#^d 2019-12-08 #^h Weekend Roundup
No time for an introduction today. On the other hand, much reason to kick this out earlier than usual. Anyway, you know the drill.
Some scattered links this week:
Zeeshan Aleem: Bloomberg's first TV interview showed him to be exactly who progressives feared he was. Yeah, but when you dig further, you'll find out he's even worse than that, and offensive not just to progressives. Someone asked me tonight whether there are any Democrats I wouldn't vote for against Trump. Bloomberg might be the one. Related:
Eric Levitz: Michael Bloomberg thinks you proles are stupid and ungrateful: "If you've ever grazed into the sweet, stupid eyes of a milk cow, then you've got a pretty good idea of what Michael BLoomberg sees when he looks at you." Also: "How could Trump possibly paint this Democrat as a lying, out-of-touch elite?"
Jack Shafer: Mike Bloomberg just made Trump look reasonable: "Their spat makes the case against moguls running our civic life."
Bloomberg's cavalier relationship with Bloomberg News, his willingness to kick the can down the road and make up new justifications as he goes along, reminds us why tycoons and moguls make terrible national leaders. They're rich, they think the world revolves around them and they don't routinely encounter anyone who disagrees.
Peter Wade: Of course Bloomberg thinks just about anyone could run for President.
Julia Belluz/Nina Martin: The extraordinary danger of being pregnant and uninsured in Texas: "The state's system for helping the uninsured thwarts women at every turn and encourages subpar care."
Ben Burgis: Sorry Mayor Pete, means-testing is not progressive. Progressive is taking things that are currently rationed via the market (and therefore preferentially to the wealthiest) and turning them into public rights, shared equally by all. If you still feel that the rich aren't paying their fair share, taxing them more is a much preferable to restricting their benefits. I'll add that I suspect one reason Buttigieg is hounded for his McKinsey past is that means-testing is the sort of pet idea so favored by corporate consultants.
Gabriel Debenedetti: Kamala Harris's long road to an early exit. Also on Harris:
Perry Bacon Jr: Why Kamala Harris's campaign failed.
Eric Levitz: Kamala Harris dropped out because the party doesn't decide.
Ben Ehrenreich: Welcome to the global rebellion against neoliberalism.
Brendan Fischer: How America's system of legalized corruption brought us to the brink of impeachment.
Joshua Holland: What if Democrats have already won back enough white working-class voters to win in 2020? I see so much crap like this in The Nation, I responded to this by tweeting:
I generally resist the notion that the left is full of morons, but "The Nation" keeps promoting them. We don't have enough votes anywhere. We should seek more and win bigger, e.g. on equality/environment issues we can all rally around:
Sean Illing: A former Republican Congress member explains what happened to his party: "And why it belongs to Trump now." Interview with David Jolly.
The reason Trump won was because he brought in populism, not conservatism. I don't see who follows that. Who's the populist in the Republican Party that comes next? I don't see one. I think it's a return to conservatism and largely white male flyover state conservatism, which statistically just isn't going to put Republicans in office a decade from now.
Alex Isenstadt: Loeffler will cut huge check for Georgia special election: She'll start off with a $20 million headstart.
Sarah Jones:
Ed Kilgore: Nikki Haley says Dylann Roof 'hijacked' confederate battle flag. She almost seemed thoughtful and principled when she decided, after Roof's racist mass murder, to take down the Confederate flag Roof had embraced, but now she wants you to know that was only a momentary lapse. Also, it was the media who misconstrued Roof's actions as racist:
Naomi Klein: Forged in fire: California's lessons for a Green New Deal.
Eric Levitz:
German Lopez/Katelyn Burns: Pensacola, Florida, Naval Air Station shooting: what we know.
Ian Millhiser:
The Supreme Court just handed the Trump administration a rare rebuke: "Attorney General Bill Barr suffers a loss in a death penalty case."
The Supreme Court considers a $12 billion plan to sabotage Obamacare.
Ella Nilsen: The House has passed a bill to restore key parts of the Voting Rights Act.
Andrew Prokop: Why Democrats are moving so fast on impeachment.
Aaron Rupar:
Rudy Giuliani just blew up Trump's "no quid pro quo" talking point: "Posting from somewhere in Ukraine, Trump's lawyer tweets the quid pro quo."
The Trump campaign's boast about impeachment polling is actually an own goal: "45 percent of voters in a red Oklahoma district supporting impeachment isn't as awesome for Trump as his campaign thinks."
John Quiggin: Virtue signalling and vice signalling.
So, the intellectual apologists of the right can only resort to tu quoque, making the claim, in various forms, that the left is just as bad as their own side. This started with the Republican War on Science, but is now virtually universal.
The point of "virtue signalling" is to make this claim, without having to say what is wrong with the virtue being signalled.
Stephanie Saul: Elizabeth Warren's days of defending big corporations. Saul had previously written The education of Elizabeth Warren.
David K Shipler: The pitfalls of political trash talk: "If Biden tries to beat Trump at his own game, he will lose. . . . Besides, Biden's not very good at it."
Manisha Sinha: Donald Trump, meet your precursor: "Andrew Johnson pioneered the recalcitrant racism and impeachment-worthy subterfuge the president is fond of." Related:
Jamelle Bouie: Andrew Johnson's violent language -- and Trump's.
Ramesh Srinivasan: Democratize the Internet: An interview with the author of Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow.
Emily Stewart: The attacks on Ilhan Omar reveal a disturbing truth about racism in America.
Emily Stewart/Ella Nilsen: Pete Buttigieg's McKinsey problem, explained. I know just enough about the management consulting company to give his employment with them all sorts of unsavory resonances. There's a Robert Townsend quote somewhere which sums up McKinsey perfectly: something to the effect that a sure way to panic your underlings into doing something is to threaten to hire McKinsey consultants if they don't perform. There is an incredible amount of formulaic bullshit in consulting, and few firms have raised that to the level of art as they have. Moreover, it's easy to imagine the appeal and utility of form of bullshit for a politician, especially one like Buttigieg. Related:
Trent Spiner: Buttigieg confronted by voters over work for McKinsey.
Michael Forsythe: When Pete Buttigieg was one of McKinsey's 'whiz kids'.
Ian MacDougall: How McKinsey helped the Trump administration carry out its immigration policies: "Newly uncovered documents show the consulting giant helped ICE find 'detention savings opportunities' -- including measures the agency's staff sometimes viewed as too harsh on immigrants."
Laurence H Tribe: Why care about the Trump impeachment? Your right to vote in free elections is at stake. "The Trump impeachment is about protecting our freedom and right to vote from lawless foreign election manipulation invited by a dangerous president." Yeah, but even if successful it won't have that effect, other than perhaps to advance a principle that Congress should do something (or many things) to ensure the integrity of elections. And that means reining in all forms of manipulation, starting with the billions of dollars that are spent by all manner of interested parties to game the system -- foreign agents are a tiny fraction of that pool. The point about Trump being "a dangerous president" is more pointed, but again the problem is caused mostly by the extraordinary powers we've allowed presidents to collect. Removing Trump would help, but every president since FDR has been dangerous, and the trendline has been increasing -- electing someone as unstable and deranged as Trump has only made the danger more obvious. Unfortunately, none of these problems will be addressed seriously and soberly as long as one party sees advantage in continuing the current system (and biasing it even further toward the rich and powerful). Some more general links on impeachment:
Lawrence Lessig: This impeachment is different -- and more dangerous.
Charles Sykes: Democrats are speeding to defeat on impeachment.
Peter Wade:
There's one less con man in Congress, as Rep. Duncan Hunter resigns: After pleading guilty to campaign finance violations.
Biden angrily issues push-up challenge to voter who criticized him.
Alex Ward: Julián Castro explains his vision for a "progressive" foreign policy as president. Better, but he still earns the caveat quotes.
Matthew Yglesias:
Joe Biden still needs a better answer on Hunter and Ukraine. Related:
Joe Biden's plan to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, explained
But strikingly, even though Biden's proposals on this front are much more moderate, they are almost identical in their orientation -- raising money from a similar group of people for mostly similar reasons. Despite the disagreement about how far to go, all Democrats these days are basically reading from the same playbook, one that says Reagan-era conventional wisdom about the relationship between taxes and growth is wrong.
"No malarkey," Joe Biden's unabashedly lame new slogan, explained: "Boldly unafraid to be uncool."
What Trump has actually done in his first 3 years: "A big tax cut, unprecedented environmental degradation, Wall Street unleashed, and a whole lot of judges." Actually, a good deal more than that, and hard to find anything good in the mix.
Julie Rodin Zebrak: What the heck happened to Jonathan Turley? The sole law professor who opposed impeaching Trump on the first day of House testimony.