#^d 2020-02-09 #^h Weekend Roundup
Skipped a week because I was working on music stuff, so this week's links go back further than usual, but much of the previous week was absorbed in speculation about Iowa and Trump's impeachment trial, which became obsolete the moment the votes were counted (or are finally counted; see Riley Beggin: Final Iowa caucuses results expected just before New Hampshire begins voting). Trump was, of course, not convicted, the vote 48-52, with Mitt Romney the only Senator to break party ranks. This, and his own holier-than-thou explanation, occasioned pieces heaping undeserved praise or wrath on Romney, none of which mentioned the most obvious point: Trump's following among Republicans is significantly weaker in Utah than in any other state, probably because Utah is uniquely insulated from the fears he preys upon.
The Iowa caucuses were a huge embarrassment for the Democratic Party's professional elites, who came up with novel ways to avoid reporting unpleasant news (that Sanders won the popular vote), and reminded us that Republicans aren't the only party willing to use tricks (in this case "State Delegate Equivalents") to steal an election (allowing Buttigieg to claim a Trumpian victory, although even there, with still incomplete results, the margin is a razor thin 564-562; Sanders led the first-found popular vote 24.75% to 21.29%, followed by Warren 18.44%, Biden 14.95%, Klobuchar 12.73%, Yang 5.00%, Steyer 1.75%, Gabbard 0.19%, Bloomberg 0.12%, Bennet 0.09%, Patrick 0.03%, Delaney 0.01% [10 votes]). Lots of articles this week dredging up old standy complaints about Iowa's premier spot in presidential campaigns, including generic complaints about caucuses, and even more about Iowa.
New Hampshire will vote on Tuesday. Recent polling: Anya van Wagtendonk: Sanders leads in New Hampshire, but half of voters remain uncommitted -- subhed amends that to 30%. Buttigieg seems to be in 2nd place now (21%, behind 28% for Sanders), followed by Biden (11%), Warren (9%), Gabbard (6%), Klobuchar (5%), Yang and Steyer (3%), with Bloomberg (not on ballot) at 2%. The Democrats had another debate last week, resulting in the usual winners-and-losers pieces, none of which caught my eye below. (If you really want one, try Vox, which had Klobuchar a winner and Biden a loser.)
Meanwhile, Trump gave his State of the Union address, on the even of his "acquittal." It read (link below) more like his campaign stump speech, at least the one he'd give if he didn't wander off script, and Republicans in the audience tried to turn the event into a campaign rally, even at one point chanting "four more years" (but at least I haven't seen any reports of "lock her up"), and the fact that half of the audience were Democrats kept the chemistry down (and added a few boos and a couple of walkouts). Of course, the content got lost in the dramatics, especially Trump's refusal to shake Nancy Pelosi's hand on entering, and her ripping up his speech afterwards. It all led pundits and partisans to offer sermons on civility, but Trump had been absolutely vicious toward Pelosi ever since she got behind impeachment. But what the exchange reminded me most of was a story about Casey Stengel, where he artfully dodged an interview after a loss by making obscene gestures the media couldn't broadcast. By ripping up Trump's speech, Pelosi signaled there was nothing but lies and contempt there, more succinctly than any of the official party responders could possibly do.
Some Republican flaks claim that last week was one of Trump's best ever, and they can point to a trivial uptick in Trump's approval rating (43.8% at 538). It's clear now that the Senate's non-trial didn't move anyone, but while it was tedious and overwrought as it happened, it will be remembered differently. Democrats will remember it as a valiant attempt to do something about a president has repeatedly abused his office and violated his oath to support the Constitution and the laws of the land, which was thwarted not by facts or reason but by cynical partisan solidarity, making clear that the Republican members of Congress are fully complicit in Trump's crimes. That's something they can campaign on this fall.
Trump celebrated his "acquittal" with a series of extremely boorish public appearances (some noted below). I've gotten to where it's hard for Trump to shock me, but his is the most disgusting performance I've ever seen by a public figure. I've long maintained that Trump himself isn't nearly as dangerous or despicable as the orthodox Republicans he surrounds himself with, but I may have to revise my view. I've long believed that the swing vote in the 2020 election will turn on those Americans who don't particularly object to Trump's policies but decide that his personal behavior is too embarrassing to tolerate further. This week has provided plenty for them to think about.
The only issue below I tried to group links under was the Kushner "deal of the century," partly because they separate out easily enough. Trump issues, Democrat issues, they're all over the place.
Some scattered links this week:
Zeeshan Aleem: Trump's State of the Union suggests he's worried about Bernie Sanders.
Robert P Baird: The prosecution of President Donald Trump.
Natylie Baldwin: Obama Russia adviser on cold war liberals: Interview with James Carden, who previously (2019-12-30) wrote Meet the cold war liberals, where he suggests FDR's Good Neighbor Policy as a way out of America's cold war rut.
Zack Beauchamp:
Trump's impeachment acquittal shows how democracy could really die: "The Senate's sham trial revealed a philosophical flaw in American liberal democracy." The problem with this argument is that "could" implies a possible future event, whereas what the trial shows is that for one major political party democracy is already dead -- at least it's not something they have to pretend to respect.
The Democratic primary has a legitimacy problem: "The Iowa results debacle has undermined faith in the entire primary process."
Lamar Alexander and the power of right-wing political correctness.
Peter Beinart: Impeachment hurt somebody. It wasn't Trump. "In the end, the president succeeded in doing precisely what he wanted in the first place: tarring a leading Democratic rival."
Julia Belluz: 9 questions about the coronavirus outbreak, answered.
Katelyn Burns: Democratic candidates aren't happy about new debate rules that seem to benefit Bloomberg. No "seem" about it. Donors aren't necessarily a good metric, but dropping it opens the door to billionaire egotists like Bloomberg to scam polls through massive ad buys, and reaffirms the DNC's commitment to oligarchy. The DNC may have had an impossible and thankless job in managing the debates, but once again they've come out looking hapless and more than a little corrupt.
Jonathan Chait:
If you think it looks bad for mainstream Democrats now, just wait. I realize they're not happy with any of their candidates, but could that possibly have something to do with: Their positions? Their track record of promising progressive reform and delivering nothing? Bad as it seems, I can't imagine any scenario looking worse for them this year than having their perfect candidate, Hillary Clinton, lose to Trump in 2016.
Impeachment exposed President Trump's authoritarian ambitions.
Trump baffled why African-Americans don't want to vote for him: "Maybe giving Rush Limbaugh another medal will fix it."
Trump speech cites sole triumph: Rebranding Obama's economy as his own.
Trump attacks John Bolton as desperate loser who nearly destroyed the planet. A rare occasion of Trump speaking truth, although Bolton was so stuck in his obsessions for so long you have to wonder about Trump's command of the vetting process.
Running Bernie Sanders against Trump would be an act of insanity. Wait! Isn't the stock definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result? Running the only person in America who ever lost a general election to Trump a second time would be insane. Wouldn't it be saner to nominate a very different candidate? Sanders may not be perfectly tailored, but he has some real strengths that are hard to find in other candidates, notably principles and integrity. In a Trump vs. Sanders election, Trump has already made it clear that he's going to practice nonstop red-baiting: an old song that for most non-Republicans has worn thin enough to be easily dismissed. Against anyone else, Trump is going to harp on the supposed corruption and perfidy of the Democrats -- points that still disturb most Americans, and are likely to hurt even where grossly unfair.
Joan Coaston: The Iowa Republican caucuses you didn't know where happening, explained. I have a pretty low opinion of Republicans these days, but I'm still a bit surprised that no serious candidate emerged to register an anti-Trump protest vote in the Republican primaries. There are still a few "never Trump" pundits flopping around, and there are some obvious names who seem to be biding their time, figuring a Trump debacle in 2020 will give them a springboard for redeeming the party in 2024 (Kasich, Ryan, Romney, with Rubio trying to have it both ways). But viability in the Republican Party almost exclusively depends on the blessing of billionaire donors -- Newt Gingrich explained his loss to Romney: "he had five billionaires, and I only had one" -- and clearly none of them came up with a favorable cost/benefit analysis. That left Bill Weld and Joe Walsh as the only candidates to solicit votes in Iowa, and all they could do was 1.54% and 1.31% respectively. Hard to know whether the media consciously ignored them to leave Trump a clear path, or just didn't notice in the first place. Even this article omitted Trump's actual vote, although you can figure out it was close to 97%. [PS: Walsh has since dropped out. See Benjamin Hart: Joe Walsh will not be the next President of the United States.
Sean Collins: Trump's Super Bowl interview was 8 minutes of pettiness and empty braggadocio.
McKay Coppins: The billion-dollar disinformation campaign to reelect the president. Including quite a bit about Trump's internet czar, Brad Parscale -- now campaign manager, which tells you something about how and where the campaign will be fought.
Neta C Crawford: The Iraq War has cost the US nearly $2 trillion . . . and counting, on track to exceeding the estimate in the 2008 book by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.
Chas Danner:
Trump awards Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh at State of the Union: I know a lot of assholes and worse have been given this award, but it usually happens in a White House ceremony, and I find it unbearably crass for Trump to presume he can do it in Congress, let alone during the SOTU address. Possibly the most disgusting thing he's done in one of his worst weeks to date. Coincidentally, I was just listening to the music from the event in 1969 when Nixon gave this same award to Duke Ellington. I doubt I'll ever despise a politician more completely than Nixon, but I've always had to give him credit for honoring Ellington.
Trump avoids handshake with Pelosi at State of the Union, and Nancy Pelosi rips up Trump's State of the Union speech: More pettiness on a bad night for both.
Watch Trump act bored and ignored during the singing of the national anthem.
David Dayen:
Welcome to the bullshit economy: Hey, sucker, wanna buy a disruptive app?
Building the people's banks: "Establishing financial institutions and regulations that work for middle- and low-income Americans is possible."
Ryan Devereaux: Trump is blowing up a National Monument in Arizona to make way for the border wall: Organ Pipe Cactus NM.
Eliza Relman/Lauren Frias: Trump supporters intentionally swarmed the Iowa caucus phone lines to delay the results: News reports that the Iowa caucus wasn't hacked were wrong. What this story shows is that Nixon's tricksters are back in force (even with Roger Stone locked up).
Matt Ford: The empire strikes back: "With impeachment behind him, Trump is already steering his cruel reign in a darker direction." Starts by quoting Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal, saying "I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed on Congress and on the American people." Trump, by contrast, makes Clinton look like the epitome of class and grace:
It's hard to imagine how President Donald Trump could have done things more differently in his own address on Thursday. Speaking to a motley crowd of White House aides, Cabinet officials, and congressional allies, the president bounced between gratitude for his most ardent supporters and anger toward his perceived enemies. "It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops," he seethed, referring to years of investigations into his misconduct. Now that Trump will no longer face consequences for his actions, the president and his allies are eager to inflict them upon everyone else.
Adam Gopnik: Thirteen (well, ten) ways of looking at impeachment and acquittal: Actually, they all strike me as bullshit:
The most plausible is 3 -- not so much that Trump won as that his win was trivial. Trump's big win was that he didn't get charged with corruption, which is his calling card, or with lying, which he does nearly every time he opens his mouth. This didn't happen because it would have involved more work, and it's not something Democrats are squeaky clean on. Plus, many Democrats still think Russia is the silver bullet, and those Democrats were the ones that unified the party on impeachment. Unfortunately, they also unified Republicans in defense, ensuring defeat. Which brings me back to what I think of as a fundamental principle: never prosecute someone you have no chance of convicting. Granted, it's tempting with someone you really want to make squirm, and it did have the effect of making Trump (and ultimately the Republican Senate) look bad. Still, it's not something you want to make a habit of.
Courtney Hagle/John Kerr: After his acquittal, Fox goes all in on the sycophantic praise of Donald Trump. Related: Rob Savillo: Fox & Friends reported on Pelosi ripping up her copy of the State of the Union 55 times more than actual lies from Trump's speech.
Rebecca Heilweil:
Sean Illing:
"Flood the zone with shit": How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy.
For most of recent history, the goal of propaganda was to reinforce a consistent narrative. But zone-flooding takes a different approach: It seeks to disorient audiences with an avalanche of competing stories.
And it produces a certain nihilism in which people are so skeptical about the possibility of finding the truth that they give up the search. The fact that 60 percent of Americans say they encounter conflicting reports about the same event is an example of what I mean. In the face of such confusion, it's not surprising that less than half the country trusts what they read in the press.
"We're losing our damn minds": James Carville unloads on the Democratic Party: Interview with the crusty Clinton strategist, mostly a rant against the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party," but I'm reading his complaints about the farthest reaches in their platform as a gripe about how "moderate" Democrats haven't been able to articulate practical intermediate steps and show how they'd really be positive steps. I doubt that's really fair, but the media would rather see Democrats fight than find fertile common ground, so what gets broadcast are the "Republican talking points" the centrists seem to embrace. So I don't disagree with his pull quote: "The fate of the world depends on the Democratic Party getting its shit together and winning in November."
Umair Irfan: Tree planting is Trump's politically safe new climate plan.
Jake Johnson: 'No better distillation of Washington': Democrats and GOP join Trump in standing ovation for failed Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó.
Sarah Jones:
Man who owns news outlet guilty of plagiarism: Michael Bloomberg. By the way, this isn't something that bothers me about Bloomberg, but since everything else does, I decided to mention it. More disturbing: Alex Henderson: Michael Bloomberg is "paying influencers" to make his 2020 campaign "seem cool".
South Carolina Democrats sure sound open to Medicare for All: "A new poll shows high levels of support for government-run health care."
Ed Kilgore: How much did Iowa slow Joe's roll? By the way, I counted 33 Kilgore posts since last Roundup, and this is the only one I thought worth mentioning. A lot of them have very short shelf lives; e.g., before this one, there was: In Iowa, a collision of campaigns before the caucuses; Two campaigns on the brink in Iowa (Warren and Buttigieg); How do the Iowa caucuses work?; In Iowa on caucus night: the view from the ground; The mourning after in Iowa.
Catherine Kim:
Trump's criminal justice record is more complicated than he claims.
John Delaney's been running for president since 2017 -- and it's finally come to an end. When the first batch of Iowa voting numbers came in, I was amused to find that Delaney's first-round vote totals were exactly 0. Latest figures I've seen had him up to 10, but you still need a lot of digits to turn that into a percentage. So, yeah, he's toast, and should hang it up. The article spends a lot of time on his "simple" health care plan, and it's not bad -- or wouldn't be if he had only framed it as a first step toward the sort of comprehensive universal coverage plan Sanders has proposed. But he didn't campaign like that. Rather, he spent all his time attacking the left, winding up with no solutions and no hope. Makes you wonder why he bothered to run in the first place.
Jen Kirby:
Bonnie Kristian: Why Trump can't believe his opponents' prayers. So this is what happened when Trump took his victory tour to the National Prayer Breakfast in DC. I'm sympathetic to people who regard Trump as a piss-poor specimen of a Christian, but empirically speaking, I've noticed that Christians (at least the hard-scrabble Protestants I grew up with and have known since childhood) easily divide into two camps: one that loves their neighbors and sincerely tries to help them through their troubles, and another who only invoke God to smite down their neighbors and consign them to hell. In his introductory remarks, Arthur Brooks made a pitch to the former. Then Trump came on, and replied: "Arthur, I don't know if I agree with you, and I don't know if Arthur's gonna like what I've got to say." They he started laying into his enemies (especially the ones who say, "I pray for you").
Paul Krugman:
How zombies at the GOP's soul: "Everyone with principles has left the party."
Does it matter who the Democrats choose? "It matters hugely whether a Democrat wins, it matters much less which Democrat wins."
Robert Kuttner: Was impeachment a mistake? He says no, but his analysis suggests we won't know until the Senate is decided in November.
Nina Lakhani: Hundreds of Salvadorans deported by US were killed or abused, report reveals. Related: William Wheeler: How the US helped create El Salvador's bloody gang war.
Eric Levitz:
Donald Trump is winning the 2020 Democratic primary: "The Democratic Party turned the Iowa caucuses into an infomercial for its incompetence and internal divisions." Alt-title, on the page: "This is how he wins."
Erik Loomis: What are you going to do when Bernie wins the nomination? The question, of course, is only raised due to the extreme vitriol of anti-Bernie hysteria among the elite tier of self-proclaimed "moderate Democrats." The fact is that those who can't "Deal. With. It." will be worse than "as bad as any Nader voter" (he's trying to hit them where they hurt). Refusing to support the Democratic nominee if it's Bernie is an admission that you never cared about progress or justice in the first place -- that the repeated failures of recent Democratic regimes were nothing more than bad faith (as opposed to conflicted interests, fear, stupidity, and ineptness). For examples of vitriol, see the comments. "I think Bernie is an increasingly bitter old man who does not play well with others" is relatively mild and laughable. Even more deranged:
I didn't vote for the fascist and I'm not voting for the Communist either. Bernie has spent his entire existence undermining Democrats and will not be rewarded for getting Trump installed. We can vote down ballot for actual Democrats. There will be no forgiveness for what the deranged old coot and his bros have done to the working class. Not to mention, his voting record is fairly despicable. He's no different than Trump. F him and his ratferking teabagging psychos as well.
In what universe is a person with so much fear and loathing not already a Trump disciple?
German Lopez: Democrats have good plans to tackle the opioid epidemic. They should talk about them.
Amanda Marcotte: Voting to acquit this noxious criminal is the point of no return for the Republican Party. I think Republicans crossed that point long ago, but it's hard to pin down one point. One might be the "Hastert rule," by which the far right could veto any moderate deals the House Republican leadership might entertain, and McConnell's 2009 decision to use the filibuster to block all bills by Democrats. On the other hand, Republican solidarity dates back at least to the fight against Clinton's health care reform, and further back to the defense of the Clarence Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court (who, you may recall, was a pretty noxious pick). [Also see note on Marcotte below.]
Daniel Markovits: How McKinsey destroyed the middle class: "Technocratic management, no matter how brilliant, cannot unwind structural inequalities." Buttigieg worked for McKinsey, although to be fair, he was but a small cog in their vast machinery.
David Masciotra:
America's fatal flaw: The founders assumed our leaders would have some basic decency. I'm not sure that's true: otherwise, why would they have concocted such an elaborate system of checks and balances to make impossible any real concentration of power? And why would they take care to proscribe titles, emoluments, bribes, and other high crimes? On the other hand, decency is a pretty low bar, one that Trump uniquely seems to have no claim to. More importantly, the founders didn't anticipate political parties, and they didn't expect the president to have anywhere near the broad powers of modern presidents. Perhaps they were naive in authorizing as much power as they did, expecting George Washington to wield that power responsibly, setting an example others might emulate. The only thing Trump and Washington have in common is exceptional wealth, but Washington also had a long record of public service, and took great pains to avoid any suspicion of corruption. Trump, well, could hardly be more opposite.
Trump's real base isn't the famous "white working class" -- it's the billionaire class.
Laura McGann:
One of America's most prominent racists just received the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Rush Limbaugh.
Joe Biden is the only candidate with a real shot at getting things done: One of Vox's series of "best case" arguments for each of the candidates (following Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, followed by Pete Buttigieg). Much of the headline claim is based on the assumption that "Biden has the best shot at carrying the Senate," which in turn is based on the idea that capturing seats depends more on swaying the center than on motivating the left. Unclear to me that Biden can do either, not least because he doesn't seem to really want (or feel the need for) much change.
Casey Michel: How the US became the center of global kleptocracy. "For the world's warlords, criminals, and autocrats, there's no gift finer than an anonymous American shell company."
Ian Millhiser:
The Senate's decision to acquit Trump is even less democratic than you think: "The 48 senators who voted to remove Trump represent 53 percent of the nation."
Mitt Romney just did something that literally no senator has ever done before: "Before this day, no senator has ever voted to remove a president of the same party from office." Points out that all nine Democrats in the Senate voted to acquit Andrew Johnson (Johnson was not technically a Democrat when he was elected vice-president in 1864, but by impeachment time the few Democrats left in Congress allied with him against the "Radical Republicans"). I was thinking there had been some breaks against Clinton (Joe Lieberman?), but a check shows not. On the other hand, 4 Republicans voted not guilty on the obstruction of justice charge (John Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter), and 5 more on the perjury article (Slade Gorton, Richard Shelby, Ted Stevens, Fred Thompson, John Warner). The votes to convict Clinton failed 50-50 and 45-55. Still, not enough of a sample to make Romney's apostasy stand out. One can argue that the case against Trump fared better relative to party standing than the strongest charge against Clinton did (+1 vs. -4), and Romney's vote helped there. On the other hand, the raw vote (48-52) fell short of the previous 50-50.
The biggest lie in Trump's State of the Union speech: "Trump wants people who depend on Obamacare to relax. They do so at great peril."
Rani Molla: Why your free software is never free: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." He has a point, but it's not about free software, a category which includes the operating system I'm using (Linux), the software distribution (Xubuntu), the editor I'm typing into (GNU emacs), the web server I'm distributing my writing over (Apache), or the browser I used to view it (Firefox), or the hundreds of other programs that fill role and do tasks in my digital universe. I paid $0 for all of them, and expect to pay $0 every time I update them. And while I rarely do so, I can in nearly every case download the source code to these programs, fix bugs, add features, and redistribute my changes to the world, who will also pay $0 for my contributions. (The few exceptions usually have to do with proprietary hardware or restricted file formats for media and "digital rights" policing. While these also cost me $0, they aren't free software, because I can't download, modify, and redistribute the source code. Sometimes such programs are referred to as freeware, but most such programs are distributed free in hopes of getting tip income and/or as demos for pricier product upgrades.) What Molla's talking about is something else: proprietary software that you don't have to pay directly for, but which collect data on you that the that the vendor can monetize, often at you expense. Google has a whole suite of tools like that, while Facebook offers a one-size-fits-all virtual world meant to monopolize all your time and run your life. Before 2000, when it ate my job at SCO, free software seemed like the next big thing, promising a future where software was freed from ulterior motives of corporate control. (Having worked in the software business for 20 years, I happened to know a lot about how that worked.) Since then, these new business models of capture, control, and manipulation have taken root, to the point where someone like Molla can pretend no other world was ever possible. But really free software is still being developed, and is available if you know where to look, and what to do (although, frankly, it's a lot easier to use now than it was when I got started).
Sara Morrison: The Iowa caucus smartphone app disaster, explained.
Nicole Narea:
Ari Natter: Trump withholding $823 million for clean energy, Democrats say.
Ella Nilsen: The Iowa caucuses have a big accessibility problem. And therefore, turnout is low, and possibly skewed. For instance, in 2016, turnout was just 15.7%, vs. 52% for the New Hampshire primary. [PS: From a tweet, Iowa Democratic turnout this year was up 5,146 from 2016 (up 3.0%), but way down from 2008 (63,436 votes, 26.5%).
Anna North: Pelosi's State of the Union response: Rip up Trump's speech.
Osita Nwanevu:
History will remember Democrats' timidity, too. The main thing I fault the impeachment effort for is the failure to bring additional charges, specifically on charges Republicans might find it even more embarrassing to vote against: Trump's self-dealing corruption; his many abuses of executive powers to keep his administration from enforcing the law (e.g., on the environment) or for overstepping the law (e.g., on refugees), and those policy links to corruption; his refusal to respect Congressional resolutions limiting his war powers (again, no doubt linked to corruption).
Trump has never looked more comfortable as a demagogue: "The president's State of the Union previewed his reelection themes: Socialism and health care and socialism and xenophobia and socialism."
Alex Pareene: Democrats embrace the grift: "The decidedly Trumpian nonprofit behind the Iowa app debacle."
Jake Pearson/Anand Tumurtogoo: Donald Trump Jr went to Mongolia, got special treatment from the government and killed an endangered sheep.
Brianne Pfannenstiel: Iowa caucus 2020: Inside the Iowa Democratic Party's 'boiler room,' where 'hell' preceded the results catastrophe.
Andrew Prokop: Iowa Democratic caucuses: Live results: Like all similar pages, their ambitions foiled by the Iowa Democratic Party, but as of Feb. 7, 4:38 am, they claimed to have 99.5% reporting, with Pete Buttigieg 2 State Delegate Equivalents ahead of Bernie Sanders, and Sanders leading Buttigieg in the Round 1 popular vote 24.75% to 21.29%, followed by Elizabeth Warren (18.44%), Joe Biden (14.95%), Amy Klobuchar (12.73%), Andrew Yang (5.00%), and Tom Steyer (1.75%). In the second round, where "non-viable candidates" (everyone from Biden down, with Yang hit hardest) faded and "lesser evilism" kicked into consideration, Buttigieg and Warren gained some ground, but still trailed Sanders. I also looked at similar pages from The Washington Post and The New York Times, which have some additional analysis, but make it harder to find raw vote numbers. For another weird wrinkle, see Nathaniel Rakich: Satellite caucuses give a surprise boost to Sanders in Iowa.
Frank Rich: Iowa is just the latest chapter in a rolling Democratic calamity.
David Roberts:
With impeachment, America's epistemic crisis has arrived: Originally published in November 2019, updated here.
New conservative climate plans are neither conservative nor climate plans: "They are mainly designed to protect fossil fuels." I don't see any point in today's right-wingers aren't true conservatives, given that the only consistent aim of "conservatives" has been to defend and increase the privileges and power of those already rich and powerful. Of course, prominent among "conservatives" are those heavily invested in fossil fuels, but you can chalk that up to self-interest, and their fellow travelers to [upper] class consciousness. And sure, they've most often tried to advance their efforts through fraud and corruption. It's not as if an appeal to reason would help them.
Nathan J Robinson:
The failure of Democratic opposition: "The Democratic party establishment have shown they are incapable of taking on Trump. They are assuring his reelection." I get the point about Democrats not putting together a story credible enough to convince low information/interest voters to counter Trump's. But a big part of that is that the media isn't listening to the narratives that various candidates have crafted, let alone presenting them cogently enough to get the attention of said low information/interest voters. But Democrats are facing a bigger problem: Trump and Republicans haven't created a big enough, immediate enough crisis to jar those voters out of their complacent everyday lives. On the other hand, it's not as if he's actually convinced anyone who didn't vote for him in 2016 to support him now.
Donald Trump will run to the left. Well, depends on what you mean by "left." Robinson's example: "Do not be surprised when Trump runs as the candidate of criminal justice reform." That's still a far cry from real left issues, like promoting unions, or soaking the rich. Moreover, much will depend on who he winds up running against: it'll be much easier to outflank Buttigieg on the left than Sanders. Indeed, with Sanders it's clear that Trump will run so hard against Sanders' "socialism" he won't have any credibility to move to the left on anything.
Aaron Rupar:
Trump strikes a bitterly vindictive tone during National Prayer Breakfast speech.
Trump immediately refuted the Republican idea he was chastened by impeachment.
Trump's post-Iowa caucuses messaging is a bad omen for Democrats in 2020.
Pam Bondi's been a punchline during the impeachment trial. But her role speaks to something important. "The shamelessness is the point."
Wilbur Ross sees the coronavirus outbreak as a moneymaking opportunity for the US.
Bhaskar Sunkara: The DNC can't steal the election from Bernie Sanders despite the Iowa chaos.
Theodore Schleifer: A new social network makes an old bet: That we want to hear from rich people. The startup is called Column, and it's basically an effort to monetize free speech by dividing the world between those who can afford to be speakers, and the rest, who can only follow. Still, I expect they'll be tracking the latter's data, and selling what they learn off to whoever is willing to pay for it (just like all the other "social networks").
Dylan Scott:
Nate Silver:
The calendar isn't helping Biden, but his Iowa performance points to bigger problems.
Our post-Iowa primary forecast is up, and Biden's chances are down. Quite a bit, with his "chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates being halved -- from 43 percent before Iowa to 21 percent now." Sanders got a bump, from 31% to 37%, although odds for "nobody" rose even more, from 17% to 27%.
Emily Stewart:
The latest Iowa caucuses drama, from an app meltdown to a possible recanvass, explained: "Well, the Iowa caucuses are turning out to be a real shitshow."
Acronym, the dark money group behind the Iowa caucuses app meltdown, explained.
Why Nancy Pelosi ripping up some papers has set the internet on fire.
Matt Stieb:
Matt Taibbi:
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor:
Democrats gave Obama a free pass. That could hurt us on election day. "We refuse to talk about how his failure to deliver major changes may have fed voter disaffection in 2016." For what it's worth, I've been pretty critical of Obama, both before and after he was elected, even though I voted for him in the 2008 caucus, and twice in November. He promised change and, after blowing the Congressional majority he was initially elected with, delivered nothing more than a slow recovery from the deep recession he inherited, with all the profits going to the top 1% -- a legacy so underwhelming Hillary Clinton blew her pitch for a "third Obama term" who promised little more than to vent the voters' frustration. Clearly, he wasn't nearly as bad as his predecessor or his successor, but his legacy is very thin compared to his promise, and twelve (or should I say twenty?) years of lost opportunity calls for much bolder leadership -- not candidates who would like to be his clones, but aren't even that.
Don't think Sanders can win? You don't understand his campaign.
Anya van Wagtendonk: What is up with that tan line photo of Trump?
Alex Ward:
Trump just fired Gordon Sondland as EU ambassador: The post-acquittal purge continues.
6 top 2020 Democrats vow to reverse Trump's new landmine policy.
Trump's Israel-Palestine peace plan: Read the full text of his so-called "deal of the century." Some key elements of the plan, as noted here:
I've spent a lot of time thinking about viable peace plans, so I've considered many of these ideas, but I haven't read this thing closely. For now, I'll just collect various links here:
As'ad AbuKhalil: Trump 'solves' the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Hanna Alshaikh: Palestinians don't need Jared Kushner to civilize them. They need rights.
Ramzy Baroud: Kushner as a colonial administrator: Let's talk about the 'Israeli Model'.
Jonathan Cook:
Belen Fernandez: On Jared Kushner's 25 books of undiluted Zionist propaganda. Kushner explained his expertise by having read "25 books on it," so when I saw this article, I was hoping for a list. (I've read, well, at least that many, so I can appreciate how one might consider oneself an expert after that.) Still, not finding one here, but Middle East Eye has offered its own list: Jared Kushner, here are 25 more books you should read about Palestine, Israel relations. Turns out I haven't read any of these 25 either, although I have read other books by Ilan Pappé and Raja Shehadeh. I'm afraid my own reading has been strongly oriented to the Israeli side. A comment added another book I wasn't aware of: Nur Masalha: Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought 1882-1948 (1992). Transfer was supposedly a British idea, introduced in the 1937 Peel Report, but was readily embraced by Ben-Gurion at that time, as the concept was not foreign to Zionist thinking. Mary Dockser Marcus discusses and dates it in her Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Robert Fisk: Kushner's "ultimate deal" would strip Palestinians of their human dignity.
Marc Owen Jones: The colonial mindset behind his so-called 'peace plan'.
Rashid Khalidi: The erasure of Palestinians from Trump's Mideast "peace plan" has a hundred-year history.
Daniel Levy: Don't call it a peace plan: "Ten ways Trump has launched a relentless assault on the very idea of Israeli-Palestinian peace."
Saree Makdisi: What's new about Trump's Mideast 'peace' plan? Only the blunt crudity of its racism.
Nizar Mohamad: The 'Deal of the Century,' an architecture of exclusion.
Jo-Ann Mort: The Trump-Netanyahu plan to force Arab population transfer.
Emile Nakhleh: Trump's 'peace plan' is the death knell of the two-state paradigm.
James North:
Yunna Patel: Understanding the Trump 'Deal of the Century': what it does, and doesn't say.
Stephen Robinson: Kushner warns Palestinian leaders not to make him read a 26th book about this crap.
Richard Silverstein:
James Zogby: Trump and Balfour compared.
Netanyahu: 'Israeli right turns against Deal of the Century'.
I haven't really tried to digest this yet, but do want to emphasize several points that are essential for any such deal:
I don't much care what borders are decided. The division could be as small as Gaza only, or could include parts of the West Bank (provided connectivity without checkpoints) as Kushner's plan proposes (although I don't see any reason why a Palestinian enclave in the West Bank should not extend to the Jordan River). A number of ancillary issues need to be decided on a fair and generous basis: water, air space, sanitation, prisoners, etc. I would advise Palestine to have a bare minimum of armed forces, which may require guarantees against Israeli attack or invasion beyond 3 above. I would also advise Israel to reduce its armed forces, but don't see either limit as required. One might require international supervision of free elections in the Palestinian state, at least for the reconstruction period. Such supervision would not be able to limit or exclude candidates or parties. Given these basic guidelines, Kushner's plan appears to be unviable. Even given the unreasonable biases of the plan, it's likely that many Israelis will reject it, as they prefer no limits on their power to seize land and repress the Palestinian people.
Philip Weiss: Lis Harris wanted to understand how Israel had gone this way: Interview, the author of In Jerusalem: Three Generations of an Israeli Family and a Palestinian Family.
Edward Wong: Americans demand a rethinking of the 'Forever War'.
Matthew Yglesias:
The Democratic establishment is doing a really bad job of stopping Bernie Sanders.
3 winners and 3 losers from the impeachment and acquittal of Donald Trump. Maybe, but it's hard to tell or care given how little public opinion budged on the issue. Note that Trump himself wasn't on either list.
Gretchen Whitmer's smart, boring speech highlighted Democrats' biggest 2020 dilemma.
Bernie Sanders leads Donald Trump in polls, even when you remind people he's a socialist. The real news here is that Sanders loses when you tell voters he's a Democrat, but gains them back when you tell them he's a socialist. That basically means that the Democratic brand is more tarnished than the socialist brand. That should be sobering to those Democrats who keep complaining that Bernie isn't a real Democrat. It's almost as if they'd rather lose.
Li Zhou:
A brief guide to the State of the Union guests. They're all there to make one point or another.
"He is not who you are": Adam Schiff makes last-ditch plea to Senate Republicans. I'm not sure whether this pitch is more stupid or pathetic. Even if some Republicans think of themselves as possessing noble moral standards, they're not likely to feel any need to impress Schiff with them. But most, like Trump, see impeachment as a cynical political ploy. (Indeed, many were around when they did the same thing to Bill Clinton.) But deep down, Congressional Republicans aren't that different from Trump. They get their news from the same partisan wells, they share most of the same prejudices, and their loathing for Democrats knows few if any bounds.
PS: I've never been much impressed by Amanda Marcotte, but her visceral rejection of Trump seems to be leading her to deeper truths. She has a recent book, Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set on Ratf*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself, which is about as pointed a title as the subject deserves. From the blurb:
Trump was the inevitable result of American conservatism's degradation into an ideology of blind resentment. For years now, the purpose of right wing media, particularly Fox News, has not been to argue for traditional conservative ideals, such as small government or even family values, so much as to stoke bitterness and paranoia in its audience. . . . Conservative pundits, politicians, and activists have abandoned any hope of winning the argument through reasoned discourse, and instead have adopted a series of bad faith claims, conspiracy theories, and culture war hysterics. Decades of these antics created a conservative voting base that was ready to elect a mindless bully like Donald Trump.
I also want to quote an Amazon comment on the book by a Joseph Caferro, which gives us a peek into the Trump troll mindset:
Why [really] do Trump and his followers troll? And the answer is not hatred.
It's a tactic to destabilize the tenuous parasitic leftist coalitions that are built on a dizzying array of incompatible grievances against imagined enemy institutions. These enemies of leftists include most of the most stable, successful institutions that make civilization possible: religion, capitalism, meritocratic education and commerce, strong national defense, controlled borders, and solvent government spending. The incessant attacks on these institutions by the left are largely encouraged by the DC establishment and most state and local governments, and the result has been failure of safety, solvency, competence, and sanity. Leftism causes parasitic failure across the board. To defend leftist policies on merit is impossible, so the left decided the primary tactic for persuasion should be defamation, intimidation, and even criminal extortion, persecution, and assault. So the right has had enough, and has decided, symbolized by and led by Trump, to assail the leftist establishment with criticism, skepticism, insults, and challenges to their authority and power at all levels. Like in any street fight, you can't win if you aren't willing to use the tactics your enemy is willing to use. So the right trolls, because the left smears. As long as the left smears and commits crimes to further their agenda, the right will troll and be willing to stop those crimes with equal or greater force. That is why the right trolls. Not because of your imagined telepathic detection of deep seated Nazi hatred, but because your leadership are a bunch of parasitic communist thugs who aspire to totalitarian tyrannical rule, and deserve trolling.
I quote this because it's a lot more coherent than what you usually get from this quarter, but still, there's a lot wrong here, starting with a gross misapprehension of what the left is concerned with, and more fundamentally with failure to understand that the bedrock of "stable, successful institutions" is a widely shared sense of justice. It's true that our notions of justice used to be rooted in religion, but that splintered long ago. Some of us gave up the religion we were born into precisely because it no longer seemed to satisfy our sense of justice, and because we found it manipulated by charlatans for special interests. Caferro's list of "successful institutions" turns out to be less coherent than he imagines. Meritocracy sounds good, but more often than not is just a ruse for rationalizing inequality. The last three are arbitrarily grafted into the others: the rationale behind a strong police state is to protect its rulers from the effects of its misrule. "Leftism causes parasitic failure across the board" is a crude way of restating Hayek's Road to Serfdom thesis, which could be used to explain the economic failures of the Soviet Union, but Hayek and his followers have always expected the same doom to befall western social democracy, which has never happened. Where Caferro's argument goes off the rails is his bit about how "the left are largely encouraged by the DC establishment and most state and local governments" and his later reference to "the leftist establishment" -- there is no such thing, as should be clear from the shit fit old guard Democrats are having over the prospect of Sanders winning the Democratic Party nomination.
Then there's the question of tactics. Caferro argues that Trump supporters have to troll because that's the way leftists fight them, but that's neither supported by fact nor by logic. The left offers much more substantial arguments than the name-calling Caferro hates, but it's worth noting that the name-calling would hurt less if it didn't smack of truth. Trump is a racist, a sexist, a liar, a crook, and an all-around asshole. One can document those assertions with hundreds or possibly thousands of pages of examples, but sometimes the shorthand is all you need. Whether he's also a fascist depends on some extra historical knowledge that may not be widely agreed on, but most leftists define fascists as people who want to kill them, so that's a relevant (if not universal) framework.
But just because your opponent fights one way doesn't mean you have to fight the same. Strong occupying armies are most often countered not by equivalent armies but by guerrilla warfare. One might argue that they are morally equivalent, in that both seek to kill the other, and that is often the downfall of the guerrillas. So the other major example is non-violent resistance, such as the movements led by Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King in the US. I'd submit that Trump trolls have chosen their tactics not because the left has but because they're more suited to taste, needs, and morals (which approve of lies and distortions to sway people, and violence to suppress them, all in support of an authoritarian social and economic order which benefits people they identify with).