A campaign that focuses heavily on January 6 might beat Trump. A campaign that points out January 6 and also says, "Here are the things we're going to do to help make your life better" almost certainly will.
Actually, I think if Harris beats Trump, which I find increasingly unlikely by the day, the reason will not be January 6 at all, because I think the people who are inclined to be swayed by that were going to vote for Harris anyway, but the one actual positive message I see from her regularly: reproductive freedom is a basic freedom and Harris will work to restore it where it has been lost.
That's the most basic part of keeping the lights on, and no, I don't think that's all that matters.
Look, putting aside any specific type of message, do you really think you can convince "low information" voters that Trump is a threat to the United States Constitution and the system that rests upon it? For a lot of Americans, that's not much different than saying he's a threat to gravity. And for others, the idea that a senile old clown is a serious threat to our system of government calls into question the legitimacy of that system at a fundamental level. In the former case, the urgency looks like manufactured political messaging, and in the latter, there is no clear reason to participate in the system at all, as it's clearly broken. I see a lot of both in less political fora on the internet.
By the way, I am not saying this as a leftist who prefers Bernie-like candidates to non-Bernie-like candidates. I think an '08 Obama-like candidate would beat Trump by 7 or 8 points this year. If you can create real enthusiasm around the idea that things can be better than they are, and your party's candidate is the one to help make them better, you will get people to vote for you who otherwise will probably just stay home, or maybe even vote for the other side.
This probably goes without saying, but Harris is who the Democrats are now, and there's no real way around that. That is, the Dems, particularly at the national level, are bland, message-less candidates who can keep the lights on.
In '08, the Dems nominated a message guy with basically no experience, over a long-time party inside with a lot of experience. He was a president who basically accomplished one (extremely watered-down version of an) on-message legislative priority in 8 years, but did mostly kept the lights on. Since his second term, they've nominated three message-less but experienced candidates, the first two times against a message candidate whose experience was questioned (despite having been in government since forever), and at least in '20, also against a message candidate who was supposed to be similar enough to Bernie in message, and similar enough to Clinton/Biden in experience, to be attractive to both types of Dems (the Dems who want a candidate who has principles and acts on them, and the Dems who want the lights kept on a little else). With the fading of Bernie, and as a result, the fading of his young acolytes, from relevance, and Warren's pretty much complete disappearance, there isn't as far as I can tell a message Dem left in the stable. And you see what message-lessness gets you against a candidate who's all message (you can't even say he's experienced after 4 years in the White House, because his White House wasn't exactly high functioning): at best, very narrow wins, with low voter enthusiasm. Maybe if the Dems lose this time, they'll consider a message going forward? I doubt it, though, because the most visible voters, and the biggest donors, just want the lights kept on, and they've increasingly tried to appeal to conservatives whose primary voting motivation is also keeping the lights on.
ISIS is not a renamed Al Qaeda in Iraq (and to be clear, Al Qaeda in Iraq was not a creation of bin Laden; it was an affiliated group founded by Zarqawi, who was not Saudi). ISIS came out of an Al Qaeda in Iraq-algined group, Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah, but was not funded by or an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
I suppose you could do a sort of counterfactual analysis in which the U.S. and the Saudis don't, from the Afghan War into the 90s, help create the original Al Qaeda, then 9/11 doesn't happen, and then Bush doesn't have the political capital to start a war of choice in Iraq, which then creates an insurgency out of which ISIS is formed (and later, a power vacuum into which ISIS slots itself), but to say that this means that the Saudis created ISIS is not much different from saying that the Ottomans created Al Qaeda by not being able to hold onto the Levant in WWI.
We are responsible for the existence of ISIS. We might as well just accept that.
They managed to accidently create ISIS by trying to pay off their fanatics.
Huh? This is a version of history I've never heard.
ISIS is of course a creation of the Iraq War. It was led by an Iraqi, aligned most closely with a Jordanian, though it also aligned, as part of the larger insurgency, with Al Qaeda, which was of course a very different animal by that point, and no longer really a mostly Saudi group in Iraq. So I can't think of any way it makes sense to say the Saudis created ISIS, because they didn't, we did.
We were even on relatively (emphasis on relatively) good terms with North Korea at the time.
And while we had effectively been in a state of near war with Iraq for more than a decade, they had little to nothing to do with global terrorism, and especially with Al Qaeda.
In other words, it was a clear attempt by Bush and his admin to lump the enemies he wanted us to have in with terrorists. And in a lot of ways it worked, as the invasion of Iraq was popular despite being based on blatant lies, and we haven't had really productive communication with North Korea or Iran since.
Building a new Axis of Evil by analogy, therefore, should be something we are all very skeptical of. Especially trying to put China into it. Our relations with China are unnecessarily bad as it is; there's no reason to make them even worse for decades.
No, Dick Cheney's endorsement doesn't make her a conservative, but a lot of this stuff does: https://www.semafor.com/article/10/15/2024/no-matter-who-wins-the-country-is-moving-to-the-right
I'm mostly focused on the idea that not wanting to have your life and career ruined for your ideas means that you aren't seriously about them. I've known very few people in my life who've lived in such a way that they follow through on their beliefs no matter what the consequences. I am quite certain no one here lives like that, and I know Jay doesn't, and I don't: I've generally been anonymous online, and when I was doxed a few years ago by local conservatives, I got a really good reminder of why anonymity is important for people with my politics.
Interestingly, almost everyone I've met who's lived their life such that they fully accept the consequences of their beliefs are pro-Palestinian academics, like Fink. That's not an easy life. I don't fault anyone for not living it, though I greatly respect those who do.
See, you still call them LARPEers, but the only reason you've offered for doing so is that they don't want to get canceled. We haven't moved from you thinking not wanting to get canceled means you aren't serious about your beliefs. If you're going to continue tell me not to take you seriously, I'll continue to oblige. I'll check back in when you've given other reasons for thinking they're not earnest.
I'd swear just a few years ago people on this site were arguing against cancel culture. I didn't not realize that meant y'all weren't serious about your beliefs, if you didn't want to be canceled for them. Good to know; I'll take you as seriously as that implies.
This isn't just the poor: you can't qualify for these programs if you're just as poor but live in Paducah, e.g. These programs are specifically targeted at a historically marginalized and underserved population, (overwhelmingly) white Appalachians in the Eastern part of the state. As I mentioned, they even have an Appalachian Studies center and department, with a great deal of money poured into researching the present and history of the people in that region.
The gist is that it finds students in Eastern Kentucky, helps them get into the university, provides financial support, and provides institutional support throughout their time at the university. There's also an Appalachian Center which is kind of like African American Studies, but for Appalachia (and therefore, obviously, less controversial).
The woman saying Obama is behind Biden (and Harris) echoes what I see a lot from MAGA Facebook. There seems to be a strong belief in MAGA World that, with Biden in the White House, Obama is running the country behind the scenes, and it's a fascinating turn in racism that deserves book-length treatments.
It's down to 5% now (it fluctuates as a way of controlling incoming class size, though I don't think it's been as high as 10% in decades).
And yes, student ability matters, but the abilities that get you into competitive schools like Michigan and Texas are ones that need to be nurtured and encouraged by families, schools, and beyond, and that encouragement and nurturing requires resources that are unequally distributed.
The University of Kentucky, where I got my undergraduate degree, has had since before I went there (and I'm old) a program designed to find ability in a place that does not have many resources, and so academic ability tends to be poorly nurtured by the schools and society generally. This program is extremely popular in the state, despite only applying to a relatively small portion of the state's residents, all in a specific part of the state. The program is designed to help Appalachian students, overwhelmingly poor white kids, get into and succeed at the university, and is very successful (two of my good friends back then were in the program).
Why aren't scholarships and institutional support for poor white kids from Eastern Kentucky controversial? I figure the answer is probably obvious. But the principle is the same: kids from places and socioeconomic situations that make it difficult to capitalize on ability should be supported, encouraged, and where possible, subsidized, in their pursuit of what a lot of kids from elsewhere, with lesser ability but significantly more opportunity, take for granted.
The Times piece discusses some of the issues, e.g., Michigan (as also here at Texas) actually has as smaller percentage of black students than it did a few years ago. And while it's true, pretty much no one who's going to college now or in the near future experienced Jim Crows (I say pretty much no one because there's always the great "88 year-old woman graduates..." stories every year), the effects of that segregation, and ongoing de facto economic and geographic segregation, along with discrimination at every level of schooling, still exists, and they affect who gets into Michigan and who succeeds there. It'd be nice if instead of institutional yard signs, we tried doing things that actually helped kids get into and succeed at schools like the University of Michigan or the University of Texas.
I mean less the people at the University of Michigan, who aren't going to spend money like this without a lot of outside pressure. The way to get them to do more than putting a sign on their lawn that says they're in favor of diversity and drinking water is to put counter pressure, but so far, the only pressure I've seen from the anti-DEI folks, be it those who think folks like Rufo and Conceptual James are serious people, or people who recognize them for the charlatans they are but still believe DEI is woke excess, has been anti-DEI. I've seen no pressure to do anything else. If DEI is falling apart, now's a great time to start proposing alternatives.
It seems unsurprising that an such an initiative at a university like that ended up being the institutional equivalent of an "In This House We Believe..." sign. What'd be nice is if the critics of DEI from the right and center had better suggestions for how to deal with issues of racial and ethnic diversity and discrimination.
It's difficult to compare decades, because weather technology has gotten much better, so we're better able to detect storms now than in the past, but there is no question that named storms are becoming more frequent. There were 104 named storms from 1940-1949; 128 from 1950-1959; 151from 2000-2009; 155 from 2010-2019; and between 2020 and 2023, 85, putting us on pace for more than 200 this decade. The year with the most named storms ever (30) was 2020, the next highest 28 in 2005, the third and fourth highest 2021 and 2023. In other words, the highest years are all in this century, and 3 of the 4 in this decade (5 is 1933, but 6-8 were in the 2010s, 9 was 1995, and then amazingly, 10 was 1887).
Again, some of that is detection (difficult to compare 2020 with 1851, the first year), but there's already a bunch of research showing that both the frequency of damaging storms is increasing, and that the patterns of air and sea temperatures means the probability of damage along the Gulf and East coasts is still increasing.
Not unless you're still listening to Pielke Jr and his soft-denialist ilk (there's a new generation, like Alex Epstein) is any of this controversial. And that's only talking about hurricanes. We still have a bunch of other natural disasters to talk about (for Florida, e.g., fires, though that's a bigger issue in California).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “What If Trump Wins?”
A campaign that focuses heavily on January 6 might beat Trump. A campaign that points out January 6 and also says, "Here are the things we're going to do to help make your life better" almost certainly will.
Actually, I think if Harris beats Trump, which I find increasingly unlikely by the day, the reason will not be January 6 at all, because I think the people who are inclined to be swayed by that were going to vote for Harris anyway, but the one actual positive message I see from her regularly: reproductive freedom is a basic freedom and Harris will work to restore it where it has been lost.
"
That's the most basic part of keeping the lights on, and no, I don't think that's all that matters.
Look, putting aside any specific type of message, do you really think you can convince "low information" voters that Trump is a threat to the United States Constitution and the system that rests upon it? For a lot of Americans, that's not much different than saying he's a threat to gravity. And for others, the idea that a senile old clown is a serious threat to our system of government calls into question the legitimacy of that system at a fundamental level. In the former case, the urgency looks like manufactured political messaging, and in the latter, there is no clear reason to participate in the system at all, as it's clearly broken. I see a lot of both in less political fora on the internet.
"
By the way, I am not saying this as a leftist who prefers Bernie-like candidates to non-Bernie-like candidates. I think an '08 Obama-like candidate would beat Trump by 7 or 8 points this year. If you can create real enthusiasm around the idea that things can be better than they are, and your party's candidate is the one to help make them better, you will get people to vote for you who otherwise will probably just stay home, or maybe even vote for the other side.
"
This probably goes without saying, but Harris is who the Democrats are now, and there's no real way around that. That is, the Dems, particularly at the national level, are bland, message-less candidates who can keep the lights on.
In '08, the Dems nominated a message guy with basically no experience, over a long-time party inside with a lot of experience. He was a president who basically accomplished one (extremely watered-down version of an) on-message legislative priority in 8 years, but did mostly kept the lights on. Since his second term, they've nominated three message-less but experienced candidates, the first two times against a message candidate whose experience was questioned (despite having been in government since forever), and at least in '20, also against a message candidate who was supposed to be similar enough to Bernie in message, and similar enough to Clinton/Biden in experience, to be attractive to both types of Dems (the Dems who want a candidate who has principles and acts on them, and the Dems who want the lights kept on a little else). With the fading of Bernie, and as a result, the fading of his young acolytes, from relevance, and Warren's pretty much complete disappearance, there isn't as far as I can tell a message Dem left in the stable. And you see what message-lessness gets you against a candidate who's all message (you can't even say he's experienced after 4 years in the White House, because his White House wasn't exactly high functioning): at best, very narrow wins, with low voter enthusiasm. Maybe if the Dems lose this time, they'll consider a message going forward? I doubt it, though, because the most visible voters, and the biggest donors, just want the lights kept on, and they've increasingly tried to appeal to conservatives whose primary voting motivation is also keeping the lights on.
On “Ukraine and the Axis of Evil”
ISIS is not a renamed Al Qaeda in Iraq (and to be clear, Al Qaeda in Iraq was not a creation of bin Laden; it was an affiliated group founded by Zarqawi, who was not Saudi). ISIS came out of an Al Qaeda in Iraq-algined group, Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah, but was not funded by or an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
I suppose you could do a sort of counterfactual analysis in which the U.S. and the Saudis don't, from the Afghan War into the 90s, help create the original Al Qaeda, then 9/11 doesn't happen, and then Bush doesn't have the political capital to start a war of choice in Iraq, which then creates an insurgency out of which ISIS is formed (and later, a power vacuum into which ISIS slots itself), but to say that this means that the Saudis created ISIS is not much different from saying that the Ottomans created Al Qaeda by not being able to hold onto the Levant in WWI.
We are responsible for the existence of ISIS. We might as well just accept that.
"
They managed to accidently create ISIS by trying to pay off their fanatics.
Huh? This is a version of history I've never heard.
ISIS is of course a creation of the Iraq War. It was led by an Iraqi, aligned most closely with a Jordanian, though it also aligned, as part of the larger insurgency, with Al Qaeda, which was of course a very different animal by that point, and no longer really a mostly Saudi group in Iraq. So I can't think of any way it makes sense to say the Saudis created ISIS, because they didn't, we did.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
George Lakoff is sending emails to everyone he knows with this video and the subject heading, "I told you!"
On “Ukraine and the Axis of Evil”
We were even on relatively (emphasis on relatively) good terms with North Korea at the time.
And while we had effectively been in a state of near war with Iraq for more than a decade, they had little to nothing to do with global terrorism, and especially with Al Qaeda.
In other words, it was a clear attempt by Bush and his admin to lump the enemies he wanted us to have in with terrorists. And in a lot of ways it worked, as the invasion of Iraq was popular despite being based on blatant lies, and we haven't had really productive communication with North Korea or Iran since.
Building a new Axis of Evil by analogy, therefore, should be something we are all very skeptical of. Especially trying to put China into it. Our relations with China are unnecessarily bad as it is; there's no reason to make them even worse for decades.
On “From The Atlantic: Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’”
I hadn't heard of self-Godwinning before.
On “From Semafor: Los Angeles Times won’t endorse for president”
I believe she's changed some of her positions, but if that article is any indication, she's running as a moderate conservative.
"
I wonder if it will prevent a Harris administration (which seems increasingly unlikely) from accomplishing anything like an actual liberal agenda.
"
No, Dick Cheney's endorsement doesn't make her a conservative, but a lot of this stuff does: https://www.semafor.com/article/10/15/2024/no-matter-who-wins-the-country-is-moving-to-the-right
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
I'm mostly focused on the idea that not wanting to have your life and career ruined for your ideas means that you aren't seriously about them. I've known very few people in my life who've lived in such a way that they follow through on their beliefs no matter what the consequences. I am quite certain no one here lives like that, and I know Jay doesn't, and I don't: I've generally been anonymous online, and when I was doxed a few years ago by local conservatives, I got a really good reminder of why anonymity is important for people with my politics.
Interestingly, almost everyone I've met who's lived their life such that they fully accept the consequences of their beliefs are pro-Palestinian academics, like Fink. That's not an easy life. I don't fault anyone for not living it, though I greatly respect those who do.
"
See, you still call them LARPEers, but the only reason you've offered for doing so is that they don't want to get canceled. We haven't moved from you thinking not wanting to get canceled means you aren't serious about your beliefs. If you're going to continue tell me not to take you seriously, I'll continue to oblige. I'll check back in when you've given other reasons for thinking they're not earnest.
"
I'd swear just a few years ago people on this site were arguing against cancel culture. I didn't not realize that meant y'all weren't serious about your beliefs, if you didn't want to be canceled for them. Good to know; I'll take you as seriously as that implies.
"
Good to know.
"
It's an easy way to dismiss people when they highlight injustices you'd rather not be highlighted.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
This isn't just the poor: you can't qualify for these programs if you're just as poor but live in Paducah, e.g. These programs are specifically targeted at a historically marginalized and underserved population, (overwhelmingly) white Appalachians in the Eastern part of the state. As I mentioned, they even have an Appalachian Studies center and department, with a great deal of money poured into researching the present and history of the people in that region.
"
The gist is that it finds students in Eastern Kentucky, helps them get into the university, provides financial support, and provides institutional support throughout their time at the university. There's also an Appalachian Center which is kind of like African American Studies, but for Appalachia (and therefore, obviously, less controversial).
"
The woman saying Obama is behind Biden (and Harris) echoes what I see a lot from MAGA Facebook. There seems to be a strong belief in MAGA World that, with Biden in the White House, Obama is running the country behind the scenes, and it's a fascinating turn in racism that deserves book-length treatments.
"
It's down to 5% now (it fluctuates as a way of controlling incoming class size, though I don't think it's been as high as 10% in decades).
And yes, student ability matters, but the abilities that get you into competitive schools like Michigan and Texas are ones that need to be nurtured and encouraged by families, schools, and beyond, and that encouragement and nurturing requires resources that are unequally distributed.
The University of Kentucky, where I got my undergraduate degree, has had since before I went there (and I'm old) a program designed to find ability in a place that does not have many resources, and so academic ability tends to be poorly nurtured by the schools and society generally. This program is extremely popular in the state, despite only applying to a relatively small portion of the state's residents, all in a specific part of the state. The program is designed to help Appalachian students, overwhelmingly poor white kids, get into and succeed at the university, and is very successful (two of my good friends back then were in the program).
Why aren't scholarships and institutional support for poor white kids from Eastern Kentucky controversial? I figure the answer is probably obvious. But the principle is the same: kids from places and socioeconomic situations that make it difficult to capitalize on ability should be supported, encouraged, and where possible, subsidized, in their pursuit of what a lot of kids from elsewhere, with lesser ability but significantly more opportunity, take for granted.
"
The Times piece discusses some of the issues, e.g., Michigan (as also here at Texas) actually has as smaller percentage of black students than it did a few years ago. And while it's true, pretty much no one who's going to college now or in the near future experienced Jim Crows (I say pretty much no one because there's always the great "88 year-old woman graduates..." stories every year), the effects of that segregation, and ongoing de facto economic and geographic segregation, along with discrimination at every level of schooling, still exists, and they affect who gets into Michigan and who succeeds there. It'd be nice if instead of institutional yard signs, we tried doing things that actually helped kids get into and succeed at schools like the University of Michigan or the University of Texas.
"
I mean less the people at the University of Michigan, who aren't going to spend money like this without a lot of outside pressure. The way to get them to do more than putting a sign on their lawn that says they're in favor of diversity and drinking water is to put counter pressure, but so far, the only pressure I've seen from the anti-DEI folks, be it those who think folks like Rufo and Conceptual James are serious people, or people who recognize them for the charlatans they are but still believe DEI is woke excess, has been anti-DEI. I've seen no pressure to do anything else. If DEI is falling apart, now's a great time to start proposing alternatives.
"
It seems unsurprising that an such an initiative at a university like that ended up being the institutional equivalent of an "In This House We Believe..." sign. What'd be nice is if the critics of DEI from the right and center had better suggestions for how to deal with issues of racial and ethnic diversity and discrimination.
"
It's difficult to compare decades, because weather technology has gotten much better, so we're better able to detect storms now than in the past, but there is no question that named storms are becoming more frequent. There were 104 named storms from 1940-1949; 128 from 1950-1959; 151from 2000-2009; 155 from 2010-2019; and between 2020 and 2023, 85, putting us on pace for more than 200 this decade. The year with the most named storms ever (30) was 2020, the next highest 28 in 2005, the third and fourth highest 2021 and 2023. In other words, the highest years are all in this century, and 3 of the 4 in this decade (5 is 1933, but 6-8 were in the 2010s, 9 was 1995, and then amazingly, 10 was 1887).
Again, some of that is detection (difficult to compare 2020 with 1851, the first year), but there's already a bunch of research showing that both the frequency of damaging storms is increasing, and that the patterns of air and sea temperatures means the probability of damage along the Gulf and East coasts is still increasing.
Not unless you're still listening to Pielke Jr and his soft-denialist ilk (there's a new generation, like Alex Epstein) is any of this controversial. And that's only talking about hurricanes. We still have a bunch of other natural disasters to talk about (for Florida, e.g., fires, though that's a bigger issue in California).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.