tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231772271709016902024-03-05T05:57:03.451-05:00The Free Market MillennialA young adult's take on the state of American politics...from the right of center, for a change. Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-70849548737415844102020-10-10T14:28:00.000-04:002020-10-10T14:28:07.825-04:00Now We Broke the Supreme Court, Too<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2OAKAEAvnQkOLZIA338FqJmBCLb5ZKey37aCNBGtp8sViJAx8GXHITy-eOSg7J-Vjm4Ais-bRS5r9xDT94qwJOcBHQaCmxASyltugYzx2_iHASLrszB5W3y1DlTVlPsMvgxnObdy-p_j2/s560/Ginsburg-Scalia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2OAKAEAvnQkOLZIA338FqJmBCLb5ZKey37aCNBGtp8sViJAx8GXHITy-eOSg7J-Vjm4Ais-bRS5r9xDT94qwJOcBHQaCmxASyltugYzx2_iHASLrszB5W3y1DlTVlPsMvgxnObdy-p_j2/s320/Ginsburg-Scalia.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo Credit: Stephen R. Brown/Associated Press<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>In the year 2020, it seems that Murphy’s Law has become not
merely an occasional nuisance but a binding norm. As norms continue to die
violent deaths all around us, it almost seems logical that in such a
relentlessly cruel year, this would be the one norm that sticks around. It is against
this backdrop—a global pandemic, an economic crisis, a bitter and contemptuous
presidential election—that we find ourselves with yet another <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/amy-coney-barretts-supreme-court-confirmation-schedule-a-timeline">empty seat</a> on the
Supreme Court. And we know just how hard it is to fill one of those these days.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The last time this happened, I wrote on this blog about the
death of the United States Senate as a storied institution. In the wake of now-Justice
Kavanaugh’s confirmation, what was once heralded as “The World’s Greatest
Deliberative Body” had degenerated into the same cesspool of polarized
squabbling that typifies the rest of our nation. And now, with the death of
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—an all-time legend on the Court—I fear we are on
the cusp of irrevocably breaking what might already be the last institution
standing. How did this happen?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The answer, at first glance, seems quite simple. It all
started when Justice Antonin Scalia—another all-time legend—died in February
2016 and the Republican-controlled Senate refused to grant so much as a hearing
to Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee for the seat. Things only
degraded once President Donald Trump was elected and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees so the
Republicans could ram through their preferred candidate, now-Justice Neil
Gorsuch. It was, in many ways, a stolen seat. Then came the mess surrounding Justice
Kavanaugh, which I will not rehash here. These overtly political machinations
made the notion of an impartial, nonpartisan Supreme Court seem like a sham. In
the wake of Justice Ginsburg’s death, and the subsequent rush to replace her
with staunch judicial conservative Amy Coney Barrett, that veneer of judicial comity
seems all but gone. But is the answer really that clean? Did this process
really only start four and a half years ago? Or should we look further into the
past to find the roots of our highest court’s degradation? Well, of course we
should, because problems this grave don’t merely arise over the course of a few
years. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One common refrain I have heard among my more liberal
friends in reaction to Justice Ginsburg’s passing is that it is profoundly
unjust for the death of one 87-year-old woman to imperil the rights and liberties
of entire classes of Americans—that any system of government which allows this
to happen is fundamentally flawed. I would agree, if that were truly the system
of government we were supposed to have. But here’s the thing: that’s not how it’s
supposed to be. That’s not how our federal government was ever intended to
operate. Our Constitution established the Supreme Court for fairly narrow purposes:
to serve as the court of last resort on appeals in particularly important cases
and to have original jurisdiction in niche areas like consular law. Indeed, in
the Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp">referred</a> to the judiciary as the “least
dangerous” branch because of how limited its reach was. “[T]he judiciary, from
the nature of its functions,” he said, “will always be the least dangerous to
the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a
capacity to annoy or injure them.” It wasn’t until <i>Marbury v. Madison</i> in
1803 that the Court even had the power to review and invalidate laws—and that’s
only because Chief Justice John Marshall (another absolute legend) straight-up
invented it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That power, while awesome indeed, exists nowhere in the text
of our Constitution and was never intended to be the primary means by which the
rights and liberties of everyday Americans are to be protected. The
Constitution <i>itself</i>, by way of the Bill of Rights and through its
careful enumeration of federal powers, was supposed to serve that function.
When its failings became evident before and during the Civil War, we changed
it. The Reconstruction Amendments even more forcefully guarded individual
rights, this time against state government infringement as well, and gave the
power to enforce those protections to <i>Congress</i>, not the courts. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So am I saying that Chief Justice Marshall broke the Supreme
Court when he articulated his vision of judicial review? Of course not. Judicial
review is a cornerstone of our unique form of government and when used responsibly
is as powerful a protector of individual liberty as any mechanism in our Constitution.
Judicial review has been the death knell of many horrendous laws—laws that
segregated schools, prohibited interracial marriages, and protected government
officials from public criticism. But it has also led to some equally horrendous
outcomes—the Court has upheld laws allowing for the internment of Japanese
Americans, the incarceration of individuals for minor drug crimes, and overturned
key portions of laws allowing us to regulate our elections. And the effect of
this power has had a distortionary effect on our political process. Momentous
policy decisions that could have been more cleanly debated and resolved through
our legislatures ended up at the Court instead. Time and time again, those who
found their positions to be losers in the field of public debate—whether their
positions were righteous or not—turned to the courts to achieve victory by
other means. That’s how you end up with an environment where individual seats on the Supreme Court become important enough for political parties to steal them. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Which brings me back to RBG. Policy goals achieved through
the judicial process are inherently fragile and often fleeting. That’s because
it’s easier to overturn a court decision than it is to repeal a law already on
the books. Just look at Obamacare—the Republicans couldn’t overturn it when they
had control of the Presidency, the House, and the Senate, but the Supreme Court
could have destroyed it in one fell swoop back in 2012 if Chief Justice Roberts
had changed his vote. That’s a lot of power for one guy to have. And that’s
illustrative of the dangers inherent in leaving too much up to the whims of unelected
judges. And that implicates other problems as well, namely that Supreme Court
decisions are inherently undemocratic. When gravitational shifts in policy come
from nine unelected geriatrics, there tends to be backlash. In fact, that was
one of Justice Ginsburg’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade.html">main criticisms</a> of the Court’s ruling in <i>Roe v.
Wade</i>. When seven unelected old white men—rightly or wrongly, that’s up to
you to decide—summarily invalidated all abortion restrictions nationwide, it inspired
significant blowback. (For my friends who, like me, support a woman’s right to
choose, think instead of <i>Citizens United</i> and how that made you feel.) My
point is not that one of these decisions was right and the other wrong, but
that they made sweeping policy determinations with input from exactly zero
American voters. Decisions that reach too far too fast, Justice Ginsburg said,
don’t do much to truly serve the rights they protect. “Doctrinal limbs too swiftly
shaped,” she said, “may prove unstable.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And that is how we broke the Supreme Court. By allowing
polarization to fester and poison the well of our legislatures, rendering Congress
completely and totally unable to govern, we put our biggest questions of policy
into the hands of an institution unable to adequately guard them against the
backlash it inherently creates. Now, I know what a lot of you would say. You’d
want to point out that when it comes to an inability and unwillingness to
properly govern, there is one party in Congress that has been much worse than
the other, especially of late. And you’d be entirely correct. I’m not going to
stoop to my usual penchant for both-sides-ism this time. But my point still
stands. We are a country divided, with two slices of the electorate that have
now lost all respect for each other and have no inclination to look for any
common ground. From that awful state we have elected legislators with no
ability or desire to work together, solve problems, and govern. And as a
necessary result of that impasse we find ourselves living under a system of
government where the death of one 87-year-old woman has left everyday Americans
fearing for their rights. But that’s not the Supreme Court’s fault. It’s ours. <o:p></o:p></p>Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-59100778949602982992020-05-12T17:58:00.003-04:002020-05-13T14:36:36.258-04:00Everyone is Losing the Coronavirus Culture War<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I had a very enlightening conversation a couple of
weeks ago with a friend of mine, someone who is significantly to my left
politically. We were talking about the same topics everyone is talking about these
days: the coronavirus pandemic, our government’s response to it, and the ever-present
specter of a reopening economy. But what made the conversation so enlightening
was not that either of us learned anything new about public health or macroeconomics,
or even that the two of us agreed that having to choose between the two was a
false dichotomy. What was enlightening was that we, as two politically distinct
individuals, could agree on anything at all when discussing these things. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As I struggle to take in the news each day (as I’m
sure all of you do too), what worries me most is not the fact that the
coronavirus has already killed more Americans than the flu did all of last year
or that we still don’t fully understand how the virus operates on the human
body. Rather, I am most frightened by the fact that America’s toxic political
culture—in which we as a people are divided sharply along partisan lines, with
each camp existing in a contained, parallel universe that operates with a
different baseline of truth and reality than the other camp’s—has extended its
cancer-like spread beyond purely political matters and now dictates how the
American public is processing a literal global pandemic. This is, for painful
lack of a better word, dangerously unhealthy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We are not going to be able to recover easily—or perhaps
<i>ever</i>—if we as a nation cannot agree on whether the virus is real, if it
is dangerous, if the experts have our best interests at heart, and if we should
want to minimize the loss of life from this worldwide threat. As a person who
leans strongly libertarian in my politics, I sympathize with the reaction of
many on the political right to the strict and pervasive lockdown orders issued by
governors all over the country. It all happened so swiftly and with such rhetorical
force, accompanied by constantly shifting projections, goals, and deadlines,
with very little in the way of satisfying explanations. Such abrupt and heavy-handed
state action is galling and offends basic conservative notions of autonomy, deliberation,
and the consent of the governed. But none of that automatically means it was
wrong, or that it is in our best interest to ignore it. Just because you have a
philosophical objection to your governor using emergency powers to keep you out
of restaurants and hair salons doesn’t mean you are doing what’s best for you,
your children, and your neighbors by disobeying it. In fact, it might mean that
there is an actual emergency—one so novel and unexpected that even people who
are in the best position to understand it didn’t immediately know how to properly
respond to it. And if that’s the case, then we as laypeople <i>certainly</i>
don’t know what’s best. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And therein lies the dangerous assumption underlying
so much of the anti-lockdown rhetoric. Those who want to rush to reopen America’s
economy seem to think that medical experts (especially those working for the
government) don’t really know what’s best for us or, if they do, that they don’t
have the best interests of ordinary citizens at heart. Again, I am not devoid
of sympathy with this view. Our “expert class” has betrayed us time and time
again: they told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; they told
us that the housing market was healthy in 2007; they told us Donald Trump could
never be president. But when they’re telling you that by leaving your homes and
assembling in crowded places you are increasing the spread of a deadly disease,
do you want to take that risk and assume they’re wrong? Do you really want to
believe that medical doctors have suddenly abandoned their oaths to do no harm?
Are you truly willing to believe that our government has elected to ravage our nation’s
economy to serve some elaborate hoax? Are you blind enough to dismiss as coincidence
the fact that the only people downplaying the effects of the virus are those
with a political incentive to do so? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But I’m not writing this post just to wag my finger at
the discontents who want haircuts. I also take umbrage at my more liberal
friends who dismiss concerns over the economic effects of the pandemic as a “conservative”
talking point. This couldn’t be farther from the truth and only exacerbates our
country’s destructive political divide. Gun-toting protesting man-children
aside, voicing concern about the economy doesn’t mean you’re a domestic
terrorist and certainly doesn’t mean you want to sacrifice grandma to the stock
market. Indeed, as so many of my liberal friends were fond of pointing out before
this crisis came around (but are notably silent on now), the economy is more
than the stock market. (Indeed, we don't even need to send people back to work for <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/us-stock-futures-rise-slightly-after-nasdaq-composite-claws-back-2020-losses-jobs-report-ahead.html" target="_blank">stocks to rise</a>.)The economy is your friend who drives for Uber to pay
rent and your neighbor who works at a nail salon and your cousin who prefers to
buy her gluten-free flour at Kroger instead of Whole Foods. Our economy is
fueled by everyday Americans who work hard and spend their money at ballparks, movie
theaters, and restaurants. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And these well-meaning government lockdowns have the
mortifying potential to make all of those things disappear forever. Every day,
I am filled with existential dread over the plight of the world-class
restaurant scene in my adopted hometown. It is not an exaggeration for me to
say that I very well may have already eaten at each of my favorite restaurants
in Richmond for the last time. Businesses that rely on mass gatherings of
people to generate paper-thin profit margins—live theatre and restaurants
especially—simply cannot survive even a few more weeks of our current status
quo. The Nordstrom where I used to work has already <a href="https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/nordstrom-may-permanently-close-short-pump-town-center-location" target="_blank">closed permanently</a>. J. Crew
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/business/j-crew-bankruptcy/index.html" target="_blank">filed for bankruptcy</a> last week. All of these closures (and I assure you, there
are a staggering amount yet to come) will mean lost jobs, lost tax revenue, and
ruined livelihoods. Twenty million Americans <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/08/jobs-report-april-2020.html" target="_blank">lost their jobs</a> in April. The
jobless rate is approaching Great Depression levels. And we’re still in the
early stages. The long-term effects will be catastrophic, and no sector of our economy
will be spared. Smaller and less prestigious colleges and universities will
close, movie viewing will become an exclusively home-based activity, and
millions of jobs will simply never come back. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The worst part is that I don’t think enough people who
are making policy decisions (and those who are so quick to condemn concerns
about our economy) understand just how bad this will get if our current state
of affairs continues for much longer. There will come a time when we must ask
ourselves the coldly utilitarian question of which option will cause fewer deaths:
keeping everyone in quarantine or opening things back up. This isn’t as simple
as the train-track problem from your freshman ethics class; there are millions
of people on both sides of the fork. And regardless of the answer, our
government has a responsibility to spend whatever amount of money is necessary
to minimize the number of shuttered businesses and lost jobs. Because no lockdown
is worth it if there isn’t an economy to reopen once it’s over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And so we find ourselves in a uniquely dangerous moment,
facing disease, death, and worldwide economic depression at a time when we have
no faith in the institutions that must help us through this crisis and no faith
in our fellow Americans who must get through it with us. If we can’t find some
way to step back, take a hard look around us, and realize that we really are in
the same boat, that we really are at our best when we care about one another,
and that we have to pull together and act as one nation to survive this, then
we’re doomed. For some time now, the American people have been teetering on the
edge of a cliff, inching ever closer to the status of a failed body politic. Turns
out it might just be an invisible virus that gives us that last nudge into
oblivion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-55220722732610971572018-10-31T00:19:00.001-04:002018-10-31T00:19:03.882-04:00Blue Wave: Point Break<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Well, here we are folks. Usually, I have
quite a bit more to say after an election than before one, and I suspect this
year will certainly be no exception. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking particularly
hard about this one, and that’s really saying something. This election is, in
many ways, an enigma. A sizable amount of uncertainty still lingers as we pull
into the final straightaway. Will there be a Blue Wave? Will the Republicans
hold the Senate? Are the polls accurate? Is that Republican from Virginia’s 5<sup>th</sup>
District <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i> into Bigfoot porn? Is
it weird that I’ve probably lost the most sleep over that last question? Let’s tackle
some of this. I’ll be brief—I want to save up some of my
election-analysis-babble for the days after this all goes down. But here’s
where my thoughts have been the past few weeks: Yes, I think there will be a
sizable (but not tsunami-like) Blue Wave. Yes, I think the Democrats will take
the House. No, I think they have almost no shot at taking the Senate. And yes,
I think the polls are generally accurate—insofar as most races will be decided
within the polls’ margins of error. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Take a look at the <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/house/2018_elections_house_map.html" target="_blank">RealClearPolitics House election page</a>. You’ll see that, at its core, the race for the House is actually
quite close. Adding up all the “safe,” “likely,” and “lean,” seats for each
party only separates the Democrats from the GOP by 5 seats. It’s when you look
at those tossups that it becomes clear why the Dems are the odds-on favorites
to take over: 29 of those 32 seats are currently in Republican hands. (This is
to say nothing of the fact that 10 of the 16 “lean” Dem seats are currently in
Republican hands.) Of those 29 tossups, nine are open, meaning there is no
incumbent. This is usually the first sign of a wave election—members of the
majority party see the writing on the wall and decide it’s time to retire or
abandon ship. Republicans had a whopping <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/here-are-all-the-republicans-retiring-from-congress-in-2018/" target="_blank">26 such retirements</a> this year, a total
that rises to an astonishing 39 if you count every Republican who left their
seat to run for another office. Compare this with only 18 open Democratic
seats, and it’s obvious which party had a disadvantage out of the gate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But why, you ask, can there still be so
much uncertainty? Well, first of all, read this nice little blurb by <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/30/uncertainties_loom_as_midterms_enter_final_stretch.html" target="_blank">my idol Sean Trende</a> if you want the expert’s take. And I’ll shamelessly parrot some of
his points here, too. Basically, at least as it pertains to House races, we’re
looking at polls that come disproportionately from one source—The New York Times/Siena
College partnership. Do I think their polls are high-quality? Without question,
but that’s not really the point. Any pollster, however prescient and scientific
they may be, is still <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">guessing</i> as to
what the electorate that shows up to vote is going to look like. If most of the
polls we refer to are making the same guess, and that guess turns out to be
even a few percentage points off, then we end up getting the whole thing wrong.
That’s why it’s always good to look at polls in the aggregate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Still, to my mind, the question isn’t
really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if</i> the Democrats will take the
House. It’s just a matter of how large their majority is going to be. Give them
half of those tossups, and they have a razor-thin majority. Give them all 32,
and they have a comfortable one. My guess—this is me going on record—is that
the Democrats will probably win around two-thirds of those tossups. Generally,
in a wave or wave-like election, there is a late break toward the winning party
by undecided and independent voters. I remember there being a similar amount of
polling uncertainty going into the 2014 midterms, only for there to be a
massive break toward the Republicans as they took the Senate and expanded their
House majority. Look for a healthy—but, again, not quite tsunami-like—break toward
the Dems this next Tuesday. Keep in mind, too, that when this kind of break
happens, the effect will be seen across <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all
races</i>, meaning the tide could spill over into some of those “lean” and even
“likely” Republican seats. If you want an example, those of you watching this
election from Virginia like me should take a look at the races in the 5<sup>th</sup>,
7<sup>th</sup>, and 2<sup>nd</sup> Districts. If the 5<sup>th</sup> goes blue,
it’s a definite blue ripple. If the 7<sup>th</sup> flips, it’s a wave. And if
the 2<sup>nd</sup> switches hands, we’re in full-on bloodbath mode. (The 10<sup>th</sup>
is a foregone conclusion already.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As for the <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/senate/2018_elections_senate_map.html" target="_blank">Senate</a>, the Democrats have
almost no hope, in spite of the fact that they will probably flip a seat, or
even two. Their problem is that the map is really skewed in the GOP’s favor. In
fact, it may just be the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-democrats-explainer/democrats-face-almost-impossible-map-to-retake-u-s-senate-idUSKCN1L920M" target="_blank">most unfair Senate map</a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of all time</i>. The Republicans have just 9 seats to defend, only one
of which is in a state that voted for Hillary Clinton, while the Democrats are
playing defense across a staggering 24 seats, 10 of which are in states that
voted for Trump. Talk about a handicap. I’d say given these conditions and the
current state of the polls, the Republicans will probably end up with 52 or 53
seats when all is said and done. I actually think Kyrsten Sinema will pull off
the major feat of becoming the first Democrat to represent Arizona in the
Senate in 30 years, but it won’t matter when the GOP picks up seats in North
Dakota (almost certain) and Missouri (call it a hunch). The only other pickup
opportunity the Democrats have is Dean Heller, the lone blue state Republican
in Nevada. Call me crazy, but I see him eking out a win a la 2012. And never, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> sleep on Lex Luthor…I mean, Rick
Scott. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6CdXu43cfsUy7enRk6tbWLR0Tm-anLOFdOp7Kd9rLg4IdN1UW4I6HuwVtJtneBos-9uXCm0tSMp6mMTaRbmlMeodY8egNOUTB6q-x67Cew9XPQFRLWqXhfFPNG0Bqkn_T44uscb0J8Bk2/s1600/Rick_Scott.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="455" data-original-width="810" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6CdXu43cfsUy7enRk6tbWLR0Tm-anLOFdOp7Kd9rLg4IdN1UW4I6HuwVtJtneBos-9uXCm0tSMp6mMTaRbmlMeodY8egNOUTB6q-x67Cew9XPQFRLWqXhfFPNG0Bqkn_T44uscb0J8Bk2/s320/Rick_Scott.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to think of it as 'world optimization'." - Lex Luthor</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><br /> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I could give you another meaty paragraph
about governor’s races, but I’m already approaching 1100 words so I’ll just say
this: the Democrats will make some sizable gains here. This will especially
come into play come 2020, when we have our next census and state legislatures
start drawing new Congressional districts (this is actually quite important, so
don’t think I’m throwing this away because it doesn’t matter).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And now, for my endorsements: I’ll be
voting for Tim Kaine for Senate for the second time, which blows my mind. He’s
a solid Senator who represents the interests of my state well. He’s a liberal
for sure, but a reasonable one with significant bipartisan appeal (Hillary
chose him as her running mate for a reason). He’s also running against a
carpetbagger, faux-neo-Confederate windbag who has precisely zero exciting
ideas, so that helps my case too. I’ll also cast a ballot for my incumbent
Congressman, Democrat Don McEachin, who similarly reflects the interests of his
district. He has admirably served Richmond, the city I love, for over two
decades and has been particularly active on environmental issues during his
first term in the House. If there’s one area where I’ll let a Dem be a Dem,
that’s a winner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Last of all, I’ll give you some fun races
to watch on Tuesday that I’ll be paying particular attention to:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">California’s
39<sup>th</sup></span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
can a female Korean immigrant keep the LA suburbs in Republican hands?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Florida’s
27<sup>th</sup></span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
what’s more important in Miami—being a Democrat or being able to speak Spanish?
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Utah’s
4<sup>th</sup></span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
why oh why do the Democrats always have a shot in this blood-red district?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Virginia’s
7<sup>th</sup></span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
you think felons have it hard? Dave Brat has ads attacking him on TV!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Georgia
Governor</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
is it time for America’s first black woman governor?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Wisconsin
Governor</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
remember Scott Walker? Yeah, me neither! <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Arizona
Senate</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
will the Grand Canyon State elect its first woman senator? (Actually yes, both
candidates are women.)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Florida
Senate</span></u></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:
I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">told</i> you not to sleep on Rick Scott<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-86458206250560944922018-10-06T14:51:00.004-04:002018-10-06T17:37:41.803-04:00Kavanaugh and the Death Knell of American Institutions<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hello, reader (or readers, if I’m being
especially optimistic). This is usually the time and place where I would go
through the ritualistic motions of acknowledging that I haven’t written
anything in a very long time, blame it on the toxic nature of our current
political climate, and throw out some nasty adjectives to describe our
president. I won’t bother you with that today; I’ve done it enough times and I’m
quite sure anyone who knows me or has read any of my past missives knows
exactly where I stand on contemporary American politics. So let’s just get to
the point. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m pretty sure the United States Senate
died this week. Mind you, what was once known as “The World’s Greatest Deliberative
Body” had been on life support since at least 2013, when then-Majority Leader
Harry Reid invoked the “nuclear option” to allow most executive branch nominees
to be confirmed with a simple majority vote. But things have gone uniformly
downhill from there, with the Merrick Garland stonewalling followed by current
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell extending the nuclear option to Supreme Court
nominees last year and now <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">You know what I’m talking about—the Kavanaugh
Debacle. From Cory Booker’s “I am Spartacus” moment to Lindsey Graham’s Tyra-Banks-level
screed, the confirmation hearings for retired Justice Anthony Kennedy’s
replacement have been an epic display of partisan meltdown. We all already hate
each other so much, and the raw tribalism fueling that hate has now spread, virus-like,
across our entire federal government. First it was the House, then the Presidency,
and now—thanks to Brett Kavanaugh and the Beach Week Ralph Club—it has reached
the Senate, and through it, the Supreme Court. By my count, that leaves us with
exactly zero governing institutions free of partisan taint. This is bad, folks.
This is really bad. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’d really rather not wade too deep into
the matter of the accusations surrounding Judge Kavanaugh. In our current state
of play, it’s more than a little tricky for a straight, white male to offer any
kind of opinion on sexual assault without getting into some kind of trouble.
This is especially true if what I have to say is something other than
unequivocally believing Dr. Ford and categorically dismissing Judge Kavanaugh
as a boorish, lying rapist. (Or, alternatively, I risk being branded a coward
by the other side if I give Dr. Ford even one inch.) That, in and of itself, is
a problem—and yet another symptom of our hyper-divided polity. As with everything
else, essentially no room has been left for middle ground here, which is
particularly troubling considering we are talking about an event that happened 35
years ago with almost no way to know definitively what actually occurred. So
let me ask just this one question: is it really so bad that I believe that both
Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh told the truth last week? Is it really impossible
that Dr. Ford was sexually assaulted and remembers it vividly while her
assailant was so drunk—or the event so insignificant in his adolescent eyes—that
he doesn’t have any recollection of it whatsoever? Because I watched both her
testimony and his and that’s what I saw. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I reject this kind of unconstructive and
harmfully dichotomous reasoning (if it can even rightfully be called that). I
don’t have to choose between a Christine Blasey Ford who is a paid agent of
Democratic sabotage and a Brett Kavanaugh who is a calculated, professional
perjurer. I do, however, agree with Ross Douthat and Frank Bruni at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i> that our country and our
institutions would be best served if Judge Kavanaugh were removed from
consideration, regardless of what happened that night three and a half decades
ago. We deserve—no, we desperately <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i>—to
confirm a Supreme Court Justice who is at least seen as legitimate (if not
necessarily agreeable) by both sides. And let’s be clear—these accusations have
rendered Judge Kavanaugh illegitimate and his fiery, partisan testimony has
disqualified him for this position. Of course, with Senators Collins and
Manchin announcing yesterday that they will vote “yes” on Kavanaugh, his
ascension to the high court seems all but assured. And that’s a damn shame,
because now we’ll have a forever tainted Justice on our Supreme Court, one who
could trigger a culture war Armageddon if he goes anywhere near <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roe v. Wade</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So yes, I believe this represents the simultaneous
death knell of the Senate and the Supreme Court. Whose fault is it? There’s
plenty of blame to go around. As I mentioned earlier, Harry Reid got this train
rolling (or, really, Bill Frist did when he first raised the specter of the
nuclear option back in 2005). Mitch McConnell did nothing to help with his
audacious roll of the dice on Merrick Garland and, later, Neil Gorsuch. And now
we have Dianne Feinstein entering the fray with a nasty, below-the-belt blow of
her own. Yes, as I’ve said, I find Dr. Ford to be a credible witness and I
believe every word she said, but I don’t think I will ever be convinced that
the timing of Senator Feinstein’s release of the allegations was anything other
than sheer political calculation. She held onto that letter from Dr. Ford for
weeks, only to make its contents known at precisely the moment at which
Republicans would be unable to withdraw Kavanaugh from consideration and put
forward another nominee before the midterm elections. It looks dirty,
underhanded, and quite frankly horribly disrespectful toward Dr. Ford. Did the
Republicans deserve it after what they did to Merrick Garland? Probably. But
the Senate is supposed to be above that kind of eye-for-an-eye pettiness and
Senator Feinstein should be ashamed for handling a woman’s courageous account of
sexual assault the way she did, whatever her reasons were.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But, if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m
having a great deal of trouble working myself up into my usual “the Democrats
have been no better than the Republicans in the way they’ve handled this”
fervor. I’m just so tired of all of this—the anger, the vitriol, the Facebook
newsfeed littered with arguments and memes spreading misinformation to
literally thousands of people at a time. And I hate that our governing
institutions have sunk to that same low. If we can’t respect each other and we
can’t trust the governing institutions that have kept our country standing for
nearly two and a half centuries, then what’s left? I don’t know, but I do know
that when Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed later today, it’ll only make things
worse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Well, that’s it for today’s uplifting rhetoric.
Here are a couple of quality links if you want some further reading on
Kavanaugh: <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-kavanaugh-debacle-christine-blasey-ford-supreme-court/" target="_blank">from Rod Dreher at The American Conservative</a>; <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/me-too/570520/" target="_blank">Caitlin Flanagan at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Atlantic</i></a>; and the aforementioned conversation between <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/18/opinion/kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">Ross Douthat and Frank Bruni at <i>The New York Times</i></a>. And let’s not forget my good friend <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cebergin/posts/10213105024051308" target="_blank">CJ Bergin’s sober analysis </a>via
viral Facebook post. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Stay tuned for my next post (yes, I’m
actually planning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">another one</i>) in
which I endorse a couple Democrats (gasp!) and talk about the forthcoming
electoral bloodbath next month. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-32669527599360754472017-08-25T11:45:00.003-04:002017-08-25T11:45:49.203-04:00All the President’s (Klans)men<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have mentioned many times before in this
blog that I find precious little joy in writing during the Age of Trump. I’m
not honestly sure, but I feel as if I’ve opened up every blog post in recent
memory with some variation of that line. I’ve spent the last two years well
outside of my comfort zone—I’ve trashed the Republican Party, condemned the hostile
takeover of said party by Trump and his fascist goons, and last month I even
found myself discussing the merits of tweeting a WWE gif that shows the
President of the United States punching someone with the CNN logo for a face. This
is madness; it is the world turned upside down. And now, as I desperately look
anywhere for a reprieve, I find myself called upon to tackle the easy,
always-enjoyable topic of white supremacy. Yes, folks, that was sarcasm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m quite sure I don’t have to explain to
any of you why I’m writing about such a grisly topic this week. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fights-in-advance-of-saturday-protest-in-charlottesville/2017/08/12/155fb636-7f13-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.131e1f6147fc" target="_blank">events in Charlottesville</a> earlier this month were
a stark distillation of our hyper-polarized nation at its very worst—a heinous
display of racial animus, violent unrest, and pure, undisguised hate. This wasn’t
just harmless picketing and chanting; it was terrorism. It left a dozen and a
half people seriously injured and unthinkably cost an American citizen her
life. I am shocked and ashamed that an act of such blatant retrograde bigotry
occurred merely an hour away from the city I call home. But, as I’ve said, we’re
in the Age of Trump.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And how does Trump respond to a gathering
of violent white supremacists in his backyard? By <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-charlottesville-statement_us_59935477e4b009141640ab00" target="_blank">blaming violence “on both sides,”</a> only condemning white supremacists a few days
later, and then giving a press conference doubling down on his initial impulse
to distract us from homegrown race terrorists by pointing fingers at the “antifa”
(anti-fascist) counter-protestors. He even went so far as to say there were “very
fine people” on both sides, which presumably implies there are some “very fine”
race terrorists out there. This is insane, unpresidential, and mind-boggling in
its obtuseness. Here we see a certain President of the United States—a man who
has been consistently dogged by accusations of racism, fascism, and xenophobia—given
a golden opportunity to speak out against all of the unsavory elements with
which he finds himself associated, and what did he do? He took the silver
platter that had been handed to him and he took a giant, steaming, metaphorical
shit on it. He spat in the eyes of anyone (read: most everyone) who is offended
or outright harmed by the behavior of overt white supremacists. He spurned the
memory of the American citizen who was <i>murdered</i>
by one of them. Make no mistake: if it hadn’t been clear already, this man is
not worthy of any American’s respect. He is a fraud, a worm, a charlatan of the
lowest order, a speck of filth more debased than the dirt beneath the soles of
my shoes. That’s what a good condemnation looks like. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But that’s not even what upsets me the
most. What truly baffles me is that I find various denizens of the American
Right—bloggers, journalists, Facebook commenters, friends—following Trump’s
lead in steering the discussion about Charlottesville away from white
supremacists and toward vague Black Lives Matter and antifa bogeymen. Not only
is this a false equivalence (a darling term of the American Left that I use
with just a little bit of vomit in my mouth), it is completely tone-deaf and
not worth anyone’s time. And that should be a no-brainer. When a group of
avowed white supremacists stage a protest, turn violent, and plow a car into an
innocent American citizen, I find myself caring very little what the “other
side” was doing to incite them. If some of my cohabitants on the Right want to
have a discussion about the tactics used by BLM and antifa and whether or not
they are misguided, that’s all well and good. It’s a discussion I’m very
willing to have, but for god’s sake, not now. That particular topic has almost nothing
to do with what happened in Charlottesville. And attempting to distract from a
very real act of domestic, white supremacist terrorism is not only harmful, but
constitutes an act of complicity in that terrorism. The first, second, and
third thoughts we should all be having as reasonable human beings in response
to these events are: <i>white supremacy and
terrorism are bad</i>. This one’s easy, folks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I increasingly fear, though, that this is
what being a part of the American Right has come to be. These days, we find
ourselves called upon to defend white supremacist terrorists. They are, after
all, a vocal and important part of President Trump’s base. What’s more, it
seems they have hijacked the ongoing discussion regarding Southern heritage as
well. (Let’s not forget the rally in Charlottesville was organized in response
to the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.) As someone who has defended
both the Republican Party’s small-government platform and the right of
Southerners to preserve elements of their Confederate heritage, I despair at both
of these developments. It is quite impossible for me to stand by a party and a
cause that are both in bed with the scum of the Earth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ve written before about the relationship
between Confederate memorabilia and race terrorists. In “We Are Not Dylan Roof,”
I defended Southern heritage as a product of regional pride, not racist hate. I
did, however, ask this question: “Is there perhaps some unseen font of
particularly vile racism that lurks somewhere in American society—somewhere
where Dylann Roof was able to tap into it and feed his own demented hatred?”
While I thought then that the answer to that question might very well be yes,
never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be confirmed in such stark
and blatant terms a mere two years later. In a weird way, maybe I owe President
Trump a thank you for bringing this scum to light. They have helped me realize
that even though a well-intentioned Southerner like myself can admire a statue
of Robert E. Lee without harboring any resentment toward by brothers and
sisters of color, this doesn’t mean we might not be better off without public
memorials of past sins. And maybe I was a fool in the first place for believing
that if I defended the display of monuments to men who fought to own slaves, I wasn’t
throwing my lot in with a bunch of full-throated racists and bigots. Obviously
I was always aware that a small, unsavory minority of the American Right
consisted of this ilk, but I never thought I’d live to see a time where they
were brought enough into the mainstream to be vocal and accepted as legitimate.
Well, if that’s truly the case—if defending my old party and my heritage puts
me in bed with open white supremacists—then I’m out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Postscript:
I know it probably seems downright vapid for me to act surprised that I’m being
joined by racists in defending statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and
Jefferson Davis, but I promise you I’m going for something more nuanced than
that. In my view, even if Confederate statues were constructed by white
supremacists one hundred or so years ago, a contemporary defense of Confederate
statues would ideally come from a sense of regional pride and historical
inclusion, not white supremacy. Perhaps I was naïve in thinking that most of my
allies felt the same way. Maybe most of them do feel this way, but that’s
irrelevant if they’re going to waste their time obfuscating about what happened
in Charlottesville. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-26018158812783046772017-07-11T17:09:00.006-04:002017-07-11T17:14:09.004-04:00CNN is Fake News<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FogXhk_Vx4k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">First of all, please let me explain. To
anyone who has spoken to me about politics more than once (or, really, at all),
my general loathing of the news media should be quite obvious. I imagine the
majority of my posts on this blog would make that fact rather self-evident as
well. Nevertheless, I should probably endeavor to offer some sort of
justification if I’m going to do something as inflammatory as slapping CNN with
the Trumpian epithet of “fake news.” And don’t fret, friends—I think I can do
it without actually defending the President. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ll start off by making one thing
perfectly clear: I unequivocally believe that it is unbecoming of the office of
President of the United States to tweet personal attacks, unsubstantiated
claims, or late-night rants in the manner preferred by our current
commander-in-chief. From the nonsense of <i>covfefe</i>
to the boorishness of his <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/29/media/mika-brzezinski-donald-trump-tweet/index.html" target="_blank">middle-school-level attacks</a> on <i>Morning Joe</i> hosts
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, our President has put on a master class in
how to debase himself and his office before the eyes of the internet (read: the
world). But just because President Trump’s tweets are unprecedented and wholly
unprofessional does not mean that they should automatically dominate our
24-hour news cycle. This is where the mainstream media and I apparently
disagree. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Cable news in particular has made a
veritable sport of breathlessly covering President Trump’s Twitter
misadventures, with each major network vying to outdo the others in bumping
more important storylines in favor of a roundtable discussion regarding POTUS’s
most recent 140-character outburst. Never mind Senate Republicans’ ongoing
efforts to complete a <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/341306-senate-gop-eyes-obamacare-repeal-vote-next-week" target="_blank">Congressional repeal</a>
of the Affordable Care Act or North Korea’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/07/how-isolated-north-korea-managed-to-build-an-icbm-that-could-reach-alaska/?utm_term=.d2f7125de7bc" target="_blank">recent test of an ICBM</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>theoretically capable of reaching Alaska. What really
matters is keeping a <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-updates-trump-tweets-monday-july-10-htmlstory.html" target="_blank">daily list</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>of
everything he tweeted, retweeted, and didn’t tweet at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The circus reached a fever pitch last week
when President Trump <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/02/media/president-trump-cnn-video/index.html" target="_blank">tweeted a gif</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>of an old
Wrestlemania clip that showed him punching an individual whose face had been
replaced with the CNN logo. Now, I must admit there are some newsworthy
elements here—a President who not only has been on Wrestlemania but also
decides to use that footage as ammunition in his ongoing feud with a major news
network is certainly worth mentioning (and mind-bogglingly bizarre). The adult
thing to do, though, is to point out the obvious fact that such behavior is
beneath the POTUS and then move on to the real stories. But CNN, of course,
would rather take the bait, stoop to Trump’s level, and keep the feud going
strong. What does that entail? It entails things like <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news-lawmaker-news-administration/340485-gop-lawmaker-to-cnn-you-guys-are" target="_blank">ambushing a freshman Congressman</a> from Virginia into discussing the merits of the
tweet, the newsworthiness of tweets in general, and the adequacy of the
condemnations of said tweet by Republican leaders in Congress before he is
permitted to discuss anything of substance. Scott Taylor (R-VA), the
Congressman in question, sits on the powerful Appropriations Subcommittees on
Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security, but really what
he needs to be talking about is an animated gif. As Congressman Taylor himself
points out, “You guys are getting played, man.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">CNN, and the media in general, have gone a
lot farther than merely attacking the President for hurting their feelings,
though. They feverishly worked to spin the tweet as encouraging violence
against the press or, as Robert Reich <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/03/donald-trump-wrestles-cnn-press-freedom" target="_blank">contended</a>
in <i>The Guardian</i>, an attack on
democracy itself. This is overblown and patently absurd. Trump’s CNN tweet
certainly further diminishes his credibility and demonstrates an astonishing
lack of judgment, but that’s about as far as any reasonable person can
interpret that gif. While I’m sure there is someone somewhere in this country
who could watch Donald Trump punch someone with a CNN logo for a head and
become inspired to physically harm a journalist, that person does not represent
the average (or even below-average) American. This hypothetical person is a dangerous
idiot and would have been a dangerous idiot in the absence of this particular
tweet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But this saga doesn’t stop there. CNN took
it upon themselves to track down the Redditor who supposedly created the gif,
made him repent for his sins (he apparently posted vile anti-Semitic and racist
material in the past), and then showed mercy by deciding not to release his
identity to the public. This is what CNN, the Holy Arbiter of Truth, had to say
about HanA**holeSolo, the offending troll: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">CNN
is not publishing ‘HanA**holeSolo’s’ name because he is a private citizen who
has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he
has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to
repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. CNN reserves the right to
publish his identity should any of that change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Holy cow. This is what is looks like when
a media giant abuses its power and thought-polices an individual American
citizen. Now, don’t get me wrong—I agree with <i>The Federalist</i>’s David Harsanyi in <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/05/cnns-threat-dox-redditor-tells-us-state-journalism/" target="_blank">thinking</a>
that this troll deserves no sympathy and that CNN would have been wiser to just
release the guy’s name instead of going full Spanish Inquisition on him. After
all, what CNN has done here is reveal that if you promise not to offend them
anymore, they can protect you. That statement is, as Harsanyi says, “a threat” implying
that if HanA**holeSolo were to go back on his repentance, “the network reserves
the right to put him in ‘danger.’” That kind of behavior is, I daresay,
Trump-like. And building your entire news cycle around a juvenile presidential
tweet and an anonymous, bigoted Redditor is—wait for it—fake news. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">UPDATE
7/11/17: Maybe this scandal involving <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/11/politics/trump-jr-russia-lawyer-emails/index.html" target="_blank">Donald Trump Jr.’s emails</a> will give CNN
something of real substance to talk about. One can only hope.</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-71493578633392198552017-04-06T22:05:00.000-04:002017-04-06T22:05:00.378-04:00Winning was easy, young man…<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">A good friend of mine asked me a few days
ago if I thought it might have been better for the Republican Party’s long-term
prospects if Hillary Clinton had been elected president last year. I was very
much surprised to find that my immediate impulse was to pay the expected
partisan lip service to the utter irredeemable nature of a Clinton presidency;
to deny that anything good could possibly have come of it. My shock was made
all the more real by my realization that just about two years ago, I wrote in
this blog that it would require not one, but </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">two terms</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> of Clinton in the White House to turn the Republican
Party around. What’s craziest of all, though, is that when I examined my
feelings on that question further, I became absolutely convinced that I really
was wrong those two (long) years ago. Why? Because the Republican majorities in
Congress have, in a very short time, demonstrated that no election is going to
teach them how to actually govern. And even if they somehow got their act
together, the Democrats wouldn’t just decline to help them; they would actively
try to stop the GOP in its tracks. (And I don’t necessarily mean that last
statement as a condemnation.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It all started with what I consider to be the
GOP’s biggest blunder so far in the Trump Era: the decision by leaders in
Congress to make fast-tracking an Obamacare repeal their first order of
business in the new session. Never mind that the replacement bill was under-baked,
unworkable, unsatisfactory, and <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2443">wholly despised by everyone everywhere</a>—the real mistake was in lining healthcare up as the
first legislative priority and then sprinting toward a vote without so much as
a water break. It truly astounds me that a party that had a front-row seat to
watch their opponents make the same mistake back in 2009 would turn around and
repeat it almost exactly upon returning to power. Let’s face it—the Democrats
paid a huge price for their decision to make healthcare reform their first
priority after President Obama came into office. They got what they wanted, but
successive drubbings in 2010, 2014, and 2016 have reduced their party’s
strength at all levels of government to historic lows. On paper, this is both a
triumph for Republicans as well as a roadmap for what not to do with their
newfound power. But, true to form, they just went ahead and did it anyway. I’m
sure I don’t need to tell you that not only did they waste a massive amount of
political capital, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/24/politics/house-health-care-vote/">but they didn’t even get what they wanted in the first place</a>. And what’s even more insane is that
their response was to float a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/us/politics/health-care-house-republicans.html?_r=0">worse bill</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>that
is also in the process of falling apart. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The failure of Paul Ryan’s conference to
utilize its robust majority and actually get an Obamacare “repeal and replace”
package through the House is a stark illustration of how much more difficult it
is to be a governing party than it is to be an opposition one. And the
Republicans have never been much of a governing party to begin with. I’ve
railed before about their inability to learn from their electoral defeats—hell,
it took a phenomenon like <i>Donald Trump</i>
to simply begin the process of walking away from the mistakes of the Bush years—and
2016 will go down in history as being no different. After spending eight years
clamoring for Obamacare’s demise (the easy part), Republicans fell flat on
their faces when they actually tried to come up with a real plan to replace it
(the hard part). This isn’t wholly surprising—drafting an actual replacement
plan is actively against an opposition party’s interests. But what I can’t
forgive is the GOP’s utter unwillingness to <i>get
serious</i> about the healthcare debate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’d be willing to entertain a fleshed-out “market-based”
healthcare reform package, but I have no confidence that Congressional
Republicans are up to that task. Their refusal to take their time drafting a
bill is indicative of their inability to actually craft a workable one. They
were more concerned about escaping the corner they had boxed themselves into
for nearly a decade than actually trying to improve people’s lives. And I think
this boils down to the fact that the Party, so steeped in the philosophy of
austerity, simply can’t accept the fact that comprehensive healthcare reform
requires spending a boatload of money. Take Tom Price’s plan: it’s a solid
outline for a reform package, but (in my humble opinion) you’d have to shell
out as least five times as much money as it allots for tax credits in order for
it to be even remotely realizable. That’s just not a conversation the
Republicans are willing to have. And it’s a tragedy for me to watch a unified,
nominally conservative government stumble into these traps of their own
creation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Meanwhile, in the Senate, Mitch McConnell
has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-senate.html">killed the filibuster<span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span></a>on Supreme Court
nominees. I’ll just go ahead and say that I think there is plenty of blame to
go around on this one—Republicans first cooked up the so-called “nuclear option”
because of Democratic obstruction of George W. Bush’s lower court nominees, but
it was Republican intransigence that led Harry Reid to ultimately go nuclear on
that count. Similarly, although the Democrats’ current partisan filibuster of a
Supreme Court nominee is a <a href="http://time.com/4659403/neil-gorsuch-filibuster-abe-fortas/">nearly unprecedented event</a>, they’d be the first to remind you that Republicans refused to
even give Merrick Garland a hearing, let alone a vote. These are all valid
points, which leads me to conclude that everyone is wrong and both parties are
at fault, as usual. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have very mixed feelings on what now
appears to be a party-line confirmation vote for Neil Gorsuch. I view Judge
Gorsuch (as do most conservatives) as an extremely capable and flawlessly pedigreed
candidate for our nation’s highest court. I actually agree with liberals who
characterize his views as outside the mainstream, but so were the views of the man
he would replace—a man who was himself a brilliant jurist and (in my view, invaluable)
conservative bulwark on the Supreme Court. Choosing a man like Judge Gorsuch to
succeed the late Justice Scalia maintains what I view as a nearly-ideal status
quo on the Court: four conservatives, four liberals, and a right-libertarian
swing vote. And so obviously part of me is quite pleased to see that Judge
Gorsuch’s path to the Supreme Court is assured. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But an equally significant part of me is
terrified for what this could mean in the future. What will happen when the
Democrats find themselves in power again? How many Supreme Court seats will be
up for grabs when that time comes? What exactly will Supreme Court nominees
look like in a world where only 51 (or even 50) Senators need to support him or
her? And the Democrats should be afraid, too—their unwillingness to make a deal
this time around has robbed them of their ability to even consider one next
time. They had better pray “next time” isn’t in the next four years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And so, in what I’ve already said should
be a triumphant moment of unified Republican control of government, I find
myself discouraged and unengaged. I’m watching a party that can’t get its House
conference in order and has to make Faustian bargains in the Senate even when
their members are united. Add in a partisan environment that has done nothing
but grow more rancorous for the past decade, and the only thing I know for sure
is that the Republican Party has learned nothing from winning and would have
learned even less from losing. Ditto the Democrats, for whom the reality of
their own vulnerability clearly hasn’t sunk in yet. And all of this, of course,
is to say nothing of the creature in the White House. The Trump years are, I
think, predestined to be a train wreck. Sure, we got the “conservative”
majorities that we always wanted and the Supreme Court nominee of our dreams.
But, I can’t help but ask, at what cost? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-16565605268929773012016-11-27T19:51:00.003-05:002016-11-27T19:52:41.264-05:00Goodbye to the Right, but good riddance to the Left<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have spent ample time on this blog in
the past going after the Republican Party for its complicity in creating the
monster that is Donald Trump’s ascendancy. In fact, that is just one of many
things I have lambasted the GOP for over the better part of the last two years.
They are a party that has no idea how to set an agenda, how to govern, how to
come up with new and useful ideas, and (most importantly) how to win elections—the
results from earlier this month notwithstanding. Going into this fall, I firmly
believed that once the Republicans lost the presidential election (and with it
their control of the Senate and the conservative majority on the Supreme
Court), they would learn absolutely nothing from their defeat and move toward
nominating yet another empty suit in 2020 whose policy positions would be
virtually indistinguishable from those of George W. Bush. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Well, I was wrong on one rather large
count. The Republican Party did not do poorly at all at the polls on November 8<sup>th</sup>.
But I remain steadfast in by belief that the party will never own up to its all
too real shortcomings and its undeniably disastrous mistakes. If anything,
their victories all over the country on Election Day will give the bumbling
idiots in charge of the GOP all the cover they need to ignore their many
deficiencies and deny that a reality television star ever managed to
successfully complete a hostile takeover of their party. And let’s not
forget—as someone who, on about 75% of the issues, can find a lot of common
ground with Republicans, I don’t say any of this with relish. I think it’s a
tragedy of epic proportions that only a party as uniquely inept as this one
could even pull off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But wait. I’m forgetting about the
Democrats, aren’t I? I had spent so much time criticizing the people on my side
of the aisle as Trump obliterated them that I, defeated, had checked out of
this presidential race completely by July and went blind to the (now stunningly
obvious) fact that there was still one more dumb, arrogant party left for Trump
to lay waste to. The Democratic Party exploded when Trump won two and a half
weeks ago. Their fall has been as swift as it has been stunning to watch. Trump
exposed the Democrats as a party out of touch not only with their base but with
working class voters all over the country whom they had taken for granted.
Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? The Democratic establishment may have been
able (with great effort) to turn back the populist tide of Bernie Sanders’
candidacy, but his swift rise and strong challenge to Hillary Clinton should
have shown us all then and there that anti-establishment revolts do not happen
solely on the right. The Republican Party as we know it might have died on
Election Day without anyone noticing, but the gutting of the Democratic Party
has been laid bare for everyone to see. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And this dismantling is arguably far worse
than anything that has happened to the GOP. The Democrats now control the
governorship and both houses of the legislature (“trifecta” control) in <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/2016-pre-and-post-election-state-legislative-control.aspx">just five states</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>after only managing to flip three
state chambers this month. In contrast, Republicans managed to flip three
chambers of their own while also holding onto the Senate, the House, and
increasing their already dominant number of governorships to 33, leaving them
with trifecta control in 25 states. The Republican Party may have some serious
troubles at the top, but in terms of down ballot success, they are <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/jasonhopkins/2016/11/10/democrats-breaking-records-control-fewest-state-legislatures-in-history-n2244010">nearing historic highs</a>. The Democrats, meanwhile,
are a party without either a standard bearer or a bench from which to cultivate
future leaders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And the Left’s reaction to the Democratic
massacre of 2016 has really been something to behold. In the wake of Trump’s
ground-shifting victory, progressives seem frantically eager to abandon their
principles and point their fingers at nameless “deplorables” rather than take a
look in the mirror and have an honest discussion about how they helped get us
here. And make no mistake about it—the Left in general, and the Democratic
Party in particular, share culpability in creating the Trump monster. The
Republicans may have incubated this movement, but once it hatched the Democrats
were all too happy to fatten it into a size capable of toppling the entire
American political establishment. The Left’s distressing habit of stifling
debate, smugly asserting their own moral superiority on every issue, and
decrying anyone who disagrees with them as hateful bigots, misogynists, and
racists didn’t exactly mollify the angry, economically devastated Americans who
were flocking behind a candidate who defied “political correctness” and smug
coastal elites. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But rather than engage in some much needed
introspection, the Democrats have apparently decided to keep engaging in the
exact behavior that created this mess in the first place. After years of
wielding identity politics as both a rallying cry to unite disparate pockets of
voters and as a cudgel to demonize conservatives, their own methods came back
to haunt them in a big way when Donald Trump came up with the rather radical
idea of playing the white identity politics game. Turns out that heaping scorn
on a diverse group of people whose only commonality is the color of their skin
does quite a lot to inspire them to start voting against you as a monolith. And
following up an electoral loss with what Eric Sasson at <i>The New Republic</i> <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/138996/liberal-response-trump-devolving-outrage-porn">refers</a> to as
“outrage porn” certainly doesn’t constitute a constructive path forward. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And it doesn’t end with just the
screeching cries of “RACIST! MISOGYNIST! XENOPHOBE!” that have been directed at
anyone who voted for Trump for any reason at all. No, the Left has decided to
go one step further and refuse outright to accept the election results. A group
of computer scientists is <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html">calling on the Clinton campaign</a> to audit the vote in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan,
where they claim there are odd discrepancies between her vote totals on paper
and electronic ballots. The Left has seized on this completely spurious claim (<a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2016/11/hackers_stole_the_election_fro.html">Nate Silver</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>says so!) and have decided that what
really happened was the Russians hacked into those electronic voting machines
and swung the election to their comrade Trump. Even <a href="https://twitter.com/paulkrugman">Paul Krugman</a>, Nobel Laureate and shameless Democratic windbag, took to
Twitter to say that “given the role of Russian hackers in the campaign,”—they
were the ones who hacked John Podesta’s emails—“it’s all too plausible.” Seriously,
this would make Alex Jones blush. And all this coming from the people who
railed against Trump time and time again for implying that he might not accept
the election results if he lost, calling such a thing a fundamental threat to
democracy. It sure didn’t take long for them to throw that deeply held
principle right out the window. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Left is notorious for shifting their
beliefs on the proper use of power once they no longer wield it, but this
post-election conspiracy theory hogwash is really beyond the pale. And that
would be the case even if they hadn’t spent the past eight years (rightly)
mocking their opponents on the Right who invented far-flung fantasies about
President Obama’s birthplace, religion, and the legitimacy of his two
elections. Really, I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself by waiting for the
Democrats to stop spewing vitriol and figure out where to go from here. First,
they’ll have to actually accept that they lost. The same goes for their allies
in the mainstream media. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw Chris Cuomo of
CNN <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/23/cnns_chris_cuomo_media_can_not_yield_trump_administration_will_demand_constant_oppositon.html">proudly assert</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>that “the media cannot
yield” in the face of a Trump presidency. I think he fails to realize that as
an anchor for CNN, he and his colleagues on all of the major cable news
networks fed the Trump juggernaut all the attention and free airtime they
needed to climb all the way to the White House. Don’t expect those fools to
learn their lesson either. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ll take a moment right now to admit that
I’m being a hypocrite by writing an entire post that glosses over Republican misdeeds while simultaneously taking pot shots at the Democrats while
they’re down. But you know what? This was a long time coming. Years of smugness
and condescension from the Left, as well as their utter lack of any magnanimity
as they racked up huge victories in the culture wars, has finally come back to
bite them in the rear. And now, they’re doing what they do best: blaming their
losses on hordes of bigoted phantasms that are angry not because they’ve been
mistreated and left behind by both parties, but simply because they are
racists, even if they don’t realize it. Don’t get me wrong—I’m deeply troubled
by the impending Trump presidency. I fear what it means for our democracy, our
institutions, and for marginalized people everywhere (including the rural
whites who see Trump as their salvation). But I’m also not too proud admit that
a sizeable part of me relishes watching the Left self-destruct as they are
finally forced to reckon with the fact that their methods are not infallible,
that their smugness is not always justified, and that their ideas are not
always winners. It’s about goddamn time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-723177227170901690.post-54549963826161539352016-11-11T22:33:00.002-05:002016-11-11T22:33:12.857-05:00What now?<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">No one was prepared for this. No one outside
of Michael Moore and my friend CJ Bergin at <i><a href="http://thedamndevilsadvocate.com/" target="_blank">The Devil’s Advocate</a></i><span style="color: #0070c0;">
</span>even considered it a serious possibility. Half of our nation—as well as
most of the world—watched in shock and disbelief on Tuesday night as Donald J.
Trump, the single most unqualified person ever given a major party’s nomination
for president, was elected to be our next chief executive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I had started my evening all but assured
of a Clinton victory. As the returns started trickling in, I noticed that the
count was considerably closer than I anticipated, but I held firm in my belief
that the eventual outcome would be the same. About two hours later, I began to
entertain the notion of an upset. And about half an hour after that, it hit me.
I had been been spending the entire evening telling myself that there was no
way Trump could possibly win, even as his electoral vote count grew ever
higher. I was so convinced it wasn’t possible that I was ignoring what was
right in front of me, just as every pundit had done since he declared his
candidacy last year. After each poll that was published and each primary won,
they continued to deny reality because a Trump win just didn’t seem possible. I
had prided myself on seeing through their arrogance and predicting a Trump win
after South Carolina. But there I was on election night making the exact same
mistake. I was experiencing this entire insane election season in microcosm
over the course of one night. I should have seen it coming. We all should have
seen this coming. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“How on Earth did this happen?” you are
all no doubt asking yourselves. Well, the answer is really quite simple. Almost
everyone on my Facebook news feed who is asking this question is much like me:
middle or upper middle class millennials who grew up with hard working parents,
were raised in cities or suburbs, went to good public schools, attended a
4-year college or university, and now have some form of steady employment. Even
though we don’t think of ourselves this way, we are part of what is called the “educated
elite.” We view and think about the world in a very particular way that is
shaped by our background and education. But, as it turns out, not everyone in
America sees things the way we do. Not all of us have grown up in a diverse,
cosmopolitan environment where service jobs are abundant and college degrees
are ubiquitous. Some Americans live in impoverished rural areas where all the
good jobs have been shipped overseas, where the most common causes of death are
<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/middle-aged-white-americans-left-behind-and-dying-early/433863/" target="_blank">drug overdoses and suicides</a>, and where their
cries for help are dismissed by people like you and me as the incoherent
ramblings of uncultured hillbillies. David Wong at <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/">Cracked.com</a></span><span style="color: #0070c0;">
</span>(of all places) wrote a piece back in October that describes the plight
of the Trump voter better than any other piece of journalism I’ve read on the
subject. He paints this bleak picture: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“In
a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a
medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no
venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There
may only be two doctors in town -- aspiring to that job means waiting for one
of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the job listings
will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just
the corpses of mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the
"suburbs" are trailer parks. There are parts of these towns that look
post-apocalyptic. I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you
dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant
about your racist white privilege.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These rural, uneducated, white Americans
are angry, folks. And on Tuesday, they made their voices heard loud and clear. Let’s
take just a moment to look at the numbers (for those of you who aren’t polling
junkies like me, feel free to skip the next paragraph or two). Exit polling
from 2016 tells us a few key things: Trump trounced Clinton among white men,
performed notably better than Mitt Romney did among minorities in 2012, and
managed to win in spite of a less white electorate than what we had four years
ago. In 2012, the electorate was 72% white. In 2016, that number had dropped to
70%. Overall, Trump’s margin among whites was almost exactly the same as Romney’s
was in 2012—Romney won the white vote by 20 points (59%-39%), while Trump won
it by 21 (58%-37%). Trump did improve upon Romney’s performance among white
men, winning their vote by a stunning 32 points (63%-31%). This was offset,
however, by a slightly poorer performance among white women, although the fact
that he won that particular cohort by 10 points (53%-43%) is still rather
incredible given his past comments and behavior. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But it wasn’t Trump’s <i>margin</i> among white voters that swung the election in his favor.
Rather, it was more a matter of <i>which</i>
white voters he was able to bring to the polls, combined with his ability to
win over a few more minority voters than his Republican predecessors (or,
perhaps more likely, Hillary Clinton’s <i>inability</i>
to replicate President Obama’s successes among those groups). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Trump won six states that President Obama
won four years ago: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, and Florida.
With the exception of Florida, all of these states have one thing in common—they
are all very white and very blue collar. Sean Trende, perhaps my favorite
political analyst, wrote a <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/08/the_case_of_the_missing_white_voters_116106.html">brilliant piece</a><span style="color: #0070c0;"> </span>in
the wake of the 2012 election called “The Case of the Missing White Voters.” In
it, he hypothesized that a key factor in Mitt Romney’s defeat was the low
turnout among white voters in rural areas who felt that an elitist plutocrat
like Governor Romney didn’t speak for them. These hypothetical voters were
described as blue collar, non-college-educated populists who had more in common
with Ross Perot than George W. Bush. These voters are neither ideological nor
particularly conservative. They distrust both big business and big government
and they fear for their economic well-being. They are the people from David
Wong’s article. Trende’s hypothesis was widely mocked four years ago, but I
think (<a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/09/the_missing_white_voters_revisisted_132308.html">as does he</a>) that the 2016 election
seems to have vindicated him. Those missing white voters turned out in force
this year and flipped every “blue” state in the Rust Belt, breaking the
Democrats’ vaunted “Blue Wall” in the process. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, increased rural turnout can’t
entirely explain Trump’s margin in these states. I’d be remiss to give him all
the credit; we mustn’t forget that Hillary Clinton lost these states just as
much as he won them. Although I don’t have data to flesh this out, it certainly
seems that there were plenty of white voters in states like Iowa and Wisconsin
that were content to pull the lever for our nation’s first black president in
2008 and 2012 but were not similarly inspired by the prospect of electing the
first woman. Is this just sexism rearing its ugly head? In some cases, maybe.
But I think the real problem for Democrats this year was that they nominated a
candidate who lacked President Obama’s charisma and oration as well as his ability
to excite, inspire, and relate to everyday Americans. Secretary Clinton’s
numbers among minority voters seem to reflect her inability to get out the
vote. She won the African American vote 88%-8%, which seems absolutely dominant
until you consider that it is actually a 7-point swing <i>away</i> from Obama’s margin of 93%-6% in 2012. That’s significant,
especially when you consider that black voter turnout (at 12% of the electorate)
was down one point from 2012, when that same figure was 13%. Astoundingly,
Trump even performed better among Hispanic voters than Romney, losing them
65%-29% rather than 71%-27%. That’s an 8-point swing, which is—again—significant.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hillary underperformed Obama among these
voters because she was, by any measure, an abysmal candidate. The Democratic
National Committee has to be seriously second-guessing themselves about now. They
threw all of their weight behind a nominee who was unpopular, distrusted,
unappealing, out of touch, and the ultimate Washington insider. I cannot imagine
a worse candidate for the times (and before you say what you’re thinking,
readers, remember: Trump was <i>perfect</i>
for this environment. That’s why he won.) She felt the same populist backlash
as the GOP in her own primary race, when Bernie Sanders nearly derailed her
decades-long quest for the presidency. Her surprise loss in the Michigan
primary, in hindsight, seems like it should have been a stark warning of what
was to come. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So what does all of this mean? Where do we
go from here? These are good questions that don’t have simple answers. First
and foremost, I think this election signals a victory not for the Republican
Party, but for Donald Trump. His brand of populism and nationalism seems to
have resonated with voters far more effectively than the GOP’s traditional
limited-government shtick. As a small-government libertarian, this both
frightens and deflates me. But this election is also a stunning rebuke to
President Obama’s legacy in particular and to the Democratic Party in general. Just
a few short years after boasting of an “Emerging Democratic Majority” and
continually mocking Republicans for their continued reliance on white voters,
the Blue Wall is shattered, everything President Obama achieved over two terms
as president is threatened to be erased, and the Grand Old Party has more power
at its fingertips than at any time since Herbert Hoover was in the Oval Office.
And I can’t even gloat about it, because it’s all owed to one particularly
reprehensible man who got us here by taking all the wrong roads.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And therein lies the central problem.
Donald Trump didn’t just sashay his way into the White House by stoking the
fires of racial discord and nationalism, although you’d never guess that by
looking at my Facebook news feed. As I scroll up and down, I see nothing but
rampant accusations of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and misogyny. My liberal friends
are ashamed to be white, ashamed to live in an America that hates women and
minorities this much, or ashamed to know anyone who voted for Trump. They are
angry, <i>livid</i>—people who were
preaching and hashtagging about the importance of unity just four days ago are
now spewing vitriol and hate like nothing I’ve ever seen from them. “God, I
hope Trump dies alone & angry.” Hashtag strongertogether. “America, you
disgust me. Every. Single. One. Of. You.” Hashtag lovetrumpshate. Come on,
guys, do you really think this is the best way to move forward?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Look, I understand that many of my friends
are feeling lost, hopeless, and scared. My heart particularly goes out to my
friends who are people of color, members of the LGBT community, who are
Muslims, who are immigrants. They can and should be frightened; Trump’s
election elevates along with him all of the sordid elements he used and abused
on his way to the top. His ascendancy emboldens all of the white supremacists
and neo-Nazis who endorsed him. I’m not sure what this all means for our nation’s
disadvantaged people, and that frightens me too. I worry for my sister and her partner,
who is a woman of color. I know none of you want to hear another white,
straight, cis male tell you that everything is going to be okay, but hear me—we
can get through this, but only if we do it right. Mourn, grieve, cry, do
whatever you have to do but please, <i>please</i>
don’t panic. Don’t lash out. Don’t respond to hate with more hate. If we’re
going to press forward, we have to do it together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In closing, I will ironically turn you to
the words of Hillary Clinton herself. In a series of comments that were much
maligned afterward, Secretary Clinton on September 9<sup>th</sup> described half
of Trump’s supporters as belonging in a “basket of deplorables…</span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">the
racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it.” As is
often the case with controversial political statements, she was mostly just
telling the truth. As Jamelle Bouie at <i>Slate</i>
<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/09/trump_s_basket_of_deplorables_hillary_clinton_was_right.html">writes</a>, poll numbers generally back up the
idea that about half of Trump supporters are actually racist. But what I want
to turn your attention to is the rest of Hillary’s quote, where she hit the
nail on the head even more cogently in discussing the “other basket”: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“…but
that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let
them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody
worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just
desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They
don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their
lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose
a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to
understand and empathize with as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, the media paid no attention to
that half of her remarks whatsoever. This makes total sense really, because the
media is comfortably part of the coastal elite that wants nothing to do with
these people. And these people that Hillary was talking about <i>are</i> real. They’re the ones David Wong
was talking about. They are Sean Trende’s missing white voters. They are the
hopeless, downtrodden rural Americans who propelled Trump to victory. He couldn’t
have done it without them—there aren’t enough neo-Nazis and Klansmen to elect
someone president on their own. And if we want to move forward and avoid
another disaster like what happened on Tuesday—if we want to prevent these blue
collar voters from being swindled by a con man who will satisfy his own ego by
promising to hurt one group of people while offering another a hollow promise
of hope they’ll never see—we need to do what Hillary said and make an effort to
understand and empathize with these people. Because we already know what
happens when we just yell at them and call them bigots. We end up with
President Trump. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Joel Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526185999114094270noreply@blogger.com1