Commenter Archive

Short of high altitude bombing nothing will ruin a city more effectively than rent control. As I read the story all I felt was mild disgust.

I agree entirely which is the devilishly obnoxious thing about Trump. He's an utter idiot but he has this instinct that sends him squirming into the crevice of any given situation where crushing him requires actors to behave profoundly contrary to their immediate interests.

I want to say something about how the Dems can use this precedent the next time they get in the executive but my expectation is this is eventually going to run into a brick wall of court judgements against it and then that wreckage will explode into a massive fireball as data leaks and other fish ups absolutely explode in ineptness and disaster so the only precedent will be "if you do this it'll blow up in your faces like you'll never believe".

Mhm, so this looks like what the markets (and I) were expecting. A bunch of already existing moves and realities being repackaged as concessions to Trump; basically kayfabe. What'd probably be good "in principle" would be for a leader to refuse to do this kind of kabuki and insist that Trumps tarrifs were a violation of existing agreements, would hurt Americans etc... but what is good for the foreign countries in each of these specific situations, though, is to simply give Trump his fig leaf and then get on with business without the disruption of an actual fight.

It's too soon to tell but the Canadian vibe has moved strongly against Trump and by association strongly against the right in Canada which is exactly why you see Poilievre, who is no idiot, tweeting that kind of stuff. This could, entirely, be just vibes based so who knows but, pre-Trump, the question in Canada was "how huge will the Liberal wipeout be?" and now it's "Everyone hates Trump, maybe Justin shouldn't resign?"

But, again, it's far too soon to tell and if this is the Trump bumpkum that I presume it is, everything could easily revert to the mean if the massive uncertainty gets resolved.

It's slightly complicated by the fact that Trump also promised to "take steps" to reduce arms smuggling into Mexico. So it's mostly just a lot of symbolic hand waving in both directions. This sort of plays into my general expectation that Trump was mostly looking for symbolic exchanges and a lot of smoke so he can peddle that to his supporters as triumphs while blowing confusion around to try and distract from the nonsense that Musk is up to on the homestead.

Of course he's juggling lit matches in an ammunition dump and if he fishes it up he'll get one heck of a market crash. It'll be interesting to see what the exchanges with the Canadians results in. So far he seems to be almost single handedly destroying the prospects for the Canadian right wing in the next election which is ironic.

Harris was an unavoidable candidate and I think she did ok with the hand she was dealt both by her past 2020 decisions and by Bidens' decisions. Harris was an unambiguously bad candidate in 2020- that's not controversial, she didn't even make it to voting; and that past haunted her in 2024. Maybe a better candidate would have either sold their past positions in a way that moved voters; or reversed on their past positions in a way that was convincing to placate voters or cleverly dodged their past positions in a way that charmed voters. Was Harris a good candidate? We can argue that I suppose but what is not ambiguous is that Harris wasn't good enough.

Catastrophically wrong would be like the reverse of Obamas victory in 2008: the GOP with 60 or more Senators and a much bigger margin of victory than 3 congrescritters, obviously.

I don't know that you're wrong, you could be right, but you could also be catastrophically wrong. Counterfactuals are hard as fish. Me, when I wanna daydream, I imagine Biden had bowed out after the midterms or, if I'm really ambitious, if he hadn't run in 2020 in the first place.

See further up in these comments Saul.

Heh that's just Captain Hindsighting Jay. For all we know had a convention been held we'd be looking at bigger losses as a bloodied and divided party crashed and burned worse in November* and you'd be here saying "you thought it wasn't important enough to unify behind a candidate quickly in order to prevent this, well... who do you expect to disagree with you?"

*And, yes, it's also possible some remarkable and gifted politician could also have risen from the scrum, united the party, raised tons of money and trounced Trump but you keep pointing out that many of the Dems politician and apparatus people are heavily into DEI stuff- who do you think would have been choosing the new candidate at the convention?

Well there ya go Saul- that's not the tone or attitude you'd get from a right wing troll who's gleeful that Trump is in office. That's genuine irritation that Harris lost showing through the normal contrarian and detached tone.

You missed the *

Certainly I have never proposed curb-stomping anyone. At most I've suggested dropping some of the least popular stuff and stopping talking about the next least popular stuff, while still supporting it.

Can we be clear here? An actual attempt at genuine mass depuration would require something from Congress otherwise it'd get shut down in courts* before it got started. As in passed the filibuster act of Congress. You'd need serious money to try and mass deport. Trump is most likely going to just loudly deport slightly fewer people than Biden or Obama did and that'll suffice for his mob. Plus if his tariff nonsense tanks the economy immigration will plunge like a paralyzed falcon organically.

*This presumes that he loses in court on his current stunts as everyone presumes. If the courts actually side with him then we're in a whole different universe.

Hey far be it for me to disrespect the classically American strategy of simply repeating our position louder and slower. It hasn't worked so far but maybe if we yell loud enough all the normie voters will just finally get it. Maybe the "we're here, we're queer, we're coming for your kids." chant should become mandatory for all Pride celebrations or something. Hopefully the thermostatic reaction to trumps being a dumb fisher will do the job for us regardless. I just prefer the party take more agency in its wins and losses.

Obviously we have no way of knowing for sure but I think a core question is being overlooked. -If- my general premise is correct and dropping the left most and most controversial, say, 10% of demands on Trans issues, for the sake of argument, would allow the Dems to win elections is that actually a sacrifice that you and/or DavidTC would even countenance? I think that is the question at the heart of the matter.

I'm on board with all of that but surely we can agree that if a teacher is trying to protect their students privacy, advertising that posture for kudos from their social media circle where anyone can see is a very bad idea and can lead to some predictably bad results?

I think, DavidTC, we can recognize issues where we're, to use your example, trying to defend a trench that is on the low ground and flooded because it was dug through a marsh versus a trench that is on a defensible elevated slope.

And I can certainly see that the right isn't stopping only at their photogenic causes on Trans and are going for blanket persecution.

I respect the argument for total purity but I suspect we're eliding the issue. Even if it was established that giving ground on those issues would mean that we'd win the median voter and keep the GOP from winning overall I presume you'd say that the cost of that victory was too high yes?

That's semantics DavidTC even though I wish it weren't. I agree no minor can transition without their parents becoming aware of the matter but parents assuredly want to know about this and teachers affirmatively saying on social media they'll hide it, let that genie out of the bottle.

We deal with the media, including the right wing fisher media, we have because we have no choice DavidTC and it doesn't change the fact that the right wing clowns managed to find teachers publicly talking about how they were hiding this info from parents.

Again, I personally think trans folks should be able to transition as soon as they've sorted out that they're trans. But the vast majority of even otherwise supportive parents do not like that idea so it's an extremely bad idea for teachers to be broadcasting that- especially if they're ostensibly trying to protect their students. If you're concerned that your trans students might be outed to their parents you might, maybe, want to consider not broadcasting to everyone on social media that you actively conceal such info from the parents of your kids. Apparently the teachers self aggrandizement is more important than the kids safety.

Persuadable voters but, obviously, not anti-trans absolutists; but we were never going to get their votes anyhow.

And we should fight like hell for access to surgery for people over the age of consent and for equal treatment for trans people in government services and treatment. But, maybe, maybe, when teachers boast on social media about how they'll encourage their 5th graders to consider trans and conceal any inclinations of those same kids from their parents we should probably be on record as not supporting that. Because, setting aside the grey zone morality of this (and it's very murky grey indeed), if everyone but the very left wing most parents hear "we're gonna support teachers hiding medical info about your kids from you" they're going to nod soberly and then vote for someone (anyone) who is opposed to that. And those fishers who get elected that way will go after everything, absolutely everything, while we sit powerless on the sidelines. Pure, but powerless.

It's a classic trope when someone says a bunch of marginal positions are unpopular and marginal to try and hide behind a non-marginal and popular position and claim that's being targeted instead.

I think that an under appreciated implication of MattY's thoughts here is the corollary to his point.
I agree, sorrowfully and reluctantly that, in the glaring blaze of hindsight, it looks like Biden did a lot of harm to the Dems out of hubris, venality and senescence (in that order).

The corollary to that point, however, is that Biden is gone; his heirs- if he even had any, are no longer extant as political forces in the party which means a great deal of the trouble the Dems face may simply be fixable by having a new set of politicians go through the crucible of primaries, define what they believe in and then they will be in a strong position to compete. The amount of movement in terms of core political beliefs and principles, for instance, is not very huge. You could disavow a very small number of fringe views, be silent on a slightly larger number of slightly less fringe views and avow some sensible reforms that don't actually cut against but instead clarify left wing goals (permitting reform, educational excellence, most things YIMBY, etc) and probably have an excellent shot at major victory.
There, arguably, isn't a big group of voters that'll fight to the death against these kinds of changes. They are, instead, rooted in fashionable elites and groups. In theory, at least, that makes these changes a lot easier.