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Comments by Koz in reply to Mark Thompson*

On “There Is A Memo Open Thread

[3] Skip the hogwash about “moral standing” and “respect institutions”. If “common purpose” places an obligation on the left, than it sure as hell places an obligation on the right, too, and Trump’s barely disguised white nationalism, as well as apologism for it, are both incompatible with any such set of obligations that isn’t a blatant partisan fraud

No no no. Those things are important, and I think it's your confusion on those points that are the lion's share of the differences between us.

We're not necessarily going to agree on policy matters, or values frameworks that underlie them (white nationalism, racism, whatever). What we can agree on, and have agreed on, is the mechanism for resolving our differences, and the idea that coming together to resolve those differences is better for all of us than a Hobbsean war of all against all. That is what libs are undermining, to the detriment of all of us.

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This is especially true if we take your rather odd contentions about “common purpose” and “saluting the uniform” [1], because in addition to being a comically awful racist jackass [2], Trump was by far the candidate who was most entangled in the right-wing attempts to reject Obama as a legitimate occupant of the Office of the President for deranged racist reasons.

Those things could be true as premises, but like I said before they're irrelevant. I don't care if Trump is a racist and a birther, he's still the President, and the nature of your obligations to him haven't changed by that.

And it’s not like this behavior wasn’t all on open display before he secured the nomination, let alone won the general election. So the argument that you are just doing all of this because of all the horribly untrustworthy ways that “libs” acted prior to the election dies yet another death, this time at the hands of causality.

Actually, that's not true at all. The way libs have acted since the election is much worse. Before the election, there's a better excuse, in that libs are trying to argue their case before the American people. But after the election, that excuse doesn't hold any more and we're supposed to be able to come together as Americans and move forward having at least some of our differences resolved by the election.

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For example, the way we rely on Congressional oversight to be a check on the Executive, both in terms of curbing its power and blocking corruption, is rooted in a mix of explicit law (going all the way to the text of the Constitution itself) and custom. Given the nature of Congress, it’s going to end up being partisan and politicized.

That's exactly right. And as a result of the tab-A slot-B mechanics of American democracy, both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans. So if want to want to try to have some kind of Congressional check on the executive, you might be better of asking the Republicans for this or that instead of trashing them.

For example, if you have a problem with racism, especially racism in the Executive Branch, we have a Senate. And in that Senate we have a Judiciary Committee. And the chairman of that committee is very well-regarded fair-minded Iowa farmer named Chuck Grassley. If he's not concerned about it, your idea just probably wasn't meant to be.

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Nope. I have to acknowledge that he’s president, and that the GOP Congress is too gutless and venal to stand up to him, but respect has nothing to do with it.

Sort of. You are correct that we are civilians and the UCMJ doesn't apply to us, so the things I am talking about in this thread are for the most part metaphorical obligations instead of actual ones.

But it's exactly this move to say, "Fcuk Trump, I don't owe him shet." that's escalating the antagonism of the situation.

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[1] There are a lot of weird and irrelevant comments about the FBI here, as if the FBI and “libs” are somehow coextensive.

Yeah, I was worried about the lack of clarity on that point, but that comment was already long enough as it was.

That is, I wasn't intending to apply that the FBI failing to salute the uniform was an example of libs failing to salute the uniform. That's not right because the FBI aren't necessarily libs. I was trying to illustrate that they were examples of the same kind, with different actors involved.

I will say though, that the confusion on that point supports my other argument about the circumstantial case for the improper politicization of the FBI. Here you have the libs on television and the FBI in lockstep message discipline regarding at least some arguments which for me are wholly spurious.

Are these things coordinated or not? I'm willing to believe that they're not but I need to see some evidence of that. And if they are coordinated that's an improper politicization and people ought to be punished for it.

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I’d use “tradition” in quotes. I’ve not doubt that certain intelligence agencies have “dirt” on important people and have used that, do use that, to their own ends….like this “tradition” of hands off.

Maybe, but what I was talking about is something more mundane.

As it pertains to the FBI and other intelligence handling agencies, there is a tradition of extreme deference to their assertions as it pertains to the need to protect sources and methods and what that applies to.

But tradition or not, it can be overridden by those who have the de jure authority to do it, which is what happened here.

And frankly, apart of the libs that's a big problem for me here.
I find it very distressing that FBI would spuriously cite sources and methods in order to prevent institutional embarrassment. I know that for me at least (which I appreciate isn't necessarily worth very much), I am going to be much more skeptical of assertions regarding sources and methods.

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Like for example right now we're in the middle of this memo business.

From the Nunes memo and other things, it's pretty clear that there's at least a strong circumstantial case that the FBI and other elements of the deep state have improperly politically mobilized against the Trump campaign.

Now libs and D's have been very active that those claims are easily rebuttable (and tbh I haven't followed the libs' arguments here very closely). But they do have to be rebutted. And they can't be rebutted until they are circulated in the first place.

I've read the memo, and I think there's a quote from Steve King or somebody to the effect that as a scandal, this is clearly the worst ever in American history. Based on that, King or whoever is clearly overselling the matter, but tbh I don't see most Republicans reacting the same. For me, it is clearly a matter of public interest that should have been published, and Rep Nunes' critics on this matter are clearly wrong.

The circumstantial case against the FBI and parts of the intelligence community, is substantially stronger however, in light of the circumstances and the aftermath surrounding the release of the memo. In perhaps the mirror image of Steve King, I've seen several lib pundits or D politicians talk about Rep Nunes' actions as being criminal or treasonous, and I haven't seen anything about those comments being disavowed by more reasonable parties.

But it's actually the response of the deep state, the FBI in particular that I want to comment on here. The FBI and some of their lib enablers have tried to claim that the release of the memo is harmful to national security because it makes sources and methods more vulnerable to compromise.

This argument is wholly specious, and that's apparent to anyone who has read the memo. Therefore, whatever there is in the memo itself, we know that the FBI and related parties are strongly trying to prevent the circulation of important information to the public interest, presumably in the service preventing institutional embarrassment.

And we've got the same kind of issue with the FBI that I was talking about wrt the libs in other comments. Legally, Constitutionally, and structurally the FBI and parts of the DOJ are the same as any other executive branch agency, like the EPA or USDA. But traditionally, they are much different in that political appointees are supposed to have minimal contact with them. There is good bipartisan reason why we want the appearance and reality that the machinations of criminal law aren't tied in with the political sausage factory of the party of whoever happens to be President.

But that is just a tradition. The law is that all of those people serve at the pleasure of the President just like the rest of the Executive Branch. There is also a tradition giving wide leeway to the FBI and the rest of the DOJ regarding the mechanics of classified information. But again that is a tradition, and it can be explicitly overridden by Acts of Congress or waivers from the President, as occurred here.

In any event, it's absolutely critical that the FBI and other elements of the deep state honor their obligations related to their chain-of-command when explicitly invoked. Salute the uniform, as it were.

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Liberals are disloyal and untrustworthy, and we also need to respect the legitimacy of our adversaries while they tell us repeatedly how disloyal and untrustworthy we are.

This is backwards. As a consequence of failing to respect the legitimacy of your adversaries, as a consequence of failing to accept that the mechanics of democracy apply to you, you have shown yourself to be untrustworthy.

This is not about me just gratuitously trashing libs for the fcuk of it. And furthermore, if those consequences aren't working for you, the remedy for it is easy. Undo those things that got you there in the first place. Don't trash the legitimacy of Trump or other Republicans to be in office.

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No. I actually am quite sympathetic to that line of argument, but it wasn't what I was getting at in my prior comments.

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But if you’re just going to say you don’t care about racism while trying to upbraid liberals for lacking civic virtue because they talk deserved and true shit about the gross bigoted buffoon in the White House, you need to take that whole redwood forest out of your eye.

No no no. It's because you won't salute the uniform, you're not loyal, you're not really one of us, it means you don't have enough moral credibility to bring up racism or anything else really for that matter.

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What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? The ignorance or stupidity of something Donald Trump says doesn't at all change the nature of your obligations.

In fact, there is a substantial likelihood that the consequences of your hostility to Trump break the opposite way of what you're hoping. Because you refuse to salute the uniform, because you have rationalized yourself into believing that the tab-A slot-B mechanics of American democracy somehow don't apply to you, you are not trustworthy, you're not a good citizen and whatever maneuvers there are to mitigate the Presidency of Donald Trump have to take place around you, not with you.

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That's a very important and useful question. In the broader context of this case, it means that libs internalize their aspirations and motivations exist within the context of the mechanics of American culture, not above it.

Therefore, as our side wins elections, it means that your scope for movement is constrained accordingly.

To the extent that you are afraid of the consequences of the Trump Presidency, you should present your concerns to us, who have control over other branches of government and have some legitimate avenues to do something about it.

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Or clap.

Or clap. Or believe anything that he says. On rare occasions, you maybe obligated to do something he requires from you. But mostly, the things that come from Trump can safely be ignored.

But to respect the fact that Trump is President comes from above Trump, that is the possibility for us to act and hold together in common purpose. The consequences of you disdaining that are not nearly as benign.

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Notably absent from the wall of text that follows this assertion: any sort of attempt to address the overwhelming evidence that Donald Trump is actually racist as hell. The fact that Donald Trump won the election, or the GOP controls Congress, or even the alleged cultural power of liberals doesn’t translate into legislative power, has precisely no bearing on the question of whether Trump is racist as hell.

Yeah, that's the whole point. We don't have to care if Trump is racist or not.

As far as I'm concerned, take it up with Gen John Kelly. If he's concerned, I'll entertain it. Otherwise, it's probably not very important.

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I mean sure, Trump is saying it’s un-American not to clap for him, and maybe treasonous [1], but it’s “libs” who need to respect the legitimacy of their adversaries.

~*facepalm*~ Yeah whatever, this is a really tendentious.

But let's say for the sake of argument that's exactly what he said and that's exactly what he meant. That still doesn't change anything. Just because he says something stupid or controversial doesn't mean that you are required to believe it. Your obligation is to respect the fact that he is the President.

You're probably not subject to the UCMJ, but that's where they come up with the concept of "salute the uniform". In parliaments, they have a loyal opposition. They apply in different circumstances, but the idea is the same, ie, how can we resolve our competing loyalties in this situation.

Suffice to say, your problems with Trump in this regard are in no way novel, and the resolution of them is not in principle difficult.

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But yeah, we’re totally the ones that are straining at gnats here.

There's an implied premise that we're supposed to take seriously lib concerns about racism, or anything else for that matter. But we shouldn't.

We have a long history of laws and traditions which libs like to ignore when it's convenient. But the lib malevolence in the Trump era goes beyond that even, to the reasons why we have those laws and traditions (or any laws and traditions really) in the first place.

People of different temperament and different interests, are going to disagree on things. You and I, lib and conservative, R and D, America and Chivas, whoever. Therefore we need a way to resolve our conflicts, so we come up with things like the Constitution, the House of Representatives and so on to handle our conflicts. Hopefully, however our differences get resolved, they are resolved and we can further our common purpose without resorting to some kind of Hobbsean war of all against all.

Libs' contemporary failure on these terms is exactly what's led to their revanchist kulturkampf against mainstream America that I was talking about before. They've taken some big hits on Election Day, but instead of dialing the antagonism down, and trying to find some common purpose, they have escalated, and now here we are.

As a consequence, we have these issues and controversies which clearly have legitimacy at the heart, fought mostly by revanchist libs who are finding that the cultural power does not go as far they want when the de jure power invokes their legitimate authority against them. And then try to argue that this is really some kind of triple-bank-shot expression of racism, or something else similarly disreputable.

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Trump’s, and his base’s, primary motivation all along is this mix of white rage and cultural resentment, and now it is turning on their fellow Americans.

For God's sake Chip, you do realize that this is complete bullshit from the get-go.

It's a convenient interpretive framework to use to "see" the racism or whatever in whatever is today's issue du jour. And then, having seen racism or whatever, it justifies an escalation in antagonism against conservatives or Republicans.

This is ridiculous because if you take an honest look at the situation it's clearly a matter of straining gnats and swallowing camels. Clearly, the immediate, direct contemporary politics of cultural revanchism is on the Left. The mainstream Right and the populist Right are in the middle of a so-far-successful devaluation of the cultural power of the Left. Ie, the Left has as much or more control over the culture industries as they ever have, but their ability to leverage that into actual influence, or more desperately, some kind of operational veto against policy changes they particularly disapprove of.

Therefore, instead of trying to strain gnats trying to conclude that Donald Trump is a racist because he said that Haiti was a shithole, let's have the libs heal themselves of their third degree (censored - maribou - roughly, affrontedness) and start participating in American political culture in a way that respects the legitimacy of their adversaries.

On “The MacGuffin White House

You, OTOH, are often just claiming that existing people will start voting _differently_.

Moreover, the only proof you provide is a general sense of your own feelings, and some extremely short-term _very slight_ voting pattern changes that they are swamped by noise, normal stuff that jumps around every election. And then, on top of that, you also assigned all pro-Republican movement to the Republican party, and all anti-Republican movement to Trump, and pretend the pro-Republican trends will continue and the anti-Republican trends will reverse when Trump leaves, which, frankly, is never how politics have ever worked.

Yeah, that's right for the most part. That is, what I'm saying has quite a bit to do with demographics, but also assumes a different message environment than what we've seen over the last say 6-10 months. This new message environment hasn't consolidated yet (and might not), but I think it's pretty clear that the momentum is heading that direction.

And underlying all this is the underappreciated reality that structurally speaking, the D's are in their last inning. The GOP controls so many offices, and are uniquely vulnerable now in the House especially, that if the D's can't win something this cycle it calls substantially into question whether they ever will. It seemed academic a month or so ago, that even if the D's were in their last inning, it really wouldn't make that much difference if they scored 10 runs that inning.

But now, there's a substantial likelihood that GOP control over political offices will appear to be a permanent thing, just like control over entertainment industry awards ceremonies appears to be a lib thing.

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The problem with your ‘Trump got 30 states, so should have 30 states in the Senate thesis’ is two fold:

1) A lot of those ‘thirty states’ were _barely_ lost by a campaign that screwed up badly thanks to bad polls. There is absolutely no reason that Michigan, for example, would be voting for Republican Senators, even if there were no incumbents. They voted for Trump by 0.5% percent, but they are really about 5 points Democratic.

The total number of states carried by Republicans was 24 under Obama. But I will admit that number seems slightly low now.

So maybe it’s now 26 states and Republicans ‘should’ have a slight majority in the Senate. Or even 27 states. (It’s not thirty.) And in some universe where the current voting population of every state was forced to vote forever and ever, all the incumbents would eventually fall out and that number would be exactly correct. But that’s not really how that works.

The point about Trump winning 30 states was just a guide for a rule of thumb. I do think the 60 Senators/30 states is about the right number. I don't think that they have to be those exact states (though obviously most of them will overlap)

Here is a useful map of the United States by partisan representation in the Senate. My my count there's 19 states with 2 GOP Senators. From my pov it's hard for me to imagine a D being elected to any of those states any time soon. There's also by my count 6 states which "ought" to have 2 GOP Senators but don't (Montana, N Dakota, Indiana, W Virginia, Alabama, Missouri).

I think it's kind of hard to dispute that really. If you give the GOP those 6 seats, we're at 57 already. And even that doesn't allow for the fact that (for me at least) it's a lot more credible to think that there should be GOP Senators from Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, etc (as in fact there are), than to think there should be D Senators from "core" GOP states. In the abstract, I only see a couple of them that are plausibly competitive: N Carolina probably, Iowa, Arizona maaayybe (but not really).

The upshot is, I don't expect the D's to have a "good" map from which they should expect to gain seats until there's 58 or some number of Republicans (so two more cycles at least).

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2) Trying to measure incumbents is a bit silly, because often the only difference between an incumbent who loses and one that retires is merely ‘How well a politician can read polls.’

I think we pretty much agree on incumbency. It's more that your prior position (or at least the way I took it) is not tenable. Incumbency is an obstacle and a real advantage for the party trying to maintain hold of a seat. It is not an insurmountable barrier, as the Republicans have shown several times over the last few cycles.

And, I also agree that it's more typical that a Senator could fall out of love with his party or vice versa and retire.

Where I think you're mistaken is in the cultural makeup of the states and the implications for the Senate. Olympia Snowe is a good example. I don't remember her situation that well, but my guess is that she could have won reelection if she wanted to (I think she already did it at least once). In any event, I think there's very few states where it's not really credible to imagine having a Republican Senator (and Maine is not one of them). Whereas there's a decent amount of states that really can't have Demo Senators (and that number is going up).

Really Mark Pryor was the turning point imo. He was basically engineered (and largely thought of himself) as a white D from the South who could weather the cultural storms associated with that due to his long personal history and association with the state. If it couldn't hold for Mark Pryor, it's not going to hold for anybody.

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If anything, your idea is exactly backwards: Who a state sends to Congress (Both House and Senate) is probably a much better judge of how that state feels about the National political parties as a whole. (Which is often not the same as how it feels about local parties.) Of course, incumbency will mean that lags behind, often by decades, but we can always look at new elections. (Well, most of them. I have a feeling Alabama is not actually Democratic now, despite that election.)

Yeah, this I agree with, in fact it's most of the reason why I think the Senate will stay Republican indefinitely.

There's a lot of GOP-leaning states, as states, and in contrast to times past I think it's going to be difficult for them to justify having a Democratic Senator, in ways that is not going to be as severe in the mirror image. Ie, it's going to be more plausible for a Republican to beat Jeanne Shaheen as opposed to a D to beat Ben Sasse. In fact, you saw this in Kansas one or two cycles ago, where a not-particularly-well regarded Republican was mailing in his reelection campaign and got it serious trouble for a while. But ultimately, the voters there couldn't afford to vote for a Democrat.

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Starting at 2010, Republicans Brown, Ayotte, Kirk, and Lieberman have lost relection.

Lieberman?

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But you can’t just invent hypotheticals and assert they will happen without some sort of justification........

What we are trying to figure out is what is likely in the future, not ‘What if a bunch of people did things for no reason at all that are completely out of character of things we’ve seen before?’

Well yeah, and that's what I've been trying to do.

Like I mentioned before, I think that the weaknesses of the GOP are associated with Trump, and don't necessarily extend beyond him.

And particular, there's a chance that this is going to manifest itself in ways that will help the GOP this cycle. As I see it, the voters have a tremendous appetite for normalcy, sobriety, coherence, and substance in politics right now. As heretofore, the primary obstacle to those things was President Trump, with his theatrics and inflammatory, erratic behavior.

But what if (this may date me but a while back Hewlett-Packard to use have these commercials about how they never stopped thinking "What if....?"), in any event what if that wasn't necessarily the case any more?

What if Trump pushed an immigration plan, that says this or that, that people may disagree with or not? What if he did the same for infrastructure a couple months down the road? What if he passed a tax cut? I don't think the D's are necessarily in a good position to handle these developments. The D's desperately want to justify and validate the emotional, visceral antagonism to the President. I don't think they appreciate that the American people want to put that behind them if the opportunity avails itself.

The upside for the GOP is avoid nationalizing the election behind Trump, especially his volatile incoherent crap. If that happens, the message, the layout of the seats to be contested, I think those things favor the Republicans.

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It could be. I don't think that the interior West has as much social dysfunction as other parts of America, so the motivation towards Trump is weaker than in other parts.

But even if Republicans are weaker in Colorado and other places than they have traditionally been, I think we're still better off de-nationalizing the election away from Trump, which seems to have taken place recently.

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48% of white college voters voted for Trump. Previously, 56% voted for Romney. You might notice that’s only an 8 point drop, but, more importantly, it’s a 8 point drop in about 30% of the population, so is actually only a 2.4 point drop.

I think there is a significant possibility to gain more than 8 percentage points among white educated voters relative to Trump.

More importantly, I don't think the possible GOP gains end there. I think they have a lot of room to gain from minority voters as well. This isn't to say that the GOP will be the primary political representation for racial minorities, but the effect is the same. Eg, I don't think that D's can sustain the percentages or turnout for black voters without a black person on the ticket, and even if it's Kamala Harris, I don't think that will work as well as Obama. I don't think Latin voters going to be that motivated post-Trump. I also don't think we've seen meaningful ceilings for the GOP share of white voters, educated or not.

The Senate has never worked that way in any manner under direct election of Senators. Ronald Reagan won 49 states and at the highest, managed only 55 Senators for two years, for the most extreme example.

That's correct, it hasn't. But it's beginning to, and given the Demo's coastal mindshare and antagonism to Middle America, I suspect will accelerate.

I don't think incumbency is going to help them very much either. Since 2010, the GOP has knocked off incumbent D Senators Feingold, Mark Udall, Begich, Landrieu, Hagan, and both D's from Arkansas. I'm exactly sure where that 93% comes from, but I can't believe it matters very much.

The other thing that will help Republicans (though not this cycle) is the perception that the Senate will have permanent Republican control. I think that will effect retirements and the
mood of the voters pertaining what party's candidate they intend to vote for in the Senate.

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