> [Walz] supports gender reassignment surgery for children [...]
The linked article doesn't really support that.
The law in question is about not honoring other states' custody laws when those laws specifically target trans kids and their parents. The law doesn't explicitly mention surgery, and it doesn't authorize any treatments that wouldn't otherwise be legal; it just prevents other states from trying to enforce their own laws against kids who've come to Minnesota for such treatments (and their parents). You can read it yourself here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?session=ls93&number=HF146&session_number=0&session_year=2023&version=list
This one made me double take in its phrasing. The law is effectively a state sovereignty measure and, it can be argued, a pro-family policy. Otherwise a great article, but that quick summary seemed a bit off the mark.
I'm so with you on this article, Noah. The many internet commenters here and elsewhere may not be ready to move on from the cynicism that developed in the 2010s, but I am.
Seems like every time someone talks about a shifting vibe in a more positive direction, that person is met with a whole lot of "Hahaha that's a nice glass of copium you're drinking there" or "Oh you sweet summer child."
I'm sick of this cynical irony crap. I'm ready to move on, and many of us should be too.
NYT reporting this morning confirms that Harris picked Walz in part for the "joy," and I think you're dead right that the campaign messaging has been intentionally sunny, which takes real discipline.
What a contrast with Trump.
After his team declared a "Hit 'em on policy" strategy, Trump went with "Kamala isn't black." Meanwhile, Kamala's response was so disciplined that she didn't even mention race or racism. The only time I heard race explicitly mentioned during last night's rally was when Walz pointed out a couple of other "old white guys" in the crowd. Kamala described herself as a middle class child raised by a working mother, and unlike Hillary, she didn't accuse anyone of "systemic racism" or "implicit bias."
This seems like a real break with the Dems' rhetoric from 2016-2020. I think it's working.
A huge reason no one cares that Kamala abandoned all her old positions is that Democratic voters are abandoning their 2020 positions as well. 2016-2024 were the Trump years, even if Biden was President for half of them. He was defined by being a last-ditch defence against Trumpism. Those years were bleak, angry and miserable, even when life was good by objective measures. No one wants to go back.
This is an important point that a lot of people are missing. There are a TON of Democrat-leaning voters who are thinking "I might be a progressive but I really don't want a repeat of 2020, that was too crazy". If individuals are allowed to moderate their positions and disavow some of the things they thought and said in the wild and disorienting era of lockdowns and racial unrest, then political leaders (who are supposed to represent the will of the people) should be able to do the same.
And yet, the ideological basis for those disavowed positions continues its growth. Politicians may not want to have their statements praising rioting and race defamation trotted back out in public, but many are sticking to the conceptual framework and the double standards that go with it. Exhibit 1: the pro-Palestinian "protests" (street actions) which are treated just as leniently and indulgently as the Floyd riots were treated. I don't think Kamala has pushed back much on the public pressure put on her by the anti-semite wing of her party (who will imagine a victory for their nastiness in the choice of Walz over Shapiro, even if the truth is otherwise). I certainly hope the silly Zoom affinity groups are mere expediency with her, because if she chooses to govern on this basis I predict a crack-up sooner or later.
I mean 70% of people did not want a Trump v Biden rematch, and they hated both parties doom and gloom against each other. Maybe the voters actually wanted positivity and something different?
Agree. The polls have been telling Democrats for well over a year that Biden is too old to be taken seriously by a huge segment of the voting public. The "vibe shift" is the same one that comes when you stop banging your head against the concrete wall -- it feels...good!
I agree with that take, its a kind of reward to the Dem Party for being at least somewhat responsive. Many had serious concerns about Biden and Trump. One party did something (even if it was not the optimal choice...it was at least a change). I think they are being rewarded for it.
I am planning to go to Pennsylvania to work for the Harris ticket so this isn't a hostile comment. In addition, because Noah is right about so very many things I'm surprised he's wrong about this.
One of the reasons why Americans are running like lemmings toward Harris is that we do love quickie solutions to big problems.
Once Harris is elected, there still will be 75 million disaffected Trump supporters whose opinions about everything will not have changed a bit. The Senate will probably be in Republican hands and the House will be closely divided—a clear reflection of the gigantic divisions that remain unresolved.
None of our problems will actually be solved, except we will avoid the madness of project 2025 and other lunatic ideas that Trump's appointees would be inclined to cook up.
I am reminded of the election of Roosevelt in 1932. The only clear gain was that Roosevelt was NOT Hoover, but the country's biggest problem, the Depression, stuck around stubbornly for another 8 years. My understanding is the economy was starting to pick up in 1936 and then Roosevelt decided he needed to balance the budget, and the recession was back on.
Noah, this has almost nothing to do with the 2010s. It is a much older clash between lower class whites who want to hold on to their cultural attitudes and dominance over minorities and a modern attitude that truly embraces multiracialism. It's another episode of the Civil War (1861-1865), a conflict that has never subsided and whose issues remain unresolved.
BTW, northern Red states have joined the side of the disaffected white folks because their populations feel disrespected by the multiracial coasts.
Absolutely agree with much of what you say. Certainly about Mr. No Opinion who should stay in his lane-economics- because his political insights lack...insights. The notion that Harris has had a sudden surge because she's all positivity.. EVERY candidate gets a bump post-convention. Harris' true colours have not been exposed yet. Remember ,Tulsi Gabbard eviscerated Harris in 2 minutes in their 2020 Primary debate. The closest to Harris as an example is Palin, who was GREAT till she began to talk. I expect a similar path for Harris. As to The VP fella-when was the last VP of any consequence in the general ?
A few other thoughts-the idea that Harris is a centrist is laughable. She's run as a law and order gal against a liberal DA, then adopted his ideas on policing once DEI and its everything is racist baloney became popular, she's tightly allied with business interests and she can't remember which policy on immigration she supports, but knows she was never the Border Tzar although Biden and legacy media sure thought so. Her record is that of a political hack who tests the winds of opinion before revising her position yet again. And this is NoNos "morning in America" scenario? She's got to get through the nightmare of the upcoming campaign first.
And after 8 years of "Trump is the Devil" and will"Destroy Democracy" both his ardent followers and those who pay attention know that it was a political hit job. And they won't give her a free pass. As to Trump's near miss assassination attempt, that plus the years of Russia/Putin/Trump lies by the Dems and the Intelligence community, the Mueller Report which found nothing, the three failed impeachment attempts, the gross negligence of those in charge of congressional security on 1/6 and the outrageous sentencing of 1/6 Defendants for acts of trespass all combine to assure us of an exciting, Tong War quality campaign the next 3 months. Not to ignore the near catastrophic quaLITY OF PEACE BIDEN/HARRIS FOREIGN POILICIES have landed us in.
If only NoNo had an emotional tie to either side of this upcoming election debacle, he might understand that we're headed for 3 months of media over-hyped political rhetoric, hysterical predictions of doom if the other side wins- and a desperation driven Dem party and their financial backers and Intelligence Community allies who fear a Trump victory and vengeance driven Trump presidency. Not to mention Antifa thugs in the streets protecting democracy as they define it.
This is far more than the normal bump for Harris, and we are not post-convention. those who dislike Trump are looking for salvation, and they've decided that she is it.
Yeah, that crack about "Antifa thugs in the streets" reflects a lot of time absorbing FOX News content.
Antifa is pretty much only present on the streets of one US city--Portland--which is why the Proud Boys had to bus their guys there for street fights. FOX would have you believe they're lurking everywhere.
They have been seen here in New York, fomenting anti-Semitic street actions intimidation and corrupting the young. They are well known to the police but our prosecutors don’t prosecute anymore so they were let off for their crimes. They will offend again.
Not sure if you are saying anything of substance other than "polarized politics exist and will continue to exist". Um, yes? Approximately half the country is always "mad" after every election. Spitting up your particular list of highly partisan grievances for this cycle (although I believe "Mueller report!!" is now officially a Golden Oldie) is what people do, although I would agree that you MAGAs have a comparative advantage in it.
The condescension in this statement says a lot of why half the country continues to hate and mistrust the Democrats. What kind of a politician in a democracy trashes the citizenry? (Hint: the last three Democratic presidents). Especially revealing to me is your dismissive conflation of ordinary white Americans with the bigoted blue-state stereotypes of white Southerners . Your preferred cultural attributes are *not* somehow objectively and evidently "modern." On the contrary, they are a question of values, on which opinions may differ. Lower class whites have never been dominant over anything and having to be ruled by people who say and believe what you just said about them, can justly be called oppression. Stop dunking on ordinary people. It's indecent.
Actually recovery "started" just about the time Roosevelt took office, but whether was collective relief or something else I don't know. Roosevelt did a bunch of good things and some very bad things (that SCOTUS scotched) but the only thing he did that affected the Depression was go off gold, which the Fed did nt take full advantage of. [The Friedman-Swartz critique] The tax increase in '37 was a mistake but if the Fed had been on the ball (granted it was a brand new ball that no one knew much about), it coud have offset the damage.
"It is a much older clash between lower class whites who want to hold on to their cultural attitudes and dominance over minorities and a modern attitude that truly embraces multiracialism. It's another episode of the Civil War (1861-1865), a conflict that has never subsided and whose issues remain unresolved."
You could write the first sentence about the UK. Maybe these are not very US-specific/Civil War derived issues at all, but are more broadly "western"?
I don't think the defining problem in America is whites vs minorities. That's a pretty dark framework through which to see the world, and all evidence suggests that when people see the world that way they get MORE racist, not less.
I didn't say it was a good or productive way to see the world. I say that it has been an issue in our country for hundreds of years now. It is Pollyanna to claim otherwise.
It's not pollyana to point out that minorities are far better off here than in any other place on earth. That's why they all keep trying to come here in record numbers and none of our native born minorities are clamoring to go somewhere else. Obviously we can and should make more progress, but that progress happens when people stop trying to divide us based on race and instead try to help everyone.
I’m done with voting because I live in California and can always find a better use of my time. I agree that everything you’ve outlined is good. I could never and have never voted for Donald Trump. I could potentially have voted Harris/Shapiro, if I lived in a swing state. But I could never vote for Harris/Walz.
I know COVID doesn’t matter anymore, and that’s good, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten. Walz was a protagonist in some of the worst, most totalitarian lockdown bullshit in the nation. This, of course, was bipartisan to a significant extent. Mike DeWine I don’t consider much better.
And then there’s the summer of Floyd. Governor of Minnesota while the Twin Cities burned? As might have been said back then, yikes.
This is just asking for all of this to be archeologized, as indeed began happening immediately.
AFAIK, veep choices matter very little, so in a real sense this will probably come out in the wash. But as someone who has appreciated Harris’s tack toward the center (not to say shocking flip-flop; I’ll take what I can get), it’s mighty disappointing.
Voting still matters for down the ballot races. I don't trust or take people seriously when they say voting doesn't matter or it isn't a good use of their time. It is very tough to take what you say seriously when you also say the Twin Cities burned. They are still very much alive and well. Hindsight regarding a once in a generation pandemic is always 20/20 by the way.
The intent of lockdowns was to bend the curve and help frontline healthcare workers literally putting their lives on the line to fight a Pandemic and save lives. What part of that do you disagree with?
MAGA largely refused to be safe and refused vaccines. 90% of those taking up incredibly expensive hospital beds were the unvaccinated. COVID didn't spread by magic. Being unsafe made it far worse. Those actions made the Pandemic last longer, make the costs massively higher, hurt the economy far more and needlessly killed hundreds of thousands.
Trump and the right have basically told the black community to STFU and take it. Trump and the right sided with the murderer, not George Floyd. Trump was too divisive to be invited to the funeral. MLK said - "a riot is the language of the unheard." Trump and the right weren't listening. Trump actually incited violent confrontation with right wing groups.
Re the Floyd riots. They were probably the biggest civil disturbance that Minnesota has ever experienced, and I don't condemn those who fail to deal well with unique events.
In contrast, the governments of Los Angeles and New York must be ready for such events.
I am in that boat...I was a really big Shapiro fan because he was a clean break from the 2020 crazies. While many pure Dems want to just forget about it...to others that dislike the Republican ticket but are sincerely suspicious of Democrats commitment to normalcy, this ticket is a mixed bag.
I am not saying it is terrible, and it is better than Trump. Still, it is mixed from my perspective and not one I could just endorse without a lot more thought and research. That said, I was profoundly disappointed by Dems in 2020/2021, so I don't claim this is a main stream position. Maybe its just Eol and myself, but I promise you I am sincere and, to the best of my knowledge, sentient :).
Oh, for God's sake. This is special pleading if I ever saw it. The time to call the National Guard was before the police had to retreat from their burning station house, not afterwards. The delay was a terrible error in judgement, likely killed people, and he has never acknowledged this failure, or explained what was going through his head while he was doing it.
Interesting, but Walz still seems much more moderate than Harris so your logic is a bit puzzling. If Harris is aloud to moderate her image (something I wish all politicians would do), I don't see why Walz shouldn't be allowed to do the same.
Walz is absolutely allowed to moderate his image. He’s only been the VP pick for a couple of days, and I think he is definitely already heading in that direction, which is good.
For me personally, the egregious nature of those two items I identified are simply disqualifying in the long run. I couldn’t possibly have any confidence in someone who was so catastrophically wrong about things as basic and essential as liberty and public order. Just because I draw the line here doesn’t mean that others can’t draw it elsewhere, or that he won’t turn out just fine in the end, if elected. He might truly have ‘learned his lesson,’ to use a horribly pedantic expression.
Also, I think it’s relevant that he seems to have quickly abandoned a lot of his bipartisan bona fides (which AFAIK seemed quite sincere at the time!) when he ceased to rep a reddish district and gained statewide office. Part of that was mechanistic, in that his ascension also coincided with a DFL trifecta in MN which they hadn’t had in a very long time.
Which is to say, I’m always going to have concerns about his and Harris’ (whose views have also evolved considerably) sincerity in professing any given view or policy.
I'm glad that liberty and public order are both important to you but they are issues that are necessarily at odds with each other. Balance between them is sometimes difficult to find. Walz was praised by Trump for bringing in the national guard quickly to suppress the Floyd riots, so maybe it would be worth reviewing what policies he actually implemented compared to other governors before making a final decision.
Harris-Walz are flanking Trump on outreach to men in general and white men specifically. I wrote about it here yesterday morning and thought about it every time Harris referred to Walz as "coach" during the rally. She even referenced Friday Night Lights, and I noticed they sold out of a Harris-Walz camo hunting hat. They knocked it out of the park at their rally, and it was nice to see. The "joy" line was powerful and underscores the sunny vibes. https://jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/harris-is-flanking-trump-on-white
This is my favorite quote today (it's early, I know):
<< Trump posted a demented comment on Truth Social fantasizing that Joe Biden will “crash” the Democratic Convention and “try to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another debate.”
You can smell the fear wafting from Trump's desperate wish that he could go back to running against Joe Biden. That train has left the station—and the light coming through the tunnel at Trump is a freight train loaded enthusiasm and hope. Trump's post was a cry for help—but sadly (for Trump), he has no friends. >>
~ R. Hubbell, "Today's Edition Newsletter," (substack 07AUG24)
mm. Perhaps we see a few things differently. Corruption charges in a food program point to incompetence. Requiring tampons in boys bathrooms? That is weird. A “snitch” line for neighbors who left their house? Sorry that you are too young to remember East Germany.
Anybody AOC cheers clearly has to have the wrong stuff. You’re still trying to make “fetch” a thing. Kamala is a terrible politician, a terrilbe manager with 92% of her staff quitting. Tim Walz may be a good attack dog. I am far less interested in how they attack Republicans....That won’t help the debt, of deficit. Won’t fix looming shortfalls in SS and Medicare. I certainly won’t make dealing with potential war with China any easier.
Trump is a terrible person. I wish he would go away. That doesn’t mean because he is awful that automatically makes her great. Looking strictly at economics is there A Democrat alive who doesn’t love to spend the peoples money? In Turmp case he is also a spender. He loves debt because he feels he owns the banks. If he needs to screw someone he does it regardless of their loyalty.
Whitewash Walz record all you want. Both represent a probably disastorus Presidency. Both will become immediately hated by Americans. It is just baked in both will be terrible for the country.
Yes, I’ll just list a few items. By now we have have about 5 million illega entrants in to the country with little to no vetting. This would include a couple of million got-a-ways. Included is this figre are some on the terror watch list along with “we don’t know who they are”.
I still have no idea why Democrats believe this to be a good situation. Biden did nothing until a few months ago when polling showed immigration to be the number issue. We are one terrorist attack aways from Democrats being sent in to history if it is found out the terrorists were allowed in to the country.
His immigration policies are so bad that the majority of the country according to polling are in favor of mass deportation.
I can tell you that his polices have destroyed charites and NGO’s budgets. The food bank I volunteered at went from serving 7000 people to over 30,000.
The chaotic withdrawal in Afghanistan appeared weak. Weakness meant that our adversaries took advantage of that weakness. His foreplay with Iran, non enforcement of oil sanctions allowed Iran to spend money and reassert its control of the middle east. I don’t believe you are a fool, but no doubt an emboldened Iran approved of the Hamas terroist attack. Approval of the Houthi’s ante,pted closure of the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Weakness in Ukraine and by that I mean, only giving Ukraine the weapons to not lose rather than win and punish Putin has emboldened China. We, the US is not coming to the defense of the Phillipines over the Isand chanis that China wants to steal. We are obligated by treaty to defend the nation. We have yet to give Taiwan the weapons they puchased and paid for in 2019. I don’t believe for one minute Biden will defend Taiwan. I also don’t believe Trump will either. This also emboldens China and frankly will have Japan and Korea questioning our value as an ally. Biden is a weak President.
There was no reason to increase the size fo the Federal Budget, after the Covid vaccines was being administered. Trump was awful at debt and deficit, Biden is just as bad.
I could go on.... but why. You believe he had a great Presidency. It is one of perspective.
Regarding immigration, Biden was trying to let Congress do its work. And as you may recall, there was a very tough and comprehensive bill from Senators Langford and Sinema that would have passed both the House and Senate, until Trump torpedoed it. Once that happened, Biden took action and boarder crossings have been way down ever since.
Leaving Afghanistan was always going to be bad. When the British left it was bad. When the Russians left it was bad. When the Americans left it was bad. Are you suggesting we should have stayed? Because while leaving was bad, staying would have been far worse.
Regarding Ukraine, agree that we could have done more. The challenge there was that we were not entirely sure that Russia wouldn't have used nukes had we escalated our aid. In the beginning, that was a very real possibility, which is why I believe we were cautious.
Regarding debt and deficits, the latter is down under Biden relative to Trump. We need to tax ourselves (mostly our rich / wealthy) more to pay for the government that we clearly want.
Biden has been an excellent President. During his term, we have had major and strategically significant bipartisan legislations (CHIPs Act, IRA, Infrastructure), an expansion of NATO, and the beginning of the containment of China, e.g. (AUS UK US nuclear submarine deal), expansion of the Quad (India, Japan, Australia, US).
Biden did nothing regarding immigration until it became eletorally urgent. The ACLU has sued and likely will win. He could have told his minions in Congress to negotiate with the GOP much earlier than he did. Trump was always going to submarine the deal leaving it as a campaing issure. The border is what he wants for three plus years. It is what his hard left wanted. So we will disagree with blaming the GOP bill which came very late in his Presidency. There is little exuse for Afghanistan. Currently we face $2 Trillion plus deficits as far as the eye can see. Trump was bad that doesn’t doesn’t make Biden good. We didn’t need to add ot the federal budget by 50% under Biden.
I also not a fan of industrial policy. But that is a policy argument.
The GOP has a dismal record on border control, and have zero intention to ever fix it, because it's a superb campaign issue.
2016-18 when they had the Presidency and both houses of Congress di they pass any kind of comprehensive border control? Or even try to build the Wall? No. They only passed a Tax Cut for the rich.
2024 the GOP torpedoes Lankford-Sinema, a bill that gave them almost everything they asked for...to keep a festering campaign issue alive.
The reason why Biden was pushing Congress to act 10 months ago on immigration is because he knew like most people knew including the ACLU is that executive orders on immigration aren't the way to solve the issue.
What are you solutions for increasing tax revenues to deal with budget shortfalls and what would you cut out of the budget to solve the problem in the future? You are nitpicking but not really offering ideas
For the President to be forced to go hat in hand to the opposition in an election year is simple political malpractice. He should have done that years ago and, in fact, he did: he appointed Kamala Harris border czar. But she didn't want to risk her important factional position doing something dopey like serving the country, so she just walked away from the job. Biden then gave it to Susan Rice (who alienated everyone) and to a bunch of other people all of whom failed and refused to take responsibility. All of those people who supposedly were his people, screwed him over instead. It's disgraceful. It says volumes about the Democratic Party's unfitness to govern. None of those people should ever work in government again.
Because for the first two years of his Presidency, the boarder wasn't really an issue. Crossings were down because of the holdover emergency restrictions from the pandemic.
It became an issue in 2023, which is when he asked Congress to address the issue. That led to months of negotiation and ultimately the Langford-Sienema bill.
The Democrats were ready to pass it and Biden was ready to sign it. Until Trump prohibited Republicans from passing it.
Fundamentally, executive actions are temporary solutions. Laws passed by Congress are more durable. That is what Biden was seeking.
I call this spin. It was a problem well before that. He designated Kamala Harris to be border czar well before that. To piss away two years when it "isn't too bad" hoping - what? - that it will go away? In any case, a crisis solution is an immediate solution, temporary or not. That's what executive power is for.
Afghanistan: As Noah pointed out on Econ102: AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL WAS TRUMP'S POLICY, which he never did...but he did PROMISE to do it by the 2021 date. Biden KEPT THE PROMISE...and the 2021 version of the Taliban let it happen with NO ADDITIONAL US CASUALTIES (the casualties were caused by the Tajik and other tribal bands; the Taliban rounded those responsible up and executed them, more or less in a nod to our agreement).
And of course, Both Biden and Trump were RIGHT to get us the fuck outta there.
No amount of spinning can hide th fact the withdrawal was a cluster fu*k.
Biden had no problem overtuning every single policy of Trumps. He was not obligated to keep the Afghan policy.
There is a vast difference between leaving our allies in a disgraceful way vs. a long term plan for leaving.
We pulled the rug out from our Afghan allies who were doing all the dying. We are still in Japan and Germany mind you. Giving Afganistan back to the Taliban in the way we did will not prove to be good policy.
Earl, the 'Stan withdrawal was 90% completed by Trump. But not finished; left as a poison pill for Biden.
The reason our 'Stan drawdown was bloodless, was the deal Trump cut with the Taliban; revoking air support to the Afghan Army...and then standing by while 60,000 of them got slaughtered. By the time Biden came in, the Taliban had retaken everything but Kabul.
You are correct that Biden had no obligation to go along with Trump's shitty deal with the Taliban that undermined the Afghan government.
What a shame Afghanistan wasn't handled like Biden has handled Ukraine. If there was a legit resistance to the Taliban, it wouldn't have cost much to fund them to fight the Taliban themselves.
It wouldn't be an easy fight. Fundamentalists like the Taliban are fine with any level of violence to obtain what they want.
Women sure lost out in the deal. Seems to be a recurring theme with Trump.
Biden's BIPARTISAN legislative record is unsurpassed in your lifetime. All with a 50-50 Senate. Trump promised infrastructure, Biden did it.
We are helping Ukraine fight for their freedom without our troops on the ground. It's a massive departure from policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. No troops on the ground and a just cause. Trump called Putin smart for trying to take over Ukraine. That's un-American. You complain Biden has done too little and a large portion of MAGA sides with Putin and wants us to do nothing. Trump already had his chance to get Putin out of Ukraine. He chose to extort them.
Our economy is the envy of the world. That includes inflation. His record on jobs is unsurpassed in your lifetime. Trump promised manufacturing jobs, Biden did it.
Biden rolled out the vaccines. Trump stood by while his MAGA followers refused to be safe and refused to get vaccinated. They said FU to frontline healthcare workers, the budget, the economy, their country and other Americans. Hundreds of thousands needlessly died.
The only party with any history managing deficits is Democrats. You mention spending without saying anything about tax revenue. You also don't mention what you'd cut. Social Security? Healthcare? Education? Military? Infrastructure?
Biden stepped aside for the good of the country and Democrats. Trump is an old, shitty human, shitty American and was a shitty President. Republicans couldn't care less.
Biden did not gavel HRC in as President. There was a time when the democratic process and peaceful transfer power was a core American value. Republicans said they valued states' rights. All states certified the election.
See, the problem with this is that you're arguing this case based on things that you value, and think others should value. But I think that many (perhaps most) Americans don't value these things, or at least not as much as other things, such as inflation and the economy, and the border. "Our inflation is not as bad as the rest of the world's" is a weak argument, even if it's true.
My argument tells you that inflation is a worldwide problem that Biden has handled better than most every other advanced nation on Earth. I don't think that's a weak argument.
My argument tells you that our economy under Biden handled the recovery from the Pandemic better than every other advanced nation on Earth. I don't think that's a weak argument.
But, sure, Americans can whine about that not being good enough. They can forget that government had their backs during the Pandemic by putting money in their pockets. They can forget about an historic supply chain mess. Americans can also pretend they don't value having a job.
Americans can pretend the cheap products they have bought for decades aren't cheap because of immigrant labor. I do get that immorally separating families is fine with them. I do get that deporting spouses is fine with them. Biden did bipartisan immigration legislation. Trump and MAGA blocked it. Are you fine with that?
Americans can also pretend Trump and Republicans are going to help them. Republican philosophy is you are on your own. No help. No benefits.
Whine? These are voters, mind. To whom the government is theoretically accountable. I'm sure if they supported your side they'd be the finest people on earth.
Biden got the Infrastructure deal because 10 GOP Senators wrote him a letter telling him they want to work a deal. You have the filibuster proof majority due to them.
That's the whole point. They knew that they could work with Biden. In a bipartisan deal, both sides deserve credit.
Trump couldn't get shit done. It isn't as if Democrats have an extremist Freedom caucus. Trump either can't make a deal or couldn't care less about getting anything done.
You repost the same list of items every time Noah writes something, people like myself argue with you or call out the lies or things that aren't true and you still keep doing it. Makes me wonder if you are the one with implicit bias?
I never had a spin and didn't provide one, and the events you are saying are empirically true but your spin on them is biased and short on context. You know this mate. Me telling you that you leave out a lot of details is also empirically true.
And don't forget the mess in the Israel-Gaza war. Biden (or the unelected committee that pretended to be Biden) have in their fecklessness fully undermined the deterrence that we spend fifty years building up after Vietnam. Iran would never done the mass attack that they did if they still had a healthy and necessary fear of what the United States would do. The public and shameful vacillations (ironclad commitment? well, not really. Red lines? but not really!) which were clearly driven by the ebb and flow of minority factions in the party and probably juiced with enemy money) made it clear to the world that we have neither the will nor the power to back our allies. As you note, they are already starting to look at Plan B. This alone far outweighs anything good that Biden might have done.
I don’t know what anything you’re talking about in the first paragraph is. I think you’ve been stewing in some sort of online spaces that are obsessing about things that haven’t been discussed much with the public yet.
I have no idea which paragraph you mean. The about Afghanistan being a cluster f^ ck or or the one about the border and Immigration not be important until a few months ago when it became clear people hated his border policies?
Regarding immigration why didn't Republicans vote to pass the most comprehensive vorde reform in decades if they really cared? It's on all of us to hold politicians accountable. Blaming it all on Biden when these issues have existed for decades is ignorant at best and bad faith at worst.
It's astonishing to me that so many Democrats have drunk this koolaid. It's absurd to blame the political opposition for not bailing the governing party out of problems caused by its slackness and incompetence. Accountability is implemented through elections: that is, the Republicans try to get Biden to lose, and then they get to do what they think is better policy for the country. That is normal. That is what is supposed to happen. Biden is not to blame for the defects in immigration framework, but he is to blame for failing to enforce the law as it stands, or indeed to do anything to address the major crisis that brewed up on his watch. That's what a leader does, and he failed.
Biden got important BIPARTISAN legislation done. That is getting both sides to compromise and help the country move forward. That's exactly how it should work.
Biden did immigration legislation, too. Trump blocked it in cahoots with the historically unproductive GOP house.
Either party can block legislation in the Senate, with a few exceptions not subject to the filibuster. It's bipartisan or it's nothing. That is simple fact.
The legislation could be bipartisan only because Biden, in his desperation, gave away virtually everything to the Republicans, thus admitting that the Democrats have been wrong all along.
Biden got a heck of a lot of bipartisan legislation done. Isn't that exactly what all of us should want? Both sides compromising to get things done for the country. Harris was in the middle of it with a 50-50 Senate.
The GOP house of these last two years has been historically unproductive. AOC is not the problem. Biden actually got bipartisan immigration legislation done. Trump and the GOP house blocked it.
I'm not going to nitpick everything you said since I've already done this with you in the past, you take some nuggets of truth and then distort them widly to just make one side look bad and only engage in bad faith. But you are definitely taking the tampon thing totally out of context. The law, which was passed in Minnesota includes tampons to be available in bathrooms of all schools for grades 4 to 12 as a way to accommodate transgender students. It isn't only targeted at boys bathrooms. The bigger issue is that students who advocated for the bill wanted access to menstrual products without having to ask for them. Honestly if that is the worst thing Walz has done and you hate him for that, it seems a little over the top.
Trump’s ‘sense of humor’ indeed. Who could forget him mocking a handicapped journalist at one of his rallies. Progressive overreach seems to be a theme. Banana Republicans haven’t overreached? Plan 2025 is some anodyne script. A corrupt Supreme Court, a Freedom caucus that prefers tearing things down rather than building or rebuilding, their main goal is to stymie legislation. January 6 was simply a social event, not a riot. Progressives seem to be a convenient punching bag, while the Republican Party couldn’t come up with one bite for the IRA. Really? But Republicans have 100% attendance at all the new projects’ ribbon-cutting and Photo Day. Calling wounded or killed-in-combat veterans “suckers” and “losers” isn’t overreach? Oh, well. I guess selective reasoning is the order of the day. By all means, let’s not call proposing to use the military to round-up migrants or bomb Mexico overreach. And blurbing a book about “Unhumans” isn’t what Usha Vance could dismiss as a “quip.” I guess she grew tired of working with “unhumans” at the progressive law firm in San Francisco. Nope. Move along now, no overreach to be seen here.
I really like reading your smart takes, Noah - but it's annoying when you say stuff like this :
"I realize there are progressives out there shouting apocalyptic warnings about Project 2025, Trump as a fascist dictator, and so on. I realize there is a leftist fringe who is still ready to burn down America over Gaza."
Give some examples. You say yourself that there exist fringe voices, why are you elevating them? You must know this is a stupid comparison - Party/thought leaders on the Right and fringe voices on the left. You're smarter than that.
He has previously commented on Project 2025, and how it would degrade the efficiency of the federal government. Seems he's now pooh-poohing it as a nothingburger--instead of a major "spoils system" regression that will damage the country.
Project 2025 will never be implemented even if Trump wins. It's nothing but a farrago of right-wing wish fulfillment and is dead before arrival. The Heritage Foundation will be damaged for years by this humiliating failure. I'd bet that some of the authors have already been fired.
Disagree. Former Trump Admin officials are a central part of the 2025 team, and its' policies--like a mifepristone ban--are all fairly standard as give-aways to key GOP constituencies like the Evangelicals, who will also demand--and get--a national abortion ban under Trump2.
The difference, is that this time, Heritage believed that putting it out (instead of keeping it under wraps until after the GE) would simply encourage and motivate the base, without eliciting any downsides.
The Right has been living in an ideological bubble, and because they watch only FOX and the mini-FOX's, has drunk so much of their own Kool-Aid that they actually believe their policies are popular with the general public. The 66,000 women currently being forced to carry their rapists' babies to term in Red States with abortion bans are among those who would beg to differ.
It would require Rooseveltian majorities in Congress to pass any of this stuff and live to see the following week. The Republicans won't have that, they can barely put on their shoes. This is checks and balances. No, what interests me is the wave effect. Suddenly, a lot of people have somehow read this thousand-page document that nobody ever heard of until last week, and they are warning us, at the same time, in identical language, of the existence of these Evil Thoughts and the ongoing threat that the American people might legally put The Demon Trump (who has repudiated it all) into office. It's like "the end of democracy" and "they're weird." It is clearly issued, shaped and curated by a propaganda machine. If you want to have an opinion, then have it, it's a free country. But at least it should be your own opinion.
You are mistaken that it was only "discovered" a week ago. Project 2025 was begun in 2022, and released in April, 2023--over a year ago--when multiple Left-leaning publications and think tanks began reporting on its more alarming proposals. It only reached the MSM a few months ago when the Biden and then Harris campaigns began referencing it.
Heritage has released similar conservative blueprints since c.1980; so it's nothing new, and nothing unexpected. And not every proposal is adopted by incoming conservative administrations; just most of them.
You are confirming what I said, which is that the furor is a recent phenomenon that has been ginned up quite specifically as an electoral strategy. I believe that the goal of this is to terrify the white professional component of the Democratic base (especially women) and to encourage them to fear and delegitimize other Americans. It's a useful tactic for the Democrats: it does away with any need to justify their record after four years in office, or to present a positive vision for how they intend to govern. It's also a despicable one.
Why are you asking him to give examples if you *don’t* want him to elevate them? He agrees with your point - the Republican leadership is saying these dark things, while it’s fringes on the left.
Because I think there might be an unfounded bias, and going through the exercise of actually finding examples might nudge Noah into seeing this - or it could shut me up and change my priors! Noah is generally very good at showing his work by embedding links. It helped me to see what he considers "extreme" positions from Kamala by following his link.
As you would appreciate an update from Tyler, I'd appreciate an acknowledgment that this phase of the election has been manufactured by a completely compliant and undiscerning media establishment. Harris was a terrible candidate and a ghost as VP. Has she really changed that much? How would we know? She doesn't go in front of the media. And why should she? They all just write hagiographies without question. Your post today isn't quite that but it verges on it.
I think the answer for that is pretty simple. Huge swaths of the electorate care way more about getting rid of Trump than having a Democratic candidate who perfectly matches all of (or even most of) their political preferences.
I count myself as one of those people. Two months ago I would have told you that Harris is a disappointing and very uncharismatic VP and a huge liability to the 2024 Democratic ticket. I would have also told you that Biden blundered in 2020 by picking Harris when there were more competent and electable VPs available. But -- big but -- in the wake of Biden mercifully stepping aside I immediately saw how many Democrat voters had been waiting on the sidelines to stand behind anybody besides Biden, I saw the record fundraising surge, and I saw that regardless of how I felt about her personally (not that I passionately disliked her, I just thought we could do better) she was going to be the one to consolidate the party and finally represent an opportunity for the Dems to actually win.... and I was all in. I cut a check to the campaign, signed a pledge, all of that stuff.
I can completely understand people looking at this thinking "wtf? a month ago you all hated her". It's a matter of interpretation whether you want to call her rise "manufactured" or whether this is just perfectly normal coalition-building playing out in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances. But none of that is remotely as important to me as fighting so that the other candidate, who I perceive to be a seriously psychologically disturbed person who should be nowhere near the nuclear football, doesn't win in November. As another commenter wrote "Most Americans dreaded an election between a narcissist crazy man and a senile one. The reaction to having a halfway decent choice is massive relief."
Other people are welcome to have different perspectives and I didn't write all of this to convert you to Harris, but I'm just saying that there seem to be a lot of people out there who feel similarly.
As a Californian, I disagree. Harris has a long history of public service in the state, starting as a DA; then AG; then Senator. She speaks, questions witnesses and debates very well.
The long-standing talking points about Trump's supposed "humor" and "authenticity" have just been smashed to smithereens by a politician who is ACTUALLY authentic, warm and funny. Trump has always been a vicious, insecure bully, more unhinged than unfiltered. But very few politicians could accentuate this contrast better than Walz has. Certainly not Biden, not Harris, not even Shapiro or Buttigieg, who are both gifted public speakers, but who convey more righteous ambition than the warmth and genuine empathy that Walz does.
Noah, how would a Harris / Walz ticket look economically in your opinion? My read is that it would be fiscally more conservative (responsible?) than Trump, less inflationary. Not clear to me where they stand on industrial policy, extension of the IRA? Less protectionism via blanket tariffs but how would they look to contain China? Ongoing support for Ukraine? Will they be hamstrung by congress? Thanks!
"The Leftist fringe who ready to burn down America is [not] in charge of the Democratic Party right now. The messaging coming from the Harris-Walz campaign has pivoted away from the rhetoric of civil conflict"
You're confusing messaging with power. The Leftist fringe is still in control, but just like 2020 when it used Grandpa Joe to hide itself, now its using laughtrack Kamala to do the same. Politically, it's a smart move, since the woke-Democrat policies are extremely unpopular.
The Democratic Party still thinks borders are racist. They still think a woman is anyone who "says they're a woman". They still believe in 57 genders. They still favor no limits on abortion. They still want to coddle criminals. They still think America is a fundamentally racist nation. They are still postmodernists. They still reject any form of natural law limits on human behavior.
None of these things have changed. They're just not talking about it anymore. On January 21st, they'll start talking about it again.
> [Walz] supports gender reassignment surgery for children [...]
The linked article doesn't really support that.
The law in question is about not honoring other states' custody laws when those laws specifically target trans kids and their parents. The law doesn't explicitly mention surgery, and it doesn't authorize any treatments that wouldn't otherwise be legal; it just prevents other states from trying to enforce their own laws against kids who've come to Minnesota for such treatments (and their parents). You can read it yourself here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?session=ls93&number=HF146&session_number=0&session_year=2023&version=list
Thank you for pointing this out. @Noah, this is a little sloppy of you to give this link and not give a little more context.
This one made me double take in its phrasing. The law is effectively a state sovereignty measure and, it can be argued, a pro-family policy. Otherwise a great article, but that quick summary seemed a bit off the mark.
I was going to say this. He doesn't support child re-assignment surgery. Looks like Noah was sloppy here....
I'm so with you on this article, Noah. The many internet commenters here and elsewhere may not be ready to move on from the cynicism that developed in the 2010s, but I am.
Seems like every time someone talks about a shifting vibe in a more positive direction, that person is met with a whole lot of "Hahaha that's a nice glass of copium you're drinking there" or "Oh you sweet summer child."
I'm sick of this cynical irony crap. I'm ready to move on, and many of us should be too.
If you are you can bet that millions more are. Definitely enough to swing an election.
NYT reporting this morning confirms that Harris picked Walz in part for the "joy," and I think you're dead right that the campaign messaging has been intentionally sunny, which takes real discipline.
What a contrast with Trump.
After his team declared a "Hit 'em on policy" strategy, Trump went with "Kamala isn't black." Meanwhile, Kamala's response was so disciplined that she didn't even mention race or racism. The only time I heard race explicitly mentioned during last night's rally was when Walz pointed out a couple of other "old white guys" in the crowd. Kamala described herself as a middle class child raised by a working mother, and unlike Hillary, she didn't accuse anyone of "systemic racism" or "implicit bias."
This seems like a real break with the Dems' rhetoric from 2016-2020. I think it's working.
All the ads so far are 100% lunch bucket, with a side of reproductive rights. Throw in some housing abundance and some sane border control...
They put out an ad attacking Trump on the border, it was great.
A huge reason no one cares that Kamala abandoned all her old positions is that Democratic voters are abandoning their 2020 positions as well. 2016-2024 were the Trump years, even if Biden was President for half of them. He was defined by being a last-ditch defence against Trumpism. Those years were bleak, angry and miserable, even when life was good by objective measures. No one wants to go back.
This is an important point that a lot of people are missing. There are a TON of Democrat-leaning voters who are thinking "I might be a progressive but I really don't want a repeat of 2020, that was too crazy". If individuals are allowed to moderate their positions and disavow some of the things they thought and said in the wild and disorienting era of lockdowns and racial unrest, then political leaders (who are supposed to represent the will of the people) should be able to do the same.
And yet, the ideological basis for those disavowed positions continues its growth. Politicians may not want to have their statements praising rioting and race defamation trotted back out in public, but many are sticking to the conceptual framework and the double standards that go with it. Exhibit 1: the pro-Palestinian "protests" (street actions) which are treated just as leniently and indulgently as the Floyd riots were treated. I don't think Kamala has pushed back much on the public pressure put on her by the anti-semite wing of her party (who will imagine a victory for their nastiness in the choice of Walz over Shapiro, even if the truth is otherwise). I certainly hope the silly Zoom affinity groups are mere expediency with her, because if she chooses to govern on this basis I predict a crack-up sooner or later.
Republicans aren't exactly famous for criticizing right-wing rioters either.
What right-wing rioters?
Actually lots of people want to go back, but that's probably just about inflation.
I don't think you need an entire article explaining why the vibes shifted.
Most Americans dreaded an election between a narcissist crazy man and a senile one. The reaction to having a halfway decent choice is massive relief.
My gut is that this 90% of the vibe shift, people aren't really watching campaign rallies yet or become too interested in an election still far away.
I mean 70% of people did not want a Trump v Biden rematch, and they hated both parties doom and gloom against each other. Maybe the voters actually wanted positivity and something different?
Agree. The polls have been telling Democrats for well over a year that Biden is too old to be taken seriously by a huge segment of the voting public. The "vibe shift" is the same one that comes when you stop banging your head against the concrete wall -- it feels...good!
I agree with that take, its a kind of reward to the Dem Party for being at least somewhat responsive. Many had serious concerns about Biden and Trump. One party did something (even if it was not the optimal choice...it was at least a change). I think they are being rewarded for it.
I am planning to go to Pennsylvania to work for the Harris ticket so this isn't a hostile comment. In addition, because Noah is right about so very many things I'm surprised he's wrong about this.
One of the reasons why Americans are running like lemmings toward Harris is that we do love quickie solutions to big problems.
Once Harris is elected, there still will be 75 million disaffected Trump supporters whose opinions about everything will not have changed a bit. The Senate will probably be in Republican hands and the House will be closely divided—a clear reflection of the gigantic divisions that remain unresolved.
None of our problems will actually be solved, except we will avoid the madness of project 2025 and other lunatic ideas that Trump's appointees would be inclined to cook up.
I am reminded of the election of Roosevelt in 1932. The only clear gain was that Roosevelt was NOT Hoover, but the country's biggest problem, the Depression, stuck around stubbornly for another 8 years. My understanding is the economy was starting to pick up in 1936 and then Roosevelt decided he needed to balance the budget, and the recession was back on.
Noah, this has almost nothing to do with the 2010s. It is a much older clash between lower class whites who want to hold on to their cultural attitudes and dominance over minorities and a modern attitude that truly embraces multiracialism. It's another episode of the Civil War (1861-1865), a conflict that has never subsided and whose issues remain unresolved.
BTW, northern Red states have joined the side of the disaffected white folks because their populations feel disrespected by the multiracial coasts.
Absolutely agree with much of what you say. Certainly about Mr. No Opinion who should stay in his lane-economics- because his political insights lack...insights. The notion that Harris has had a sudden surge because she's all positivity.. EVERY candidate gets a bump post-convention. Harris' true colours have not been exposed yet. Remember ,Tulsi Gabbard eviscerated Harris in 2 minutes in their 2020 Primary debate. The closest to Harris as an example is Palin, who was GREAT till she began to talk. I expect a similar path for Harris. As to The VP fella-when was the last VP of any consequence in the general ?
A few other thoughts-the idea that Harris is a centrist is laughable. She's run as a law and order gal against a liberal DA, then adopted his ideas on policing once DEI and its everything is racist baloney became popular, she's tightly allied with business interests and she can't remember which policy on immigration she supports, but knows she was never the Border Tzar although Biden and legacy media sure thought so. Her record is that of a political hack who tests the winds of opinion before revising her position yet again. And this is NoNos "morning in America" scenario? She's got to get through the nightmare of the upcoming campaign first.
And after 8 years of "Trump is the Devil" and will"Destroy Democracy" both his ardent followers and those who pay attention know that it was a political hit job. And they won't give her a free pass. As to Trump's near miss assassination attempt, that plus the years of Russia/Putin/Trump lies by the Dems and the Intelligence community, the Mueller Report which found nothing, the three failed impeachment attempts, the gross negligence of those in charge of congressional security on 1/6 and the outrageous sentencing of 1/6 Defendants for acts of trespass all combine to assure us of an exciting, Tong War quality campaign the next 3 months. Not to ignore the near catastrophic quaLITY OF PEACE BIDEN/HARRIS FOREIGN POILICIES have landed us in.
If only NoNo had an emotional tie to either side of this upcoming election debacle, he might understand that we're headed for 3 months of media over-hyped political rhetoric, hysterical predictions of doom if the other side wins- and a desperation driven Dem party and their financial backers and Intelligence Community allies who fear a Trump victory and vengeance driven Trump presidency. Not to mention Antifa thugs in the streets protecting democracy as they define it.
This is far more than the normal bump for Harris, and we are not post-convention. those who dislike Trump are looking for salvation, and they've decided that she is it.
It only seems like we already had the convention -- we still have a bump coming...
Unless the Dems managed to put on a spectacular convention, I think this is the bump.
Still have some big guns to fire, including Obama. I see upside...
I'd also love to hear from Amy Klobuchar who was my pick for president in 2020. Maybe she'll nominate fellow Minnesotan Walz.
Good point. I'd like to hear from Michelle—I always found her more compelling than Barack. I can definitely do without the Clintons.
Sean, the Democrats haven’t had their convention yet.
??? "near catastrophic quaLITY OF PEACE BIDEN/HARRIS FOREIGN POILICIES have landed us in."
So far as I know, Biden neither invaded Ukraine or attacked Israel on 10/7
Calm down Sean...take a deep breathe and maybe stop echoing empty rhetoric because it doesn't suit your perspective.
Yeah, that crack about "Antifa thugs in the streets" reflects a lot of time absorbing FOX News content.
Antifa is pretty much only present on the streets of one US city--Portland--which is why the Proud Boys had to bus their guys there for street fights. FOX would have you believe they're lurking everywhere.
They have been seen here in New York, fomenting anti-Semitic street actions intimidation and corrupting the young. They are well known to the police but our prosecutors don’t prosecute anymore so they were let off for their crimes. They will offend again.
Yeah, wait two weeks and see what happens in Chicago.
BTW, I did not say that Noah shouldn't comment on political matters. This time he happens to be wrong.
Not sure if you are saying anything of substance other than "polarized politics exist and will continue to exist". Um, yes? Approximately half the country is always "mad" after every election. Spitting up your particular list of highly partisan grievances for this cycle (although I believe "Mueller report!!" is now officially a Golden Oldie) is what people do, although I would agree that you MAGAs have a comparative advantage in it.
The world is only full of antifa thugs when your world is the internet. Walk outside and tell me how long it takes you to find any.
The condescension in this statement says a lot of why half the country continues to hate and mistrust the Democrats. What kind of a politician in a democracy trashes the citizenry? (Hint: the last three Democratic presidents). Especially revealing to me is your dismissive conflation of ordinary white Americans with the bigoted blue-state stereotypes of white Southerners . Your preferred cultural attributes are *not* somehow objectively and evidently "modern." On the contrary, they are a question of values, on which opinions may differ. Lower class whites have never been dominant over anything and having to be ruled by people who say and believe what you just said about them, can justly be called oppression. Stop dunking on ordinary people. It's indecent.
Actually recovery "started" just about the time Roosevelt took office, but whether was collective relief or something else I don't know. Roosevelt did a bunch of good things and some very bad things (that SCOTUS scotched) but the only thing he did that affected the Depression was go off gold, which the Fed did nt take full advantage of. [The Friedman-Swartz critique] The tax increase in '37 was a mistake but if the Fed had been on the ball (granted it was a brand new ball that no one knew much about), it coud have offset the damage.
"It is a much older clash between lower class whites who want to hold on to their cultural attitudes and dominance over minorities and a modern attitude that truly embraces multiracialism. It's another episode of the Civil War (1861-1865), a conflict that has never subsided and whose issues remain unresolved."
You could write the first sentence about the UK. Maybe these are not very US-specific/Civil War derived issues at all, but are more broadly "western"?
Excellent point.
I don't think the defining problem in America is whites vs minorities. That's a pretty dark framework through which to see the world, and all evidence suggests that when people see the world that way they get MORE racist, not less.
I didn't say it was a good or productive way to see the world. I say that it has been an issue in our country for hundreds of years now. It is Pollyanna to claim otherwise.
It's not pollyana to point out that minorities are far better off here than in any other place on earth. That's why they all keep trying to come here in record numbers and none of our native born minorities are clamoring to go somewhere else. Obviously we can and should make more progress, but that progress happens when people stop trying to divide us based on race and instead try to help everyone.
I’m done with voting because I live in California and can always find a better use of my time. I agree that everything you’ve outlined is good. I could never and have never voted for Donald Trump. I could potentially have voted Harris/Shapiro, if I lived in a swing state. But I could never vote for Harris/Walz.
I know COVID doesn’t matter anymore, and that’s good, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten. Walz was a protagonist in some of the worst, most totalitarian lockdown bullshit in the nation. This, of course, was bipartisan to a significant extent. Mike DeWine I don’t consider much better.
And then there’s the summer of Floyd. Governor of Minnesota while the Twin Cities burned? As might have been said back then, yikes.
This is just asking for all of this to be archeologized, as indeed began happening immediately.
AFAIK, veep choices matter very little, so in a real sense this will probably come out in the wash. But as someone who has appreciated Harris’s tack toward the center (not to say shocking flip-flop; I’ll take what I can get), it’s mighty disappointing.
Voting still matters for down the ballot races. I don't trust or take people seriously when they say voting doesn't matter or it isn't a good use of their time. It is very tough to take what you say seriously when you also say the Twin Cities burned. They are still very much alive and well. Hindsight regarding a once in a generation pandemic is always 20/20 by the way.
The intent of lockdowns was to bend the curve and help frontline healthcare workers literally putting their lives on the line to fight a Pandemic and save lives. What part of that do you disagree with?
MAGA largely refused to be safe and refused vaccines. 90% of those taking up incredibly expensive hospital beds were the unvaccinated. COVID didn't spread by magic. Being unsafe made it far worse. Those actions made the Pandemic last longer, make the costs massively higher, hurt the economy far more and needlessly killed hundreds of thousands.
Trump and the right have basically told the black community to STFU and take it. Trump and the right sided with the murderer, not George Floyd. Trump was too divisive to be invited to the funeral. MLK said - "a riot is the language of the unheard." Trump and the right weren't listening. Trump actually incited violent confrontation with right wing groups.
Re the Floyd riots. They were probably the biggest civil disturbance that Minnesota has ever experienced, and I don't condemn those who fail to deal well with unique events.
In contrast, the governments of Los Angeles and New York must be ready for such events.
Agree! Being pro Harris/Shapiro but refusing to vote Harris/Walz cannot be the sincere sentiment of a sentient voter.
I think Eol views himself as an independent rather than a Democrat.
Edited for clarity...
That's a bit rude. Most people have conflicting ideas that a pure logic machine would reject. Doesn't mean they aren't sentient, means they are human.
I am in that boat...I was a really big Shapiro fan because he was a clean break from the 2020 crazies. While many pure Dems want to just forget about it...to others that dislike the Republican ticket but are sincerely suspicious of Democrats commitment to normalcy, this ticket is a mixed bag.
I am not saying it is terrible, and it is better than Trump. Still, it is mixed from my perspective and not one I could just endorse without a lot more thought and research. That said, I was profoundly disappointed by Dems in 2020/2021, so I don't claim this is a main stream position. Maybe its just Eol and myself, but I promise you I am sincere and, to the best of my knowledge, sentient :).
Oh, for God's sake. This is special pleading if I ever saw it. The time to call the National Guard was before the police had to retreat from their burning station house, not afterwards. The delay was a terrible error in judgement, likely killed people, and he has never acknowledged this failure, or explained what was going through his head while he was doing it.
Interesting, but Walz still seems much more moderate than Harris so your logic is a bit puzzling. If Harris is aloud to moderate her image (something I wish all politicians would do), I don't see why Walz shouldn't be allowed to do the same.
Walz is absolutely allowed to moderate his image. He’s only been the VP pick for a couple of days, and I think he is definitely already heading in that direction, which is good.
For me personally, the egregious nature of those two items I identified are simply disqualifying in the long run. I couldn’t possibly have any confidence in someone who was so catastrophically wrong about things as basic and essential as liberty and public order. Just because I draw the line here doesn’t mean that others can’t draw it elsewhere, or that he won’t turn out just fine in the end, if elected. He might truly have ‘learned his lesson,’ to use a horribly pedantic expression.
Also, I think it’s relevant that he seems to have quickly abandoned a lot of his bipartisan bona fides (which AFAIK seemed quite sincere at the time!) when he ceased to rep a reddish district and gained statewide office. Part of that was mechanistic, in that his ascension also coincided with a DFL trifecta in MN which they hadn’t had in a very long time.
Which is to say, I’m always going to have concerns about his and Harris’ (whose views have also evolved considerably) sincerity in professing any given view or policy.
I'm glad that liberty and public order are both important to you but they are issues that are necessarily at odds with each other. Balance between them is sometimes difficult to find. Walz was praised by Trump for bringing in the national guard quickly to suppress the Floyd riots, so maybe it would be worth reviewing what policies he actually implemented compared to other governors before making a final decision.
Harris-Walz are flanking Trump on outreach to men in general and white men specifically. I wrote about it here yesterday morning and thought about it every time Harris referred to Walz as "coach" during the rally. She even referenced Friday Night Lights, and I noticed they sold out of a Harris-Walz camo hunting hat. They knocked it out of the park at their rally, and it was nice to see. The "joy" line was powerful and underscores the sunny vibes. https://jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/harris-is-flanking-trump-on-white
It looks like tfg gets your point on this.
This is my favorite quote today (it's early, I know):
<< Trump posted a demented comment on Truth Social fantasizing that Joe Biden will “crash” the Democratic Convention and “try to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another debate.”
You can smell the fear wafting from Trump's desperate wish that he could go back to running against Joe Biden. That train has left the station—and the light coming through the tunnel at Trump is a freight train loaded enthusiasm and hope. Trump's post was a cry for help—but sadly (for Trump), he has no friends. >>
~ R. Hubbell, "Today's Edition Newsletter," (substack 07AUG24)
I did see a funny meme of a photo of Tim Walz fishing with it saying "Tim Walz is an REI hire."
mm. Perhaps we see a few things differently. Corruption charges in a food program point to incompetence. Requiring tampons in boys bathrooms? That is weird. A “snitch” line for neighbors who left their house? Sorry that you are too young to remember East Germany.
Anybody AOC cheers clearly has to have the wrong stuff. You’re still trying to make “fetch” a thing. Kamala is a terrible politician, a terrilbe manager with 92% of her staff quitting. Tim Walz may be a good attack dog. I am far less interested in how they attack Republicans....That won’t help the debt, of deficit. Won’t fix looming shortfalls in SS and Medicare. I certainly won’t make dealing with potential war with China any easier.
Trump is a terrible person. I wish he would go away. That doesn’t mean because he is awful that automatically makes her great. Looking strictly at economics is there A Democrat alive who doesn’t love to spend the peoples money? In Turmp case he is also a spender. He loves debt because he feels he owns the banks. If he needs to screw someone he does it regardless of their loyalty.
Whitewash Walz record all you want. Both represent a probably disastorus Presidency. Both will become immediately hated by Americans. It is just baked in both will be terrible for the country.
Has Biden’s Presidency been a “disaster?” Just trying to calibrate your post.
Yes, I’ll just list a few items. By now we have have about 5 million illega entrants in to the country with little to no vetting. This would include a couple of million got-a-ways. Included is this figre are some on the terror watch list along with “we don’t know who they are”.
I still have no idea why Democrats believe this to be a good situation. Biden did nothing until a few months ago when polling showed immigration to be the number issue. We are one terrorist attack aways from Democrats being sent in to history if it is found out the terrorists were allowed in to the country.
His immigration policies are so bad that the majority of the country according to polling are in favor of mass deportation.
I can tell you that his polices have destroyed charites and NGO’s budgets. The food bank I volunteered at went from serving 7000 people to over 30,000.
The chaotic withdrawal in Afghanistan appeared weak. Weakness meant that our adversaries took advantage of that weakness. His foreplay with Iran, non enforcement of oil sanctions allowed Iran to spend money and reassert its control of the middle east. I don’t believe you are a fool, but no doubt an emboldened Iran approved of the Hamas terroist attack. Approval of the Houthi’s ante,pted closure of the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Weakness in Ukraine and by that I mean, only giving Ukraine the weapons to not lose rather than win and punish Putin has emboldened China. We, the US is not coming to the defense of the Phillipines over the Isand chanis that China wants to steal. We are obligated by treaty to defend the nation. We have yet to give Taiwan the weapons they puchased and paid for in 2019. I don’t believe for one minute Biden will defend Taiwan. I also don’t believe Trump will either. This also emboldens China and frankly will have Japan and Korea questioning our value as an ally. Biden is a weak President.
There was no reason to increase the size fo the Federal Budget, after the Covid vaccines was being administered. Trump was awful at debt and deficit, Biden is just as bad.
I could go on.... but why. You believe he had a great Presidency. It is one of perspective.
Regarding immigration, Biden was trying to let Congress do its work. And as you may recall, there was a very tough and comprehensive bill from Senators Langford and Sinema that would have passed both the House and Senate, until Trump torpedoed it. Once that happened, Biden took action and boarder crossings have been way down ever since.
Leaving Afghanistan was always going to be bad. When the British left it was bad. When the Russians left it was bad. When the Americans left it was bad. Are you suggesting we should have stayed? Because while leaving was bad, staying would have been far worse.
Regarding Ukraine, agree that we could have done more. The challenge there was that we were not entirely sure that Russia wouldn't have used nukes had we escalated our aid. In the beginning, that was a very real possibility, which is why I believe we were cautious.
Regarding debt and deficits, the latter is down under Biden relative to Trump. We need to tax ourselves (mostly our rich / wealthy) more to pay for the government that we clearly want.
Biden has been an excellent President. During his term, we have had major and strategically significant bipartisan legislations (CHIPs Act, IRA, Infrastructure), an expansion of NATO, and the beginning of the containment of China, e.g. (AUS UK US nuclear submarine deal), expansion of the Quad (India, Japan, Australia, US).
Biden did nothing regarding immigration until it became eletorally urgent. The ACLU has sued and likely will win. He could have told his minions in Congress to negotiate with the GOP much earlier than he did. Trump was always going to submarine the deal leaving it as a campaing issure. The border is what he wants for three plus years. It is what his hard left wanted. So we will disagree with blaming the GOP bill which came very late in his Presidency. There is little exuse for Afghanistan. Currently we face $2 Trillion plus deficits as far as the eye can see. Trump was bad that doesn’t doesn’t make Biden good. We didn’t need to add ot the federal budget by 50% under Biden.
I also not a fan of industrial policy. But that is a policy argument.
The GOP has a dismal record on border control, and have zero intention to ever fix it, because it's a superb campaign issue.
2016-18 when they had the Presidency and both houses of Congress di they pass any kind of comprehensive border control? Or even try to build the Wall? No. They only passed a Tax Cut for the rich.
2024 the GOP torpedoes Lankford-Sinema, a bill that gave them almost everything they asked for...to keep a festering campaign issue alive.
Hey if it makes you feel better to pretend that Joe Biden didn’t open the border that is ok....it is wrong, but I hope you do feel better.
Whataboutism is a disease. I am more than happy to excoriate the GOP. They’re assholes...but it doesn’t forgive what Joe Biden did.
The reason why Biden was pushing Congress to act 10 months ago on immigration is because he knew like most people knew including the ACLU is that executive orders on immigration aren't the way to solve the issue.
What are you solutions for increasing tax revenues to deal with budget shortfalls and what would you cut out of the budget to solve the problem in the future? You are nitpicking but not really offering ideas
For the President to be forced to go hat in hand to the opposition in an election year is simple political malpractice. He should have done that years ago and, in fact, he did: he appointed Kamala Harris border czar. But she didn't want to risk her important factional position doing something dopey like serving the country, so she just walked away from the job. Biden then gave it to Susan Rice (who alienated everyone) and to a bunch of other people all of whom failed and refused to take responsibility. All of those people who supposedly were his people, screwed him over instead. It's disgraceful. It says volumes about the Democratic Party's unfitness to govern. None of those people should ever work in government again.
So, if Biden could have taken action all along, why didn't he?
Because for the first two years of his Presidency, the boarder wasn't really an issue. Crossings were down because of the holdover emergency restrictions from the pandemic.
It became an issue in 2023, which is when he asked Congress to address the issue. That led to months of negotiation and ultimately the Langford-Sienema bill.
The Democrats were ready to pass it and Biden was ready to sign it. Until Trump prohibited Republicans from passing it.
Fundamentally, executive actions are temporary solutions. Laws passed by Congress are more durable. That is what Biden was seeking.
I call this spin. It was a problem well before that. He designated Kamala Harris to be border czar well before that. To piss away two years when it "isn't too bad" hoping - what? - that it will go away? In any case, a crisis solution is an immediate solution, temporary or not. That's what executive power is for.
Afghanistan: As Noah pointed out on Econ102: AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL WAS TRUMP'S POLICY, which he never did...but he did PROMISE to do it by the 2021 date. Biden KEPT THE PROMISE...and the 2021 version of the Taliban let it happen with NO ADDITIONAL US CASUALTIES (the casualties were caused by the Tajik and other tribal bands; the Taliban rounded those responsible up and executed them, more or less in a nod to our agreement).
And of course, Both Biden and Trump were RIGHT to get us the fuck outta there.
No amount of spinning can hide th fact the withdrawal was a cluster fu*k.
Biden had no problem overtuning every single policy of Trumps. He was not obligated to keep the Afghan policy.
There is a vast difference between leaving our allies in a disgraceful way vs. a long term plan for leaving.
We pulled the rug out from our Afghan allies who were doing all the dying. We are still in Japan and Germany mind you. Giving Afganistan back to the Taliban in the way we did will not prove to be good policy.
Earl, the 'Stan withdrawal was 90% completed by Trump. But not finished; left as a poison pill for Biden.
The reason our 'Stan drawdown was bloodless, was the deal Trump cut with the Taliban; revoking air support to the Afghan Army...and then standing by while 60,000 of them got slaughtered. By the time Biden came in, the Taliban had retaken everything but Kabul.
Biden didn't overturn tariffs or the tax cut.
You are correct that Biden had no obligation to go along with Trump's shitty deal with the Taliban that undermined the Afghan government.
What a shame Afghanistan wasn't handled like Biden has handled Ukraine. If there was a legit resistance to the Taliban, it wouldn't have cost much to fund them to fight the Taliban themselves.
It wouldn't be an easy fight. Fundamentalists like the Taliban are fine with any level of violence to obtain what they want.
Women sure lost out in the deal. Seems to be a recurring theme with Trump.
Biden's BIPARTISAN legislative record is unsurpassed in your lifetime. All with a 50-50 Senate. Trump promised infrastructure, Biden did it.
We are helping Ukraine fight for their freedom without our troops on the ground. It's a massive departure from policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. No troops on the ground and a just cause. Trump called Putin smart for trying to take over Ukraine. That's un-American. You complain Biden has done too little and a large portion of MAGA sides with Putin and wants us to do nothing. Trump already had his chance to get Putin out of Ukraine. He chose to extort them.
Our economy is the envy of the world. That includes inflation. His record on jobs is unsurpassed in your lifetime. Trump promised manufacturing jobs, Biden did it.
Biden rolled out the vaccines. Trump stood by while his MAGA followers refused to be safe and refused to get vaccinated. They said FU to frontline healthcare workers, the budget, the economy, their country and other Americans. Hundreds of thousands needlessly died.
The only party with any history managing deficits is Democrats. You mention spending without saying anything about tax revenue. You also don't mention what you'd cut. Social Security? Healthcare? Education? Military? Infrastructure?
Biden stepped aside for the good of the country and Democrats. Trump is an old, shitty human, shitty American and was a shitty President. Republicans couldn't care less.
Biden did not gavel HRC in as President. There was a time when the democratic process and peaceful transfer power was a core American value. Republicans said they valued states' rights. All states certified the election.
It's weird any American would support Trump.
See, the problem with this is that you're arguing this case based on things that you value, and think others should value. But I think that many (perhaps most) Americans don't value these things, or at least not as much as other things, such as inflation and the economy, and the border. "Our inflation is not as bad as the rest of the world's" is a weak argument, even if it's true.
My argument tells you that inflation is a worldwide problem that Biden has handled better than most every other advanced nation on Earth. I don't think that's a weak argument.
My argument tells you that our economy under Biden handled the recovery from the Pandemic better than every other advanced nation on Earth. I don't think that's a weak argument.
But, sure, Americans can whine about that not being good enough. They can forget that government had their backs during the Pandemic by putting money in their pockets. They can forget about an historic supply chain mess. Americans can also pretend they don't value having a job.
Americans can pretend the cheap products they have bought for decades aren't cheap because of immigrant labor. I do get that immorally separating families is fine with them. I do get that deporting spouses is fine with them. Biden did bipartisan immigration legislation. Trump and MAGA blocked it. Are you fine with that?
Americans can also pretend Trump and Republicans are going to help them. Republican philosophy is you are on your own. No help. No benefits.
Whine? These are voters, mind. To whom the government is theoretically accountable. I'm sure if they supported your side they'd be the finest people on earth.
Biden got the Infrastructure deal because 10 GOP Senators wrote him a letter telling him they want to work a deal. You have the filibuster proof majority due to them.
They were the bipartisan portion of that bill.
That's the whole point. They knew that they could work with Biden. In a bipartisan deal, both sides deserve credit.
Trump couldn't get shit done. It isn't as if Democrats have an extremist Freedom caucus. Trump either can't make a deal or couldn't care less about getting anything done.
The word of the week!
You repost the same list of items every time Noah writes something, people like myself argue with you or call out the lies or things that aren't true and you still keep doing it. Makes me wonder if you are the one with implicit bias?
Everything I post is empirically true. Your spin may be the bias I suspect you have
I never had a spin and didn't provide one, and the events you are saying are empirically true but your spin on them is biased and short on context. You know this mate. Me telling you that you leave out a lot of details is also empirically true.
And don't forget the mess in the Israel-Gaza war. Biden (or the unelected committee that pretended to be Biden) have in their fecklessness fully undermined the deterrence that we spend fifty years building up after Vietnam. Iran would never done the mass attack that they did if they still had a healthy and necessary fear of what the United States would do. The public and shameful vacillations (ironclad commitment? well, not really. Red lines? but not really!) which were clearly driven by the ebb and flow of minority factions in the party and probably juiced with enemy money) made it clear to the world that we have neither the will nor the power to back our allies. As you note, they are already starting to look at Plan B. This alone far outweighs anything good that Biden might have done.
What a load of idiotic BS.
Very persuasive.
I don’t know what anything you’re talking about in the first paragraph is. I think you’ve been stewing in some sort of online spaces that are obsessing about things that haven’t been discussed much with the public yet.
I have no idea which paragraph you mean. The about Afghanistan being a cluster f^ ck or or the one about the border and Immigration not be important until a few months ago when it became clear people hated his border policies?
Regarding immigration why didn't Republicans vote to pass the most comprehensive vorde reform in decades if they really cared? It's on all of us to hold politicians accountable. Blaming it all on Biden when these issues have existed for decades is ignorant at best and bad faith at worst.
It's astonishing to me that so many Democrats have drunk this koolaid. It's absurd to blame the political opposition for not bailing the governing party out of problems caused by its slackness and incompetence. Accountability is implemented through elections: that is, the Republicans try to get Biden to lose, and then they get to do what they think is better policy for the country. That is normal. That is what is supposed to happen. Biden is not to blame for the defects in immigration framework, but he is to blame for failing to enforce the law as it stands, or indeed to do anything to address the major crisis that brewed up on his watch. That's what a leader does, and he failed.
No!
Biden got important BIPARTISAN legislation done. That is getting both sides to compromise and help the country move forward. That's exactly how it should work.
Biden did immigration legislation, too. Trump blocked it in cahoots with the historically unproductive GOP house.
Either party can block legislation in the Senate, with a few exceptions not subject to the filibuster. It's bipartisan or it's nothing. That is simple fact.
The legislation could be bipartisan only because Biden, in his desperation, gave away virtually everything to the Republicans, thus admitting that the Democrats have been wrong all along.
Biden got a heck of a lot of bipartisan legislation done. Isn't that exactly what all of us should want? Both sides compromising to get things done for the country. Harris was in the middle of it with a 50-50 Senate.
The GOP house of these last two years has been historically unproductive. AOC is not the problem. Biden actually got bipartisan immigration legislation done. Trump and the GOP house blocked it.
So much of what you said is just plain wrong or taking entirely out of context...
You mean that Afghanistan didn’t happen or he didn’t sign a bill requiring tampons in boys bathrooms? What context is there on actually truths?
I'm not going to nitpick everything you said since I've already done this with you in the past, you take some nuggets of truth and then distort them widly to just make one side look bad and only engage in bad faith. But you are definitely taking the tampon thing totally out of context. The law, which was passed in Minnesota includes tampons to be available in bathrooms of all schools for grades 4 to 12 as a way to accommodate transgender students. It isn't only targeted at boys bathrooms. The bigger issue is that students who advocated for the bill wanted access to menstrual products without having to ask for them. Honestly if that is the worst thing Walz has done and you hate him for that, it seems a little over the top.
Amen to moving on!
Trump’s ‘sense of humor’ indeed. Who could forget him mocking a handicapped journalist at one of his rallies. Progressive overreach seems to be a theme. Banana Republicans haven’t overreached? Plan 2025 is some anodyne script. A corrupt Supreme Court, a Freedom caucus that prefers tearing things down rather than building or rebuilding, their main goal is to stymie legislation. January 6 was simply a social event, not a riot. Progressives seem to be a convenient punching bag, while the Republican Party couldn’t come up with one bite for the IRA. Really? But Republicans have 100% attendance at all the new projects’ ribbon-cutting and Photo Day. Calling wounded or killed-in-combat veterans “suckers” and “losers” isn’t overreach? Oh, well. I guess selective reasoning is the order of the day. By all means, let’s not call proposing to use the military to round-up migrants or bomb Mexico overreach. And blurbing a book about “Unhumans” isn’t what Usha Vance could dismiss as a “quip.” I guess she grew tired of working with “unhumans” at the progressive law firm in San Francisco. Nope. Move along now, no overreach to be seen here.
I really like reading your smart takes, Noah - but it's annoying when you say stuff like this :
"I realize there are progressives out there shouting apocalyptic warnings about Project 2025, Trump as a fascist dictator, and so on. I realize there is a leftist fringe who is still ready to burn down America over Gaza."
Give some examples. You say yourself that there exist fringe voices, why are you elevating them? You must know this is a stupid comparison - Party/thought leaders on the Right and fringe voices on the left. You're smarter than that.
He has previously commented on Project 2025, and how it would degrade the efficiency of the federal government. Seems he's now pooh-poohing it as a nothingburger--instead of a major "spoils system" regression that will damage the country.
Project 2025 will never be implemented even if Trump wins. It's nothing but a farrago of right-wing wish fulfillment and is dead before arrival. The Heritage Foundation will be damaged for years by this humiliating failure. I'd bet that some of the authors have already been fired.
Disagree. Former Trump Admin officials are a central part of the 2025 team, and its' policies--like a mifepristone ban--are all fairly standard as give-aways to key GOP constituencies like the Evangelicals, who will also demand--and get--a national abortion ban under Trump2.
The difference, is that this time, Heritage believed that putting it out (instead of keeping it under wraps until after the GE) would simply encourage and motivate the base, without eliciting any downsides.
The Right has been living in an ideological bubble, and because they watch only FOX and the mini-FOX's, has drunk so much of their own Kool-Aid that they actually believe their policies are popular with the general public. The 66,000 women currently being forced to carry their rapists' babies to term in Red States with abortion bans are among those who would beg to differ.
It would require Rooseveltian majorities in Congress to pass any of this stuff and live to see the following week. The Republicans won't have that, they can barely put on their shoes. This is checks and balances. No, what interests me is the wave effect. Suddenly, a lot of people have somehow read this thousand-page document that nobody ever heard of until last week, and they are warning us, at the same time, in identical language, of the existence of these Evil Thoughts and the ongoing threat that the American people might legally put The Demon Trump (who has repudiated it all) into office. It's like "the end of democracy" and "they're weird." It is clearly issued, shaped and curated by a propaganda machine. If you want to have an opinion, then have it, it's a free country. But at least it should be your own opinion.
You are mistaken that it was only "discovered" a week ago. Project 2025 was begun in 2022, and released in April, 2023--over a year ago--when multiple Left-leaning publications and think tanks began reporting on its more alarming proposals. It only reached the MSM a few months ago when the Biden and then Harris campaigns began referencing it.
Heritage has released similar conservative blueprints since c.1980; so it's nothing new, and nothing unexpected. And not every proposal is adopted by incoming conservative administrations; just most of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
You are confirming what I said, which is that the furor is a recent phenomenon that has been ginned up quite specifically as an electoral strategy. I believe that the goal of this is to terrify the white professional component of the Democratic base (especially women) and to encourage them to fear and delegitimize other Americans. It's a useful tactic for the Democrats: it does away with any need to justify their record after four years in office, or to present a positive vision for how they intend to govern. It's also a despicable one.
Why are you asking him to give examples if you *don’t* want him to elevate them? He agrees with your point - the Republican leadership is saying these dark things, while it’s fringes on the left.
Because I think there might be an unfounded bias, and going through the exercise of actually finding examples might nudge Noah into seeing this - or it could shut me up and change my priors! Noah is generally very good at showing his work by embedding links. It helped me to see what he considers "extreme" positions from Kamala by following his link.
As you would appreciate an update from Tyler, I'd appreciate an acknowledgment that this phase of the election has been manufactured by a completely compliant and undiscerning media establishment. Harris was a terrible candidate and a ghost as VP. Has she really changed that much? How would we know? She doesn't go in front of the media. And why should she? They all just write hagiographies without question. Your post today isn't quite that but it verges on it.
I think the answer for that is pretty simple. Huge swaths of the electorate care way more about getting rid of Trump than having a Democratic candidate who perfectly matches all of (or even most of) their political preferences.
I count myself as one of those people. Two months ago I would have told you that Harris is a disappointing and very uncharismatic VP and a huge liability to the 2024 Democratic ticket. I would have also told you that Biden blundered in 2020 by picking Harris when there were more competent and electable VPs available. But -- big but -- in the wake of Biden mercifully stepping aside I immediately saw how many Democrat voters had been waiting on the sidelines to stand behind anybody besides Biden, I saw the record fundraising surge, and I saw that regardless of how I felt about her personally (not that I passionately disliked her, I just thought we could do better) she was going to be the one to consolidate the party and finally represent an opportunity for the Dems to actually win.... and I was all in. I cut a check to the campaign, signed a pledge, all of that stuff.
I can completely understand people looking at this thinking "wtf? a month ago you all hated her". It's a matter of interpretation whether you want to call her rise "manufactured" or whether this is just perfectly normal coalition-building playing out in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances. But none of that is remotely as important to me as fighting so that the other candidate, who I perceive to be a seriously psychologically disturbed person who should be nowhere near the nuclear football, doesn't win in November. As another commenter wrote "Most Americans dreaded an election between a narcissist crazy man and a senile one. The reaction to having a halfway decent choice is massive relief."
Other people are welcome to have different perspectives and I didn't write all of this to convert you to Harris, but I'm just saying that there seem to be a lot of people out there who feel similarly.
As a Californian, I disagree. Harris has a long history of public service in the state, starting as a DA; then AG; then Senator. She speaks, questions witnesses and debates very well.
The long-standing talking points about Trump's supposed "humor" and "authenticity" have just been smashed to smithereens by a politician who is ACTUALLY authentic, warm and funny. Trump has always been a vicious, insecure bully, more unhinged than unfiltered. But very few politicians could accentuate this contrast better than Walz has. Certainly not Biden, not Harris, not even Shapiro or Buttigieg, who are both gifted public speakers, but who convey more righteous ambition than the warmth and genuine empathy that Walz does.
Noah, how would a Harris / Walz ticket look economically in your opinion? My read is that it would be fiscally more conservative (responsible?) than Trump, less inflationary. Not clear to me where they stand on industrial policy, extension of the IRA? Less protectionism via blanket tariffs but how would they look to contain China? Ongoing support for Ukraine? Will they be hamstrung by congress? Thanks!
"The Leftist fringe who ready to burn down America is [not] in charge of the Democratic Party right now. The messaging coming from the Harris-Walz campaign has pivoted away from the rhetoric of civil conflict"
You're confusing messaging with power. The Leftist fringe is still in control, but just like 2020 when it used Grandpa Joe to hide itself, now its using laughtrack Kamala to do the same. Politically, it's a smart move, since the woke-Democrat policies are extremely unpopular.
The Democratic Party still thinks borders are racist. They still think a woman is anyone who "says they're a woman". They still believe in 57 genders. They still favor no limits on abortion. They still want to coddle criminals. They still think America is a fundamentally racist nation. They are still postmodernists. They still reject any form of natural law limits on human behavior.
None of these things have changed. They're just not talking about it anymore. On January 21st, they'll start talking about it again.