MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
For a contemporary version, consider this Substack which excerpts the author's paywalled article in New Statesman, the main left-wing political magazine in the UK. The basic these is that the UK has been excessively focussed on low consumer prices (unspoken, except for housing) when we should have been thinking about industrial policy and resilience. But the core beef of the political movement that New Statesman readers are part of is about middle-class living standards.
Both right-populists and left-populists are telling a story where manufacturing is special such that prioritising reshoring manufacturing over middle-class living standards will nevertheless produce higher middle-class living standards.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
Based on what gets upvoted and downvoted, I suspect there are a lot of lurkers and occasional posters who have conventional MAGA political views. I agree that you are one of a very small number of normie Republicans among the regular posters.
"Most of the posters on this forum would be sorted as auth-left in the context of some other more libertarian forum" says more about the culture of that other forum than the culture here - David Brin had a (no longer online as far as I'm aware) meme of this where the Nolan chart had a tiny triangle of "Libertarian" in the lib-right corner with 95% of the chart labelled "Dirty fucking Commie". The actual auth-left (relative to the median voter) have mostly sorted out - unless you think that MAGA counts as an auth-left movement based on Trump's unwillingness to cut unsustainable entitlement spending.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
The Talafreako meme is Republicans being high on their own supply. A good candidate is one who reads as a more charismatic version of a normie to swing voters, which he does. Actual normies don't run for statewide office, and if they did they wouldn't be able to act normal in the freakish situations political campaigns put candidates in.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
Bonus nitpick, but if you're willing to implement explicit ethnonationalism, religious exclusion on top seems a bit redundant - unless you also really hate Albanians/only hate Orthodox Jews for some reason.
"White" as a political category is closer to "non-Black and culturally Christian" than it is to "member of the Caucasian family of ethnic groups". Nobody thinks that Arabs and Turks (who are no swarthier than white Sicilians) are politically white, and most white nationalists are not fond of Jews either. Which religion we don't believe in is fundamental to who the ingroup is.
Albanians are unwanted immigrants in western Europe based on their religion and criminality in spite of their skin colour, and this is not controversial among European ethno-nationalists.
Most European ethnonationalists are ethnonationalists of a specific European ethnicity (French, German, Scottish etc.) The superordinate identity that covered all Europe was Christendom, not whiteness - "white nationalism" was an American thing about justifying slavery and later outgrouping ADOS blacks. Pan-European Christian nationalists have been confused about whether Christian Africa is outgroup since the days of medieval Abyssinia and Prester John.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
B.1. These could be signs that progressive liberal politics really do need a blue tsunami to win any office.
B.2. Or this is particularly prescient of Bernie, as progressive as possible yet still win.
The blueness of the territory matters more than the national environment. AOC didn't need a blue wave to win in a deep blue NYC House district, she just needed to win the primary. "Leftist candidates can't win statewide, even in blue states" used to be conventional wisdom, on the basis that no state is that blue on a statewide basis. And that conventional wisdom is in trouble. MA-Sen was always winnable from the left. MI and MN are both coming through with large enough margins that they would still have been winnable with Bernie's candidates in a more normal "bad midterms for the President's party" environment.
So I think this is smart politics from Bernie.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
I disagree with this, but here's a thought experiment: Suppose that (1) the Israelis were offered a deal - total peace but they had to withdraw to the 1948 line and uproot J & S settlers just like they did with settlers in Gaza; and (2) somehow it was a credible offer. Would they take it? Obviously the answer is "yes" given that they accepted much worse deals in the past. So unless you believe that at some point the Israeli mentality fundamentally changed, it seems pretty clear that the saying still holds.
The whole point I am making is that religious Zionist parties (excluding Likud, which has always had a religious Zionist faction which has become more significant over time) went from 9 Knesset seats in 1992 (when the Rabin government that did Oslo was elected) to 19 in 2026 (if you allocate half of B'Yachad's seats to Naftali Bennet), due to a change in Israeli demographics. Religious Zionists would definitely reject the hypothetical deal you discuss, and Netanyahu built his political career based on opposition to the "worse deals in the past" that Israel accepted, so I suspect most Likudniks would as well. (Netanyahu is one of the Israeli right-wingers who deliberately allowed Hamas to build up its position in Gaza because a stronger Hamas makes a two-state solution less likely, at the cost of a few dead and maimed Israelis).
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
That is why I specify Modern Orthodox. I agree that Haredim are noticeably less Zionist.
I agree that Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist aren't totally overlapping categories, but they are strongly correlated in the diaspora, and sufficiently correlated in Israel that Israelis use the same Hebrew word (dati leumi) to refer to both groups.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
3d ago
1992 (both the UK and the US) was the first year I was able to understand what was going on in an election campaign. It was also the closest I have been to a US election, in the sense that we went to Disneyworld in the October half-term, and I remember seeing so many Perot yard signs (for whatever reason Bush and Clinton voters didn't put up yard signs) that I thought Perot would win Florida. Both Buchanan (in the primary) and Clinton (in the general) hammered Bush on being a foreign policy President instead of paying attention to bread-and-butter issues at home. From the other side of the Pond this felt like the main election issue - I particularly remember the Buchanan campaign setting up a giant searchlight to look for Bush in order to ask him about the economy. And Bush lost by a landslide, so presumably the attack worked. Conventional wisdom became that foreign policy could lose elections, but not win them.
The way Trump defended the Iran war once it was clear that the US wasn't going to win a quick victory was "A temporary increase in gas prices is a small price to pay to achieve my foreign policy goals (including something something nukes)." That is a self-admitted case of being a foreign policy President at the expense of domestic bread-and-butter issues.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
Also a denominational one. Secular/Reform/Masorti Jews hate Trump in America, and aren't that fond of him in Israel. Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist Jews love him in both countries. Haredim do what they do, which mostly ends up being transactionally voting right.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
As a side note, this is a counterproductive misunderstanding (if you believe in mistake theory). There is a saying that if the Arabs lay down their weapons, there will be peace; if the Israelis lay down their weapons, there will be no more Israel. And in fact, the historical record pretty convincingly shows that this is the case, at least if you are looking at Palestinian Arabs.
If you define peace in the ordinary English sense as the absence of war, this is true. But if Israeli demographics mean that the Netanyahu coalition will be in power most of the time going forwards, then Israel is not offering normalcy (reasonably secure property rights, protection from criminal attacks by radical settlers, freedom of movement within sufficiently large contiguous areas to support a viable economy) to the Palestinian population of the West Bank. This is a change since the Oslo era, and it is an interesting but fundamentally unimportant question whether the change is driven by Israeli demographics (in particular, high religious Zionist birth and immigration rates) or by the counterproductive behaviour of Palestinians (mostly not resident in the West Bank) alienating potentially sympathetic Israelis.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
The extremely narrow EHC that Hanania favors is only useful for a few things
Those few things are the main reason why America is so much more productive that the Europoors, which is the main outcome Hanania cares about.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
The highest value lesson the Republicans need to learn from this election is one of the oldest ones in the book, and one that we thought they had learned after GW Bush.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
I don't think a gender gap that large is a good thing for democracy, it isn't normal (compared to other democracies or the US historically) and I don't see either party making an effort to shrink it (Dems think what they are doing right now is fine, MAGA Reps think that a massive gender gap is normal).
The only saving grace is that US exit polls are inaccurate (because of the difficulty exit polling postal and early voters) and can be wildly wrong if the demographics of people who actually voted doesn't match historical averages, which I suspect was the case yesterday.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
One point - with real Dan Sullivan a nose ahead of Peltola (and likely to win on transfers even if he is a nose behind when the first count is complete because the also-rans are another Republican and fake Dan Sullivan), it looks like voter irritation at the fake Dan Sullivan affair allowed the Republicans to hold on in a state Peltola should have won comfortably given the national swing.
Was fake Dan Sullivan the second biggest self-own of this election cycle (after Iran)?
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
Bitcoin appears to be holding up better, at 0.3% off over 24 hours.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
80% of what's wrong with the UK comes down to NIMBYism. My impression was that this isn't a partisan issue in the US, and that YIMBYs are winning intra-Dem fights at the moment.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
Silly question - Americans talking about a big Democratic win in this election are using aquatic metaphors like waves and tsunamis. Whatever happened to the good old landslide?
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
On the other hand, so far it looks like congratulations to the NC GOP for a perfect dummymander. After multiple rounds of litigation they finally managed to draw a map which was supposed to be 11-3, but Dems are leading in all 14 districts according to CNN.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
The black machine politicians who determine Democratic primaries don't want four years of President Vance, so Kamala is unlikely to be the nominee.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
Florida House results are looking interesting. The Republicans have avoided a dummymander by the skin of their teeth - based on current leads they are going to get a 17-11 split of the seats while winning both statewide races 51-49 or so. But a lot of districts which were drawn as safeish R are ending up in recount territory.
If the Democrats win the Senate, which I am hopeful they will not, then they will likely refuse to confirm all of Trump's judicial nominees, which will start a constitutional crisis whereby judges will only be confirmed when the same party controls both the Presidency and Senate.
Out of interest, I took a look at the list of failed SCOTUS nominations. Only 8 since 1900:
- Parker. Nominated by Hoover. Rejected by a bipartisan (Dems and Progressive Republicans) vote because of his anti-union jurisprudence.
- Fortas. Nominated for promotion to Chief by LBJ. Rejected by a bipartisan (Republicans and Dixiecrats) vote on grounds of corruption but lefties think it was really ideological. Resigned as an Associate justice a year later due to another corruption scandal.
- Thornberry. Nominated for Fortas's soon-to-be-vacant seat as an Associate justice, nomination lapsed due to the lack of a vacancy.
- Haynsworth and Carswell. Nominated by Nixon, both rejected by bipartisan (northern Dems and moderate Reps) vote because they turned out to be closet segregationists.
- Bork. Nominated by Reagan, rejected on a near-party-line vote. Dems said they voted against based both on his role in the Saturday Night Massacre and his ideology. Bork and his supporters said that Bork did not hold the extremist views he was accused of and the motivation was pure partisanship.
- Miers. Nominated by GW Bush, would have been rejected on a bipartisan, non-ideological basis due to being obviously unqualified.
- Garland. Nominated by Obama, rejected by McConnell based on pure partisanship.
So of the seven substantive rejections, at most two (Miers, and probably Fortas) were on personal grounds. The other five were all an ideologically coherent bloc in the Senate opposed to the President, rejecting the nominee based on their political views. The change is that the ideological line-up in the Senate now matches the partisan one in a way it historically didn't.
Given that only the Bork and Garland rejections became scandals, I think the mos maiorum that people want to exist (but doesn't, given that there was no political price in either case) is "Party-line rejection of the President's SCOTUS nomination by a Senate majority of the other party is inappropriate." Unfortunately, given increased ideological coherence and party discipline in the modern Senate, this would cash out as "the President can nominate anyone he wants as long as they are broadly acceptable to the President's own party", and would be a bad rule on that basis.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
I think that TDS is powerful enough that their supporters in the country will expect them to impeach Trump regardless if there is any chance of conviction.
MadMonzer
If you're talking to me, my preferred pronouns are you/your
4d ago
I saw (both at the time and as part of the discussion of the recent Iran war) "Trump's pulling out of JCPOA will make a war with Iran (or a nuclear Iran, which nobody wants) inevitable, and the people* who convinced him to pull out of JCPOA know this and are actively trying to maneuver America into a war Americans don't want." That isn't "Trump, personally wants to start a war" but it is close.
* Whether the people in question are Netanyahu and the Israeli right, or GOPe neocons and the Deep State in the US.
It reminds me about an old SSC post about the politics of his readership. It was mostly Bay Area bugman leftists for the obvious reasons, but among the right-wing minority there were a lot of (self-identified) libertarians, enough neoreactionaries to be worth making them a line item in the report, a significant number of people who wrote screeds about their unique political views in the free-text box, and precisely zero mainstream red tribe conservatives. My impression is that the founding stock of the Motte is that eclectic "grey tribe" libertarian-leaning right-wing minority of the original SSC readership.
@JeSuisCharlie correctly senses that this is not a red tribe forum, and concludes that it must secretly be a leftist one. I suspect he would feel the same way on a European monarchist forum or suchlike.
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