The Day After Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, November 6, 2024
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77 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Here, in Germany, most ppl I’ve talked to are feeling baffled. We didn’t believe the US was so broken. But that’s how it looks like now. Ppl can’t understand why the majority of the voters could gladly vote for that man.
*sigh*
Mostly, we’re worried though.
Well sadly expected rather than hoped.
Perhaps I can hope against reason that this will shock the Democrats into dropping their Uni grad dominated discourse, cultural forward agenda to something that can can win back the US labourer class. Drop the arch uni dorm lounge language, agenda framing that’s evidently losing.
Unlikely to happen and am sure a flow of invective towards MAGA and supposed sympathisers will rather flow
This is an example of me not being happy with me being right.
A practice I picked up over 40 years ago, was to read people of very varying opinions. Not just read people I agree with or I hope will be right on some subject. In 1980, I first subscribed to The New Republic. Before 1980 was finished, I subscribed* to The National Review also.
While I have been a registered Democrat my whole life, I have voted for a good number of Republicans over the years. I have had a few regrets there, but I’ve had the same for some Democrats I’ve supported too.
Democrats were very confident both going into 2016 and 2020 and we know what happened. I can remember lots of confidence in the conservative blogosphere** before the 2008 election. That was misplaced also.
This year the polls said too close to call. I have been saying for a long time, the polls are wrong about Trump. People who support him don’t tell the pollsters their real opinion. I was sure it was happening again.
I wish I had been wrong because as many others here also think, this country is in for a hellish period of time. God help us all.
*- Sometime in the fall of 1980, NR ran a advertisement in TNR.
**- I blogged at one such website back then. Got kicked off it less than a year later mostly because of my heated opinion in which I stated some pro-lifers don’t practice what they preach. My wife and I have personally experienced it.
Well.
That could have gone better.
America has chosen fascism. I have no words. May whatever god or gods that may exist help us, and the world that will soon suffer.
1. There are a lot of misogynists in the US, many of them “closeted.”
2. This includes a lot of women.
3. People neither care, nor understand, how government works. They will soon care about how they are affected.
4. There are a lot of people whose understanding of how things operate in this country is the depth of an evaporating puddle.
ETA:
5. This is on the American people. The Dems ran a very, very disciplined campaign in the 16 weeks they had. While there’s always something that could have been done differently, the fact that an old, obscene, wobbly individual showing clear signs of dementia was able to win says something not very good at all about America’s collective character.
Removed. I understand strong emotions, but let’s keep them in check. Fantasies about violence will not be allowed.
I am sorry Dr. Franklin, we couldn’t keep it.
@Jen:
A thousand thumbs up.
@Jen:
This. All of THIS.
When I read how many of the Latino population voted for this man, all I could think was…well, my ppl really are uneducated.
I hope the Biden Administration spends the next two-plus months toddler-proofing the office of the presidency. I’m not sure how much, exactly, can be done, but whatever guardrails they can install–particularly in our intelligence community–will at least slow the coming sh!tshow down a bit.
This is going to be an unholy mess of an administration. The barely competent people from his last administration are all on the enemies list. I really do wonder what our allies are thinking.
JFC.
@Jen:
Sometimes it is possible to make no mistakes and lose anyway. That is not a weakness, that is life. — Jean-Luc Picard
I only wonder if things would have turned out differently, had Harris been able to campaign longer. Obviously that was out of her control, of course.
BOX OF ROCKS
When the success of a democracy relies on the wisdom of a box of rocks, democracy is doomed to be stupid, reactionary, and gullible.
I will pray that Trump lives out his 4 year term, because I am certain that Vance is even more dangerous to a nation that was founded on separation between religion and governance.
God help us.
USA, RIP.
@Jen:
I think it’s worse…People believe they *do* understand how government works. And they don’t believe it should work like that, and their party will fix it!
Amongst other things, Ukraine is screwed. Somewhere there’s a quote that empires aren’t murdered, they commit suicide. We’ve made big mistakes as hegemon, but I doubt China will be better.
Can’t sleep well; one of the after-effects of total exhaustion. Remembered this:
Irish citizenship is available to you if one of your grandparents was born in Ireland.
https://www.ireland.ie/en/dfa/citizenship/
Ireland is booming, what with the UK brexit-ing their asses off. Consider it.
@Kathy:
You ought to banned, not only for potentially bringing the secret service to our host’s virtual door – which is rude at best, but also for the supreme cognitive dissonance of claiming to be for democracy while openly advocating for the assassination of your political opponents which is very much fascistic.
@Bobert: Democracy has and always will rely on a people as they are not as Left (or Right) intellectuals idealise. The problem in end is you lot and reactions like this. This has been painfully evident in this site and other Lefty American sites, a self-deceived snobbery about the reaction of the non-university graduated fraction of the population and a snobbish (dressed up in fashionable Lefty format as anti-snobbery but in fact a form of cultural snobbery relative to the wrong kind of people)
I myself concluded you would lose when I read data based in this sort of profiling 0n the Latino reaction to the linguistic barbarism that is (was) Latinx (while this article is without over emphasis on a word when without doubt there are multiple drivers, none alone sufficient in themselves). Equally the professional-white-collar class “inflation-splaining” and idiotic denialism of that impact, using Fox News as the bouc emmissaire to explain your own failings in engagement.
Ms Harris did a yoeman’s job with a bad hand, unlike Ms Clinton and I think achieved better than Biden would have, but she had a bad hand that the Left gave her from
Of course the usual Political Activist Partisan reaction will be the explanation that Harris should have been more Left, but that is hard to reconile with the working class loss and theheavy shift – it is not Ms Harris centre focus it is the albatross of Wokey Woke overreach in discourse, and utter blindness on the part of the white collar bohemian bourgeouisie Left to their alientation of the labouring class – as going on and on about wiping out uni-grad loans which resolve demographically to a comperative elite, rather than addressing Labouring class inflation concerns and loss of status concerns.
And now we have the disaster of a Trump II thanks to this.
Pity that Ms Harris who I quite came to like is likely to get blame when she almost certainly rescued you from a wipe-out.
Yascha Mounk:
@Lounsbury: Today is a bad day to lecture people.
Still getting site errors intermittently.
Foremost of all I blame Merrick Garland.
His first and top priority the minute he got into office should have been to prosecute and convict the fuhrer. He instead appeared to sit on it until the National Archives, of all agencies, found the fuhrer had illegally taken documents. The he had no choice but to do something, two years too late.
The one lesson democracies don’t seem to ever learn is that a coup attempt must be dealt with swiftly, harshly, and permanently. See the current fuhrer’s spiritual predecessor in Germany, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and plenty others.
Second I blame the media. they were all over each and every stumble Biden made, but let the fuhrer skate most of the time. For those who don’t pay much attention, this creates a very misleading impression. They also went pretty hard on Harris, because she was busier than any other candidate would be at the same stage, seeing how she had to come up with a campaign structure quickly. With the same forbearance for the fuhrer when he did similar things, like not detail policies.
Third, I blame Biden. This may sound a bit contradictory given the second point. For the record, I find him still capable and in possession of his faculties, but not as much as he was four years ago. Aging gets us all. The thing is given his propensity to misspeak now and then, and given his advanced age, he should have known better than to try for reelection. I completely understand why he did, but he was wrong. He should have stepped down after the midterms and left the field open for younger leaders.
Fourth, the education system. granted finances and economics are complex and arcane subjects even experts in the field don’t really comprehend, but some things are or should be pretty clear. Essentially, Harris lost because a few million people don’t understand inflation. It’s more complicated than that, as Jen has begun to show (I’m sure she has plenty more to say about it), but that’s the gut feeling level essence.
And a special mention goes to the late Republican establishment, which had so many opportunities to stop this moron in 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, and each time decided power was more important than people. We’re in the second gilded age, and they love it.
On a side note, right now I’m so angry I find it hard to fathom my own rage. If I keep up with politics, I’ll become depressed. So I will step back quite a bit, maybe entirely. I’ll still come here and post on other topics. this remains a great place for conversation, and all you regulars, including Andy and Pearce II, are smart people with a lot of thoughts worth getting to know. I’ll just not post much about politics.
@Andy:
I also noted what Kathy wrote. What I write below isn’t a defense of her.
Just before the 1994 elections, The New Republic published a piece by a lawyer out of Chicago. He complained about undemocratic the US Senate. Did he propose a solution? Yes, it was some solution that would have taken voting out of public’s hands.
My memory of the article is distant but it has stuck with me for 30 years because
1 The solution was in conflict with the author’s complaint
2 The article was full of factual mistakes. A precursor to Stephen Glass and his writing for TNR.
3 In response to article, I wrote a letter (My first and only) to TNR pointing out the two problems above. The letter wasn’t published and TNR didn’t acknowledge there were errors in the article.
People advocating one thing and doing/arguing the reverse is a habit too many people.
It reminds me of a scene from the Munsters. Grandpa is teaching Eddie how to box.
“I’m glad your father doesn’t see what we’re doing right now. He is so opposed to violence, your father might kill me.”
It was an uphill battle due to the inflation in the middle of the Biden years. They prioritized people keeping their jobs and maintaining economic growth but we found out inflation was more important to most people. I also think they waited too long to address immigration.
Steve
To America’s friends, allies, client states, and all who looked to us for aid, succour, leadership, and example, I apologize. You deserved better.
To my fellow citizens who have apparently elected Mr. Trump, congratulations. Enjoy what you have reaped. You deserve it, unlike his legions of victims.
BTW, I’ve never been so glad I live south of the border. Not that we haven’t authoritarian problems of our own, but at least those carrying them out are 1) not crazy megalomaniacs, and 2) are seasoned politicians experienced in actual governance.
Quick history lesson:
The Mexican Revolution (aka the 1910-1921 civil war) concluded with the murder of Venustiano Carranza and the accession of his killer, Alvaro Obregon. After the latter was himself killed (poetic justice?), his successor, Plutarco Elias Calles, instituted the National revolutionary Party. You may know it better by its latter name, Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI to its friends and many enemies.
This party instituted a dictatorship from 1924 to 2000 (outlasted the USSR), but it was a party dictatorship. No man (they were all men) served more than one presidential term of six years (no reelection), nor consecutive terms in the chamber of deputies or the senate. Its ideology was to keep itself in power, keep the population content, and skim a bit off the top of all government expenses.
Overall this worked well until the mid-1970s, when Luis Echeverria royally effed up the economy, followed by Jose Lopez Portillo (Jolopo to his many, many, many, many, many enemies), who went so far as to nationalize the banking industry to loot it of foreign currencies (seriously). and thus killed off Mexico’s Trente Glorieuses (most western countries had them).
In time, and after the reformist but corrupt administration of Carlos Salinas, we got a political thaw and democracy. Institutions were slow to build up, but they were built up over the period 2000-2018 by presidents Fox, Calderon, and Peña Nieto.
The came his majesty, Manuel Andres the zeroth, who tried his very best to dismantle many of these institutions, and as a last act wrecked the independent judiciary. In short, he reinstated the PRI style of rule under his new party, Movimiento de Regeneracion Nacional (MORENA). Prior to that he had ruined a left wing party (PRD), and prior to that he had been a member of the PRI before the democratic reforms.
While this sounds very bad, and it is, it doesn’t quite reach the level of damage and corruption i expect the orange fuhrer to inflict upon America. See what I said above: the PRI knew to keep the populace content and the corruption moderate. this is cynical, I realize, but it’s far beyond the fuhrer’s ability or comprehension. Ask his niece if you don’t believe me.
And I hate to say this, but Manuel Andres had part of a point. Salinas’ reforms were in what’s known as neo-liberalism. Some were necessary, like simplifying bureaucracy and reducing or eliminating tariffs (and NAFTA was good for us), but we do get the same upwards flow of capital to the very rich, just at a lower rate than goes on in America. He just did’t do much about it but complain and use it as a cudgel against his enemies.
@Kathy:
I am also glad I don’t live there rn. Still, I worry how the new Fuhrer and his government might affect the country where my family is.
Also, from Europe…well, I guess it’s time to stop thinking the USA is our biggest ally.
@Lounsbury:
If the above translated into something other than Lounsburian self-entertainment, it would have been important to say. As it is, however…
@steve: But of course, had the Biden admin taken a different courst that kept inflation a bit lower with unemployment shooting up, the right would have screamed endlessly about *that* instead. And probably lied about 100 other things as well to keep everyone angry.
Until people start recognizing and punishing all of the lies, I don’t see much changing.
@Bill Jempty: The 80s were the era of Martin Peretz’s “Rethink Liberalism and Get Paid For It” campaign. The insurgence of neoliberalism made new TNR readers a natural potential market/constituency for post-Buckley right-wing nut jobbery.
@Min:
I don’t have family there, I think, but I have friends and acquaintances, and I include the regulars here at OTB. If I were religious, I’d pray for Beth and Stormy.
I was ready to see el fuhrer win, but I did not expect such a catastrophe.
BTW, I should amend my post above. The democratic thaw began with Salinas (he was a reformist for all his massive corruption). In the last two years of his term, opposition politicians heckled him when he addressed Congress.
Another thing about his majesty’s party, is that it’s firmly on the left. And this includes diversity and inclusion policies. So there’s little danger of abortion bans or LGTBQ+ repression in the near future. Society lags behind, largely, but it won’t be a problem aided and abetted by the government as well.
@Steven L. Taylor: True, but he’s probably feeling well entertained, and isn’t that what really matters?
@Lounsbury:
In my defense, it has nothing to do with elitism.
1) a person who is demonstrable and consistent liar does not deserve to be trusted.
2) a person who is a demonstrable bully does not deserve to be trusted
These are things that any 4 year old (with no university/elite background) understands.
The republicans within my sphere don’t seem to grasp that tariffs are paid for by consumers, a concept that most non-college (aka non- elite) can understand IF they have any interest in how the price of goods comes to be.
After Trump was elected in 2016, I read an article relating the experiences and adaptations made by a person who lived in a country that dissembled from a democracy to autocracy. He said it may become unsafe for Americans to openly resist autocracy, but the really important thing was to be a decent person everyday in the small ways that once could practice resistance.
That said, I have often thought the only way the current Republican party would swing left would be for them to truly have to govern. They win elections through fear. Now they have to legislate to make the lives of the their electorate better rather than blame the Democrats for everything or, as Trump did with the recent attempt to pass legislation to improve immigration and border integrity, sabotage bipartisan governance.
Today, all I can muster is the hope I will have the personal courage to exemplify the best of the American ideals I believed more Americans shared prior to November 2016.
Given that I don’t think either Biden or Harris have it in them to stage a coup (before accusations fly, consider the difference between assault and hitting someone in self defense), the other very unlikely savior is Judge Merchan. he could sentence the fuhrer to decades, or at least years, in prison.
I’m 99.9999% certain he won’t. For one thing, I assume he would like to live a normal lifespan. And in any case it would be futile. No way he orders the fuhrer into jail while the appeal is pending, and no way he ever serves a day even if JD stages a 25th amendment legal coup on January 22nd.
We’re at the stage where infection is rampant, symptoms are developing, and there’s no treatment or drug available that can cure the patient. It may be possible to ameliorate the damage, but the next four years, if not longer, will be very damaging.
That’s where the focus should be. If there is still a functioning democracy in America by 2028, that will be the time for bold and decisive action.
And the EC still needs to go, even if there was no inversion this time.
reid- Its a given that they would lie, but inflation affects almost everyone. Unemployment affects those who are unemployed, a much smaller group. People arent that good at seeing beyond themselves.
Steve
I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Harris to call Trump and congratulate him. He spent months calling her lazy and dumb. No doubt that is how he and much of his base see blacks. Kind of his inside joke. The saving grace is that is probably the last time she will ever have to speak to him.
@Lucysfootball:
I hope he was at least marginally civilized to her, or is that too much to ask.
@Kathy: A pretty good summary. I agree, with the quibble that I blame a lot of four on two. The supposedly liberal MSM kept running stories on INFLATION!! long after inflation had effectively ended. And they seldom tried to explain either the causes or why prices don’t go down. Unless Trump causes a recession, which is likely. But inflation aside, it seemed like it was only in the last few months that the media noticed the economy is a huge success.
We grant the “press” respect and special privileges on the grounds that a well informed electorate is necessary for democracy. An incumbent administration with a hugely successful economic record just lost an election largely because of the economy. If the media don’t inform the public any better than they have, they deserve to be herded into a box at the back of the room and made the butt of jokes, like Trump does.
And the same applies to immigration. Biden has done a pretty good job of cutting illegal immigration, but nobody knows it.
@Lucysfootball:
I have a fantasy that Biden resigns in the next few weeks, making Harris the 47th President and removing her from certifying the election on January 6. For extra sweet trolling, Harris wouldn’t select a VP, creating a tiny constitutional hiccup.
I know it’s petty, and changes nothing, but I am so very disappointed and disillusioned right now that imaginary scenarios are at least a tiny bit comforting.
I predict that inflation will recede as an issue next year because Trump will declare it solved. Of course, this be bullshit You know what will continually rise in cost? Food and insurance. Why? Because of worsening climate disasters, more crop damage, higher crop insurance. Food shortages will increase. Rebuilding communities ravaged by floods or fire means higher insurance rates. Building materials are more expensive, due to demand. Trump and his cronies want to axe fema. If that happens, hoo boy. I wrote here years ago that we have entered The End of Plenty. Tell me where I’m wrong.
@restless: I hoped Obama would do the same with Biden, but much closer to the end. After all the invitations were printed for the inauguration of the 45th President.
Just a small petty thing of almost no consequence.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I love that your profile picture is literally you lecturing people. Gave me a bit of a chuckle on what is shaping up to be a low chuckle day.
I have no pearls of wisdom, but this is a seriously worthwhile read:
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/11/trump-is-toxically-masculine-andy.html
@gVOR10:
The media misunderstands economics and finances as much as everyone else, even when they make use of experts to explain things.
Then there’s the adage that if it bleeds it leads. Overall the front page and most headlines are bad news, or maybe neutral. they are seldom unalloyed good news, except for the triumph of a local sports team. You won’t get clicks, these days, by saying “The Economy Is Improving.” You will with “Food Prices Have Never Been Higher.” the latter sounds neutral, but isn’t.
@becca: The insurance system is very close to breaking in some states. State regulators have kept rates artificially low, and the reinsurance industry (insurance for insurance companies) has experienced very high losses. Combined with higher costs to repair/rebuild/replace, this could be very bad indeed.
@Min:
There have been articles popping up on the periphery of the news I follow about conservatives taking an interest in Spanish-speaking news organizations for the past few years. For instance, in 2020, a controlling interest of Univision was sold to Searchlight Capital.
There’s a difference between uneducated and lied to.
But, this has all been just on the edge of my news consumption, so I am half-speculating/half-remembering.
Maybe your people are uneducated rather than just lied to — I know a hell of a lot of white people don’t know how tariffs work, so the Latino community wouldn’t be worse than them.
@Jen: I moved to Florida a year ago, before that we were snowbirds for four years. Homeowners insurance in Florida is approaching the breaking point. I’m treasurer of our Condo Association, and the building insurance has gone up almost 400% in five years. The personal condo insurance has gone up 150% in that time. People think there is some “magic solution”. they think the insurers are gouging and making a mint in Florida. I always respond that if that were true how come more than half of the insurers in the state have left since 2020. People are pissed, and they blame the government, but they seem to blame the Democrats even though every state official in Florida is a DeSantis appointee.
For us it’s an inconvenience that costs us about $3k more per year than we thought, but it’s just money. For others on a fixed income it’s a major problem. But then I hear those same people, many of whom voted for Trump, whine about why isn’t the government helping us. I feel like saying the same thing they do when discussing the working poor or the homeless – because it’s not the government’s job. maybe you should have planned better.
I don’t mean to be *that* guy, but I read that Harris got about 15 million fewer votes than Biden in 20202. Trump himself got fewer. Does that not seem suspicious, especially given how much we were hearing stories about long lines and huge turnout?
Breaking away from politics and into political history of sorts, I can’t understand public reaction to things like pandemics, disease outbreaks, and other public health matters.
When there’s a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood, or wild fire, people demand immediate and sufficient aid from the government, and this persists in affected communities for anywhere from weeks to years.
Yet when a disease is ravaging the population, killing and disabling people, help and guidance from the government isn’t wanted. In many cases it’s resented. Partly this is because unless you or someone you’re close to gets sick, it seems entirely something that happens to other people. Also a lot of the damage is invisible. COVID was not like the black death that left corpses on the streets, or smallpox that left even survivors scarred. Someone with COVID, in 2020, might cough and be somewhat out of it, but then they go home and recover or get worse and die, all out of view.
So guidance on masks, on staying home, on lock downs, is resented, even when it comes with things like the paycheck protection program (which didn’t protect as many paychecks as one might think) and “stimulus” checks.
Therefore when a government mismanages a health emergency and gets hundreds of thousands of people killed unnecessarily (see what South Korea did with testing and tracing, or New Zealand with near total lock downs), it’s not seen as a huge failure.
I’m not talking just about el fuhrer, but other leaders who imitated him. Manuel Andres in mexico, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and others. America does not understand soft power, and less how much the soft power it wields affects other countries.
Look at it this way:
On the one hand, America went to war for two decades over the destruction of two buildings, the damage of one public building, and the deaths of about 3500 people. I’m not saying this wasn’t justified, though a 20 year war can’t help but be branded mismanaged in many ways.
On the other hand, the man most responsible for making a mess of even the most basic response to COVID could barely be voted out of office.
As I said, it’s not just el fuhrer. In Mexico we don’t even know how many people died of trump disease, because not that many tests were done; and even when they were done in private labs they might not have been counted. Excess deaths, including those accounted by COVID (around 350,000), were 600,000 in 2020-21.
So not all the excess quarter million deaths were by the trump virus, but how many were indirect due to overfilled hospitals or unavailable medical personnel?
And yet, his majesty’s party won majorities in both houses in the midterms. It won even bigger majorities in the general election this year. And the handpicked successor won the presidency with a respectable majority.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
So many nightmare scenarios, but one in particular is keeping me awake right now.
1) Ukraine knows that US support ends on 1/20/25 and will be desperate. Losing access to US ammunition is likely a death blow within a year.
2) Their neighbors in the Balkans, well aware that they are next on Putin’s target list and equally well aware of Trump’s lack of interest in upholding NATO, are also scared to death.
3) France previously floated the idea of pushing NATO troops into Ukraine, and as recently as last week I saw the idea coming up again in response to the North Korean troops arriving in the fight.
4) More North Koreans are coming.
5) An angry and frustrated Biden administration, desperately trying to Trump-proof things, starts to think…”well, maybe…if the French send some troops, and we knock out the Russian air force, that might stalemate things even with Trump stabbing the Ukrainians in the back?”
6) Once the shooting starts no one knows what happens next.
I’m not saying this is a high probability scenario just yet, and the irony that it won’t be Trump starting WWIII but the fear of Trump causing others to start it is not lost on me, but the whole thing seems entirely too plausible.
And then if nothing happens before 1/20/25 the chances of the US getting involved in conflict with Russia will go down for a couple years because Trump is an appeaser of dictators, but once Putin finishes off Ukraine he’ll have to start wondering if it would be better to go after the Balkans himself before the next US election changes the calculus while knowing that with Trump in office he has someone who hates NATO and will be completely willing to abandon the Balkans, which makes 2027 yet another high risk time.
This is terrifying.
@reid:
Honestly no–for three reasons:
1. Voting was easier in 2020 due to a number of the COVID accommodations.
2. Having a LOT of people out of work made it easier for a higher degree of participation.
3. The fact that a LOT of people were out of work and we were in the midst of a crisis made voting more important because it felt like things were more urgent.
One of the great mistakes we often make is thinking that things always move in one direction. 2008’s turnout was significantly higher than 2012’s (and that had some of the same factors juicing it).
Additional point: And part of the reason I’m not posting on the election beyond what I wrote this morning–we don’t have all the data yet. Many of the releases are provisional and many are incomplete. So, this isn’t the time to assume much of anything beyond the big facts.
@Matt Bernius: I thought turnout among women would be through the roof. Two main reasons: 1. Dobbs, 2. E Jean Carroll/ Access Hollywood tape. Dobbs is self-explanatory. I know people say that character has become less important in elections, but for God’s sake, we elected a fucking rapist as a president. No sane woman could doubt that he raped Carroll, he bragged about sexually assaulting women, more than two dozen women said, yes he assaulted me, and Carroll told friends at the time. My fantasy is that these women tell their story in a book.
@Mikey: That quote has been going through my head all day. Also, the old HL Mencken quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
@Skookum: I think the GOP has long been governing/legislating with a net. And now much of that net is gone. It’s really easy to pass draconian anti-abortion laws when they won’t be put into effect, but it’s another thing to pass draconian anti-abortion laws knowing that it will drive OB/GYN doctors from practice, and cause other doctors to stop treating women of child bearing years.
I am going to break this up to avoid a wall of text.
Part 1:
Last night, in the open thread, @Matt* posted:
And @Lucysfootball said:
I responded to the latter, but not substantively:
I started to respond to Matt, but I was on so little sleep for days that I just did not have the energy. I barely have it now, but I will try.
They both, in different ways, considered the same questions: why? how?
The thing is, everyone will have their own pet explanations. None of them definitive. None of them wrong, but not correct either.
It is a buffet. We are talking about more th 100 million people. It’s impossible to fully explain the behavior of one person, let alone a group that large.
@Jen and @Bobert make good points that hit key parts of it.
Ignore @Lounsbury‘s tut-tut tone and understand that he does have a point. Is it overblown? Yes. Is it too confident? Yes. Is the tone hectoring? Yes. But there is some truth there.
*Not Bernius. I call them Bernius.
@Kurtz:
Everyone seems to. There is something about that name that leads people to refer to us (members of my family) by it.
@Kurtz:
I agree. But I think we should hold off on the inevitable circular firing squad for a day at least.
The Democrats are on the road to becoming a permanent minority. The Republicans have realized over time that the winning formula is cut taxes, increase the deficit, run on reducing the deficit, and paint the Democrats as the party of fiscal irresponsibility. And talk down the country as much as possible when the Democrats have the presidency. If the Republicans don’t care about the country, and Trumpism proves they don’t as party, it will work forever.
Most of the people in this room are smart, many are in business or even have run businesses. They understand that if you cut revenue permanently (be it cost of products or services or in the case of government, taxes), the actions affect the future. Most people don’t! Almost all of the US debt (currently nearly $36 trillion) can be directly traced to the Reagan, Bush 2, and Trump tax cuts. Nothing wrong with a tax cut if you pay for it. But they parrot the Laffer Curve, which no reputable economist agrees with. Economists might be terrible at predicting the future, but they aren’t bad with the present. With rare exceptions, if you have a huge decrease in revenue you better have a corresponding cut in expenses.
So the Democrats start with an undeserved reputation as the party of fiscal irresponsibility. But in the past they made up for it on other issues. Things seem to have changed with Trumpism. Maybe people’s memories have gotten shorter. Certainly Trump’s 50% approval rating had to be a shocker considering where he was during his presidency (average of 41%, lowest by four point of any president). In addition, a large part of rural America hates the Democrats. That has been brewing for years. But the kicker is that rural America, certainly more religious (I wouldn’t say Christian because I associate that term with some baseline amount of values and ethics) than the rest of America, has embraced the most amoral man to ever run for national office. Character, ethics, morality – they don’t seem matter at all.
I was starting to think that maybe the Democrats need to start incorporating a healthy amount of lying into their campaigns, but the problem is that most people identifying as Democrats care about the truth. There is simply no way that you can say that about a large portion of people who identify as Republicans at the current time. Trump’s constant lying has never bothered them, whether silly (crowd size) or serious (the blood libel against the Haitian community in Ohio).
If you have one party that only cares about winning and the power that comes with it, it’s a major problem. Maybe the other party can only win when it gets so bad the people will vote for a Democrat. In 2008 was Obama cleaning up after Bush and in 2020 was Biden cleaning up after Trump.
@Kurtz:
You can translate bloviating into English?
I don’t know, man, that sounds a lot like people hearing a Trump Word Salad and saying it means X, Y and Z.
@Lucysfootball:
I hate to break it to them, but insurance companies are going to need a LOT of year-over-year rate increases. The state department of insurance will hold back–many of them are elected officials–but if they don’t get their increases you’ll see more companies pull out of Florida.
@Jen: I worked as an actuary and was directly involved in ratemaking. Hurricane Ian a few years back had more insurable losses than two years total premiums collected of Florida property insurance, on both personal and commercial sides. This year we had two major hurricanes, not a huge insurance loss in the state ($4 billion), but it will make companies think twice about writing here. People don’t understand risk premium, where insurers will charge extra for the risk even if the long-term expectation of profit is the same.
I advise resisting the doom and gloom until knowing what he will do, and it may not be so bad. I recall Trump, after winning in 2016 had a crowd chanting “Lock her up!” at him and he told them he was going to do no such thing…and he didn’t.
Trump is unique in American politics in that he can and does ignore the things he has said as if he had never said them without repercussions from his base. Everything he has said in this campaign can easily be, and much of it almost certainly is, meaningless. We can not draw solid conclusions about what this guy will do from those.
The man seeks adoration above all and reads a crowd with a keen eye, as someone who is arguably the best con-man of all time should. It is It is at least somewhat unlikely he won’t, or allow the people whom he chooses to run the government for him, do anything which would make him generally unpopular. We must wait and see.
@dazedandconfused:
IN 2016, el fuhrer didn’t own the party. he had to work with the GOP establishment. Where the latter agreed with him on policies or goals, they went all out for him. Tax cuts, judges, etc. Where they didn’t agree, they ignored him or even quietly obstructed him. The wall, for instance, or the Muslim ban, or locking up someone without charges or evidence of wrongdoing.
Things are different today. Most of the establishment of 2016 either has been co-opted or has gone away. I think they will mostly do as he says, whether they want to or not. Further, in his misunderstanding of reality, he now probably believes the Leo court said he can do what he wants without adverse consequences.
Mark my words, we will wish he’d get Barr as AG.
Part 2:
–No Country for Old Men
I want to focus on the “four years ago” question, because it seems of particular importance. And it may yield a more general explanation than the others highlighted in Part 1 without invalidating their reasoning.
Also, when the Trump campaign started using “were you better off . . .” approach, I posted here in bafflement. I thought it made no sense. I should have known better.
Human memory capacity is a funny thing. Partial. Selective.* Imperfect. Always diluted; sometimes deluded.
Well, that is why the four years question works. It also points to something Mann and Ornstein identified in It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.
The American people, as much as I think that to be a mostly meaningless term that can feed overconfidence, have shown a pattern of reactionary, “throw the bums out”, behavior. That old phrase is used by the authors multiple times.
That is not a bad thing in and of itself. It is, ultimately, necessary for a democracy to function. The problem is that it is exploitable.
I repeat: the very mechanism that allows for democratic governance also is its weak point for authoritarians. Those who find the right scabs to pick at the right time win.
I admit that over the past 16 hours or so I have texted a few people and characterized the American people as stupid. I had to blow off steam. I cannot blow. It is important to me. I have to have a little release.
But it is, at the very least, unfair. I am trying to limit length as much as possible, so I will not go into why it is unfair. I have posted st length about it in the past. If anyone is interested, I can explain that view in a separate post.
My partially formed personal take:
The vanity of the American people may be its most enduring characteristic. The propagandic, euphemistic story of individual men pushing westward, forging a nation is bullshit. But persons have an appetite for bullshit. And that just-so story permeates every part of the nation’s psyche.
That focus on individualism comes at a steep cost–it requires ignorance of biological understanding of organisms. It ignores that some species, many in fact, are by their nature, social. It elevates state of nature analysis that does not, and in most cases, cannot account for subsequent discoveries.
Ironic, is it not? To cling to ‘first principals’, to claim the mantle of rationalism by treating 17th and 18th century philosophy as revelatory and immortal truth. That belief is not merely irrational; it is anti-rational.
For most of us here, the Covid period does not engender fondness. But check that for a second. Bear with me.
This country is hard on people.
Covid locked us down. Many people could not work their job. For those who transitioned to remote work, they continued their employment, but from home.
For both of those groups, it was a rebate paid in the most finite currency of all: time. Everyone had more of it. Creativity flourished. Long dreamt projects were undertaken, some completed. People had more time to spend with loved ones.
This country taxes people.
The taxes that receive the most attention, the ones paid in dollars, can only be roughly converted into the one that is, unbelievably viewed as expendable, despite it being the one thing that, once wasted or lost, cannot be recovered.
Yet, our economic and political systems convert time into dollars and cents. Linguistically, we treat them as equivalent when we utter the phrase, “time is money”.
But because so many of us are constantly scrambling to afford basic needs, we ignore just how pernicious this is.
Wal Mart got caught taking out life insurance policies on their employees. That is offensive to me on so many levels. It reduces a person, a mind, to a number behind a dollar sign. That it does not seem to offend a lot of people, for others a minor offense at worst, should be seen a a symptom of an ill culture. A terminally I’ll society clinging to the grinding gears of a system that treats individuals as a resource–as disposable income. Our bodies and minds are the grist ground into a product.
So am I surprised that people look back fondly on four years ago? No. Because what is memory if not an impressionabout how one felt at a particular juncture of their lives? I doubt many realize what is driving that fondness. For the first time in our lives, or at least, since childhood, we had a true taste of freedom from the chains of a vengeful deity called the Economy.
And just like religious deities, it is invisible and mostly mysterious. It is treated as if it governed by natural laws and rules that we think of as immutable, outside of time and space, even if we can only conjure a few ‘truths’ that we consider to be inviolable.
So am I surprised that people look back fondly on four years ago? No. Because what is memory if not an impression about how one felt at a particular juncture of their lives?
*I dislike this term, because it implies choice via its root, select. It is an involuntary biopsychological process of which there are more unknowns than knowns.
@Gustopher:
I am not criticizing anyone for ignoring @Lounsbury’s post. If his tone bothers you to the point that it affects your mood, don’t read them. The insight that is in there does not make up for the downside.
But if you can dismiss the negativity, he makes valid points. One can still validly disagree on various grounds and at different points along the logic chain. But complete dismissal is unwise from an intellectual perspective.
@Matt Bernius:
Because it’s awesome. My last name is clunky. So I recognize when someone’s name is phonetically smooth and fun.
@Kurtz: I can’t figure out what he means, other than that he is a smug twit.
Beyond that, if there are any points they are lost on me, as I am a Uni-Bobo whatever, and he writes in the earthy tones of the working class or something.
Meanwhile in Germany:
Government falling apart
Chancellor Scholz sacks Finance Minister Christian Lindner (who is also leader of the Free Democrats).
So the now Christian Democrat/Green coalition lacks a majority in the Bundestag.
A vote of confidence scheduled for January, so elections likely in March.
Wonderful timing, guys.
@JohnSF:
“Things fall apart; the center will not hold.” — W. B. Yeats
@CSK: That has been running through my head all day.
Addendum to my post on Mexico’s political history.
Echeverria, Lopez Portillo, and Salinas, are like the anti-Trinity of modern Mexican history, equal to Lopez de Santa Ana (lost Texas), and Porfirio Diaz (30 year dictatorship).
What these first three have in common is they ended their terms with a major economic crisis, most particularly including currency devaluation. Portillo in particular earned the nickname “El Perro,” after promising to defend the peso “like a dog,” shortly before a massive devaluation.
All three, moreover, left the country along with leaving office. Portillo had built a retirement villa on the outskirts of Mexico City atop a hill in an exclusive residential neighborhood. He had no chance to make use of it. But it was known afterward as el Cerro del Perro (Dog Hill). As it happens, it was visible from the school bus on the route to junior high school. It was demolished in stages by others, with the last piece coming down in 2018.
Salinas actually left office with the peso at 3.50 for a dollar, But he left things in such a precarious state, that his successor, Ernesto Zedillo, blew things up trying to get a handle on it. Part of it was Zedillo’s fault for not being more candid about economic conditions. But the custom was to blame all ills on the prior Administration. Not that Salinas didn’t deserve it. Zedillo found some redemption after things recovered, and by hastening democratic reforms.
These four occupy the period between 1970 to 2000. In between them, from 1982-88 was Miguel de la Madrid. The joke is he was the least corrupt president to that time, because the economy was so bad there was nothing to loot. His term included the highest inflation ever in Mexico, peaking I think at 150%. His signal accomplishments in popular memory were 1) getting Mexico to host the soccer World Cup for 1986 after Colombia dropped out as host, and 2) remaining in the country after his term ended. He was equaled in the second by Zedillo and all subsequent presidents.
I never thought we’d go back like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edAxujKev1I
Because my medication has worn off and I really hope all the ag producers I think of as my friends and neighbors get it good and hard, just like they voted for. So full of rage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edAxujKev1I
Beth and Stormy and any of the lurkers who never comment, I hope you are all ok.
@Mike in Arlington:
Two points, or counterpoints
1. This, like institutional cruelty, is the feature NOT the bug.
2. But it won’t be THEIR womenfolk affected.