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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32894 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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"The Democrats' new sunny vibes"

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-democrats-new-sunny-vibes

Noah Smith argues that with Kamala Harris and her surge in the polls gave the Democrats more chill and optimistic vibes. Going back to normalcy. The only thing missing is a "It's morning again in America" ad.

along with the shift from Biden to Harris has come an abrupt and distinct shift in the Democrats’ tone. Whereas Biden’s messaging was often dark and dire, focusing on the MAGA movement’s threat to democracy, Harris’ has been lighter and more reminiscent of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Instead of calling Trump a would-be dictator, she has labeled him “weird”. Her campaign is overtly patriotic, draped in American flags. Crowds at her speeches chant “U-S-A! U-S-A!”.

Case in point: I read right now the headline that Joe Biden warns about the "bloodbath" Trump allegedly promised if he loses the election. It is like soothing cool aid for /r/politics, but it does sound a bit hollow from a cranky old Biden, doesn't it? I don't think Harris will make the same doom & gloom attack. Maybe there is a bit good cop / bad cop dynamic here.

Regarding her VP pick Tim Walz I read the worst about him here, but looking at pictures of that guy I just don't feel it. He looks harmless and nice. Noah says the record shows that Walz is a pro market Yimby guy who is pro-nuclear. When the biggest problem of America is that it can't build anymore than you want a guy like him at the top. And mirroring the tone change of the Democrats Walz message is not an angry "kill the rich!" like from blue-haired-Antifa-communists, but a pragmatic "help the poor".

Culturally, everything about Walz is Middle American and middle-class. He spent 24 years in the Army National Guard, and in fact is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to ever serve in Congress. He was a successful high school football coach — in fact, Kamala Harris refers to him as “Coach Walz”. He’s a hunting enthusiast who poses with guns.

Walz may not appeal to social conservatives, but the aim is to appeal to independents/undecided anyway. And he is the sort of guy who both signals that woke is over, because woke won:

He’s emblematic of the way that wokeness has become a sort of post-Protestant middle-American orthodoxy

"Post-protestant middle-American orthodoxy" is quite mouthful. But it is not quite the professional–managerial class, instead a bit more folksy.

Regarding the lefty fringes, neoliberalism is back on the menu:

I realize there are progressives out there shouting apocalyptic warnings about Project 2025, Trump as a fascist dictator, and so on. I realize there is a leftist fringe who is still ready to burn down America over Gaza. But crucially, none of those people is in charge of the Democratic Party right now.

I do suspect they've stumbled upon a winning formula. Typically, the party that is having the most fun is the party that wins. Note just how happy Democrats seem when they call JD Vance and other Republicans "weird". It doesn't reach quite the mania of 2015-16 Trump, but it is a stark change from what we expect to see from Dems.

The dominant emotion that Reds feel towards Blues is resentment. The dominant emotions that Blues feel towards Reds is contempt. These can appear superficially similar, but there are deep and subtle differences. Vance can't call Democrats "weird" anymore than Hillary could turn around and call Trump "Crooked Donald". "Weird" is fundamentally a contemptuous insult, while "crooked" stems more from resentment. The decision to explicitly embrace and harnass contempt could be the left's Trump revolution.

I think some Democratic PR think-tank finally realized that Democrats were in danger of being seen as the party of moralistic fuddy duddies and that the candidate switch-up was a good opportunity to try and change that.

What's most interesting to me about Walz, though I've been uncharacteristically out of date with politics the last week or so, is that I did see that he has a pathetically low net worth. Without his pension, it's only like 300k or something like that. Which is actually quite nice and rare! I can't remember the last time we had a major presidential or VP candidate who hadn't at least made a million off of books or something. So at least in one sense, he has a legitimate claim to the everyman title.

I don’t really believe his asset disclosure. He’s been making six figures for long enough that it’s suspiciously low.

The disclosure doesn't include mutual funds, ETFs, or individual stocks under $10,000. So he could easily have a few hundred grand (and I would assume probably does), or more, in reasonable investments that wouldn't be disclosed.

Is that (mutual funds, ETFs, or individual stocks) under $10,000; or mutual funds, ETFs, or (individual stocks under $10,000)?

https://cfb.mn.gov/pdf/forms/public_officials/eis_annual.pdf

List all businesses whose securities are valued at more than $10,000 that you or your spouse individually or jointly held at any time during the reporting period. Use the definition of business from the Sources of compensation section on the previous page.

“Securities” means stocks, shares, bonds, warrants, options, pledges, notes, mortgages, annuities, debentures, leases, and commercial paper in any corporation, partnership, trust, or other association. “Securities” does not include shares of mutual funds, shares of exchange-traded funds, or defined benefit pension plans. For stocks, list the name of the business. Do not list the exchange symbol, total shares, or value of a security.

So the second. If he didn't own more than $10,000 of any individual business, he wouldn't have to disclose it. ETFs and mutual funds are excluded entirely.

The form also says for real property not to report your homestead.

My net worth is multi-million but on this form I think I'd only have about $500k of assets to report, most of that in the house I helped my mother to buy, and so which my name is on. I'm not landlording and haven't made any individual stock or option bets in awhile.

The form doesn't even require you to disclose cash or cash-like assets.

He doesn't own a home, though.

@ToaKraka says he didn't report dividends or capital gains, but if it's in ETFs he may just have some which managed to avoid capital gain distributions.

The article also states that he didn't report any dividend or capital-gains income on his 2022 tax return. But maybe the mutual funds are in an IRA or something.

It seems unlikely that he owns 70 individual stocks, ETFs, or mutual funds, which he would need to secretly have a million dollars.

See my reply to ThenElection, it's to be parsed the other way.

It's tautilogically true that, without their most valuable assets, most people have a pretty low net worth.

I actually find the complete reliance on public pensions and no IRA or 401k like the vast majority of Americans a little concerning.

Well yeah, he’s either lying or Mother Theresa or really bad with money. He certainly doesn’t seem to have taken a vow of poverty(and we’d expect it to come up) and he almost certainly knows better than to have no independent assets. So we’re left with ‘he’s probably lying’.

Or...as 5 people have pointed out, the disclosure form doesn't require he disclose certain assets.

Well yes, I'll lump that in under 'lying' even if it's technically within the letter of the law. Obvious bias is obvious and you can disagree, but using it to try to say he isn't a rich guy is just stupid.

You have a very different definition of rich than rich people have. Even having the level of assets that could be hidden within the constructs of that form puts him firmly in the poor house among the PMC.

I can't tell if there's a vibe shift at all, but I imagine the assassination attempt incentivizes toning down the 'threat to our democracy' angle in favor of more positive messaging. 'Threat' narrative is already baked in, can still be pushed on the fringes, but ideally Trump does not get to mention the assassination in a 'high impact' context without seeming somewhat self centered.

All the talk about the shift in "vibes" and re-energizing of the Democratic party under Kamala, as well as the talk about how good this "weird" insult is at owning the Republicans just makes me think of someone noticing an ignorant child tilting his head with a quizzical expression and quickly shutting that all down by ostentatiously shouting out that everyone in fashion agrees that the emperor's new clothes will absolutely revolutionize the industry with its creative use of sleeves or whatever. It's just narrative built on top of narrative said by like-minded people, which doesn't imply it's false, but when the people pushing forward the narrative also happen to be people who like the narrative, largely based on what other people who also like the narrative say, it certainly implies that great skepticism is in order.

The bigger issue I think this raises is, if the narrative turns out to be false and people notice that, then that will result in the many journalists and media outlets that pushed forward the narrative having discredited themselves, which will mean fewer trustworthy resources for the American electorate to learn about their politicians. This phenomenon of journalists discrediting themselves through politically-motivated messaging has been going on at least since the 2015 Trump campaign, and it seems to just keep getting worse, and I wonder if, eventually, something will have to give.

Here I come with my big fat black pill again. Choke it down. I'm just hoping I'm as wrong about this as I was about Biden staying in the race.

Before Kamala was crowned in corrupt undemocratic backroom deals, I was feeling good. I fully bought into the zeitgeist that the MSM was powerless, and rapidly losing control of The Narrative. Alas, looking back that appears to have been a coordinated effort to starve Biden out of the race, because as soon as he was gone, they turned it right back on again. All I see, even in otherwise critical independent media, is that Kamala's popularity is through the fucking roof. Panoramic photos of some rally she gave lately that easily gives a Trump rally a run for it's money. It's inexplicable to me. Everything we knew about this woman in the 2020 Primary, in her appearances as VP, say this should be impossible. And yet here we are. They've managed to invert reality once again. Apparently she's even trending on TikTok for reasons I'm sure are not suspicious at all. Leftist are euphoric, conservatives are manufacturing cope. I bet I'm gonna get an earful the next time my in laws are over about how amazing Kamala is, for no reason they can articulate at all.

Panoramic photos of some rally she gave lately that easily gives a Trump rally a run for it's money.

If it's the same one I was thinking of, it was maybe 2,000 people in the crowd.

At the rally where Trump was shot, they were planning for 15,000 in ticket sales. They also had a big crowd milling around outside. This is very rural, an hour drive from the nearest city, the county itself is only about 190,000 people.

Harris-Walz in Arizona was >15,000 people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/09/trump-montana-harris-arizona-rally/

It's not impossible at all. Sure, a lot of the excitement is astroturfed, but not nearly all of it. Democrat-supporters are genuinely invigorated.

Trump and Biden have dominated the political discourse for 9 straight years. Many people were just sick of it. Kamala is a young, fresh face who is relatively unknown, so it is easy for Democratic-leaning people to project whatever good vibes they want on her. Most people do not pay as close attention to politics as the people here do. On the Democrat side, they don't know and don't care about Kamala's record, what matters to them is that she's young and fresh and she is running against the orange man. On the Republican side, they don't really know much or care much about Kamala's record either, they're just going to vote against her because she is not the orange man.

Democrats love young, hip politicians. JFK, Bill Clinton, Obama... etc. Kamala isn't hip but she is young-ish, and that counts for a lot when she is running against a 78-year-old.

Kamala's poor primary performance is kind of irrelevant now because back then she was running against Obama's Vice President and a bunch of other Democrats, whereas now she is running against orange man. Against other Democrats, she had to make a positive case for herself without just criticizing everybody else. Against Trump, she just needs to criticize him for his weaknesses, like his age, his scandals, January 6, etc... while doing the bare minimum to make it seem like she herself has some positive qualities.

It's not like Democrats are completely dominating the narrative, they're just doing a pretty good job of claiming a chunk of it. There are millions of people who are more tuned into the Republican narrative than the Democratic one. They're all over X, for example. They're on Fox News. It's easy to find them. It's not like we live in some kind of pro-Democratic narrative hegemony. The election is still going to be very close.

It's not like Democrats are completely dominating the narrative, they're just doing a pretty good job of claiming a chunk of it. There are millions of people who are more tuned into the Republican narrative than the Democratic one. They're all over X, for example. They're on Fox News. It's easy to find them. It's not like we live in some kind of pro-Democratic narrative hegemony. The election is still going to be very close.

These are unimportant people though, generally. You need to win the Sunday Night Football voter who watches neither Fox nor MSNBC, and that is where the Democrats do dominate.

I think you're right on the vibes but it's funny that someone almost old enough to retire is considered "young" in American politics these days.

Strongly agree. Also, I think a lot of commentators are reading too much into the current media wave. There's still a very, very long time until the election. We won't even get a debate for another month! Elections always tighten and get more intense in the last few weeks; it always amazes me how much people tend to forget this. She will be stress-tested eventually. Current enthusiasm is a mix of a ton of Democratic-leaning orgs and individuals who were keeping their powder dry due to Biden fatigue suddenly igniting it all at once, and some genuine ground-level celebration that something on the wishlist of at least 3/4's of America ("don't give us another Trump-Biden election with two soon-to-be-80-year-olds") suddenly came true (or at least half-true). Human psychology is such that a feeling of "relief" doesn't immediately give way to being confronted with the demands of reality, humans like to bask or indulge in the relief for a little while.

"don't give us another Trump-Biden election with two soon-to-be-80-year-olds"

Quibble: Biden is not a soon-to-be-80-year-old. He's 81.

The Democrats have realized that memory is short, at least in the sense that bringing up what your opponent did three years ago has less relevance than what he's saying now. Trump was unusually restrained while he was leading, and Biden's references to his past behavior didn't stick because they seemed at odds with the Trump of 2024. Now that Harris is the nominee the strategy is for her to run a straight shooter campaign that accentuates the positive and only criticizes Trump in terms of his most recent statements, to the extent that they even pile on rather than letting these statements speak for themselves.

One of Trump's primary weaknesses as a candidate is his tendency to pander to his base in situations where it costs him votes among constituencies he needs to win. If Trump calls Harris a DEI candidate then his audience cheers but ordinary suburban swing voters think "Is he really going there?" She doesn't even have to respond, since him belaboring the point is only digging himself in a deeper hole. Similar thing with Tampon Tim — trans issues get right wingers fired up but aren't going to swing an election. The more time spent attacking a vice presidential candidate on that just makes it look like the Republicans don't have their priorities straight.

The worst thing, though, is that Trump seems to be doing to himself what Biden never could. Trump was able to keep a more or less even keel through all of Biden's Threat to Democracy talk. Now that Biden's out of the race, Trump can't help but make election theft comments about a popular Republican swing state governor. Why should Harris say anything about it when Trump is all too willing to remind people himself? What does bringing this up accomplish for Trump? Are there really that many Biden voters out there who think the election was stolen? Do swing voters need Trump to remind them of all the things they find distasteful about him? As long as Trump keeps making these kind of bonehead moves, the Harris campaign is going to sit tight and talk about positive vibes. Why go after Trump in this situation? It's an attack ad without the downsides of running an actual attack ad. And Trump seems more than willing to oblige. The question isn't only one of how long the shine stays on Harris, but of how much Trump will add to his own stink.

I think a lot of that might not be true. The normies might be more sympathetic to positions on the right than we’ve been lead to believe simply because modern office politics and the fact that most social media is public tends to lead to normie self censorship. This was what made polling a mess in 2016. People knew better than to publicly support a lot of Trump positions. Being less than thrilled that your kids can check out nearly pornographic gay sex books is labeled right wing, but I don’t think the actual opinions have changed that much. And I’d say the same for things like transgender kids — most people are not in favor of young children starting down that path, and would absolutely be livid if their child’s interest in such things were actively hidden from them.

What’s actually happening is that the left has put shame-filled labels on them, included them in HR training and thus put people on notice that their livelihoods and even their ability to keep their children depends on them at least publicly being open and inclusive and mouthing the lefty talking points on those things. And because of the conforming culture of PMC and aspiring PMC whites, they mostly go along with the watchwords and even out those who refuse to conform to HR. Try saying something vaguely populist right at a normie dinner party. The over the top reactions are not those of genuine disagreement. They’re fear. These people act like Inquisition Spaniards hearing something heretical, not people who have thought through the issue and come to a reasonable conclusion about the issues.

Trump might be pandering to his base, but I don’t see it as a negative simply because I don’t see a lot of people who actually oppose the things he’s saying. They’re mostly afraid to be publicly on his side. And the thing is that voting is the one place where you can express a heresy without fear because the ballots are private.

If they are then it isn't affecting voting much. The issues you talk about were much more salient in 2020 than in 2024, along with other assorted "woke" issues, and Donald Trump lost that election. In 2022, Democrats won the governorships of Michigan and Pennsylvania by large margins. I agree than Trump will fare better than Mastriano, but if these things were going to have electoral consequences in states that matter then we would have seen it by now. If Trump wins PA, it won't be because of a trans panic.

What’s actually happening is that the left has put shame-filled labels on them, included them in HR training and thus put people on notice that their livelihoods and even their ability to keep their children depends on them at least publicly being open and inclusive and mouthing the lefty talking points on those things.

Unfortunately, this works. Most people can't maintain the kind of doublethink necessary to publicly believe but privately disbelieve. Force them to say the words and they'll come to believe them. It's a technique which works in brainwashing, it works in struggle sessions, and parents even use it to train their children through forced apologies.

I think the route is less "force A to say X -> A comes to believe X", and more "force A, B, C, and D to say X -> A notices that B, C and D he respects are all (also) saying X but doesn't notice that they're being forced -> A comes to believe X".

Do you think there's any money in teaching Americans some Eastern European cynicism? Sounds like you guys could use it.

I'm pretty sure it has to be learned the long, hard way. Perhaps after 500 years of woke rule, we'll be close.

Wow - it never occurred to me to frame political peer pressure as a matter of cognitive strain, rather than simply as a matter of personality traits or commitment to principles. I never really considered the fact that it could be physically difficult for people to maintain a set of public-facing lies, and that over time this could have a palpable effect on their actual beliefs. To me, it's water off my back to say that I'm voting for Kamala when I'm actually voting for Trump - I get a thrill out of constructing elaborate lies anyway, I view it as a sort of theatrical performance - but is this the case for everyone? Almost certainly not. It's something to keep in mind, anyway.

And if this does have measurable large-scale social effects, then that's a tough blackpill to swallow, because it implies that any "silent majority" that opposes wokeism will shrink over time, and the perception of wokeism's dominance will more and more become reality.

https://digitalagency.substack.com/p/compliance-and-the-erosion-of-agency

During the Korean War, captured American soldiers found themselves in POW camps run by Chinese Communists. The Red Chinese engaged in what they called “lenient policy,” which was a sophisticated psychological assault on their captives... The Chinese were very effective in getting Americans to inform on one another, in contrast to the behavior of American POWs in WWII.

The Chinese answer was to start small and build. Prisoners were asked to make statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential "The United States is not perfect." "In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem." Once they complied with these minor requests, the men were pushed to submit to more substantive ones. A man who had agreed that the United States is not perfect might be asked provide examples. He might then be asked to make a list of "problems with America" and sign his name. Later, he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it’s what you really believe, isn’t it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.

Suddenly he would find himself a "collaborator."

Leftists have understood and exploited the nature of human weakness and malleability to power structures for over a century. They are very good at it. Every lie they tell and every middle school bullying tactic is carefully tailored to warp their victims into a shape the torturer wants. They see themselves as sculpting the human mind the way dog trainers condition dogs. "Engineers of The Soul" as one essay put it.

How would you describe the way society worked for millenia before the leftists?

There was no Foucault and no panopticon, just brutal violence and local suppression.

More brute force, fewer mind games

Wow - it never occurred to me to frame political peer pressure as a matter of cognitive strain, rather than simply as a matter of personality traits or commitment to principles. I never really considered the fact that it could be physically difficult for people to maintain a set of public-facing lies, and that over time this could have a palpable effect on their actual beliefs.

This was one of the core themes of 1984, from what I recall, that if you force someone to say a lie enough times, then the cognitive dissonance, or "doublethink," between what they believe and what they say becomes too difficult to maintain, and it gets resolved by their beliefs matching their actions (speech). I think this is an important insight that explains human behavior in all sorts of contexts, not just ideological or political. In the end, Winston truly, honestly, in his heart of hearts, loves Big Brother, just like Picard in that one Star Trek episode about 4 lights that was referencing 1984 truly, honestly believed that he saw 5 lights despite there being 4. I think one aspect 1984 got pretty wrong is in how it vastly overestimated how much effort it would take to cause someone to truly, honestly, believe that metaphorically 2 lights plus 2 lights make 5 lights. The organizations in the novel and the protocols they followed seem like someone bringing an RPG to a situation where a Nerf gun would suffice.

And if this does have measurable large-scale social effects, then that's a tough blackpill to swallow, because it implies that any "silent majority" that opposes wokeism will shrink over time, and the perception of wokeism's dominance will more and more become reality.

I'm pretty sure that I've seen this exact sequence of events outlined by a "woke" person as the means by which they will actually come to become dominant. Honestly, I thought this assumption was sort of "baked in" to any sort of analysis of the "woke" (and more broadly any authoritarian ideological movement that coerces people into repeating certain lines).

IIRC doublethink was not what you describe, but the ability for Ingsoc subjects to believe two contradictory things at the same time and to reflexively shut down any realization of the contradiction ("crimestop"). Good modern examples are instances of what Michael Anton calls "The Celebration Parallax" ("That's not happening, and it's good that it is").

It's been a long time since I read the book, but IIRC "doublethink" had 2 different definitions, possibly contradictory by intentional design. I'd thought that what I wrote was one of the definitions, but it seems similar enough to what you wrote that your definition might be one of the correct ones, and mine isn't.

I could believe that there were two definitions. I don't remember well enough either.

I'm pretty sure that I've seen this exact sequence of events outlined by a "woke" person as the means by which they will actually come to become dominant.

"By informing people that the expression of racist or sexist attitudes in public is unacceptable, people may eventually learn that such views are undesirable in private, as well. Thus, Title VII may advance the goal of eliminating prejudices and biases in our society."

From a footnote to the opinion of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, 858 F. 2d 345 - Davis v. Monsanto Chemical Company

Yeah, I feel like Trump should just focus on: 1) crime / lawlessness in Democratic-controlled areas, 2) immigration, 3) inflation, 4) the Biden/Harris administration's real or imagined foreign policy failures, and 5) the fact that he has already been President and things were pretty good until COVID (which he can blame on China) and BLM (which he can blame on the left).

Those are Trump's strengths. Election fraud and niche culture war topics like trans bathrooms might have a lot of people who want to yell about them online, but I am not sure they will really drive independents to the voting booth to vote for Trump.

If Trump calls Harris a DEI candidate then his audience cheers but ordinary suburban swing voters think "Is he really going there?" S

Affirmative action is incredibly unpopular across America. yet it surprises me how urban liberal types are so out of touch that they think people are clunching pearls over using DEI in a negative way. There’s a ton of resentful people who will be galvanized by seeing Kamala’s election as undeserved privilege being handed over yet again to someone with the right genitals and skin tone instead of the right merit

DEI is still pretty popular as a basic idea - https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4727744-americans-favor-dei-programs-poll/

Now you can argue people don't know what DEI really is or just not believe polling, but just throwing it out there isn't a boogeyman outside of right-wing circles.

people don't know what DEI really is or just not believe polling

California of all places voting against affirmative action comes to mind. People like things that sound nice, people do not like the reality behind the mask.

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll also asked about companies taking up “programs to hire more employees from groups that are underrepresented in their workforce, such as racial and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities and to promote equity in the workplace,” to which 69 percent said was “a good thing.”

Sounds like the wording of the poll was biased to get the answers WaPo wanted. Because, at least the last time I checked, this is essentially affirmative action which has always been unpopular even among African Americans

I'd argue that wording actually does matter. There might be some misrepresentation all over the spectrum, but people do think differently about e.g. a program that deliberately goes out and seeks underrepresented groups and helps them prepare better for applications, and e.g. a program that sets a soft or hard quota for hiring a certain amount of underrepresented people, or even sets aside individual positions for certain people explicitly. Sure, you can argue that they might be roughly morally equivalent. But the shades of meaning do matter to people. In my examples, both technically fit the goal of promoting equity, but one is much more palatable than the other.

So yeah, though it doesn't make for snappy debate, you do actually need to define DEI at some point, and people define it differently. But if we're talking about the "basic idea" then Outlaw is completely correct, the basic idea IS popular. People are almost hard-coded to value "fairness" and so if DEI shows up with that framing, people will go for it.

I think “DEI candidate” could have been an effective attack. Unfortunately Trump decided to go with “she’s not really black,” which sort of accepts the premise that being black is a notably positive attribute.

I see that moreas she’s a striver who tries to parlay identity for her own ambition and status but I see your poin t

There has been a trend recently of leftists here promoting the idea that their social views are anodyne to "normies", but those of conservatives are repelant. To me this is consensus building. That their views are normal, unremarkable, just water in which we all swim, but those of opposition should remain unvoiced, lest they expose just how unpopular they are.

I don’t think @Rov_Scam is saying that normies are cool with leftist values. I read it as normies mostly don’t want to get dragged into the mud on culture war topics. Trump calling Kamala a DEI hire is an insult in language that only really matters to people firmly in his camp already, which is true. The Grill party voters that decide the election see it as Kamala saying nothing and Trump making a vaguely racist attack in response, raising the Grillist’s “Oh, right. This guy again.” alarms.

I disagree on the trans attack in terms of political value. Trans issues are still very much an ick for Grillists, so tying Harris/Walz to the trans enthusiasts on the left, especially in the context of enforcing it in schools, i think works to Trump’s benefit. “Vote for these two and you get four more years of gender ideology in your daily life” is exactly the kind of thing Grillists are hoping to avoid.

Normies just don't think about trans stuff, and they don't want to think about trans stuff. Intentionally bringing up trans stuff is annoying, which is why it's bad for Trump. Normies would also be annoyed by someone making a big fuss to get tampons put in boys' bathroom, but so long as they don't have to encounter it, they are happy.

Analogously, suppose it were the case that right wingers were really into anime tentacle porn. This would disgust normies, and they wouldn't like it. However, if the Harris campaign continuously brought it up, those feelings of disgust would bounce back to the Harris campaign.

The median American view on transgender issues is, "I don't get it, they have the right to do what they want, and I might have some worries about what's going on in the schools, but that's something I'll deal with a school board race, and I don't get why Presidential candidates think it's more important than the economy/immigration/abortion/whatever."

Again, America is an inherently libertarian and 'mind your own business' country, which will frustrate both left-leaning and right-leaning people occasionally.

The median private American view on trans issues is deeply philosophically inconsistent, combining both a level of acceptance that would make Ron Desantis cry with a level of bigotry that would be totally unacceptable to HR guidelines.

In all honesty, 90% of it comes down to what you picture a hypothetical trans girl looking like.

Donald Trump is arguably closest to the median view on trans issues, with the combination of ‘sure, Caitlyn Jenner can use the women’s bathroom at Trump tower’ but also ‘let’s not allow 11 year olds to ruin their lives with dangerous hormonal medication’.

I've commented before that it's fascinating to watch this happening after decades - certainly enough decades to cover my entire lifetime so far - of the left explicitly saying that non-normie, non-anodyne social views that go against the status quo and make normies freak out should be not just tolerated and accepted, but celebrated merely due to the fact that they are oppressed by the majority. Which points to a couple of possibilities. One is that such statements were always just cynical, dishonest ploys to gain power by fooling the gullible or desperate. Another is that this is a case of "Jesus would agree with all of my social views, so you, as a follower of Jesus, should agree with all of my social views. Oh me, I'm not backwards enough to follow Jesus, I'm just hoping that by invoking Jesus, I can manipulate you into agreeing with me." That is, since the left lionizes the "weird" - often explicitly, using the exact same word - it doesn't carry much negative affect to them, but the right does denigrate "weirdness," so it affects them. Based on my perception "in the wild" of how the "weird" insult and, more generally, the claim that the leftist social views are just the normie default now, have landed, they seem about as effective as the typical case of an atheist trying to use the Bible to convince a Christian to agree with his social views. I'd guess there's definitely aspects of both going on there, which is pretty expected with any such wide scale phenomenon around such a large ideological/political bloc.

Certainly the corporate news media has been spinning wildly in hopes of a Trump defeat.

I have a number of criticisms of Harris, but historically, the most consequential impact of most Presidents has been through Supreme Court nominations. And Harris has always been a "no friends to the right of me, no enemies to the left of me" sort of politician. The independents/undecideds are rarely sufficiently dialed in to understand or care about the intricacies of law and its long-term impact on culture. Justice Jackson has already shown herself to be an unsophisticated jurist who simply votes for whatever seems Wokest, and Harris would appoint more of the same.

The fact that we've reached a point in our political history where every cultural disagreement turns into a Constitutional Question does not really bode well, I think. We are supposed to have a federal system; not every question of importance is supposed to be answered the same way for the entire nation. To the contrary--questions of importance are precisely the questions that states should be free to disagree about. Trump's nominees have moved the needle in the right direction, albeit only slightly. Harris would move us more toward totalitarianism and ruin than Trump could ever hope to manage, assuming she gets an even slightly sympathetic Congress (and I do expect her to win in November, as a direct result of the corporate news media being the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party--the fix is clearly in).

I don't like Trump, I've never liked Trump, and he has been a disaster for the Republican Party. But he was genuinely a kind of bland president who made okay SCOTUS picks. I would expect Harris to be essentially his equal-but-opposite--actually a much more boring President than one might expect from her public buffoonery, but something of a jurisprudential catastrophe in the long run.

I think the biggest concern is that Harris/Walz really don’t seem like a pair who understand that their ideological enemies are allowed to survive and flourish and even win occasionally, and think they need to change the rules if that’s going on.

Like I had problems with Obama’s and Biden’s us-vs-them arc of history triumphalism. But I didn’t get that vibe from them. I don’t think Biden is fully aware that he just endorsed court packing(I mean, I don’t think he’s aware of many other things as well, but like, Obama isn’t notably cheerleading for it, and earlier in Biden’s tenure when he was a hair more lucid he backed away from the idea). Harris, I think just genuinely has a very different idea about what democracy means(namely, the progressive establishment always wins, and the rules ensure that).

I don't have a lot of direct exposure to day-to-day US politics, so would you mind providing some links to things demonstrating this? I saw the thing about her saying the executive should act if Congress won't, but I assume there are more things giving you this vibe.

I think just genuinely has a very different idea about what democracy means

Rule by the demos versus rule by the democrats versus rule by demographics.

Would not all be affixed the same grammar?

Harris, I think just genuinely has a very different idea about what democracy means

She has a very different idea about what constitutional democracy means. Back during the pre-2020 Democratic primary debates, when Biden was trying to explain that an executive order could be unconstitutional, she was laughing at him for it and explaining that Congress not passing a law they want is sufficient reason for a Presidency to write it themselves.

He got worse after that, but I haven't seen evidence that she got any better.

When the rubber hit the road, Obama and Biden were willing to do out of bounds things to accomplish specific policy goals. But neither of them- either Obama nor pre-total senility Biden nor the Clintons- wanted to permanently change the rules to prevent the other side from winning. That’s a big difference.

Biden was willing to put pressure on social media companies to censor Covid posts deemed Misinformation. Walz straight up says he doesn’t think free speech applies in cases of hate speech or misinformation.

I think the biggest concern is that Harris/Walz really don’t seem like a pair who understand that their ideological enemies are allowed to survive and flourish and even win occasionally, and think they need to change the rules if that’s going on.

This seems right to me. Something that has long niggled me about Trump is that he often talks in the same way--but he doesn't seem to actually mean it. Like, "lock her up" was his big 2016 thing, and immediately upon victory he was like, "nah, we don't say that anymore." Clinton was not prosecuted, that was the end. Like for Trump, it was all just trash talk over a game. Whereas, Harris seems to be genuinely interested in putting a permanent end to the possibility of flourishing deplorables. I'm skeptical of her ability to do that even if she wins, but living through even her failed attempts promises to be annoying at best.

What kind of attempts do you have in mind?

She has no signature policy, no specific crisis to solve. She doesn’t have a particularly unified Congress. The limiting factor on the Democrats is not the Supreme Court.

I see a Harris presidency leading to one or two Bruen and Dobbs level decisions.

The southern border would be an obvious "specific crisis", and Venezuela is likely to just keep getting worse well and long before it gets better. And it doesn't hurt that the 'obvious' solution, at its most charitable, involves funneling billions of dollars to immigrant and refuge assistance groups that overwhelmingly support Dems, and more credibly involves large-scale amnesty and eventual citizenship to large groups of people that Dems believe will vote reliably Democratic.

(cfe 2020's estimate of 2.1 million.)

On culture war stuff, "does the ADA cover gender identity" is very likely to come to a head at SCOTUS in the next four years no matter how hard Roberts tries to punt on it, and regardless of what SCOTUS decides is going to be a massive political deal. If it ends up a Gorsuch opinion, it's hard to overstate how much of both law and everyday life that it touches. Either answer is likely to have a Harris admin run as far as SCOTUS will let them in the rulemaking postgame.

College debt is a ticking time bomb.

I would be very surprised if we go two and a half years without some high-profile shooting of some kind that makes gun control the matter of the day.

And that's suggesting Nothing Ever Happens re: Taiwan, Russia, Iran, so on.

This seems like more of the "vote Biden for moderate normalcy" propaganda from 2020. It was a lie, the people saying it knew it was a lie, but it was an effective way to con people so they said it anyway.

I don’t think it was a lie.

In the primary, he was certainly more moderate than Sanders. In the general, he played the straight man to Trump’s firebrand; I’d say both of them turned out pretty moderate indeed.

Like most administrations, Biden’s has had boring responses to boring problems. What was the moderate/normal version of dealing with inflation?

I think the "Fair Game" order on Elon Musk was pretty abnormal. Multi-agency conspiracies to retaliate against domestic dissent are pretty serious business. Yes, it's not entirely unprecedented, what with literal Watergate and the Trump-Ukraine affair (and, if you really want to dredge things up, the Sedition Act), but Biden's Musk harassment is possibly larger in scale than the former two and in any case even "on par with Nixon and Trump in abuse of the office" is hardly a "return to normal".

Like most administrations, Biden’s has had boring responses to boring problems. What was the moderate/normal version of dealing with inflation?

Not causing it with a massive vote buying giveaway after the causes of a non-central "recession" were already solved.

The border was stable. He destablized it intentionally by repealing a bunch of policies.

There was no war in Israel. He released billions of dollars to Hamas's patron Iran.

He tried to fire millions of workers over a vaccine that ended up being meh.

He stopped the Keystone pipeline more or less permanently.

He tried getting a PR win by evacuating Afghanistan in a totally illogical way just so it could happen before 9/11.

These are not moderate left wing ideas like raising the payroll tax cap by 50% or expanding school lunch programs to include a new disadvantaged class (indeed he also radically threatened to pull funding for school lunches if schools didn't enable transing the kids). They are wild attempts at reforming things significantly in a very left wing way.

I don't know, but I think I could come up with something more moderate than ensuring the executive has to participate in white privilege struggle sessions, or pressuring an already radical organization to promote the removal of age limits on transgender care.

I remember the LockMart shitshow. I also observe that it was in the long hot summer of 2020, months before Biden was elected. Trump nominally banished any training which mentioned those terms with this order; looks like Biden overrode that with another. I don’t like his framing, but I also don’t think you can describe that as requiring struggle sessions.

Point conceded on trans issues. No return to quietly ignoring them from Biden.

You've convinced me. I won't try to pretend that's anodyne.

Every. Fucking. Time. It's worse than Darwin ghosting and pretending it never happened. It's like pulling chatGPT's teeth to get it to acknowledge something against its RLHF, then refreshing the window and having to do it all over again, every time.

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What kind of attempts do you have in mind?

Red flag laws and assault weapons bans, specifically as they are likely to be unevenly applied against more conservative groups, would be annoying at best. A continuation of Biden's "what border?" policies would be annoying at best. Following her running mate's record on transing the kids or preventing religious universities from promulgating their own views would be annoying at best. Under a Harris administration, we could expect the Department of Education to do everything in its power to undermine SFA v. Harvard, which would be annoying at best.

These are all things that aim toward shutting down the ability of the "deplorables" to defend themselves from government overreach, to maintain democratic influence in their own nation, to protect their children from politically popular social contagions, to participate in society on the basis of merit, and so forth.

The limiting factor on the Democrats is not the Supreme Court.

I'm not so sure about this. I agree that she probably will not enjoy the assistance of a particularly unified Congress, but that remains to actually be seen. Court Packing remains unlikely, but it is certainly more likely under Harris than under any alternative administration.

America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back. (Applause.) We are not going back. We’re not going back.
AUDIENCE: We’re not going back! We’re not going back!
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We’re not going back.
AUDIENCE: We’re not going back! We’re not going back!
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We are not going back.
AUDIENCE: We’re not going back! We’re not going back!
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We’re not going back.
AUDIENCE: We’re not going back! We’re not going back! We’re not going back!
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We’re not going back.
And I’ll tell you why we’re not going back: because ours is a fight for the future.

Scott, prescient as always.

As for the substance. My point is that endorsing red flag laws or abortion rights or gender whatever is not sufficient to make those things happen at a federal level. Most of the time, the President gets to pick an appropriately-aligned justice or two, sign the budget, and then go back to meeting with foreign leaders or ordering bin Laden’s death.

Also, I observe that most of your example tyrannies were enacted by and for individual states. Given that Biden and Congress have failed to override Dobbs trigger laws, despite the vivid backlash, I have little expectation of a sweeping rule on lesser CW battlefronts.

Would Harris sign a federal assault weapons bill? Sure. Would any Democrat not? I have seen precious little evidence of conscientious objectors saying, “no, this time the party has gone too far.” By the time something crosses the Resolute desk, it’s got the explicit approval of hundreds of congressmen and, by proxy, roughly half the country.

That’s not true for executive action, and I’ll agree that a Democrat is more likely to use the administration against the interests of “deplorables.” Does that really get you to “an end to the possibility of flourishing”? I don’t think so.

I would expect Kamala to go after religious colleges through to department of education- and I think BYU specifically is important to Mormon flourishing- at the very least.

I immediately imagined having to pretend I’m an anarchist (full grey tribe mode) in order to continue being a libertarian conservative (grey-red).

Mentioned downthread, but the timing is interesting that the same week that Kamala assumed the presidency, Tulsi Gabbard just happens to land on the terror watch list.

Kamala Harris is not the President of the United States. Joe Biden has decided not to run for re-election, but he is still the President.

Justice Jackson has already shown herself to be an unsophisticated jurist who simply votes for whatever seems Wokest, and Harris would appoint more of the same.

I don't think this is true. The only time I genuinely couldn't comprehend where she was trying to go in terms of jurisprudence was her questioning in Murthy v Missouri. Aside from that case, she seems fine to me in oral arguments and writes opinions that I just disagree with. She's not stupid or unsophisticated, she's just wrong. Do you have an example of what you're referring to?

She clears the low low bar of not being Sotamayor, but other than that I'd say she is the worst writer on SCOTUS (non-Sotamayor) of the last 4 decades. And she is one of the most partisan. Probably the least gifted non-Sotamayor SCOTUS appointee since Abe Fortas.

The only time I genuinely couldn't comprehend where she was trying to go in terms of jurisprudence was her questioning in Murthy v Missouri.

This was certainly my top example, but I don't think it was hard to comprehend. I think it was stupid.

So my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods. I mean, what would — what would you have the government do?

Like, seriously? "The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?" This is almost as straightforwardly embarrassing as her inability to answer the question "what is a woman?"

She is similarly stupid in her engagement with issues on race (though Sotomayor has similar problems).

This is not a person who is sophisticated but merely wrong. She's probably smarter than, say, Kamala Harris. But she's definitely bottom-of-the-barrel for SCOTUS, maybe even for the Circuits.

Like, seriously? "The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?"

If you read the rest of her comments she says "“I’m interested in your view that the context doesn’t change the First Amendment principles,” Jackson said. “I understood our First Amendment jurisprudence to require heightened scrutiny of government restrictions of speech, but not necessarily a total prohibition when you’re talking about a compelling interest of the government to ensure, for example, that the public has accurate information in the context of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.”"

So she is obviously aware that the Constitution limits government power, but she is talking about there not being a total prohibition when there is a compelling interest.

Now you may of course disagree with the fact whether Covid or whatever is such a compelling interest, but I think positing that one question, means she is an idiot, about not understanding what the Constitution does is just cherry picking. The rest of her questioning clearly shows she does know that.

Her question shouldn't paraphrased as

"The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?"

but rather as

"The Constitution limits government power, but that limit is not all encompassing. In your view what should the government do when and if it does have such a compelling interest?"

Remembering her question here is in the context of a hypothetical about a viral social media stunt that is causing suicides among teenagers. So she is asking even if people are dying is your position that the government cannot encourage the media companies to suppress these posts. Is that not a compelling interest? And the advocate understands where she is going because he answers, no, the government can use positive speech to condemn the posts but it cannot ask the companies to take them down. So they both understand that government power is limited by the Constitution, what they are going back and forth about is what counts as a compelling interest and where those limits end.

Again, you may think she is wrong about where those limits are, but it is clear she isn't a moron who doesn't understand that the Constitution is there to put limits on government action. She clearly understands that.

it is clear she isn't a moron who doesn't understand that the Constitution is there to put limits on government action

I think it's clear that she is kind of a moron (see: "I'm not a biologist"). That aside, there is understanding, and then there is understanding. I'm sure she knows what enumerated powers means. I'm also sure she doesn't give a shit about enumerated powers if the principle happens to get in the way of the result she wants, which constitutes a failure to genuinely grasp the principle and her responsibility to it. That's the problem with results oriented jurisprudence. It's a naked exercise of power; it's illegible and thus illegitimate as a jurisprudence.

see: "I'm not a biologist"

That isn't being a moron, that's her toeing the line on the current culture war. And similarly if she does understand it, but is choosing to ignore it, that doesn't make her stupid. I am sure she grasps the principle, she just disagrees over what her responsibility is to it. Which is a good reason to be against her as a justice to be clear! But it isn't the same as not understanding.

But it isn't the same as not understanding.

People who make themselves deliberately stupid, are still stupid. People who consistently act as if they are stupid, just are stupid. The kind of person who answers "what is a woman" with "I'm not a biologist" is being a stupid person, even if they could in theory generate a wall of text explaining to me why in context it was better to pretend to be an idiot than to give an intelligent answer--that is, even if they have the ability to not be a stupid person.

This is what it means, to be a mistake theorist: I genuinely believe that the people who disagree with me, are making a mistake, and that if they were smarter, it is not a mistake they would make.

For if she is not stupid, well, what remains is for her to be actually evil.

As a mistake theorist, I'm open to the possibility that it's a mistake to be a mistake theorist! But that's where I am right now.

This line of thought is so illogical to me. It's patently obvious that there are incentives to anyone even adjacent to politics to be mealy-mouthed and delicately sidestep questions that don't have a "good" answer. I know people get annoyed at politicans for giving non-answers but the fact of the matter is that giving non-answers actually works well, because politicians often rather slightly annoying many people over enraging a few people. Rather than acknowledge that these incentives exist, and they are quite strong, you're deliberately attempting to take the evasive answer at face value rather than acknowledge that smart people sometimes choose to say dumb things because it's beneficial for them to do so.

For example, lawyers do this all the time. Just because a lawyer states a fact in a tortuous way doesn't make the lawyer stupid, it just means they want to win their case and realize that sometimes even an absurd linguistic distortion that would make their middle school English teacher cry might help them win their case. I don't see a lawyer twist words into pretzels and then conclude "oh this lawyer must not understand English very well"...

A supreme court justice position is inherently a political position in the broad but most accurate meaning of the word (the philosophy of how we govern ourselves), and pretending otherwise does no one any favors. There is not an expectation of complete truth in all of their responses to a nomination board, merely a hope of general integrity.

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This is what it means, to be a mistake theorist: I genuinely believe that the people who disagree with me, are making a mistake, and that if they were smarter, it is not a mistake they would make.

She could still be smart, and be making a mistake though. Right now, I think you are both very intelligent and wrong. If she is deliberately playing her part, because she knows that doing the opposite would be a huge mistake for her career then she isn't being a stupid person. Nor is she being evil. There are other options in between!

She could just be being a standard relatively self-interested person who both believes in her causes, has internalized what she needs to say to fit in in her social group and would quite like to have an important job.

You know who I think that describes? The vast majority of people. Mistake theory doesn't mean that people can only be stupid or evil. They can be smart but wrong, dumb but wrong, or perfectly average but wrong. They can be subject to social forces and so on.

I also consider myself a mistake theorist for context here. Most people are decent people. There are very few evil people in the world. The difference is i think, that I believe that because we are not rational beings, being smart doesn't get you much closer to being correct. So having reached the wrong belief does not mean you are stupid, or being a stupid person. It is simply very very difficult to ignore the whole social edifice of your society. So that being persuaded by it, tells you almost nothing about the individual in question except that they are a person.

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But she's definitely bottom-of-the-barrel for SCOTUS, maybe even for the Circuits.

Eh she seems to at least be marginally smarter than Sotomayor. Sotomayor consistently has the most braindead opinions of the entire court.

Eh she seems to at least be marginally smarter than Sotomayor. Sotomayor consistently has the most braindead opinions of the entire court.

You may be right about this, I don't have a strong view here. Either way, people who find themselves in high political office based more on their skin color or sex than on their demonstrated merit often end up in over their heads. And yes, when I say that, I get a lot of pushback from people who want to tell me all about Jackson's merits, but like... Biden himself said it. He wasn't even looking for the best candidate, just the most plausible black woman for the job.

Justice Jackson has already shown herself to be an unsophisticated jurist who simply votes for whatever seems Wokest,

I think, our ongoing series of Supreme Court analysis has indicated otherwise no? She has sided with the conservatives against the other liberal justices on multiple occasions particularly in criminal cases like the January 6th case.

Indeed she has been slightly less liberal than Sotomayor or Kagan:

" Jackson has voted slightly less liberal than the other two non-conservatives on the bench—59 percent of the time to Sotomayor's 63 percent and Kagan's 65 percent"

In fact to the extent there are op ed pieces about her not living up to expectations as a liberal appointment.

"Jackson, the most recent addition to the bench, joining in 2022, has surprised some since taking her seat on the Supreme Court. This term, President Joe Biden's appointee, and the first Black female justice, unexpectedly sided with her conservative colleagues on a number of cases, including Fischer vs. United States, a major case pertaining to January 6."

Indeed she has been slightly less liberal than Sotomayor or Kagan

I'm pretty skeptical of the use of the word "liberal" in such contexts, and cases where justices don't line up with what the news media "expects" of them often come out that way precisely because the case does not neatly align with orthodoxies like "Woke." I suspect SCOTUS analysis carried out along "blue tribe/red tribe" metrics could be more helpful than "Republican/Democrat" or "conservative/liberal" metrics--but I haven't actually done the work, so that is only a suspicion.

(With specific respect to the 2020 protest, I did see some discussion of Jackson and Barrett "swapping places" but in the end I think far less attention was paid to that peculiarity than was maybe warranted.)

(With specific respect to the 2020 protest, I did see some discussion of Jackson and Barrett "swapping places" but in the end I think far less attention was paid to that peculiarity than was maybe warranted.)

I am not sure about Barrett, but Jackson has sided with conservatives on reading criminal statues narrowly in a few cases. I am not saying she is conservative by any means, but she does have a very specific jurisprudence that can lean what has been described as libertarian on criminal matters. Now she was a public defender, so it maybe her experiences there with perhaps the over-reach of the prosecutorial state have aligned her somewhat that way. She is also very concerned with the practicalities of rulings. As in, how easy is it for an average person to know what they should or should not be doing with any given statute or law. She thinks the courts should be doing more to clarify and help citizens there.

Obviously you are not likely to agree with a lot of her opinions, but I think she is a far better justice than she has been painted, even with that expectation.

I am not saying she is conservative by any means, but she does have a very specific jurisprudence that can lean what has been described as libertarian on criminal matters.

To the extent that "Woke" is downstream of stuff like BLM, this would appear to be a case-in-point of my read on her decisions. A consistent libertarianism (e.g. on Murthy, where the Democrat appointees sided with Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh to empower the federal government against the First Amendment) would have shown some sophistication. Someone who is libertarian when it protects petty criminals from local LEOs but statist when the federal government wants to bully corporations into doing things the federal government is forbidden from doing, does not have a sophisticated jurisprudence. They have a results-oriented political agenda.

And I do think that Murthy shook out in approximately that way, split between plausibly principled jurists and mere creatures of the state. Barrett is the one I have the hardest time pinning down, it seems I am as often disappointed by her as I am impressed. They all get it right sometimes, and they all get it wrong sometimes, and that's to be expected. But the "freedom contingent" is small, and gains allies only inconsistently.

Someone who is libertarian when it protects petty criminals from local LEOs but statist when the federal government wants to bully corporations into doing things the federal government is forbidden from doing, does not have a sophisticated jurisprudence. They have a results-oriented political agenda.

Then she should have sided against J6 surely? That was a Federal case.

In any case, i think you are quite right in one respect, she is results orientated. Which is something I think is needed on the court. The courts are made for men, not men for the courts in other words. Very technical rulings in order to make the smallest possible change to a statute without providing any guidance to how that impacts the statute over all, are very common currently as are punting things back to lower courts on narrow grounds. Whether that is Roberts just not wanting to rock the boat too hard or just being slightly too beholden to previous decisions. I see Jackson and Thomas as being antidotes to that, though in clearly different directions.

I'd rather have a decision go against my political side as long as it results in clear ideas of what can or can't be done, than some wishy-washy dismissal on providence grounds. That is one of the reasons I like Jackson, she consistently pushes for them to make actual real decisions, even when it is likely (as in the Idaho case) that her preferred outcome would not be the one a conservative leaning court would actually make, if it was willing to make a decision. Notably Thomas also does this as well. Which is why even though I disagree with a lot his decisions, I think he adds a good balance to the court.

Then she should have sided against J6 surely? That was a Federal case.

It was still "local LEOs" on the ground, though. DC's unique character makes it a special case.

That is one of the reasons I like Jackson, she consistently pushes for them to make actual real decisions

The extent to which we agree or disagree on this probably depends on what you ultimately mean by "real decisions" and "results oriented." In legal theory, "results oriented" is a term of art specifically connoting "uses the law to achieve particular outcomes (whether in the particular case or in more general sociocultural ways), rather than pursuing a consistent jurisprudence grounded in clear principles." So for example, Roe v. Wade was a badly-decided case (even RBG thought so), but the clear outcome was so desired by certain people that they enshrined it in their jurisprudence anyway. Was that better than a wishy-washy dismissal? Maybe, but I'm skeptical, and "wishy-washy dismissal" is of course not the only alternative.

The problem with a results oriented jurisprudence is that a clear answer to this question may actually muddy the waters on many other questions. That's the point of principle: if I know how the Court has ruled in relevant principle, I can get a sense of how the Court is likely to rule on similar and related questions that are not answered by the case under immediate consideration. And one of the most important principles of American governance is the doctrine of enumerated powers, which has not been carefully adhered to since, well, maybe ever... but the accrual of power to the federal government certainly accelerated through the 20th century in a trend that seems to be continuing into the 21st.

And one of the most important principles of American governance is the doctrine of enumerated powers, which has not been carefully adhered to since, well, maybe ever...

Exactly, if it wasn't carefully adhered to, from very early on, there is no reason it should be now. All of that is just a framework for decisions that benefit the people. If your rules don't work and have to be ignored, then the rules are no good and should be ignored.

Now that does allow for decisions to be made in partisan ways, and that is another problem I completely agree. But the rules didn't stop that happening anyway. So you are no worse off. But having actual enumerated decisions at least let people know what the ground under their feet is doing now. Sure maybe that changes on the next case, but that is ok. Knowing what the next step looks like is enough for 90% of people.

Personally I'd prevent the Supreme court from punting or making very minor narrow decisions. If a law is unconstitutional then they force the government to rewrite it until it is. Give them some powers to enforce that on the executive and legislative branches. Give them some actual teeth to really be a check and balance. Their job is to determine that and punting it back and forth helps no-one except prolonging things. Even if that means my side would lose a lot of cases given the ideological make up of the court, I would far prefer that.

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(and I do expect her to win in November, as a direct result of the corporate news media being the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party--the fix is clearly in).

The fix was in in 2016 too. What makes this time different?

The fix was in in 2016 too. What makes this time different?

Eight years.

Specifically, eight years of learning how to deal with Trump. In 2016, Trump played the media like a fiddle. Their exasperation and outrage only increased support for him. He was slinging mud while they were trying to coronate their queen in the most manifest destiny play since the days of Polk. Well, now they're slinging mud. Now they're pointing and laughing. It's probably not the sort of thing that would be sustainable through a contested primary... so the Democrats did away with the primary.

Furthermore: Trump already won! He defeated Joe Biden. He shot his shot, he achieved the victory he set out to achieve... but it was too early to make the difference that mattered. The only question now is whether three months is long enough for the fresh polish to wear off the Harris campaign. I won't say it's impossible! I have been wrong about Trump's chances before. Maybe I'll be wrong again. But I'm skeptical that Americans have the energy to prevail against the will of the media elites twice in a single year.

I won't say it's impossible! I have been wrong about Trump's chances before. Maybe I'll be wrong again.

Interestingly, I think the opposite, I think Trump is still favored here. Maybe not by a lot at this stage, the switch did help, but maybe I'd give it 55-45 to Trump. By no means a sure thing, but I would rather be in Trump's position not Harris's.

The messaging coming from the Harris-Walz campaign has pivoted away from the rhetoric of civil conflict and toward the sort of calm, patriotic cheerfulness that typified the presidencies of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

The presidency of Bill Clinton was also typified by blowjobs...

Sure, but that was fodder for late night comedians, not reason for gloomy doom postings on AOL or Usenet.

Can someone please explain why they take Noah Smith seriously? He's a colossal wonk and he looks like that weird Trekkie guy.

(This is a serious question. I've noticed a few people link him on HN too. He never gets a good reception.)

He has lots of money behind him. He came out of the VOX system IIRC and has a weird substack now with very low productivity so its reasonable to assume he has one or more patrons that aren't subbing at $10/month.

Did he get kicked out of Vox during some reshuffle? I can never remember and always mix him up with yglesias.

He blocked me on Twitter for ratioing him, so I don't have access to his keen insight.

It's not clear to me how being a wonk or looking weird are bad, or discredit him in any way.

I'm not defending him, to be clear. I'm only saying that those specifically are not reasonable criticisms of him.

You've been told repeatedly not to post low-effort one-liners like this, and yet another ironical take of "weird and creepy yikes" is not as clever as you think it is.

I for one really really don't like Noah Smith, and don't take him seriously, but wtf is this comment? Are we going to ape the Harris campaign now, jettison all reasonable discourse, and just start calling people weird?

I'm weird

Da ba dee, da ba dieeee…

Sorry, I'm simultaneously discussing weird down thread. Weird is starting to sound weird. Weird.

Help

One thing this discourse has revealed to me is how often I use the term 'weird,' not even with any moral valence, just as a synonym of "notable" or "interesting" or "unexplained."

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