Harsh Your Mellow Monday: What Did You Expect? Edition
“Metropolis”, directed by Fritz Lang, 1927. F.W. Murnau Foundation
On this Monday before Thanksgiving, which is in the opposite spirit of Harsh Your Mellow Monday, let us pause and reflect on the many, many takes in which folks have unjustly found their mellow. Those poor souls, not realizing they should not be so comfortable in being wrong, can at least be thankful that we few, we happy few, are here to correct the error of their ways in the conventional thinking that has lead them astray. Bless their hearts.
The “Who’s That” Cabinet
Former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden speaking with the media at the 2019 Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, 8 August 2019. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons
One of the easiest things in the world to predict was that that social media would get most of the Biden cabinet picks wrong in the usual prognostication portion of the political silly season that runs from the end of the election till the inauguration of the incoming regime. And silly some of those predictions were, where folks had a fifth of the Democratic Senate contingent suddenly abandoning the cushiest of jobs for the grunt work and anonymity of the Executive, or their favorite big-name politicians or pundits, or the particularly lazy folks who just filtered in the entire Democratic field from 2020 into the available slots.
Nope, the cabinet and key roles would be filled out by folks who most of the chattering webs would have to google, but would be very well known to Team Biden full of insiders and previously-served folks from Joe’s vast experience in both the Senate and also the West Wing for eight years under President Obama. While unimaginative pundits pined for Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, Team Joe went with folks who, at least on paper, have been there and done that:
It would be more exciting to write about how the new president is betraying his promise to shake things up in Washington by turning to the same old Beltway hands, but of course Biden always promised to turn to the same old Beltway hands so we’re left with a boring story.
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) November 23, 2020
Oh, lookey here:
The US president-elect, Joe Biden, will nominate the veteran diplomat Antony Blinken as his secretary of state and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the UN, moving forward on his campaign pledge to restore the US as a leader on the global stage and rely on experts. Blinken and Thomas-Greenfield bring deep foreign policy backgrounds to the nascent administration while providing a sharp contrast with Donald Trump, who distrusted such experience and embraced an “America First” policy that strained longstanding US relationships.
Blinken could be named as early as Tuesday, according to sources close to Biden, while Axios first reported Thomas-Greenfield’s impending nomination. Blinken’s appointment made another longtime Biden aide and foreign policy veteran, Jake Sullivan, the top candidate to be US national security adviser, a source told Reuters.
Thomas-Greenfield, served as the assistant secretary of state for Africa under Obama, and Axios reported that her appointment was intended to restore morale and help fulfill Biden’s pledge to choose a more diverse cabinet than Donald Trump’s.
Biden’s first big personnel announcement set the tone for what looks to be coming, by picking long-time confidant and Washington insider Ron Klain as his Chief of Staff:
Ron Klain, the longtime aide President-elect Joe Biden picked as his White House chief of staff, knows that “cocaine monkeys” unlock tax cuts. That’s just old-fashioned Washington horse-trading, a reflection of the deal making he helped foster during the Barack Obama era and just what he and his new boss hope to do with congressional Republicans during the post-Donald Trump era.
Mr Klain is known as a problem-solving realist in a party increasingly pushed to the left by hard-charging progressives. His ties to the party’s progressive wing do not appear that strong, meaning he will have to extend olive branches to liberal Democratic lawmakers who on Thursday demanded “payback” from the incoming administration for helping get Mr Biden elected.
Somehow, the very Twitter folks whom the Biden Campaign is now openly bragging about ignoring on their way to victory convinced themselves they would be getting the biggest say in filling out Team Biden depth chart. Joe Biden is many things, but a mystery is not one of them. He has almost 50 years of government ties, connections, hook-ups, and networks to draw from, and he isn’t going to need anyone outside his circles help in doing so. He also has the requisite favors and taking care of supporters to consider. Most of all, President-elect Biden understands how government actually works, something his predecessor never bothered with. Biden knows that Mitch McConnell still sits in charge of the senate, and he also knows from his decades of law making that the window for an incoming administration to get big ticket items done is very short. Add in a hostile US Senate and it is even shorter. A wise Biden Administration is not going to waste precious time with drawn-out and unwinnable confirmation fights just to make rose Twitter happy for the effort.
So as the cabinet fills out, expect more “who’s that” reactions than anything else, as insiders look poised to dominate the 46th presidency. With them comes some of the same old issues. Already folks on Joe’s left flank are starting to howl about too many corporate interests having influence, and with the Biden Administration sure to have a plethora of Obama and Clinton veterans in it the right will be hauling out a bunch of their ’08-’16 talking points and grievances.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The Passion of the Rafael
Possibly the most online Senator in the US Senate is at it again:
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 22, 2020
This is, of course, is a take on the famous “Come and take it” flag of Texas’ independence fight against Mexico. The fact that Ted Cruz will protect his turkey more so than he did his wife and father from his favorite president Donald J. Trump has somehow not made it into his social media feed yet.
But perhaps Ted is just off-kilter from having to change his Thanksgiving plans from how he thought November might go.
“I guarantee you…” pic.twitter.com/HRjKjtrziV
— Bad COVID-19 Takes (@BadCOVID19Takes) November 23, 2020
Bless his heart, poor Ted has just been lost as of late. When he stood on the stage of Liberty University to launch his 2016 presidential bid, he sure didn’t see this coming. Having carefully crafted himself as the great evangelical conservative hope for years, basking in applause at America’s largest Evangelical university seemed like the first step in riding a wave of right-wing support to the White House. Little did he know the man sharing the stage with him that day, Jerry Falwell, Jr., had already cast his lot with someone closer to his own greedy and morally questionable heart in Donald Trump. Trump himself rode into Liberty as a conquering hero of many conservative evangelicals despite a long list of seemingly incompatible acts. The politically concerned faithful rejected Cruz and flocked to The Donald. Having been defeated in the primary, Cruz took a shot at calibrating at the RNC in ’16 with his non-endorsement “vote your conscious” speech that got him booed off the stage and roundly mocked by just about anyone.
Ever since, having had his electoral soul ripped out through his nose by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz has been reduced to complementing President Trump on what a lovely hat The Donald made of Cruz’s former electoral soul at every possible opportunity. Senator Cruz has become a very online politician, with constant tweeting and even a podcast with Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles. His latest book was titled One Vote Away, which you may recall from the Amy Coney Barret hearings where he worked the phrase into every sentence that didn’t involve talking about the cases he had litigated.
Thus Cruz 3.0 is in the incubation stage, no doubt hoping 2024 will bring about his adoring public to finally recognize Rafael Edward Cruz for the master political artist he always has been in his own mind.
Good luck with that, artist formerly known as TrusTed. You are going to need it.
Presented Without Further Comment
Sex Pistols star Johnny Rotten bitten by a flea on his penis after rescuing squirrels https://t.co/UVRWVGeUHt pic.twitter.com/2wGuY4mLDW
— 1 NEWS (@1NewsNZ) November 23, 2020
The Ruins of Pompeo
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo tours and has lunch at Psagot Winery, in Judea and Samaria on November 19, 2020. [State Department Photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain] 19 November 2020
It’s a trip that seemed almost calculated to offend — and to burnish Pompeo’s conservative credentials for a possible 2024 presidential campaign. Never one for niceties of etiquette or protocol, Pompeo’s last big tour as America’s 70th secretary of state offered provocations of those who have questioned Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and Pompeo’s role as its No. 1 promoter.
Like President Trump, Pompeo refuses to publicly acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election. Nonetheless, the seven-nation journey, one of the longest he’s taken as secretary, offered evidence that Pompeo is already looking past the Trump era, chockablock as the trip was with pronouncements likely to make Biden’s life difficult and setting out a platform for his own political future.
“He’s spending his last two months in office trolling the world,” said Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It’s an odd role for the nation’s top diplomat to be playing at a rather sensitive time.” The trip started in Paris, where Pompeo’s first event — before seeing government officials — was a private meeting with reporters from right-wing French media, including Valeurs Actuelles. It’s a magazine that was roundly condemned as racist — and was put under preliminary investigation by a prosecutor — after printing an image that depicted a Black French lawmaker as a slave in a piece of fiction.
In Turkey, Pompeo proposed that government ministers come to him in Istanbul — they refused — where he met with the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Turkish officials called Pompeo’s statement on religious freedom in the country “extremely inappropriate,” while senior State Department officials blamed a scheduling conflict for his failure to travel to Ankara, the capital. In Georgia, Pompeo waded into that country’s election dispute, lending legitimacy to a government that has cracked down on protesters demanding a new vote.
Pompeo hit peak anti-diplomacy by visiting a winery in the Israel-occupied West Bank that once named a red blend after him — with a label that says #madeinlegality — for his pro-settlement stance. Under any previous administration, Republican or Democrat, this would have been forbidden, not least because Palestinian families still claim the land on which the winery was built.
“He visited settlements, drank from the poisoned chalice, sanctioned dispossession,” the left leaning Haaretz newspaper said in an editorial on Pompeo’s last day in Israel. “These are the last days of Pompeo. How good it is that this is the case.” Through it all, the question was – why? What was so important that it merited a trip just as France, Israel and other nations undertake new lockdowns in a desperate effort to get the coronavirus under control before Christmas?
The tour was planned well before the U.S. election, and secretaries of state routinely travel in the lame-duck period between election and inauguration. Before the trip, senior State Department officials said it had many goals: honoring the victims of terrorism in France, promoting religious freedom and discussing the diplomatic agreements between Israel, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
A senior department official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity on Sunday, rejected the idea the trip was a victory lap or aimed at furthering Pompeo’s ambitions.
“Future ambitions” as to what? Pompeo is so politically toxic that he had to be strong-armed out of running for senate in Kansas out of fear he would tank a vital seat in Republican’s efforts to hold their slim majority. Pompeo has all the charisma of a dried-out sponge and half the charm. He has no political talent to speak of that was not damaged by his unflapping loyalty to President Trump. Trumpism is going to survive the outgoing president in some form or fashion, but the same cannot be said about all the practitioners of MAGA. It is hard to see any future for Pompeo outside of the integrated MAGA celebrity circuit that is rapidly forming to champion and celebrate — not to mention make a business model — of the lost cause of Trump.
I hope Pompeo brought some of that wine home with him; it will surely be a rarity in coming years.
1. Insider v. outsider is a false dichotomy. An insider can be a person with institutional knowledge, a firm sense of civic responsibility, and expertise in their field. An outsider can be a buffoon who acts as a wrecking ball, breaks shit, and demoralizes everyone.
2. There is no strategy in the Trumpian ID only chaos. Pompeo’s actions reflect this.
3. I get COVID-19 fatigue, I really do. We are not psychologically equipped to be thinking like this for the long term. I thought this article on the subject of being “over” COVID:
https://slate.com/technology/2020/11/coronavirus-psychogy-moral-decision-making.html
I like Thanksgiivng a lot. It is one of my favorite holidays but we are in the mist of a deadly uptick in the disease across the globe. I don’t think people need to cancel Thanksgiving but they need to maybe scale it back a bit and crack open some windows.Report
My feeling is that the only way you get everybody to scale back on the holiday Season rather than just a plurality is with troops on the streets. That’s the typical way quarrantines were enforced rather than moral suasion. The type of moral suasion that people are doing online, “A Zoom Thanksgiving is better than an ICU Christmas” is going to only work on the converted.Report
comment in modReport
*makes sign of the OT* it is releasedReport
Re: Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, Rod Dreher, Donald Trump and the entire Republican Party:
Trumpism Is More About Culture Than Economics
https://thedispatch.com/p/trumpism-is-more-about-culture-than
Nut graf:
If we look a bit deeper at Trumpian populism, it becomes clear it is mostly a bundle of cultural sentiments. It is rooted in anti-elitism, which does not necessarily mean support for industrial policy, protectionism, or restrictive immigration. Large national surveys conducted by the American Enterprise Institute suggest Trump’s supporters are actually quite content with American economic life but highly reactive to elite dominance of American cultural life.
What makes this so dangerous is that there is no political cure for cultural resentments. There isn’t any governmental policy that can make cultural conservatives happy, other than the wholesale suppression of things they find unpleasant, meaning the equality of others who don’t share their culture.
This is what I was getting at with my questions about what an imagined conservative dystopia might be, and asking for a specific list of grievances they want cured.Report
Dreher!Report
Crisis!
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2020/civil-war-is-coming-can-we-stop-it-in-timeReport
There ya go!
“influential voices such as Yosemite Sam and Marshall McLuhan” – wrong
“influential voices such as Marshall McLuhan” – rightReport
I’m not sure what your argument is here.
That Dreher isn’t influential? I’d say he is.
Or maybe that he isn’t an accurate representation of the cultural right? He is unique in his calls for withdrawal, but in his set of grievances with contemporary culture he represents a large majority of the Trumpist faction.
And as Carl Bernstein pointed out, even the “sane and responsible” figures like Romney, Collins and Murkowski may speak the words of moderation but in terms of ultimate outcomes, they share everything that Dreher and the writers of Crisis do.Report
I’ve talked about this before on the site: I’ve never heard Rod Dreher cited by anyone on the right, only by people on the left who think he represents the thinking of the right. If I want to know what smarter lefties are thinking, I’ll look at The Atlantic or Mother Jones, because those are the sources they refer to. If you want to understand what the smarter conservatives are thinking, you should read the people we read.
I’m pretty sure you were part of that conversation. I’d hate to think that my advice was in vain, because the unfamiliarity of OT’s lefties with rightward thought is a running issue.Report
I don’t think I was in that. Can you point me towards some?Report
https://ordinary-times.com/2020/10/30/the-antifa-case-for-voting-trump/Report
Yeah, I just checked, and you were part of that mini-thread. Are you noticing a pattern? How many times have you claimed to understand conservative thought, only to be told by me and others that you don’t get it, and yet you don’t follow up on our suggestions? Isn’t the point here that we’re supposed to be moving closer to understanding?Report
You don’t think you might be doing a Pauline Kael thing here where you don’t read Dreher so you assume no one on the right does?
Dreher writes for the American Conservative magazine, which is Pat Buchanan’s old turf.
He has 64K followers on Twitter;
The WaPo in 2017 described him as “An influential and prolific blogger for the American Conservative — he averages 1.3 million monthly page views on his blog — Dreher is credited with helping introduce J.D. Vance of “Hillbilly Elegy” to a larger audience. He founded the “crunchy con” ideology — another book, back in 2006 — wedding cultural and moral conservatism with an organic, co-op-and-Birkenstock lifestyle.”
His latest book “Live Not By Lies” is reviewed in the current issue of Commentary magazine.
Dreher has been published in Time and National Review.
Do I need to go on? He seems at least as influential a figure on the right as anyone.
For us to assert that Dreher is a good example of How Conservatives Think seems perfectly reasonable.Report
On that thread I linked to, only one of our local conservatives said they had heard of him. On the other hand, there’s you, Saul, and the Washington Post to tell me how conservatives think. There’s a Kael thing happening here, all right. I don’t remember if I used this example on the other thread, but imagine if I told you that Juan Williams was an influential liberal because he was on FNC a lot.
ETA: 64K Twitter followers? Is that a joke?Report
He was on NPR *ALL THE TIME*.
Until he got fired for racism.Report
That’s so unfair. He’s a bigot for sure, but against LGBTQ people, liberals, and especially the religiously non-orthodox (you know what Episcopalians are like), not non-whites.Report
So @Pinky a question – is Dreher wrong conceptually? Whether anyone has heard of him or reads him is irrelevant if he gets the ideas right . . . and that aside who would you rather @Chip Daniels read?Report
You all miss the point. For reasons Pinky won’t articulate, Dreher is embarrassing to someone who holds the views Pinky self-identifies as “conservative.” It is to Pinky’s credit that he finds Dreher embarrassing. But rather than explain what he finds embarrassing about Dreher and why Dreher is not properly regarded as an example of conservatism, he writes him off as some unknown weirdo, despite his regular gigs in conservative magazines, two books, and profiles in the mainstream media. Just because he, and a couple of other people here, claim not to have heard of him. And then takes refuge in “Pinkyism” when he wishes to disclaim anything specific that Dreher says, however consistent with widespread understandings of the various branches of “conservatism.”
To be sure, Pinky is authoritative on the tenets of Pinkyism, but if he wants to disown Dreher he should tell us how Dreher’s views differ from his own.Report
***** ***** off.
I tried to think of a better comment, but if you’re questioning my motives, then ****** ** a *****.Report
Well, that certainly tells us all we need to know.Report
I’ll talk to anyone about this stuff if they’re willing to listen. If you want to accuse me of deception, why should I respond?Report
Another reading comprehension problem. Whatever else I may “accuse” you of, it isn’t “deception,” unless, perhaps, it’s self-deception. The only reference to your “motives” is to the embarrassment you feel being associated with Dreher, which I explicitly assert is to your credit. The rest is an account of your public comments distancing yourself from embarrassing associations with Dreher, what you have said and what you have not said, and an invitation to explain how you differ from Dreher, if you do, and why he is not a fair representative of one prominent strand of actually existing conservatism, beyond that you hadn’t heard of him, if, indeed, you hadn’t.
So in the words of Frasier Crane, “I’m listening,” and so are others, like Chip and Philip H., who have wanted the same questions answered.Report
Good reading comprehension is an admirable goal. Show me where I distanced myself from Dreher’s ideas. I don’t know what his ideas are, because I’ve never read him. Joridor Planecko may describe conservatism perfectly, but I’ve never read him either, so I’m not going to comment on his strengths and weaknesses. But I will comment if every liberal considers Planecko to be essential conservative reading, and I’ll do so all the more enthusiastically if those liberals can’t describe conservative thought accurately. If you want to know where I differ from Planecko, I comment here frequently.Report
Exactly. You haven’t distanced yourself from Dreher’s ideas; you’ve distanced yourself from Dreher. And you feel the need to do so for some reason. If it’s not his ideas, which you say you don’t know, is it his reputation, or his personality, or his easy mockability, or some other reason? When people here cite Dreher, they usually cite something he has said or written. You obviously don’t want that albatross hung around your neck, and nobody can blame you, but you can’t have it both ways, asking us to take your word for it that Dreherism and Pinkyism differ from each other and that Dreherism isn’t properly part of actually existing conservatism and Pinkyism is when you won’t engage.Report
I’ve explained this. I don’t know what Dreherism is. I visit this site for entertainment, but mainly for information-sharing in both directions. If you don’t want information from the mainstream right, that’s fine, and if you want the last word, go for it.Report
I’d very much like information from the “mainstream right.” and I think I get a fair amount of it from the usual sources. I also get a fair amount of information from other rightist sources that may or may not be “mainstream,” but are sufficiently prominent in the overall rightist ecosystem to be taken seriously as representing significant tendencies in actual existing conservatism.
I’m quite sure that Pinkyism is a far more reasonable viewpoint than Dreherism — admittedly a low bar to clear — but Pinkyism isn’t the whole rightist ecosystem, and Pinky isn’t the Pope of Conservatism, empowered to excommunicate embarrassing co-religionists, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. If it really bothers you that people who have read Dreher cite him, point, and laugh, feel free to ignore them. Your saying you don’t know who he is or what he stands for (though you seem to know enough not to want to be associated with him) doesn’t advance the ball.Report
Janet Yellen for Treasury, Avril Haines for Director of National Intelligence, Jake Sullivan for National Security Adviser, Alejandro Mayorkas for D.H.S., Linda Thomas-Greenfield for U.S. Ambassador for the United Nations, John Kerry for special envoy on Climate Change.Report
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/katie-porter-did-not-question-emily-murphy-because-the-gsa-head-blew-off-todays-biden-transition-briefing/
I was hoping for a less partisan source but Emily Murphy ignored the Congressional request to testify and offered a subordinate for 30 minutes next week instead. The burn everything down technique lives on.Report
Did you see the Congressional response letter? Its as close to “get your unresponsive a$$ in here now young lady” as I think I’ve ever seen from a committee.Report
Oh, that Commentary review of Dreher’s new book really gets to the heart of what is causing the radicalization of conservatives:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/abe-greenwald/soft-totalitarianism-hard-truth/
Anyone who’s ever been admonished for asserting that, say, only women have periods or that looting and arson do not a peaceful protest make, can attest to the efforts of our radical reality tinkerers. And precisely because the new totalitarianism is so different in appearance from that of the Soviet Union, it goes unrecognized by most Americans, including conservative people of faith. What’s more, the soft totalitarianism Dreher describes is less overtly intimidating than it is therapeutic. “It masks its hatred of dissenters from its utopian ideology in the guise of helping and healing,” Dreher writes. “In therapeutic culture, which has everywhere triumphed, the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish.”</i.
Lemme extract that last part:
"… the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish."
This then, is what is so alarming and terrifying to Dreher and American conservatives. Liberal American society is not allowing Dreher to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine Rod Dreher standing in front of a women's bathroom. Forever.Report
I’m old enough to remember when Commentary sneered at the majority of Americans Jews for being opposed to the free market allegedly. Or at least our support for the welfare state was wrongheaded.Report
I know that living members of my family have personal memories of having to remain indoors in the mid-1920’s for fear of the Klan nightriders.
Due to a shortage of dark skinned folk in the upper Midwest, in those days the Klan was as virulently anti-Papist as anti- anything.
So like American Jews, one might think that American Catholics should have a keen grasp of where the kulturekampf leads.
But I guess its part of human nature to think that “this time it will work in our favor!”Report
Celebrating the pursuit of happiness is so un-American.Report
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine Rod Dreher standing between a mob of left-wing rioters and a small business, forever,” didn’t quite have the same punch to it, I guess.Report
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/23/politics/transition-biden-gsa-begin/index.html
Looks like the the transition will begin formally.Report
I like the Cruz/Dad reference… I still laugh every time I remember that. Douthat made a similar observation.
Report
Trump is a quintessentially American story, in that if you wrote it down and claimed it was fiction nobody would buy it.Report
The version that *I* heard was that the attack was originally intended for Jeb!.
Sadly, Trump never got to use it against him. WOULDN’T THAT HAVE BEEN SOMETHING.
“If elected president, I will open the JFK files and we’ll see what Jeb!’s dad was doing that day.”
Sadly, no one clapped and Jeb! was gone.
But it’s such a good attack! Might as well use it against Ted.Report
That’s … insane.
And also makes sense as an attack. GWHB was a Texan, played footsie with the far right (he ran for the Senate the next year opposing the CRA), and was later head of the CRA. Also, Barbara Bush would have squashed Trump like a bug.Report
It sounds insane as soon as you read it but you read it a second time and you want to redo 2016.Report
There’s lot of reasons to want to redo 2016. In just one category, 260,000 of them as of today.Report
One of the funny dynamics I’ve seen between The Left and The Far Left has to do with Elizabeth Warren’s place in the cabinet.
“She was supposed to be X!”, The Left cries out.
“Yeah, I guess she stabbed Bernie in the back for nothing (snake emoji)”, The Far Left rejoins.
(food fight ensues)Report
Actually a lot of us never wanted her in the cabinet. She will be far more effective on the Hill in her current job. I just wish she’d unseat Chuck Schumer as Democratic Lead. That man can’t inspire dryer lint.Report
Warren is a Democratic Senator from a state with a Republican Governor. She was never going to be in the Cabinet as a simple matter of arithmetic. That was always obvious. Maybe someone somewhere will get into a food fight over that. There are 350-odd million Americans, after all. But that it will be either interesting or dynamic I seriously doubt.Report
Schumer is another politician who is much better at his job than he is given credit for because people think the position Senate Minority Leader has super magic powers. It does not. Schumer’s main work is in backrooms and this involve getting DiFi to announce she will not be in the chair or ranking Democrat on the judiciary committee depending on the outcome of the GA special elections.Report
Your dedication to D-minus trolling is impressive especially with its firm commitment to thinking twitter is real life and the basis for all Democratic Party action despite all evidence to the contrary. Most people in the real world want Warren to remain in the Senate because she is more effective in the Senate and she would be replaced by a Republican if on a cabinet.Report
I can easily see how centrists would want that.Report
Us leftists want it too.Report
MOLOTOV: Is not the True Leftist position to want Warren in the Cabinet?
*Rose Twitter members begin to raise their hands in unison*
MOLOTOV: “On the other hand- Perhaps the True Leftist position is to have Warren remain in the Senate, thereby thwarting any attempt by the revanchists to install a counterrevolutionary Senator!”
*Rose Twitter members lower, then begin to raise their hands in unison again*
MOLOTOV: But no! The most True Leftist position is to have Warren in the Cabinet and accept a counterrevolutionary in the Senate as a way of demonstrating our unwavering commitment to the sacrifices needed for the revolution!”
*Rose Twitter members exchange nervous looks then begin to raise their hands in unison once more*Report
In hindsight he probably would have won.Report