However all that nastiness is really just the gravy on top of the core Trump pitch: you are being screwed by the elites. And IMO to understand why Trump had and still has some currency, you have to understand the foundation. Which is why I framed it the way I did.
I think it is the nastiness that is the foundation, and the paper-thin pretext about "elites" screwing you that is gravy on top, one that is mostly effective by deflecting (ironically) "elite" attention away from the nastiness and towards failures of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
I'll acknowledge that this is a take that is more flattering to our side of the aisle, which justifies some skepticism, but on the other hand, Trump's support has remained more or less constant, while his inability or disinterest in actually solving any problems has been demonstrated as clearly as possible in a way that was simply not possible prior to 2016.
Like, yes, I think you would have had to have been an absolute rube to believe he would "grow into" the Presidency in 2016, but we have since had four years of him proving repeatedly that he didn't.
What hasn't changed is the dishonesty, the racism and xenophobia, and the promises of authoritarian retribution and political violence. All of those have held on much more consistently than the anti-"elite" messaging.
Serious questions, why did you omit the sentence of that paragraph where I said the below in italics?
Because I really didn't think it changed how charitable you were being. Not objectionable on its own (I wouldn't have commented), but I think the framing around "working illegally" and "big business interests" really puts a very benign gloss on Trump's appeals which were, and are, often openly bigoted and far from scrupulous in restricting conversation to people in the country illegally (working or otherwise).
It’s worth asking who is and isn’t in the mainstream on the subject, and how far over the line Trump’s stances really are, at least if we care about how voters feel about the subject. My totally unsupported guess is that the ugliness of his rhetoric may well dampen the potential support for a major crack down and show of force at the border, not because people would be against it but because of how profoundly alienating the messenger is.
That's a plausible theory, but it is also all the more reason to emphasize the ugliness of the rhetoric. Because there's a lot of other reasons to question whether Trump actually does represent the mainstream--including his and the GOP's polling on the issue when he actually held power, which was dismal.
But I am really not sure what people are trying to prove with these responses.
That Trump is a viciously bigoted authoritarian extremist--which is both true and entirely consistent with him also being indifferent to pre-MAGA Rightward orthodoxy on Medicare and Social Security.
Well, sure, but the HVAC guy is likely to be richer than the professor, in addition to having considerably more pull with not only the local government officials, but state officials and his Congresscritter as well.
Reality however is that those elusive Obama-Trump voters (aging, white people without college degrees of which there are many in the upper midwest) are a lot more motivated by preserving their benefits than they are in protecting big business’ interest in letting huge numbers of foreign nationals come into the country to work illegally.
This is an absurdly charitable take on Trump's 2016 immigration rhetoric.
Which is, I suspect, why there's so much resistance to the (true, objectively) argument that he moderated the GOP's fiscal messaging in 2016: it usually comes alongside a description of Trump's messaging on other matters that makes them look much more moderate than they are.
So we can compare the political/economic power of the guy who advertises on the local AA ballpark with the political/economic power of the people you read about in the paper.
If the "elite" were routinely limited to the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies or members of Congress or something, sure, we could do that and local business owners, even successful ones, will rarely rate.
In practice, though, complaints about the elite are just as likely to be addressed at college professors or people who just have college degrees and white collar jobs.
Yes, what really matters about the elite is not their political or economic power, or even their ability to succeed in challenging and competitive environments, but a bunch of superficial cultural signifiers like the TV shows they watch.
As for Israel/Palestine? As long as she sticks to nostrums nothing that either side slings is going to sway the voters who’ll decide this thing.
This is one of the areas where she is much better off for not having had a primary.
So much of the primary dynamic involves activists trying to get candidates to commit to positions that are going to be unpopular with the general electorate ahead of time, and Harris [1] just got to totally skip it.
[1] Who just totally flubbed specifically this part of the her 2019 primary run!
I think Walz is a pretty good pick in that he seems unlikely to particularly hurt the ticket with anybody, and Dem partisans are pretty excited about him. Grassroots enthusiasm does not directly translate to votes, but it does get you more money and more volunteers for GOTV efforts.
Given the way the election is probably going to play out (decided by a handful of battleground states with vote margins in the 4 or low 5 digits), that last seems pretty valuable.
It’s the kind of attack that both sides do, both sides should do (norms against drunk driving are Good, Actually!), and are not gonna move a single vote when aimed at the bottom half of the ticket.
But also, it's not only, or even primarily, candidates who peddle this myth.
It is pretty much our whole-ass culture that tells us, at every turn, that our dreams are just within our reach. We get it from ads, of course, and from the whole ad-adjacent world of parasocial relationships with "influencers", from self-help gurus and alleged spiritual leaders, from celebrity-obsessed gossip media, and a million other disreputable sources.
Hell, in a more benign form, one benign enough that a lot of the malignant variants try to nuzzle up against it and look like a part of it, we have the American, well, Dream.
Candidates for office are not powerful enough, or critical enough to our overall cultural identity, to create this on our own, but they sure are crafty enough to use the dreams as forces to conjure with. And like Andrew said, they're sure to disappoint, even more than the beer commercials and grindset hucksters, because our liberal, democratic system of government is at its best when it delivers everybody compromises they can live with, instead of giving a few people a bespoke utopia to lord over everybody else.
I just don’t think, “A variety of Democratic Party stakeholders applied a mix of public and private pressure to get a desired political outcome,” rises to the level of “conspiracy” on its own.
I can envision details that about the private campaign that would make me think it’s a conspiracy (if it involved certain corrupt forms of pressure like bribery or blackmail). I haven’t seen anyone even suggest that’s what happened here, though.
You shouldn’t immediately jump to “a Republican might say that therefore a Republican did and since Republicans lie, I don’t have to take that statement seriously.”
If you say, as pillsy does above, that the only people who said that Biden was too old also say that Harris is unqualified because she’s childless, then you’re not reading the other side
I’m pretty sure that’s not what I said.
I am certain it’s not what I meant.
What I said was a direct response to JB’s suggestion that this means we should trust Republican criticisms more. That’s actually dumb, and following his advice would lead you exactly where I said it would.
It also doesn’t have much to do with your criticism which is actually right. The issue isn’t that I couldn’t see the metaphorical dong, it’s that I was pretty sure I could but didn’t want to say anything about it because it was politically and socially inconvenient to do.
“Republicans, naturally, turn to Criticism sub 2. “Criticism sub 2 is unfounded! It’s a conspiracy theory! Only bad people believe it and even worse people spread it!”
Ok so because Biden really was too old to campaign effectively, we should be more receptive to the claim that Harris is a crazy cat lady who has no investment in the future because she has no biological children?
Makes sense to me.
Also lest I be accused of nutpicking, I hasten to point out that I didn’t select that particular nut. Trump did, when he chose him as a running mate.
You’d say (correct me if I’m wrong) that our system assumes each branch *will* seek to expand its power.
Exactly. I don't think our system imposes any obligation for branches to not expand their power at the expense of other branches.
There are areas where it attempts to prevent the branches from expanding their power at the expense of individuals or state government.
Even those restrictions often require one branch or another to expand its power to prevent other branches from infringing on individual rights or state prerogatives.
Also, I think there is a closely related defect in terms of how institutionalized are parties are there in general, so if one of them is sufficiently rotten (Fact Check: true) it will still have a puncher's chance of taking power.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Party of the Middle”
I think it is the nastiness that is the foundation, and the paper-thin pretext about "elites" screwing you that is gravy on top, one that is mostly effective by deflecting (ironically) "elite" attention away from the nastiness and towards failures of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
I'll acknowledge that this is a take that is more flattering to our side of the aisle, which justifies some skepticism, but on the other hand, Trump's support has remained more or less constant, while his inability or disinterest in actually solving any problems has been demonstrated as clearly as possible in a way that was simply not possible prior to 2016.
Like, yes, I think you would have had to have been an absolute rube to believe he would "grow into" the Presidency in 2016, but we have since had four years of him proving repeatedly that he didn't.
What hasn't changed is the dishonesty, the racism and xenophobia, and the promises of authoritarian retribution and political violence. All of those have held on much more consistently than the anti-"elite" messaging.
"
Do you think during the 2016 election, he moderated his stance on Medicare and Social Security, from Republican orthodoxy?
Yes, no question, and no need to check any links.
I remember it pretty clearly, and even remember that a few Leftward pundit types were fooled by it.
"
Serious questions, why did you omit the sentence of that paragraph where I said the below in italics?
Because I really didn't think it changed how charitable you were being. Not objectionable on its own (I wouldn't have commented), but I think the framing around "working illegally" and "big business interests" really puts a very benign gloss on Trump's appeals which were, and are, often openly bigoted and far from scrupulous in restricting conversation to people in the country illegally (working or otherwise).
It’s worth asking who is and isn’t in the mainstream on the subject, and how far over the line Trump’s stances really are, at least if we care about how voters feel about the subject. My totally unsupported guess is that the ugliness of his rhetoric may well dampen the potential support for a major crack down and show of force at the border, not because people would be against it but because of how profoundly alienating the messenger is.
That's a plausible theory, but it is also all the more reason to emphasize the ugliness of the rhetoric. Because there's a lot of other reasons to question whether Trump actually does represent the mainstream--including his and the GOP's polling on the issue when he actually held power, which was dismal.
But I am really not sure what people are trying to prove with these responses.
That Trump is a viciously bigoted authoritarian extremist--which is both true and entirely consistent with him also being indifferent to pre-MAGA Rightward orthodoxy on Medicare and Social Security.
"
Well, sure, but the HVAC guy is likely to be richer than the professor, in addition to having considerably more pull with not only the local government officials, but state officials and his Congresscritter as well.
"
This is an absurdly charitable take on Trump's 2016 immigration rhetoric.
Which is, I suspect, why there's so much resistance to the (true, objectively) argument that he moderated the GOP's fiscal messaging in 2016: it usually comes alongside a description of Trump's messaging on other matters that makes them look much more moderate than they are.
"
If the "elite" were routinely limited to the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies or members of Congress or something, sure, we could do that and local business owners, even successful ones, will rarely rate.
In practice, though, complaints about the elite are just as likely to be addressed at college professors or people who just have college degrees and white collar jobs.
"
Yes, what really matters about the elite is not their political or economic power, or even their ability to succeed in challenging and competitive environments, but a bunch of superficial cultural signifiers like the TV shows they watch.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Deeper into Assassin’s Creed 2”
I would love to hear how you think AC 4 holds up.
That game was such a good time.
On “Trump News Conference: Watch It For Yourself”
Being the leader of a cult of personality means never having to say you're sorry.
Or, you know, anything remotely coherent.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/5/2024”
This is one of the areas where she is much better off for not having had a primary.
So much of the primary dynamic involves activists trying to get candidates to commit to positions that are going to be unpopular with the general electorate ahead of time, and Harris [1] just got to totally skip it.
[1] Who just totally flubbed specifically this part of the her 2019 primary run!
"
Yet another YouTube video that could have been a Tweet.
Or a Xeet.
Or whatever the heck we call them now.
On “Tim Walz Tapped to be VP Kamala Harris Running Mate”
HW. Had to wait his turn but was did a decent job once he got it.
Ford is a super-weird special case.
"
Yeah the thing that gave me pause about Shapiro is that he has a couple potential scandals brewing.
Could be and probably are nothingburgers, but the downside risk is he's Andrew Cuomo 2.0.
"
I think Walz is a pretty good pick in that he seems unlikely to particularly hurt the ticket with anybody, and Dem partisans are pretty excited about him. Grassroots enthusiasm does not directly translate to votes, but it does get you more money and more volunteers for GOTV efforts.
Given the way the election is probably going to play out (decided by a handful of battleground states with vote margins in the 4 or low 5 digits), that last seems pretty valuable.
"
It’s the kind of attack that both sides do, both sides should do (norms against drunk driving are Good, Actually!), and are not gonna move a single vote when aimed at the bottom half of the ticket.
On “Political Dreams and Electoral Nightmares”
Very much so.
But also, it's not only, or even primarily, candidates who peddle this myth.
It is pretty much our whole-ass culture that tells us, at every turn, that our dreams are just within our reach. We get it from ads, of course, and from the whole ad-adjacent world of parasocial relationships with "influencers", from self-help gurus and alleged spiritual leaders, from celebrity-obsessed gossip media, and a million other disreputable sources.
Hell, in a more benign form, one benign enough that a lot of the malignant variants try to nuzzle up against it and look like a part of it, we have the American, well, Dream.
Candidates for office are not powerful enough, or critical enough to our overall cultural identity, to create this on our own, but they sure are crafty enough to use the dreams as forces to conjure with. And like Andrew said, they're sure to disappoint, even more than the beer commercials and grindset hucksters, because our liberal, democratic system of government is at its best when it delivers everybody compromises they can live with, instead of giving a few people a bespoke utopia to lord over everybody else.
On “Donald Trump and The National Association of Black Journalists: Watch For Yourself”
Yeah, and in those 40 years he managed to only brag about committing sexual assault on tape once!
On “None Dare Call It A Conspiracy, Because It Wasn’t”
I just don’t think, “A variety of Democratic Party stakeholders applied a mix of public and private pressure to get a desired political outcome,” rises to the level of “conspiracy” on its own.
I can envision details that about the private campaign that would make me think it’s a conspiracy (if it involved certain corrupt forms of pressure like bribery or blackmail). I haven’t seen anyone even suggest that’s what happened here, though.
"
Well yeah I said exactly what you said because I agree with what you said!
But I don’t agree at all with what I thought JB said—he has since rephrased his argument into something I don’t disagree with.
"
You shouldn’t immediately jump to “a Republican might say that therefore a Republican did and since Republicans lie, I don’t have to take that statement seriously.”
Ok. I don’t disagree with this argument.
"
The “Oh, so you’re saying that I have to take everything that Republicans say seriously now?” people
It’s extremely unclear how else you think we could address your complaint.
"
If you say, as pillsy does above, that the only people who said that Biden was too old also say that Harris is unqualified because she’s childless, then you’re not reading the other side
I’m pretty sure that’s not what I said.
I am certain it’s not what I meant.
What I said was a direct response to JB’s suggestion that this means we should trust Republican criticisms more. That’s actually dumb, and following his advice would lead you exactly where I said it would.
It also doesn’t have much to do with your criticism which is actually right. The issue isn’t that I couldn’t see the metaphorical dong, it’s that I was pretty sure I could but didn’t want to say anything about it because it was politically and socially inconvenient to do.
Exactly like the people in the story.
"
“Republicans, naturally, turn to Criticism sub 2. “Criticism sub 2 is unfounded! It’s a conspiracy theory! Only bad people believe it and even worse people spread it!”
Ok so because Biden really was too old to campaign effectively, we should be more receptive to the claim that Harris is a crazy cat lady who has no investment in the future because she has no biological children?
Makes sense to me.
Also lest I be accused of nutpicking, I hasten to point out that I didn’t select that particular nut. Trump did, when he chose him as a running mate.
On “Biden To Do What He Couldn’t Do”
You’d say (correct me if I’m wrong) that our system assumes each branch *will* seek to expand its power.
Exactly. I don't think our system imposes any obligation for branches to not expand their power at the expense of other branches.
There are areas where it attempts to prevent the branches from expanding their power at the expense of individuals or state government.
Even those restrictions often require one branch or another to expand its power to prevent other branches from infringing on individual rights or state prerogatives.
"
Also, I think there is a closely related defect in terms of how institutionalized are parties are there in general, so if one of them is sufficiently rotten (Fact Check: true) it will still have a puncher's chance of taking power.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.