It's Mark Penn, he hasn't been anything but harmful for, what, twenty five years? Longer?

Well that is the "woke" business in a nutshell- the established powers embracing this new symbolism without substance and new language signaling because they can easily do so without making any substantial concessions or painful choices. Shouldn't be a surprise that the Dems politicians do it too and, yeah, it's very much a lot of elderly folks in very comfortable prestigious jobs clinging tightly to them because they don't want to let go.

Justin is a dead man walking. He didn't learn ol Johnny Cretchien's lessons and went hog wild. It's gonna be a bitter cold run in the wilderness for the grits.

As an outspoken centrist I'm gonna go on record and say I disagree with Nancy Pelosi on this. AOC has been a trooper and deserved the nod. This is just obviously personal politics in that Pelosi jumped in to help an old friend and that just doesn't help the party in the long run. I think AOC should have gotten the job.

Sure, that is possible but some seriously important and central people in the GOP would have to have their oxen really
(primarily around taxes) significantly gored and considering that Trump seems to be going in the opposite direction with DOGE and Ryanism seeming to be in the offing; and seeing as Trump himself is one of those people who'd have their oxen gored if taxes went up on them I'd not bet for it.

The identarian set is noisy and well connected to the Democratic activist and staffer class but if they're angry the worst they can do is contact staffers or media figures who can contact/get the attention of actual Democratic decision makers and politicians. Whereas if the GOP money men get angry they can have GOP Senators and Congresscritters and Governors on the phone in minutes.

Yeah Harris tried to reach everyone AND alienate no one to her left or in Bidens' administration. I think a pretty good case can be made that:
A) the attempt at appealing to neocons was a perennial failure. Ignore Nikki Haley's protest vote, the Bulwark crowd and their ilk. The neocons don't command an actual constituency of voters that aren't already in the tent. Every second on Cheney was a wasted second.
B) The attempt to keep the Biden crew happy was probably a mistake. She should have thrown the old man under the bus on immigration policy and possibly on the inflation question (though she might have been able to finesse that one if she'd directly faced it without blaming Biden necessarily). She wasn't going to lose voters for hurting Bidens' feelings.
C) She was wildly over considerate of the left wing groups. In hindsight we know she should have probably broke ranks with them on some elements of immigration policy (like dropping back to Obama era stances) and gone even harder on crime questions. Instead she campaigned as a moderate by not saying anything on those issues, which let her get painted by her past 2020 positions. If she hadn't run as she did in 2020 maybe it could have worked but with that record. No, wasn't going to happen.
D) and the final error was getting sucked into Trumps gravitational well. Every minute spent talking about how awful Trump was, was probably wasted. Everyone who knew was already onboard, anyone not on board would consider it irrelevant or funny or just part of the conspiracy against him. This is probably Trumps political super power- tricking his opponents into talking about how he's a pile of excrement in a human-ish shape instead of talking about things the persuadable voters actually care about. Hilldog fell into it, so did the entire GOP lineup in 2015, and so did Harris.

I sit corrected, I saw so many folks inveigling that she lost ground on both sides because of Bidens' actions on Gaza that I assumed without looking that it was true. The point stands, just leave Jewish voters off the list, bless them.

I'd still bet on the Dems over the Republicans on that question because for the Dems to get to that quadrant requires, by and large, simply being unfashionable to a noisy but electorally small set. For the GOP to get requires that they cross an electorally small but very financially powerful (in the GOP) constituency.

Sure, and I agree- and have noted elsewhere, that giving any credence to the neocon/libertarian set is a terrible mistake Harris made and that Dems have made for quite a long time. When I think about all the bandwidth and time Harris wasted, flat out wasted, trying to appeal to Cheney centrists who just don't exist as a voting block, well that is dispiriting.

That's also not, I think, controversial- I don't think it's a mistake Dems are likely to make again if for no other reason than that we're plumb out of neocon figures, thank goodness, but losing ground with Asians, Jews or Historic amounts of lost ground with Hispanics? I don't think that can all be blamed on inflation or asymmetrical hack gappery, especially when it looks like a lot of those losses can be laid at the feet of our own avant garde leftist hacks.

Sure, and kicking poor JB around is a liberal honored tradition here but I think it obscures more than it illuminates. JB isn't a conservative (no matter how much you cast it upon him).

It remains true that inflation is the most likely and central culprit for the Dems loss, but the losses in specific demographics? Hispanics? Other minority communities? That bad? It seems dubious and a lot of info suggests that our least appealing and most screechy left wing groups are not just wrong about the voters/communities they claim to speak for but ludicrously, terribly wrong. And that's a serious problem that needs to be considered no matter whether Jay annoys you or not.

You often assume an ironic or enigmatic posture so I am inquiring to be certain.

You realize that a double blind trial like what you're talking about would involve exposing unvaccinated (placebo) children to fishin polio? Doing it back when no vaccine existed is one thing but doing that now? You don't see any problems with that?

Sure, but what 2024 seems to have told us is that there is a lot -LESS- tradeoff than the various groups and advocates claim. The open borders leftist coalition told the Dems for over a decade that absolutely all of their demands on permissive border policy were necessary to win the votes of Latin American immigrant communities. It turns out that not only were those groups wrong- they were ludicrously wrong. One can go down the lift of liberal interest groups and it looks like most of the highest heat/lowest light subjects also have the lowest voter salience. In other words a confident nimble liberal politician could trim off the leftiest most policies and reap a lot of shrieking from vocal interest groups but also reap a lot of electoral gain from the actual, meatspace voters who actually decide elections. The silver lining message of 2024 is that the circle is a lot closer to a square than the ideologues claim. It might even be a squircle.

What's encouraging is that, because it's so dumb and so unpopular, it shouldn't be hard to reverse. Like the idiotic school boards have already had their hides tanned. The nutty DA's are being recalled, the liberal woo local politicians are losing (to other Democrats) in the local elections. The NIMBY thing is gonna be tough but that's also the one that's got the least national salience.

All this presumes that RFK Jr. would have to come back to the well of confirmation again and again on each policy he tries to enact which is, of course, nonsensical. There will be no "support him on the good stuff, oppose him on the bad stuff" option what so ever. If he pursued the slim chance of upside policies it'd be smothered within the administration/GOP coalition and the Dems support of that unlikely upside policy would mean nothing. When he persues the likely downside policies Dem opposition would, once again, mean very little. Dems get one attempt, up or down, to support or oppose JFK Jr.'s nomination. Since his nomination has a slim prospect of some good things and high likelihood of terrible things the only rationale choice for Dems is to oppose his nomination in total.

He also had an interaction with Mexico that followed along the same lines:
Trump- I'mma gonna tarriff unless you cut off immigration and fentanyl lines to the US.
Sheinbaum- Ok, we'll cut off immigration and fentanyl Mr. President. *does nothing*
Trump- Great conversation with Mexican President, trade war is off!

But, of course, when talk means nothing then it isn't predictive of actions so who the fish knows what'll actually happen.

I'm very sorry about the cancer that is hitting your family. I hope it goes well- cancer is never a joke.

I'm of two minds on the subject.

The optimistic take is that Trump is a known value now and his counterparties know that some symbolic gestures and lots of talking up Trump may be sufficient to buy him off.

The pessimistic take is that Trump did actually launch trade wars before and this time he has far less latitude for fishing up. Inflation was just recently tamped back down - if he launches a trade war it could go to pot enormously quickly. Perhaps it'll go so bad that it'll convince congress to rescind the executives unilateral authority to enact tariffs.

Ironically there is potential because they'd have to be pretty fishin awful to beat Assad.

I get it, he's the current GOP in a nutshell.

I'd take the other side of that bet. He'll be lucky to be a trivia question or comic relief.

Certainly not- we both agree Hunter is guilty of the tax charge and the picayune gun form charge.

My explanation, unlike yours, explains the enormous scope and breadth of the pardon Joe issued. If Biden was simply trying to get Hunter out of the current charges he could have pardoned those specific charges/crimes. His pardon, instead, is for all actions/allegations that took place in a huge swathe of years. That's like trying to kill a local cat by carpet bombing the entire county. Biden is very obviously trying to pre-empt any effort to gin up any form of charges against Hunter by a future administration; not just get Hunter out of his current charges.

I don't approve of any of it, mind, but that's because I think a Trump administration spending bandwidth crucifying Hunter Biden would be some of the least nationally destructive, albeit evil, stuff they could spend bandwidth on. But I'm not Hunter Bidens' father.

Yeah as if Newsweek, Politico and twitter set the discourse. We shall see but I have profound doubts. Then again, the old man has used pardon powers in ways I don't approve of already. I still don't think he'll be expending them for Fauci, Cheney and Schiff; no matter what Newsweek, Politico and X say.

Gotcha, next thing to twitter then.

I don't deny it was a massive and blatant favor to his son and I don't approve of any element of the pardon- we just disagree on whether it was out of fear of Trump going much further and I don't think such fears are baseless.