagan was able to index tax brackets. I was, as a young man, *super* impressed by that.
Seems to me what we need to do the next time we get a chance, is to try to monkey with the indexing formula: no indexing in deficit years. You wanna index rates, reduce the debt! Ideally, the index tweaking would be relegated to the Fed.
Wish us luck, lol.
Candidate Mamdani would do well to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the truths of Matt's "Stationary Bandits of NYC" in fashioning his general election candidacy and his to-be-hoped-for mayoralty of NYC. Taxing the most heavily citizenry is a cul de sac at best on the road to reviving the liveliest city in the world.
Ezra’s discussion with Sarah McBride was amazing. They identified my own journey, as a squishy moderate who supported civil unions prior to gay marriage, to someone who now sees that as cowardly and shortsighted. That in turn convinced me that big asks from the trans movement should be accepted wholesale so I didn’t make that mistake again.
But of course, some of the takes *did* make me uncomfortable. There’s a YMCA in my city that has a pool, and there have been numerous complaints, and even protests because a trans woman with a fully male body uses the locker room stark naked, including the group showers. Some of the little girls who take swimming lessons there have never seen a naked man before. The Y’s position has been that they can’t take legal action, and instead has put up signs encouraging “modesty.”
There’s been another awful case where a person who has had numerous arrests masturbating around children now claims to be a trans woman and now hangs out leering in a women’s locker room. This person has made absolutely no effort to look or sound female. It’s a creepy dude taking advantage of the idea that simply identifying as a woman is enough.
I was also shocked to hear a trans woman suggest a compromise position on team sports, leaving it up to local control. She’s very impressive, and I hope Dem lawmakers use the spaces she’s created to moderate.
I'm in an ornery mood this morning, so I'm gonna write another "Do you know what time it is?" comment.
Matt Y is all "let's be reasonable and sensible and centrist and moderate and slowly, boringly, incrementally drill through the hard boards!" Sounds legit!
What he ignores is that four and a half years ago, the hard board labeled "the loser of an election concedes graciously" got set on fire and fed through a woodchipper.
Trump never paid any price - not legally, not politically - for inciting a violent riot to try to prevent the certification of Electoral College votes. People died. The Capitol was vandalized. We quite likely narrowly avoided the assassination of multiple members of Congress. Trump? After some brief words of condemnation, his entire party closed ranks behind him, and he sailed to the GOP nomination in 2024 and then won the general election.
What is to stop the next GOP POTUS candidate from doing the same in 2028? It's all upside, no downside! If he succeeds, heyyyy, he gets to be POTUS! If he fails, welp, he just gets to sit around for four years Xeeting about how badly and unfairly he's been robbed of his rightful win, stoking outrage among his followers that will help him get elected in 2032.
I mean, the one saving grace here is that Trump is old and will die soon, and none of his heirs apparent (Vance, Don Jr.) have his kind of charisma, but how much of a comfort is that? Are we 100% sure that MAGA derives its strength from Trump and will fall apart without him? I'm genuinely not sure.
Pretty much all discourse on Slow Boring is predicated on the belief that Democrats are the problem, if they would just go all Sister Souljah on those extremist lefty activists' asses, then the electorate will appreciate Democrats and turn away from Trump and vote for a Democratic POTUS in 2028, and all will be well!
What if it doesn't work like that, not anymore?
There's no higher power or teacher figure coming to enforce the rules and make Donny go stand in the corner. The way to defeat him is to appeal to people in the middle and to the right of the middle who are queasy about Trump or Trumpism but find Democratic governance crazy and won't accept that either. There is no amount of complaining about whataboutism or stomping our feet about January 6 being worse that will fix the problem.
In a democracy, the voters *are* the higher power. There is a reason the Founding Fathers wrote about how this system of government is suitable only for a virtuous people.
Nonetheless, you did not address my concern. Fine, we do exactly as you say, we are very thoughtful and we appeal to people in the middle and we get enough of them to vote for Buttigieg over Vance in 2028.
And then Vance goes, "Psych! I don't accept this, the election was illegitimate and stolen" and he refuses to certify the Electoral College votes. And he promises to pardon anyone willing to use violence to help him win.
What then?