James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.
Donald Trump
August 25, 2025
I think he (his boyfriend Kim Jong Un) has a country of great potential. Tremendous potential.
CNN
Donald Trump on Truth Social
September 2, 2025
Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.
I just read through yesterday’s discussion under the Stephen Miller picture.
I do not understand how people who have lost so much ground on so many issues can continue to furiously deny that we Democrats bear any responsibility for those losses. (Mr. Hannibal you had occupied central Italy and now they’re salting your garden, and you made no mistakes?) Soon after the election I started pushing for a real discussion of what mistakes were made, how we made them, and how can do better next time.
After a team loses a game they study that game. The fact that Democrats seem incapable of doing that does not signal commitment, it signals weakness and a lack of conviction. Any time anyone offers a criticism everyone leaps to the conclusion that this or that group is about to be ‘sold out,’ and discussion is choked off. This is not the attitude of people who are actually confident in their beliefs, it’s more of the same snarling cringe Democrats have been in since November.
The purpose of the Democratic Party is to win elections so that we may feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, lift up the downtrodden and defend liberty. We are not a religion where any criticism is heresy. Focus on the goal, figure out how to get there, and fuck everything else.
@Michael Reynolds: I am a big fan of learning from one’s mistakes.
AND, most if not all of Trump’s policies are underwater as regards public approval. We are in a profoundly undemocratic place. As Steven has been saying for quite some time.
I do not take Miller’s remarks as mainstream. I do think he wants you to think of his remarks as mainstream. Its all part of the confidence game. It’s mistaking loudness for support.
@Michael Reynolds: I agree that Democrats need to be examining this closely. However, I will note that after Romney’s loss, the Republicans did something similar, and then took allllll of those learnings and understandings and dumped them in the trash, and have gone on to win.
No one likes to hear that there’s only so much analysis that can be done. Close elections are sometimes tipped one direction or the other based on what amounts to vibes. Republicans are very good at identifying the zeitgeist and capitalizing on it, while Democrats insist on rewarding competence (e.g., nominating two talented, capable female leaders) even when it’s been made painfully clear that *even women* don’t think women can be in the top job.
Stuart Stevens had a post that was essentially recommending a scorched earth path if Democrats succeed in winning the House in 2026. It was spot-on IMHO, but I just don’t see Democrats behaving that way. We continue to bring safety scissors to a gun fight.
Right now MTG and I think Luna are at the Epstein presser. JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank are mentioned as launderers. Deutshe Bank? Where else have I heard so much about Deutsche Bank?
Republicans are very good at identifying the zeitgeist and capitalizing on it
This goes back to Karl Rove: focus on negative partisanship, pick 3-4 issues, and hammer them home. Americans don’t have the bandwidth for nuance. We can’t assess risk or probabilities. We are a wealthy nation. We don’t have as much need to focus on what we want. We are better on having feelings about we don’t want.
Yes, the last election had the bad vibes of inflation. Democrats spent time explaining why there was inflation. They should’ve pounded the table on how they brought inflation down after the pandemic (which happened on Trump’s watch).
I’m sure if asked, the nazi would say Texla sales are going to plan. Meantime in Australia, they are down.
IMO, this may not be only due to the nazi being a nazi, nor to the rising anti-US sentiment amid the Taco Tariffs, but also due to some deficiencies in the Texla models.
@Scott: I’d say it goes back further than Rove, at very least to Lee Atwater. When I was in college, grassroots campaign schools run by Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute were all over the country disseminating this type of campaign process and messaging.
Florida’s surgeon general on Wednesday announced plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for children to attend schools, which would make it the first state to completely withdraw from a practice credited with boosting vaccination rates and controlling the spread of infectious diseases.
This pure idiocy will cost untold lives in Florida and around the country.
After a team loses a game they study that game. The fact that Democrats seem incapable of doing that
Where is this alternate reality where such study isn’t what Democrats have been preoccupied with for most of the past year? Is it in the same 5th Dimension where Kamala Harris spent most of her campaign pushing for trans rights?
When people disagree with the substance of a particular criticism and offer an alternative critique, it doesn’t mean that they oppose “any criticism.” It just means they oppose that particular criticism. And that’s not the same thing.
Close elections are sometimes tipped one direction or the other based on what amounts to vibes.
Empirically true, and it is the job of political scientists to look for and point out these structural factors, no matter how much we ideologues — with our narcissistic belief in our own importance and power — don’t like hearing it.
It is perfectly valid endeavor for academicians. That’s not a “heresy” either.
@gVOR10: “But then there’s the problem of getting the supposedly liberal MSM to report the table pounding.”
Oh, they’d report it, just as they did when the Biden administration talked about the positive things they’d done — “Those Dems are so clueless talking about accomplishments when people are feeling like prices are going up. It’s just making them look even more out of touch. And hey, Trump says he’ll bring prices down in a day!”
@Michael Reynolds:
Can’t ignore the electoral college, but putting that aside for a moment, Harris lost the popular vote by 2.3 million voters.
How many of those voters based their choice on gender of the candidate?
Just based on my small circle of friends/associates at least 10% were adament that a woman should never be in the presidency.
I am at a loss as to how the Democrats (or any party for that matter) should address that.
@wr: Oh, you even had some OTB commentators claiming that Democrats were out-of-touch for touting good Biden-Harris economic data. Regurgitating the spoonfed mainstream media narrative, per usual.
Prices are even higher now, with electric bills surging and the job market sputtering. But suddenly, the inflation inflation inflation coverage is M.I.A. Instead we get Maher and Smerconish telling us how Trump’s tariffs haven’t been so bad. Lol
The purpose of the Democratic Party is to win elections so that we may feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, lift up the downtrodden and defend liberty.
That’s rank socialism there.
After a team loses a game they study that game. The fact that Democrats seem incapable of doing that does not signal commitment, it signals weakness and a lack of conviction.
I think the impression that the Democrats are weak and lack conviction comes more from the Democrats being weak and lacking conviction than anything else.
The only Democrats who are showing signs of life are Mamdani, Newsom and Pritzker. A socialist, a George W Bush style Republican, and a Billionaire.
Any time anyone offers a criticism everyone leaps to the conclusion that this or that group is about to be ‘sold out,’ and discussion is choked off.
I get that it’s a matter of priority and focus rather than deliberately discarding people, but Democrats have been really bad about changing focus. Polling says people say they care about kitchen table issues, but results show that people are distracted by the shiny object of hating trans people and immigrants.
And worse, not offering a strong defense for trans people (Harris spent her time on anything but that) creates a situation where all major parties are ok with hurting trans people. We’ve seen where that leads in the UK aka TERF Island (um… hi Beth, if you’re out there).
Granted, we have masked goons pulling people off the street and disappearing them, as well as soldiers being called up and deployed to occupy our own cities, so we aren’t doing great either.
Things are close enough that we might eke out a victory playing safe, and trying hard to avoid upsetting the center, but we will end up with Dems too timid to “feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, lift up the downtrodden and defend liberty.”
——
Conversely, there’s this report by Blue Rose Research showing that the only issues people care about that they trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on are health issues. Dems are not trusted on the economy (I’m guessing that means jobs), cost of living, government debt, foreign policy…
I think the graph on page 14 could give you days of ranting material.
I might counter that by saying the Democrats are not good at changing topics to things they want to talk about, and we need to blunt the Republicans sharpest tools — the culture war and equality issues that Americans say they don’t care about, but very clearly do.
Just based on my small circle of friends/associates at least 10% were adament that a woman should never be in the presidency.
I am at a loss as to how the Democrats (or any party for that matter) should address that.
Obviously, we need to have a woman president first, so we can get people used to the idea before they will vote for one.
I think we tried in 2020 by nominating an ancient man half expecting that the VP would take over. With the current attitude towards gerontocracy, I don’t think that’s a great model going forward.
Obviously, we should elect a man who will then transition, and use the power of incumbency to boost her chances of reelection.
China celebrates the victory over the Japanese Imperial Empire, and the POTUS isn’t invited. This is clearly a big embarrassment for Trump. Trump has told us about his great friendship with these guys, and he has emphasized again and again that this friendship is based on his personal charm and not on having congruent national interests lubricated with courtesy toward the other side. Don, when Putin calls you tsuka(transliterated from the Cyrillic) it doesn’t mean sweetheart.
Conversely, there’s this report by Blue Rose Research showing that the only issues people care about that they trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on are health issues. Dems are not trusted on the economy (I’m guessing that means jobs), cost of living, government debt, foreign policy…
I think the graph on page 14 could give you days of ranting material.
I might counter that by saying the Democrats are not good at changing topics to things they want to talk about, and we need to blunt the Republicans sharpest tools — the culture war and equality issues that Americans say they don’t care about, but very clearly do.
We lost the plot by trying to tell people to quit bitching everything was fine with immigration and inflation, and by our obvious inability to deal with homelessness in blue cities. And we made it worse by being tedious, humorless scolds as sensitive to perceived insult as a Renaissance princeling. (Do you bite your pronoun at me, Sir?) We became the establishment at a time when that was not a good place to be, at a time when Covid and its sequelae had rattled people far more than I expected*. And we seemed to go out of our way to ignore the 60% of voters who are white.
*Not necessarily a diss – at the time I was basically a hermit without a job to go to or a school to attend. The pandemic hardly affected me. I bought a Jacuzzi and had my whiskey left at my front door.
I hear a military parade was scheduled as part of the festivities. If so, Xi might just have wanted to spare El Taco the embarrassment of seeing a far better parade than anything America can put up.
Or maybe Xi just prefers the theory that Japan surrendered when Soviet troops began to move towards Manchuria, and not due to the two atomic bombs the US Army dropped on them.
And we seemed to go out of our way to ignore the 60% of voters who are white.
Must be why every Democratic presidential ticket ever makes sure there’s a white guy on it. Of course, for some of this cohort, not being 100% of the focus 100% of the time is a catastrophe of inattention.
Would that it were more white Americans spent more time being grateful for the inordinate amount of attention they receive from every American institution ever — including the Democratic Party — and less time whining and playing the victim, this pathetically embarrassing new pastime taken up in the 21st century by the most privileged and powerful demographics in the country.
Were that so, white Americans would not have destroyed their global reputation, with the self-inflicted stupidity of giving a majority of their votes to an incompetent pedophile who’s taking their jobs, businesses, and healthcare. The Greatest Generation, this ain’t.
How many of those voters based their choice on gender of the candidate?
Many, perhaps a determinative amount? No way to know. Harris’s loss was broad geographically but shallow numerically, so narrow that everything and nothing could be proximate cause.
But there’s enough evidence for this misogyny that folks here and elsewhere bitterly criticized Democrats for failing to rally round its incumbent — the old white guy Dems nominated to give attention to white voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. As it quickly became clear his black woman VP was the moment’s only viable alternative.
This was an implicit critique of Democrats’ blinkered attitude towards post-Obama America’s racist backlash and sexism. (Seen recently again in calls for Dems to nominate AOC or Buttigieg in 2028, I mean really.)
These fears of a Harris candidacy — offered by a rare convergence of progressive politicians, Fetterman types, and black voters opposed to Biden’s ouster — were roundly mocked. Instead, the “Fk Joe Biden” crowd got their switch.
Only for some now to pretend such criticisms of Democrats’ choices never existed at all. Maybe they just don’t notice criticisms they disagree with?
Conversely, there’s this report by Blue Rose Research showing that the only issues people care about that they trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on are health issues.
Then we lean into this, HARD.
You find the issue(s) that people generally think you have a solid grasp of, and hammer it.
Health care touches almost EVERYTHING.
Your job? Crappy economy, you lose your job, no healthcare.
You have health care? Good. Lucky you. How much of your income is getting eaten up by deductibles, stuff that isn’t covered for vague reasons, etc.? How’s that squaring with increased prices?
How are your adult kids faring? Any grandkids yet? If not, is it because caring for a child is insanely expensive–including all of the health care they require, including vaccines?
If the general voter believes the Democrats have the upper hand in health care, they should use that as the framing. It’s how you get people to listen. Everything from the economy, to education, to finances, to even tax policy can be framed through a health care lens.
Get them to listen to that first, then move on to transportation, energy costs, etc.
In the Coe and Duncan History Show Podcast*, Alexis Coe suggested Biden should have resigned the presidency when he dropped out of the campaign, precisely in order to get people to see Harris as the actual president.
I don’t know. Perhaps misogyny is part of the infamous American Exceptionalism. There have been plenty of women who have taken on the governance of a country, overall they’ve done as well as any man.
Provincialism is a large part of the American character. Maybe most of the US population simply hasn’t heard of any of them.
*The podcast has been dark since March, and no info has been given as to its future prospects. Maybe the name was too long.
FIFA claims this is all in an effort to adapt to the customs of the host country. Never mind there are nominally three host countries for some reason, the implication I see is that the US is made up of sheep who want to be fleeced.
I’d say this is an unbearable insult, were it not that 45 years of trickle down “economics” lend credence to it.
@Jen: Dems did this successfully with healthcare and abortion in 2018 and 2022 respectively, but because Trump’s Obamacare repeal and then Dobbs were the causes célèbre of those cycles.
Harris couldn’t replicate that when the cause was inflation inflation inflation. That’s the poli sci point, that post-COVID economic shocks reduced incumbent party share globally, left and right, this being more salient than messaging on pronouns. Not a very sexy point. But it’s evidence-based and as valid as anyone else’s, agree or disagree (I think disagree? I think a white male 2024 Dem nominee would be president now.)
As more Americans lose healthcare thanks to Trump’s people, of course Dems will lean into that. It’s favorable terrain. The problem is once the next Dem president expands healthcare access, Americans will quickly take it for granted and vote for Republicans to make them sick again.
This voter schizophrenia affects both parties. Now that Trump has closed the border to enact the aggressive mass deportation he promised, all of sudden:
Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.
These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups.
Leaning into strengths won’t matter tomorrow because culturally, Americans are contrarion, oppositional, and perpetually biased against the status quo. Score another point for those believing vibes and largely-uncontrollable structural factors matter most. YOLO
@Kathy: I used to agree with that, but being President is a full time job, at least for the first few months. I don’t think Harris could have campaigned nearly as much if there was a transfer of power. And a few months wouldn’t have been long enough to convince anyone it wasn’t a weird temporary emergency thing.
Resigning after the midterms might have been enough time.
I think the first woman elected President is going to be a Republican. It leaves the conservative misogynists (at least 2/3rds of the misogynists) nowhere to go. It may also require the Democratic candidate to completely fall apart.
(Remember when John Edwards was running for the nomination, lost, and then a few months later his secret other family was discovered? Good times. Anyway, maybe something like that, had he gotten the nomination)
@Jen: The Republicans have done well attacking Democrats’ strengths, and I think that’s something we would have to replicate. Possibly easier for us, when facts are on our side, but not a sure thing.
Healthcare is also… wonky. It’s easy to get lost in the details, so I think it has to be tied very explicitly to core values — freedom, family, frottage, etc. Very doable.
(I remember the run up to the 2020 campaign when people were arguing over the details of the various Democrat’s health plans that they would never be able to implement unchanged… and that’s primary voters, the more informed and more engaged voters)
@Kathy:
It had such promise as a welcoming tournament for international fans after the last two World Cups (Qatar in 2022, Russia in 2018). But now I wouldn’t count on high demand, and therefore higher ticket prices, for many of the games in the U.S., the home team matches and quarterfinal and beyond matches (which will be played in the U.S.) excepted. But the matches in Mexico and Canada should be spirited and well-attended.
Must be why every Democratic presidential ticket ever makes sure there’s a white guy on it. Of course, for some of this cohort, not being 100% of the focus 100% of the time is a catastrophe of inattention.
I remember the Clinton campaign in 2016. It was shocking how few white men were in her campaign ads. Everything was either racially diverse or about women. (“I’m with her” was a big slogan)
It was weird. I don’t think I had seen a campaign that was so not about me. (And it might be that it was only 70% about white men instead of 95% — it was jarring!)
You might say that white men need to get over themselves, and that they shouldn’t need to be coddled like the little whiny babies they are — and that’s certainly true. But, these whiny white male babies also vote.
I think it’s silly of MR to complain about identity politics (did he do that today, or just every other day?) while simultaneously pointing out that the Clinton and then the Harris campaigns didn’t activate that white male identity strongly enough (although in different words).
I thought Harris did fine on that, or better than Clinton. Walz was awesome in a way that generic boring white guy what’s-his-name wasn’t, and the ads didn’t feel jarring, but that might have been personal growth on my part.
I think future campaigns have to remember to coddle white men and the New York Times, and especially the white men at the New York Times. Or fundamentally change America. The coddling seems way more achievable though.
I thought Harris did fine on that, or better than Clinton.
Did she? If she did, didn’t matter much. Clinton remains the only woman to win the popular vote. A feat that now looks miraculous, wit Harris not surviving 30+ years of attacks and avoiding a 2+ year campaign slog.
If the 2016 election had occurred 3.5 months after Hillary entered it, Trump would be a historical footnote.
But, these whiny white male babies also vote.
To what end? Who do statements like this really threaten? Hillary is chillin in a mansion in Westchester between projects. Harris is plotting her future from a mansion in Brentwood and a sweet pad in SoMa.
Aside from the occasional anti-Trump outburst and a general air of concern from those suffering loss of Biden admin competence, care, and protections, the liberals in Cape Cod and Fire Island seemed to be mostly fine this summer. Just a really idyllic lifestyle these people live — and I noticed Provincetown, while affluent, still has a visible working class. Same with most I was around in Europe, where polls showed folks preferred Harris at 70-90% rate. All societies have serious issues, but I didn’t see the aggrieved anger and doom of 2025 America.
So I wonder who Americans think their political choices are actually harming. Many left and right live by the mantra, “I know– I’ll punish Dems by…shooting myself in the face! That’ll teach em!”
This is an exceedingly strange strategy. Good luck with that, I guess?
It depends which teams qualify for the elimination rounds. And whether El Taco sends ICE to detain Snoozefest fans at games…
I wonder if I should try to get tickets for Mexico’s first match, then resell them at a profit when the price gouging kicks in. Better I get a cut than FIFA, after all. But it says there’s a max of 4 tickets per match. I don’t think they’ll appreciate that much.
Besides, after last month’s triple whammy (insurance, electric bill, and minor car repairs), I’ll be short on funds the rest of September…
@Kathy:
It appears that Mexico’s final (3rd) group stage match will also be in Mexico City. If they haven’t wrapped up one of the top two spots in the group by then, it will be huge match with the expectation that it will propel them to the elimination stages.
In other World Cup news, Iran has qualified again. The US and Iran ended up in the same group and therefore played one another in 1998 and in 2022, with Iran winning the earlier match and the US winning what was effectively an elimination match in 2022. It’ll be interesting to see where Iran ends up in the 2026 group draw, and if there’s a realistic chance of a US-Iran rematch on US soil (seems unlikely).
I don’t usually read the daily threads, but had some extra time today and this one is interesting.
On the reasons for D losses, I think it’s important to remember that politics is the art of the possible – meaning things a candidate, politician, or campaign can directly control or influence.
The extent to which there are racists and misogynists in our society who purposely or subconsciously will not vote for anyone but a white man (and such people do exist), we have no idea how big a group this is or how many vote. But more importantly, there isn’t anything that can be done about it in a political campaign. It is outside the art of the possible in politics, except on a very long timescale. So, blaming some group of prejudiced people of unknown size for these losses while ignoring other factors that are both decisive in outcomes and part of the art of the possible is ultimately a dead end. This dead end is compounded if one takes it further and declares that only a white man can win, and therefore, politics somehow has to change the hearts of white people.
This line of thinking is countered by the fact that Obama won decisively twice despite the supposed decisive disadvantage of being Black. Maybe political skill, charisma, and the right set of policies and vibes that match the national zeitgeist – all factors that politics can influence- are actually important. Obama had all of those. Obama was both a better political talent and ran under more favorable conditions than Clinton or Harris. That’s not a trivial difference.
Clinton barely lost in a contest in which both candidates were super unpopular, which is why the third-party vote was historically large. I know some here would deny that Clinton made any mistakes, but leaving those aside, she started out as an unpopular candidate and was running as an establishment candidate in a change election. Bernie’s insurgency probably bled support to Stein (another woman, BTW), who got ~1.5 million votes – a decisive number. Harris was dragged down by being forced to ride the coattails of the most unpopular Democratic President in at least the last half-century, and was expected to pick up the mantle and win at the last minute. She was disadvantaged from the start by White Man Biden’s unpopularity, but still did fairly well, considering that her truncated campaign was not without mistakes.
So no, I don’t think it’s at all true that America is so racist or sexist that only white men can win. But if people here actually believe that is true, and that nominating a woman is a guaranteed loss, then they really should advocate for only nominating white men if they want Democrats to win. And then play the long game to try to bend society in a better direction. But I don’t think that’s where America is.
@Gustopher‘s link to Blue Rose should really be a big focus. It clearly shows that the Democratic theory of victory for the 2024 campaign was an error. It takes a cascade of failures to lose to someone as unpopular as Trump, and Democrats being underwater on every issue but health care is a pretty big cascade, combined with Biden’s age and the last-minute candidate switch.
Clinton remains the only woman to win the popular vote.
The irony is that Harris got a larger percentage of the popular vote than Clinton – 48.3 vs 48.2. Of course, Harris also received approximately 10 million more votes than Clinton, largely due to the larger voting electorate.
@Andy: Obama’s candidacy doesn’t prove or disprove anything about American racism in 2024-2025. Because Obama didn’t have to run after the racist backlash and radicalization of many white voters prompted by the Obama presidency. (Not to mention that if only white Americans could vote, Obama would never have been president.)
If a person living in Berlin c.1939 pointed out that Jews could not do business in Germany, examples of successful German Jewish industrialists in operation c.1923 would not be a counter.
There is a saying in black households: “We know white folk better than they know themselves.” Which is a condescending joke that means it’s easy to be sanguine by American racism when you’re not being bombarded with racist microagressions daily.
That’s why black voters pushed Biden to the nomination in 2020, polled against dumping him in 2024 and (I predict) while argue for a generic white guy in 2028.
This is not 2008. We are in a different America at the moment. I’m on my way to an EU passport, so I’m not sure I’ll care so much what messes the US electorate is making in 2028. If I did, I’d be urging Democrats to nominate to win, not nominate to virtue signal. There is a time for the Art of the Possible, and there’s a time for the Math of Reality. 2028 primary voters will sort that out. And then they’d be smart to enthusiastically back the nominee regardless, even if said enthusiasm must be faked till Election Day — instead of our usual M.O. of loudly projecting our disappointment, thereby undermining demand for our own product and helping a wildly inferior competitor. Sales 101.
Looks like the leading Authoritarians have kicked Fanboi Donnie to the curb.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115137717177283585
Trump sounds like a jilted girlfriend in this.
SAD!!!
@Daryl: I refuse to click on it. Synopsis, please? 😉
@Jax:
Trump big mad that the world’s leading authoritarians had a party and didn’t invite him.
Breaking up is hard to do!
@Neil Hudelson: After all those love letters between Trump and Kim? Yep, Trump is acting like a jilted lover.
Marginal Revolution quotes the Financial Times saying there’s a big sell off in long term bonds. The bond vigilantes may be back.
I just read through yesterday’s discussion under the Stephen Miller picture.
I do not understand how people who have lost so much ground on so many issues can continue to furiously deny that we Democrats bear any responsibility for those losses. (Mr. Hannibal you had occupied central Italy and now they’re salting your garden, and you made no mistakes?) Soon after the election I started pushing for a real discussion of what mistakes were made, how we made them, and how can do better next time.
After a team loses a game they study that game. The fact that Democrats seem incapable of doing that does not signal commitment, it signals weakness and a lack of conviction. Any time anyone offers a criticism everyone leaps to the conclusion that this or that group is about to be ‘sold out,’ and discussion is choked off. This is not the attitude of people who are actually confident in their beliefs, it’s more of the same snarling cringe Democrats have been in since November.
The purpose of the Democratic Party is to win elections so that we may feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, lift up the downtrodden and defend liberty. We are not a religion where any criticism is heresy. Focus on the goal, figure out how to get there, and fuck everything else.
@Michael Reynolds: I am a big fan of learning from one’s mistakes.
AND, most if not all of Trump’s policies are underwater as regards public approval. We are in a profoundly undemocratic place. As Steven has been saying for quite some time.
I do not take Miller’s remarks as mainstream. I do think he wants you to think of his remarks as mainstream. Its all part of the confidence game. It’s mistaking loudness for support.
@Michael Reynolds: I agree that Democrats need to be examining this closely. However, I will note that after Romney’s loss, the Republicans did something similar, and then took allllll of those learnings and understandings and dumped them in the trash, and have gone on to win.
No one likes to hear that there’s only so much analysis that can be done. Close elections are sometimes tipped one direction or the other based on what amounts to vibes. Republicans are very good at identifying the zeitgeist and capitalizing on it, while Democrats insist on rewarding competence (e.g., nominating two talented, capable female leaders) even when it’s been made painfully clear that *even women* don’t think women can be in the top job.
Stuart Stevens had a post that was essentially recommending a scorched earth path if Democrats succeed in winning the House in 2026. It was spot-on IMHO, but I just don’t see Democrats behaving that way. We continue to bring safety scissors to a gun fight.
Right now MTG and I think Luna are at the Epstein presser. JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank are mentioned as launderers. Deutshe Bank? Where else have I heard so much about Deutsche Bank?
@Jen:
This goes back to Karl Rove: focus on negative partisanship, pick 3-4 issues, and hammer them home. Americans don’t have the bandwidth for nuance. We can’t assess risk or probabilities. We are a wealthy nation. We don’t have as much need to focus on what we want. We are better on having feelings about we don’t want.
Yes, the last election had the bad vibes of inflation. Democrats spent time explaining why there was inflation. They should’ve pounded the table on how they brought inflation down after the pandemic (which happened on Trump’s watch).
I’m sure if asked, the nazi would say Texla sales are going to plan. Meantime in Australia, they are down.
IMO, this may not be only due to the nazi being a nazi, nor to the rising anti-US sentiment amid the Taco Tariffs, but also due to some deficiencies in the Texla models.
@Scott: I’d say it goes back further than Rove, at very least to Lee Atwater. When I was in college, grassroots campaign schools run by Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute were all over the country disseminating this type of campaign process and messaging.
Make children dying of preventable diseases great again!
Florida moves to end all school vaccine mandates, first in nation to do so
This pure idiocy will cost untold lives in Florida and around the country.
@Scott:
Damn straight. But then there’s the problem of getting the supposedly liberal MSM to report the table pounding.
@Michael Reynolds:
Where is this alternate reality where such study isn’t what Democrats have been preoccupied with for most of the past year? Is it in the same 5th Dimension where Kamala Harris spent most of her campaign pushing for trans rights?
When people disagree with the substance of a particular criticism and offer an alternative critique, it doesn’t mean that they oppose “any criticism.” It just means they oppose that particular criticism. And that’s not the same thing.
@Jen:
Empirically true, and it is the job of political scientists to look for and point out these structural factors, no matter how much we ideologues — with our narcissistic belief in our own importance and power — don’t like hearing it.
It is perfectly valid endeavor for academicians. That’s not a “heresy” either.
@gVOR10: “But then there’s the problem of getting the supposedly liberal MSM to report the table pounding.”
Oh, they’d report it, just as they did when the Biden administration talked about the positive things they’d done — “Those Dems are so clueless talking about accomplishments when people are feeling like prices are going up. It’s just making them look even more out of touch. And hey, Trump says he’ll bring prices down in a day!”
@Michael Reynolds:
Can’t ignore the electoral college, but putting that aside for a moment, Harris lost the popular vote by 2.3 million voters.
How many of those voters based their choice on gender of the candidate?
Just based on my small circle of friends/associates at least 10% were adament that a woman should never be in the presidency.
I am at a loss as to how the Democrats (or any party for that matter) should address that.
@wr: Oh, you even had some OTB commentators claiming that Democrats were out-of-touch for touting good Biden-Harris economic data. Regurgitating the spoonfed mainstream media narrative, per usual.
Prices are even higher now, with electric bills surging and the job market sputtering. But suddenly, the inflation inflation inflation coverage is M.I.A. Instead we get Maher and Smerconish telling us how Trump’s tariffs haven’t been so bad. Lol
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s rank socialism there.
I think the impression that the Democrats are weak and lack conviction comes more from the Democrats being weak and lacking conviction than anything else.
The only Democrats who are showing signs of life are Mamdani, Newsom and Pritzker. A socialist, a George W Bush style Republican, and a Billionaire.
I get that it’s a matter of priority and focus rather than deliberately discarding people, but Democrats have been really bad about changing focus. Polling says people say they care about kitchen table issues, but results show that people are distracted by the shiny object of hating trans people and immigrants.
And worse, not offering a strong defense for trans people (Harris spent her time on anything but that) creates a situation where all major parties are ok with hurting trans people. We’ve seen where that leads in the UK aka TERF Island (um… hi Beth, if you’re out there).
Granted, we have masked goons pulling people off the street and disappearing them, as well as soldiers being called up and deployed to occupy our own cities, so we aren’t doing great either.
Things are close enough that we might eke out a victory playing safe, and trying hard to avoid upsetting the center, but we will end up with Dems too timid to “feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, lift up the downtrodden and defend liberty.”
——
Conversely, there’s this report by Blue Rose Research showing that the only issues people care about that they trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on are health issues. Dems are not trusted on the economy (I’m guessing that means jobs), cost of living, government debt, foreign policy…
I think the graph on page 14 could give you days of ranting material.
I might counter that by saying the Democrats are not good at changing topics to things they want to talk about, and we need to blunt the Republicans sharpest tools — the culture war and equality issues that Americans say they don’t care about, but very clearly do.
@Bobert:
Obviously, we need to have a woman president first, so we can get people used to the idea before they will vote for one.
I think we tried in 2020 by nominating an ancient man half expecting that the VP would take over. With the current attitude towards gerontocracy, I don’t think that’s a great model going forward.
Obviously, we should elect a man who will then transition, and use the power of incumbency to boost her chances of reelection.
@DK:
Right here in comments.
China celebrates the victory over the Japanese Imperial Empire, and the POTUS isn’t invited. This is clearly a big embarrassment for Trump. Trump has told us about his great friendship with these guys, and he has emphasized again and again that this friendship is based on his personal charm and not on having congruent national interests lubricated with courtesy toward the other side. Don, when Putin calls you tsuka(transliterated from the Cyrillic) it doesn’t mean sweetheart.
@Gustopher:
We lost the plot by trying to tell people to quit bitching everything was fine with immigration and inflation, and by our obvious inability to deal with homelessness in blue cities. And we made it worse by being tedious, humorless scolds as sensitive to perceived insult as a Renaissance princeling. (Do you bite your pronoun at me, Sir?) We became the establishment at a time when that was not a good place to be, at a time when Covid and its sequelae had rattled people far more than I expected*. And we seemed to go out of our way to ignore the 60% of voters who are white.
*Not necessarily a diss – at the time I was basically a hermit without a job to go to or a school to attend. The pandemic hardly affected me. I bought a Jacuzzi and had my whiskey left at my front door.
@Daryl:
@Slugger:
I hear a military parade was scheduled as part of the festivities. If so, Xi might just have wanted to spare El Taco the embarrassment of seeing a far better parade than anything America can put up.
Or maybe Xi just prefers the theory that Japan surrendered when Soviet troops began to move towards Manchuria, and not due to the two atomic bombs the US Army dropped on them.
@Michael Reynolds:
A writer who struggles to read? That’s a new one.
Must be why every Democratic presidential ticket ever makes sure there’s a white guy on it. Of course, for some of this cohort, not being 100% of the focus 100% of the time is a catastrophe of inattention.
Would that it were more white Americans spent more time being grateful for the inordinate amount of attention they receive from every American institution ever — including the Democratic Party — and less time whining and playing the victim, this pathetically embarrassing new pastime taken up in the 21st century by the most privileged and powerful demographics in the country.
Were that so, white Americans would not have destroyed their global reputation, with the self-inflicted stupidity of giving a majority of their votes to an incompetent pedophile who’s taking their jobs, businesses, and healthcare. The Greatest Generation, this ain’t.
@Bobert:
Many, perhaps a determinative amount? No way to know. Harris’s loss was broad geographically but shallow numerically, so narrow that everything and nothing could be proximate cause.
But there’s enough evidence for this misogyny that folks here and elsewhere bitterly criticized Democrats for failing to rally round its incumbent — the old white guy Dems nominated to give attention to white voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. As it quickly became clear his black woman VP was the moment’s only viable alternative.
This was an implicit critique of Democrats’ blinkered attitude towards post-Obama America’s racist backlash and sexism. (Seen recently again in calls for Dems to nominate AOC or Buttigieg in 2028, I mean really.)
These fears of a Harris candidacy — offered by a rare convergence of progressive politicians, Fetterman types, and black voters opposed to Biden’s ouster — were roundly mocked. Instead, the “Fk Joe Biden” crowd got their switch.
Only for some now to pretend such criticisms of Democrats’ choices never existed at all. Maybe they just don’t notice criticisms they disagree with?
Then we lean into this, HARD.
You find the issue(s) that people generally think you have a solid grasp of, and hammer it.
Health care touches almost EVERYTHING.
Your job? Crappy economy, you lose your job, no healthcare.
You have health care? Good. Lucky you. How much of your income is getting eaten up by deductibles, stuff that isn’t covered for vague reasons, etc.? How’s that squaring with increased prices?
How are your adult kids faring? Any grandkids yet? If not, is it because caring for a child is insanely expensive–including all of the health care they require, including vaccines?
If the general voter believes the Democrats have the upper hand in health care, they should use that as the framing. It’s how you get people to listen. Everything from the economy, to education, to finances, to even tax policy can be framed through a health care lens.
Get them to listen to that first, then move on to transportation, energy costs, etc.
@Bobert:
@Gustopher:
In the Coe and Duncan History Show Podcast*, Alexis Coe suggested Biden should have resigned the presidency when he dropped out of the campaign, precisely in order to get people to see Harris as the actual president.
I don’t know. Perhaps misogyny is part of the infamous American Exceptionalism. There have been plenty of women who have taken on the governance of a country, overall they’ve done as well as any man.
Provincialism is a large part of the American character. Maybe most of the US population simply hasn’t heard of any of them.
*The podcast has been dark since March, and no info has been given as to its future prospects. Maybe the name was too long.
Unsurprisingly, the 2026 Snoozefest tickets will be even more expensive than usual.
FIFA claims this is all in an effort to adapt to the customs of the host country. Never mind there are nominally three host countries for some reason, the implication I see is that the US is made up of sheep who want to be fleeced.
I’d say this is an unbearable insult, were it not that 45 years of trickle down “economics” lend credence to it.
@Jen: Dems did this successfully with healthcare and abortion in 2018 and 2022 respectively, but because Trump’s Obamacare repeal and then Dobbs were the causes célèbre of those cycles.
Harris couldn’t replicate that when the cause was inflation inflation inflation. That’s the poli sci point, that post-COVID economic shocks reduced incumbent party share globally, left and right, this being more salient than messaging on pronouns. Not a very sexy point. But it’s evidence-based and as valid as anyone else’s, agree or disagree (I think disagree? I think a white male 2024 Dem nominee would be president now.)
As more Americans lose healthcare thanks to Trump’s people, of course Dems will lean into that. It’s favorable terrain. The problem is once the next Dem president expands healthcare access, Americans will quickly take it for granted and vote for Republicans to make them sick again.
This voter schizophrenia affects both parties. Now that Trump has closed the border to enact the aggressive mass deportation he promised, all of sudden:
Trump is under water on some of his top issues — including immigration (Politico)
Why tho? This is what y’all voted for.
And also:
Leaning into strengths won’t matter tomorrow because culturally, Americans are contrarion, oppositional, and perpetually biased against the status quo. Score another point for those believing vibes and largely-uncontrollable structural factors matter most. YOLO
@Kathy: I used to agree with that, but being President is a full time job, at least for the first few months. I don’t think Harris could have campaigned nearly as much if there was a transfer of power. And a few months wouldn’t have been long enough to convince anyone it wasn’t a weird temporary emergency thing.
Resigning after the midterms might have been enough time.
I think the first woman elected President is going to be a Republican. It leaves the conservative misogynists (at least 2/3rds of the misogynists) nowhere to go. It may also require the Democratic candidate to completely fall apart.
(Remember when John Edwards was running for the nomination, lost, and then a few months later his secret other family was discovered? Good times. Anyway, maybe something like that, had he gotten the nomination)
@Jen: The Republicans have done well attacking Democrats’ strengths, and I think that’s something we would have to replicate. Possibly easier for us, when facts are on our side, but not a sure thing.
Healthcare is also… wonky. It’s easy to get lost in the details, so I think it has to be tied very explicitly to core values — freedom, family, frottage, etc. Very doable.
(I remember the run up to the 2020 campaign when people were arguing over the details of the various Democrat’s health plans that they would never be able to implement unchanged… and that’s primary voters, the more informed and more engaged voters)
@Kathy:
It had such promise as a welcoming tournament for international fans after the last two World Cups (Qatar in 2022, Russia in 2018). But now I wouldn’t count on high demand, and therefore higher ticket prices, for many of the games in the U.S., the home team matches and quarterfinal and beyond matches (which will be played in the U.S.) excepted. But the matches in Mexico and Canada should be spirited and well-attended.
@Michael Reynolds:
@DK:
I remember the Clinton campaign in 2016. It was shocking how few white men were in her campaign ads. Everything was either racially diverse or about women. (“I’m with her” was a big slogan)
It was weird. I don’t think I had seen a campaign that was so not about me. (And it might be that it was only 70% about white men instead of 95% — it was jarring!)
You might say that white men need to get over themselves, and that they shouldn’t need to be coddled like the little whiny babies they are — and that’s certainly true. But, these whiny white male babies also vote.
I think it’s silly of MR to complain about identity politics (did he do that today, or just every other day?) while simultaneously pointing out that the Clinton and then the Harris campaigns didn’t activate that white male identity strongly enough (although in different words).
I thought Harris did fine on that, or better than Clinton. Walz was awesome in a way that generic boring white guy what’s-his-name wasn’t, and the ads didn’t feel jarring, but that might have been personal growth on my part.
I think future campaigns have to remember to coddle white men and the New York Times, and especially the white men at the New York Times. Or fundamentally change America. The coddling seems way more achievable though.
@Gustopher:
Did she? If she did, didn’t matter much. Clinton remains the only woman to win the popular vote. A feat that now looks miraculous, wit Harris not surviving 30+ years of attacks and avoiding a 2+ year campaign slog.
If the 2016 election had occurred 3.5 months after Hillary entered it, Trump would be a historical footnote.
To what end? Who do statements like this really threaten? Hillary is chillin in a mansion in Westchester between projects. Harris is plotting her future from a mansion in Brentwood and a sweet pad in SoMa.
Aside from the occasional anti-Trump outburst and a general air of concern from those suffering loss of Biden admin competence, care, and protections, the liberals in Cape Cod and Fire Island seemed to be mostly fine this summer. Just a really idyllic lifestyle these people live — and I noticed Provincetown, while affluent, still has a visible working class. Same with most I was around in Europe, where polls showed folks preferred Harris at 70-90% rate. All societies have serious issues, but I didn’t see the aggrieved anger and doom of 2025 America.
So I wonder who Americans think their political choices are actually harming. Many left and right live by the mantra, “I know– I’ll punish Dems by…shooting myself in the face! That’ll teach em!”
This is an exceedingly strange strategy. Good luck with that, I guess?
@Gustopher:
Quoted for the comedy. Hahaha
@Gustopher:
I don’t know if I buy it, either.
Very likely. Like the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court (RIP).
Unless the project 1939 people get their way and repeal the 19th amendment, or otherwise manage to strip women of (more) of their rights.
@Eusebio:
It depends which teams qualify for the elimination rounds. And whether El Taco sends ICE to detain Snoozefest fans at games…
I wonder if I should try to get tickets for Mexico’s first match, then resell them at a profit when the price gouging kicks in. Better I get a cut than FIFA, after all. But it says there’s a max of 4 tickets per match. I don’t think they’ll appreciate that much.
Besides, after last month’s triple whammy (insurance, electric bill, and minor car repairs), I’ll be short on funds the rest of September…
@Kathy:
It appears that Mexico’s final (3rd) group stage match will also be in Mexico City. If they haven’t wrapped up one of the top two spots in the group by then, it will be huge match with the expectation that it will propel them to the elimination stages.
In other World Cup news, Iran has qualified again. The US and Iran ended up in the same group and therefore played one another in 1998 and in 2022, with Iran winning the earlier match and the US winning what was effectively an elimination match in 2022. It’ll be interesting to see where Iran ends up in the 2026 group draw, and if there’s a realistic chance of a US-Iran rematch on US soil (seems unlikely).
I don’t usually read the daily threads, but had some extra time today and this one is interesting.
On the reasons for D losses, I think it’s important to remember that politics is the art of the possible – meaning things a candidate, politician, or campaign can directly control or influence.
The extent to which there are racists and misogynists in our society who purposely or subconsciously will not vote for anyone but a white man (and such people do exist), we have no idea how big a group this is or how many vote. But more importantly, there isn’t anything that can be done about it in a political campaign. It is outside the art of the possible in politics, except on a very long timescale. So, blaming some group of prejudiced people of unknown size for these losses while ignoring other factors that are both decisive in outcomes and part of the art of the possible is ultimately a dead end. This dead end is compounded if one takes it further and declares that only a white man can win, and therefore, politics somehow has to change the hearts of white people.
This line of thinking is countered by the fact that Obama won decisively twice despite the supposed decisive disadvantage of being Black. Maybe political skill, charisma, and the right set of policies and vibes that match the national zeitgeist – all factors that politics can influence- are actually important. Obama had all of those. Obama was both a better political talent and ran under more favorable conditions than Clinton or Harris. That’s not a trivial difference.
Clinton barely lost in a contest in which both candidates were super unpopular, which is why the third-party vote was historically large. I know some here would deny that Clinton made any mistakes, but leaving those aside, she started out as an unpopular candidate and was running as an establishment candidate in a change election. Bernie’s insurgency probably bled support to Stein (another woman, BTW), who got ~1.5 million votes – a decisive number. Harris was dragged down by being forced to ride the coattails of the most unpopular Democratic President in at least the last half-century, and was expected to pick up the mantle and win at the last minute. She was disadvantaged from the start by White Man Biden’s unpopularity, but still did fairly well, considering that her truncated campaign was not without mistakes.
So no, I don’t think it’s at all true that America is so racist or sexist that only white men can win. But if people here actually believe that is true, and that nominating a woman is a guaranteed loss, then they really should advocate for only nominating white men if they want Democrats to win. And then play the long game to try to bend society in a better direction. But I don’t think that’s where America is.
@Gustopher‘s link to Blue Rose should really be a big focus. It clearly shows that the Democratic theory of victory for the 2024 campaign was an error. It takes a cascade of failures to lose to someone as unpopular as Trump, and Democrats being underwater on every issue but health care is a pretty big cascade, combined with Biden’s age and the last-minute candidate switch.
@DK:
The irony is that Harris got a larger percentage of the popular vote than Clinton – 48.3 vs 48.2. Of course, Harris also received approximately 10 million more votes than Clinton, largely due to the larger voting electorate.
@Andy: Obama’s candidacy doesn’t prove or disprove anything about American racism in 2024-2025. Because Obama didn’t have to run after the racist backlash and radicalization of many white voters prompted by the Obama presidency. (Not to mention that if only white Americans could vote, Obama would never have been president.)
If a person living in Berlin c.1939 pointed out that Jews could not do business in Germany, examples of successful German Jewish industrialists in operation c.1923 would not be a counter.
There is a saying in black households: “We know white folk better than they know themselves.” Which is a condescending joke that means it’s easy to be sanguine by American racism when you’re not being bombarded with racist microagressions daily.
That’s why black voters pushed Biden to the nomination in 2020, polled against dumping him in 2024 and (I predict) while argue for a generic white guy in 2028.
This is not 2008. We are in a different America at the moment. I’m on my way to an EU passport, so I’m not sure I’ll care so much what messes the US electorate is making in 2028. If I did, I’d be urging Democrats to nominate to win, not nominate to virtue signal. There is a time for the Art of the Possible, and there’s a time for the Math of Reality. 2028 primary voters will sort that out. And then they’d be smart to enthusiastically back the nominee regardless, even if said enthusiasm must be faked till Election Day — instead of our usual M.O. of loudly projecting our disappointment, thereby undermining demand for our own product and helping a wildly inferior competitor. Sales 101.