Earlier today Norm Ornstein published a really thoughtful piece in The Atlantic about what the candidates should actually be asked at tonight’s debate. I highly recommend you all take a few minutes and read it. Full disclosure: I know Norm, he’s a friend and senior mentor, and he occasionally tweets out my posts here to his very large social media following.
However, I want to take a different direction in discussing the campaign, which includes the debates, before tonight’s debate in Atlanta. The Democratic candidates, every single one of them, whether they know it or not, recognize it or not, or want to recognize it at all, are not involved in a normal or traditional campaign cycle, nor in a normal or traditional presidential election year. The 2020 US election – from the presidential election to the senatorial and congressional elections to the state gubernatorial and legislative elections to local elections – are all being contested within an information and political war that has expanded from an unconventional Russian hybrid active measures operation to a largely non-violent and non-kinetic world war. This is the reality for the United States and Americans as the Democratic presidential primary grinds on towards the first election and caucus, as candidates register to run before state filing deadlines, and as people sign up to volunteer for campaigns or to work as election officials.
The Democratic presidential primary candidates, as well as every candidate regardless of party up and down the ballot, are now enmeshed in a war. And because it is a political war – politics including other means to use the Clausewitzian formulation- that largely relies on diplomatic, information, economic, intelligence, and legal warfare while downplaying the use of military power. It is a war that is going largely unremarked and largely uncommented on. The war has multiple fronts and not all are in the US. Brexit is one front and the now sequestered counterintelligence report on Russian financing, support, and interference in Brexit, by order of the Prime Minister and/or his senior staff, is a Damoclean sword hanging over the upcoming British elections. Russia’s ongoing low intensity kinetic, information, and political warfare operations in Ukraine is another front. As are Russia’s similar operations in Syria and Libya. The PRC’s Belt and Road initiative is a diplomatic, information, intelligence, and economic warfare operation, as is their information, intelligence, and economic warfare operation against the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong is part of this new world war. The President’s ongoing unearned fulfillment of items on Bibi Netanyahu’s wishlist is another front.
The US front, however, has one very specific center of gravity: the President and the Republican Party. Or, perhaps, more accurately stated, voting the President out of office in the 2020 election, holding the majority in the House, flipping the Senate majority, maintaining the state houses and legislatures currently in Democratic hands, and flipping as many as possible is the strategic objective of the 2020 elections. That’s it. Everything else, from revising how health care is funded and delivered to how college is paid for to fixing the tax code to repairing our relations with our allies and partners to seriously addressing climate change to shoring up the aging post World War II and post Cold War global system, are all, at the Federal level, dependent on limiting the President to one term, maintaining the majority in the House, and flipping the majority in the Senate.
All of the sturm and drang about how to fix health care and health insurance in the US, rebalancing the powers between the branches of government, rebalancing the Federal courts, repairing the tax code after decades of abusive revisions in pursuit of validating economically bankrupt theories, repairing our relationships with our allies and partners, seriously addressing climate change, and shoring up the global system WILL ONLY HAPPEN IF THE PRESIDENT IS LIMITED TO ONE TERM, IF THE DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IS MAINTAINED IN THE HOUSE, and IF THE DEMOCRATS FLIP THE MAJORITY IN THE SENATE!
It is absolutely wonderful to have a talented, diverse field of candidates who demonstrate the depth and breadth of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious coalition that makes up the Democratic Party and spans from the center to the left of center. And in another time and another America, debating the minutiae of various plans, proposals, potential policies, and the strategies to achieve them would be a political junky’s dream. Unfortunately we DO NOT live in that time, nor do we live in that America. We are in an America at war. A war that is not formally declared, that our President, his administration, his allies in Congress and at the state levels of government, his surrogates, and his media supporters at Fox News, Sinclair, talk radio, and conservative digital news and social media have no interest in recognizing, let alone combatting. Our self governing democratic-republic is on the knife’s edge. We are in murabashi – facing our opponent across the log bridge over a deep ravine. We cannot retreat without being cut down, we cannot go to the right or left or we fall to our death, the only way out is through one’s opponent and across the bridge to safety.
The focus of the Democratic candidates and their campaigns needs to be on the reality of this existential threat. If the news media, and the debate moderators drawn from within its ranks, can’t get their heads around it and want to focus on the minutiae between various candidates plans and proposals because they are following the professional wrestling concept of controversy creates cash, ie people tune in to see a fight, then the candidates have a political obligation to bring every answer back to this reality: nothing, not a damn thing will be done on any of these issues until and unless the President is limited to one term, the House majority is maintained, and the Senate majority is flipped. Everything else is a distraction.
Elections with incumbent presidents standing for reelection are always referendums on the incumbent. The Democratic candidates and their campaigns need to adjust and focus on this reality. It is perfectly fine to state one has a plan or a proposal or a strategy for fixing anything and everything that ails the US and Americans, but it needs to be focused through the lens of it only happens if we elect a Democratic president, reelect a Democratic House majority, and elect a Democratic Senate majority in 2020. That is the real strategic objective of the 2020 election. Not health care reform, not tax revisions, not how to fund college educations, pay for child care, repair our alliances and partnerships, shore up the global system, take serious measures regarding climate change, and/or dozens of other too long neglected issues. Those are all lines of effort to be undertaken once the strategic objective has been achieved. But unless the strategic objective has been achieved those are just nice ideas that will never ever be attempted, let alone accomplished. The various proposals, plans, policies, and strategies are just good ideas presented by a dozen or so good idea fairies with no hope of ever even being seriously considered if the President is elected to a second term and if Senator McConnell maintains his majority in the Senate.
Open thread!
Mary G
Righteous rant. I seriously worry that the debate will be “everybody pile on Mayor Pete” while he does a three-hour rendition of “OK, Boomer.”
germy
Adam L Silverman
@germy: He is not wrong.
lamh36
posted this on the last thread but reposting here since it’s more fitting
????new digital ad from Kamala Harris
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Some of those candidates are so old, they’re not boomers. They’re war babies.
lamh36
@germy: i saw they took and totally agree
Spider-Dan
While I agree that control of Congress and the WH are the key in 2020, and that other goals are essentially meaningless if we don’t first do that… this was also the case in 2016, arguably even more so than next year. And that argument didn’t work.
So it seems to me that it’s “better” to run on plans you can’t actually implement, because running on the importance of winning (and the ability to subsequently implement your plans) just elicits a bunch of yawns.
But maybe 2016 has made me excessively cynical.
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: I don’t endorse candidates, but she is the only candidate I have seen who consistently puts it all back on defeating Trump.
Also, you have email!
glory b
But will this bring out the youths? /snark/
Timurid
The Assassination of Tinker Bell by the Coward Adam Silverman, now streaming on Disney Plus…
jk
Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann are the Lennon and McCartney of think tank scholars and their work
It’s Even Worse Than It Looks is their Sgt Pepper album.
I have extremely low expectations for tonight’s debate, God bless Norm, but the tv networks are in the infotainment business and don’t view these debates as a public service. Also, fuck MSNBC for choosing Rachel Maddow as a moderator. She’s a performance artist and camera mugging doofus who has no business being involved in this debate. Last night, she whined about too many witnesses testifying. She’s a self absorbed dope.
Cacti
@Mary G: I figured Mayo Pete couldn’t get much lower than he already was with black voters. Then the video of him blowing rhetorical kisses at the Tea Party in 2010 showed up.
Yarrow
@germy: Agree. If they can’t cancel it then put it online only.
lamh36
@Mary G: speaking of Pete
Ahem…there is at least candidate on stage tonight that has an easy answer to this “challenge”
wvng
I just got into a “debate” with some people saying anyone not for M4A isn’t a real Democrat and needs to change parties. That debate was started with some trash talk about Joe Manchin not being a real Democrat and how the party would be better off without him. My response was that in order to get Dem majorities in the Senate we need to win races in conservative states, which means we need to run conservatives. This is just math, and yet many simply can’t see it. Good on you, Adam, for spelling it out. Winning is the ONLY thing that matters right now. Without winning we can’t do anything.
Adam L Silverman
@Spider-Dan: The election will be decided in about 12 to 15 states that are central to the Electoral College vote. Medicare for All scares the shit out of the Independents, including the Democratic leaning Independents in those states. The concerns of the gettable voters in those states all revolve around the President being voted out of office. This isn’t an argument against Medicare for All on the merits. I’ve lived in places with national health care systems, have no problems with them, and think they’re superior to what we’re doing, but the simple reality is you have to go to the voters where they live in terms of politics, economics, ideology, values, etc. If what you’re proposing turns them off, especially as there is absolutely no chance of achieving it even with a Democratic majority Senate, then all you’re doing is committing campaign and electoral fratricide by focusing on it.
NotMax
Aside from the bottom feeders – and Biden’s magical thinking – what leads you to think the other credible contenders don’t recognize this? And more important, address it as a priority during general election (as opposed to primary election) campaigning?
Elizabelle
Yeah, this is why I stopped coming to Balloon Juice much for a while. Could not stand seeing Democratic candidates being torn limb from limb, and some people here are goddamned vicious.
And I do wish they were not having a debate tonight. Steals the thunder of Sondland’s revelations today, and there are still 101 candidates up there. Enough. (Although, of course, Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time.)
But any debate just brings out the built-in derision of Democrats by our “liberal” media, and the lazy as fuck media types who are all “yeah, but how are you going to PAY FOR IT???” when it’s their goddamned malfeaseance that helped elect Trump.
Why can’t we be more like other first world countries? Some times I think the questioners should be people who have lost their jobs in the media — and there are lots of them out there. Lots of them.
Who needs some asshole with a fat contract for appearing on the air? I’d rather hear from the person who is scrounging for healthcare and not getting callbacks for jobs because — ooh, over 30. And unemployed.
Adam L Silverman
@glory b: Counting on the youth vote is a fool’s errand.
lamh36
@Adam L Silverman: oooh let me check my email. I’ve got a finance test tonight so I’ve mostly been studying for that and I’m heading to go to class soon…i’ll check before I get to campus
Adam L Silverman
@jk: Should’ve been Joy Ann Reid. She’s their best questioner/interviewer. Honestly, Nicole Wallace’s aww shucks we’re all friends around the coffee table chatting persona belies a better questioner/interviewer than Maddow. Just go back and watch her take her long time friend and colleague Steve Schmidt apart when he came on her show last January promoting Howard Schultz’s potential candidacy. Stephanie Ruhle would’ve also been a very good choice.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I’m sorry, I’ve been told(for a while) that anyone over 55 is a Boomer(and evil).
Gin & Tonic
You should warn us when he does that, so we can make sure we are wearing pants. Could get embarrassing otherwise.
Mary G
@Cacti: The “Maybe Julian Castro should come to South Bend so I can explain brown people to him” remarks should have been the end of him. Bernie Sanders does better than that.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: If the primaries turn off the general electorate because they’re aimed at mollifying or amplifying the left of center purity ponies, then you’ve lost the war because you improperly set the theater. And that’s what is happening right now.
Sab
@lamh36: I said on last thread that Harris is everyone’s strong number two, which doesn’t help her in the polls.
I am team Warren, but I really really like Harris.
Hang in there. We have had zero primaries so far
ETA: I wish every D candidate had her infectious laugh.
Betty Cracker
@jk: Crossing you off my Christmas card list for hating on my Rachel… ;)
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: It’ll make you scratch your head.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: If you were born during World War II you’re a war baby, not a boomer.
mistermix loves your ass
Adam, are you on drugs? What the hell are you thinking? We want to have at least half of the debate occupied by an argument over the picayune details of each candidates health care plans, or it isn’t a real debate! /s
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I’m just wondering how long Maddow’s into will be. //
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: An hour and 12 minute intro dialogue on the etymology and history of debate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Actually, I think that both Harris and Biden are in their own ways looking beyond just the primary.
The Moar You Know
Sadly, not only are our candidates “not getting it”, the vast majority of our voters aren’t either.
The #1 thing I hear from my friends are “I just want everything to get back to normal”. And it won’t. Shit has changed, as my drummer frequently says.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Hate to say it, but I’m not a Maddow fan myself. I like her fine as a person, but she is verbose. Way. Less. Words, Rachel.
Mary G
@lamh36: His tax returns from McKinsey don’t mean shit. Everybody knows they pay a fuckton of money. What he should do is get them to waive his NDAs and tell us what clients he worked for. (Don’t bother telling me that’ll never happen, I know that.) My point is that this is fake and meaningless.
Kamala is still my favorite, but she’s got to pull a rabbit out of her hat like now. Here in CA people are already agitating for her to get out already.
Mike J
This is the same thing Corbyn and Labour need to concentrate on. Sadly, their campaign is “wouldn’t it be cool if a beardy guy gave you everything you wanted this December?” instead of, “we’re going to prevent food and medicine shortages by stopping Brexit.”
Sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The last Boomers were born in 1960, so they are 59.
55 is Gen X. I think boomers get blamed a lot for Gen X shenanigans.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I remember, on another blog(with an orange theme), back in 2010 a bunch of folk calling the Boomers the elderly. The term elderly means someone over 65, at that time NO Boomers were 65 or older. I’ve seen Joe called a Boomer here. Basically, it seems that to some if someone is “old” they’re a Boomer.
jk
@Adam L Silverman:
I would have given the slot to Katy Tur or Hallie Jackson.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
We’ve done damn well in generating enthusiasm for midterm and off-year elections. Frankly can’t see that momentum being deliberately squandered.
Will add that countering voter suppression is of equal importance to what you posit above.
Spider-Dan
@Adam L Silverman: If you’re saying M4A is a bad policy to run on, fine. But running on the importance of governing itself is not a winning strategy for the left. All of the centrists who were turned off by Trump in 2016 were not enough to win, and even in 2018, healthcare was a big deal.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sab: The baby boom ended in 1964.
Elizabelle
@Mary G:
I like that it seems Elizabeth Warren’s supporters could happily support Kamala Harris, and vice versa. I think that’s why we see such particularly vicious attacks on these two candidates in particular.
And I think Biden and Mayor Pete are the stand-ins for safe white male candidates. It’s tiresome.
Cacti
@Adam L Silverman: War babies belong to the Silent Generation.
NotMax
@Sab
1964, not 1960. Obama (1961) is not Gen X.
jk
@Betty Cracker:
Life is too short for Maddow’s grandiose over-the-top pontificating for me. She never misses an opportunity to take 20 minutes to make a point when 5 minutes would suffice.
Spider-Dan
@Sab: Census Bureau defines Boomers as born from 1946-1964 (18 year span), making a 54-year-old with a December birthday a Boomer.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Anyone who whines about millennials is a boomer.
Mike J
@Cacti: I belong to the blank generation and I can take it or leave it each time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J7j5tjb3eo
Elie
AMEN, Adam
NotMax
@Martin
Even millennials whine about millennials.
;)
Elie
amen
jk
@Elizabelle:
Cory Booker is way more qualified than Pete B. and clearly has more gravitas than Uncle Joe. He should be polling much better.
Martin
Debate tonight won’t matter. We still have two more witnesses testifying today. That’s (thankfully) going to run over the debate time.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@jk: I used to watch Maddow but I just couldn’t stand the way she repeats things. I mean, I got it the first time. However, there are many people out there who like her presentation style. OTOH, I enjoy seeing her on talk shows because she is more natural and witty. Overall I think she is a positive force for the left.
Sab
@Elizabelle: My brother is RWNJ and lifelong Republican (except he just bailed on the party) who works in the financial industry. He likes Warren, because he thinks she wants to return things to the 1970s, when there were rules. He doesn’t think she is radical. He thinks she is an old fashioned liberal Republican, Weld but younger. He is in the top 1% income wise, and he is at war with the top .1%.
His major issue with Harris is that she didn’t go after Wells Fargo more when they were illegally foreclosing on soldiers overseas.
I don’t know if he is right, or misinformed.
Elizabelle
OT: AP in the Los Angeles Times.
BERLIN —
The son of former German President Richard von Weizsaecker was stabbed to death while he was giving a lecture at a hospital in Berlin where he worked as a head physician, police said Wednesday.
Yarrow
@The Moar You Know:
Things have changed.
dnfree
@Sab: For some reason, boomers are the only generation whose timeline everyone agrees on. They started in 1946 with the military returning from World War II and immediately starting to procreate. (Yes, I am one of the oldest boomers.) 1964 apparently was when the birth rate started dropping back. I remember kids going to school in shifts, partial days, because there weren’t enough classrooms or teachers for all of us.
Mary G
@Elizabelle: It is. I was just thinking bitterly that either internalized misogyny, fear of losing, or both are going to stick us with a white male president again who is the fifth or sixth best president we could have. Then he’ll ask a brilliant woman to be veep, a job that is cheerleader/human therapy dog.
Betty Cracker
@jk: Someone here once said if you asked Maddow the time of day, she’d tell you how to build a clock. There’s truth to that. But she’s neither a performance artist nor a self-absorbed dope, IMO. I totally get that her delivery isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but she takes her role analyzing and disseminating news seriously.
West of the Rockies
@lamh36:
I love it! I wish it came out about 3 months ago.
Mainmata
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Boomers age group is 1946 – 1964, i.e. 55 – 73 years old. So Sanders, Biden and Bloomberg are all War Babies.
Sister Golden Bear
First time that I can recall the Democratic presidential candidates marking Transgender Day of Remembrance — when remember the 22 trans people killed this year for being who they were (the vast majority of them Black trans women).
https://www.joemygod.com/2019/11/2020-dems-mark-transgender-day-of-remembrance/
Words are good, actions are better. Let’s see a plan for reversing the widespread rollback of our rights during the last three years.
PJ
@germy: This idea is extremely counter-productive.
The Democratic candidates are, with a few exceptions, sane, intelligent adults, and are capable of debating the future of the country and maintaining their eyes on the prize – I mean, that’s why they’re there (but for those few exceptions.) The media is going to spin everything they can as “Dems in disarray” whenever they have the opportunity. More damning information is going to come out about Trump every week until he leaves office. If you follow TBogg’s argument, should we just forego Democratic debates, and, hell, why not the primaries themselves? Because there will be no end to Trump’s shit, and no end to the media’s reluctance to properly focus on what is the truth and what is important.
the Conster
Beating Trump is the only thing that matters. The more policy and the weeds of the policy and large budget numbers for funding get talked about, like with M4All, the more it gives people not progressive Dems more reasons not to vote for the Dem candidate, and I’m looking at you Warren and Sanders. I keep saying this isn’t a policy election, it’s a return to norms and our place in the world election. Nothing ambitious is getting through the Senate even if it flips, so stop blowing smoke up my ass about policy, and start talking about our shared values as Americans. It’s really just that simple.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: I thought Hill and Holmes were going to testify tomorrow.
West of the Rockies
@Adam L Silverman:
“We begin tonight’s debate… in 1921.”
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: She seems to be speaking to the person who has woken up after a 20-year sleep, and has no idea of the backstory. She drives me nuts because we usually do have a pretty good idea of the general topic, and don’t need the 101.
Which makes me wonder if she perceives her audience to be someone looking in, for the first time, from FoxWorld and needing to come up to speed.
I find that I often have completely tuned her out after 5 minutes because she just takes too damn long to get to what can be an interesting point, and it feels like word salad when she could have maybe stuck in an additional short segment or two on another topic.
She has a Ph.D., but she is not that much smarter and we are not the dim bulbs she appears to assume. Also, the sneering. I think it undercuts the message.
PJ
@Spider-Dan: “I’m way better than that criminal moron” gets some people out to the polls, but was insufficient in 2016 to put Hillary into the White House. Many voters want to be excited about the candidate they are voting for, and giving them concrete plans as to what you want to do (despite the difficulty in doing it) gives them a reason to get out and vote.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Guessing viewership will be tepid to ice cold. Too many candidates at too many events is taking its toll on interest. (IMHO) Plus, you know, other stuff going on.
Jay
Without systemic institutional repair and codification of norms, post Dolt 45, y’all will simply be back in the exact same place or worse in 4-8 years.
It’s not enough to vote Dolt 45 or Pencil should it be that way, out. You also need to vote in people who will fix the rot in American democracy and capitalism.
Sab
@dnfree: Oops. I just bellowed downstairs and asked my also Boomer spouse. We were both wrong, but I still stand by position that boomers get blamed for Gen X misbehavior.
Cacti
Booker is just the latest in a long line of east coast politicians whose national appeal was grossly overestimated by the east coast media establishment.
PJ
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Huh – I thought they were saying you were all “okay.”
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: My parents are war babies. Or dad was, mom still is. Neither of them was silent about anything.
Chief Oshkosh
That’s “Fewer,” not “Less.”
How the heck are we going to win if pedants are allowed to be pedantic on important political blogs?
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Agreed. She bores me.
Cacti
You mean like starting bogus middle east wars and crashing the national economy?
Wait, no, that WAS boomers.
Sab
@Betty Cracker: She is young. She knows that a lot of her audience is also. They need context for stuff that they didn’t actually live through.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@West of the Rockies: Heh.
billcoop4
@Adam L Silverman: demographically, maybe, but folks born during the war (1942 on) are culturally boomers. Which is the key to generational thinking.
Adam L Silverman
@Spider-Dan: Protecting the ACA from the President and the GOP destroying it, shoring it up, tweaking it – those were winning issues in 2018. Overturning the entire system wasn’t the message then and there’s no reason to believe, let alone evidence to support the belief, that running on doing so now will be effective.
Cacti
@Adam L Silverman: Hey, that’s great man. But there is no distinct generation called the war babies.
They’re from the end years of the Silent Generation (1926-1945).
Chief Oshkosh
@PJ: I agree. For Democrats, you need both. You simply aren’t going to get all the heavy, behind-the-scenes lifting done without inspiring the current Democrats. GOTV efforts need that.
I think that the eventual primary winner likely will understand both that and understand the situation as Adam puts forth here. Some will get it more than others. If one of those is the candidate, then, well, we’ll have to help them with that aspect of reality.
What more can you do?
PJ
@the Conster: Then you should be voting for Buttigieg, because that’s basically his message – he didn’t want to have any policies at all when he started running. But advocating for “our shared values” didn’t stop Trump from getting elected in 2016 and I have no reason to believe it will work in 2020.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti: If George W. Bush represents Boomers, Paul Ryan can represent X-Gen’s, fair trade?
WaterGirl
@Sister Golden Bear: I found this comment in Spam and I released it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: My mother loves her explanations. Not everyone is an obsessive like we are. My mother is solid Dem. She is a retired teacher from the upper Midwest who like Harris, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: There are no more witnesses/hearings today.
Mary G
@Mary G: Lol, Mayor Pete:
Liz is a Republican troll, but she’s not wrong.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: @schrodingers_cat:
Me too. I like Rachel as person. I mean, I don’t know her personally, but she comes across as nice, thoughtful, intelligent with a good sense of humor and so forth, but her show is just tedious. I very occasionally watch a clip and even that makes me zone out. I don’t watch much cable news at all, though, so maybe I’m the wrong demo.
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies: BC…
Sab
@Sister Golden Bear: Wow. My youngest and favorite nephew is trans.
I worry about him all the time. Fortunately he is in CA not OH
ETA: Also I misspoke. She is my niece now. Even for family the transition is hard, but the love is still there. Same kid, but we have a different perspective.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: I think the past few elections have shown as otherwise.
BroD
Dead on, Adam (well, except for the “murabashi” part which I didn’t understand because..well…old.)
I don’t see a “perfect” candidate among those running (but there are a few I hope will drop by the wayside.)
In any case I’ll be contributing way more to Democrats in congressional and senate races.
bluehill
@Jay:
Agree. Trump 2.0 can only be smarter.
Elizabelle
@Sab:
Actually, that’s a great point. Particularly since the young have been fed the Saint Reagan myth.
I think a lot of the younger journalists have no idea what actually happened either. They believe the myth, or were never serious enough to question it.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Has that changed? NBC news said they were coming back for Cooper and Hale.
Gin & Tonic
@Chief Oshkosh:
I think you mean “are NOT”.
Citizen Alan
@Adam L Silverman:
I believe they’re called the Silent Generation because they were the generation who were adults throughout the Civil Rights era. Nixon coined the term “the silent majority” to describe the huge secret mass of Republican supporters who actually supported Republican policies but weren’t inclined to go out and protest in support of their beliefs.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: Yeah. Looks like that will be at 5:30 today. C-Span to carry it on C-Span 3. I hope that means it will stream online too.
the Conster
@PJ:
He’s cancelled after his coddling of the racist Tea Partiers. I can’t stand him.
bluehill
@Adam L Silverman: Also I think that a proposal to repeal Trump tax cuts would be an easier sell than the current proposals addressing inequality. Trump tax cuts didn’t create jobs, didn’t lead to greater investment, ran up the deficit way beyond what dems did during the worst of the recession and were a clear giveaway to the rich at a time when the economy was doing better than it is today. Those cuts are already unfavorable and indefensible for repubs.
Kent
The baby boom started in 1946 when all the soldiers returned home from the war and started to breed like bunnies to make up for lost time. For a good 15 or so years the whole country was involved in a giant project to accommodate all those new families with new suburbs and new schools going up all over the place. This lasted until the early 1960s when the youth finally started saying….time out, there is more to life than marriage, family, job, and kids and then the 1960s happened. The end of the baby boom is usually pegged around 1964.
As someone who was born in 1964 I can tell you I identify a whole lot more with Gen-X than the boomers. I was 5 when the 60s ended, all I remember from that era is Sesame Street and the moon landing.
The Clintons were the classic boomers being born in 1946 and 1947. Obama was a late boomer being born in 1961.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: Let’s clarify something. She has a D.Phil from Oxford. In environmental policy/politics. There are three ways to get a D.Phil from Oxford:
That’s it. It is very, very, very unlike the US doctoral system. And, frankly, every person I know with a doctorate from a British university in the US either had to start at a third tier university and work their way up to get tenure at a decent university, works in government, or works in the private sector or think tank world. It is an antiquated system that barely makes sense in regard to how undergraduate education is done in Britain. I have a friend from when I lived and went to graduate school in St. Andrews who married a laser physicist from Ireland. We were having a discussion once, he mentioned his empirical model, and I asked a series of questions about statistical tests and he had no idea what I was talking about. He has a D.Phil in laser physics from either Oxford or Cambridge and has never taken a stats class. He learned just enough to be able to do his work and that’s it. That’s the type of degree that Maddow has.
Adam L Silverman
@billcoop4: My parents was not in the case of dad and is not in the case of mom culturally boomers.
jk
@Cacti:
Other than serving as Obama’s #1 cheerleader for 8 years, I don’t understand Biden’s appeal.
His Senate record sucks (support for the crime bill and Iraq war, treatment of Anita Hill, etc) and he really is too fucking old to be President.
He’s 77 years old. He needs to release his damn medical records now and not the week before the Iowa Caucuses.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Whoa. I had no idea.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Liz is from Seattle and thinks because she attended St. Andrews (we did not overlap fortunately) and married someone from England that she’s British. It’s not so much that she’s a troll as she’s simply delusional.
Kent
Someone born in 1942 would have been age 27 during Woodstock. Maybe they were out there getting high and getting lots of free love to Hendrix. But more likely they were a dad wearing a suit and 4 years into the career, or a mother already on their 2nd child.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: Cooper and Hale are supposed to start at 5:30 EST today.
Adam L Silverman
@BroD: Murabashi is a martial arts metaphor my Sensei uses to describe having to fully commit to one’s attack, because the only other options are death. And that one’s defense in this type of situation is also their offense. Attack and counterattack are one. We practice the concept with boken (wooden training swords).
Kent
So what is this stuff with Mayor Pete and the Tea Party. Anyone have a link?
Yarrow
@Mary G: @Adam L Silverman: She’s being sued by Devin Nunes.
oatler.
At least if Maddow’s moderating she won’t keep drawing things out until the next Charles Schwab commercial.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: According to the schedule Hale and Cooper were supposed to testify at 2:30 PM. Since Sondland’s testimony didn’t end until almost 4:00 PM, my guesstimate is that they’ve rescheduled Hale and Cooper.
Jay
@Kent:
Generational “niches” are defined by much more than simple years. If you were born in 1960, you graduated into the last of the ‘70’s boom. If you were born in 1961, you graduated into the Reagan Recession, 11.6% unemployment and a 27% prime interest rate.
The difference a year can make is a median $180k in wealth holdings by 1981.
PJ
@Sab: Maddow is middle-aged (46). I don’t know the demographics of her audience, but anyone her age lived through the past 40 years of Republican dominance of politics and should be aware of how we got to the mess we’re in now.
Jeffro
@Kent: It’s funny – I am an early GenXer, but I tend to think and act (both at work and at home) like these much-maligned Millenials in many ways.
I’ll know I’m getting old when I start acting like a Boomer, or a RWNJ GenXer (of which, sadly, there are many)
Jay C
@Yarrow:
Isn’t everybody?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: I’d bet that most of the people in the bands on stage were right about that age.
Yarrow
@Jay C: Nunes Cow was but I think they might have dropped that one.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: I think there’s a big difference between early and late Boomers.
As someone pointed out WRT Woodstock: it matters how old you were when the Beatles and Stones hit the scene.
And I think the older Boomers grabbed the prime jobs and there was a dearth for later boomers — isn’t that a gripe in academia? I kind of remember some Malcolm Gladwell book where there was a sweet spot in which to be born a Boomer. Bill Gates is in it. I think 1955 was the magic year.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: The Hill journalists are still gathered in the hearing room, according to the MSNBC live feed. Looks like the witnesses will testify today.
Mr. Kite
@Sab:
Spoken like a true Boomer!
(Don’t @ me, I was born in ’64)
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: The British graduate education system is slowly moving to be more like what we have in the US, but at the time that she and I were doing graduate degrees across the pond, they were still very much doing things the way I described.
I remember being back in the US and doing my second masters degree, which I partially did because the one I got in Scotland had no transcripts, no grades, and no credits to transfer, and being in my dad’s office at USF where he was, at the time, the graduate director for the Criminology Department. He got a phone call for a Supervisory Detective Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard who wanted to come and do a doctorate in the program. His department was going to pay for everything, the program is one of the best in the country, and I suppose living in Florida for three or four years on the Metropolitan Police Department’s 10 pence piece is a heckuva lot better than English winters at Oxford or Cambridge. I recall this because my dad had to patiently explain to him that if he couldn’t get a transcript from Oxford or Cambridge or University College London or Kings College London where he’d done his bachelors degree, because they didn’t have transcripts for degrees when he did his degree, then there was no way he would be admitted. Not because the department didn’t want to admit him, but because his application would never making from the initial submission system to the department without a transcript for his bachelors degree.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: She’s nuts, but she doesn’t deserve that.
JWR
Blindsided.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: I sit corrected.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: That’s a real shame, what happened to the Scotland Yard guy. You would think they could have approved him on the basis of equivalent education. If Scotland Yard wanted to send them over on their nickel, clearly he had mastered his subject matter so far.
ETA: “Supervisory Detective Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard.” I mean, come on.
Elizabelle
@JWR: Maybe they really don’t read newspapers in the White House.
I thought at least their lawyers did. LOL.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: As far as I know he didn’t apply.
Josie
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m watching MSNBC and they seem to think there will be more investigations today.
ETA: Betty types much faster than I do.
PJ
@Kent: Though this is not the way the census views it, I primarily think of the Boomers as the people who reached maturity during the 1960’s – roughly, anyone born between 1940 and 1952. Let’s call them “classic Boomers”. So, as a rule of thumb, anyone actually playing at or attending Woodstock, or the young cultural figures of the 1960s would be a classic Boomer. They’re the ones who had a stranglehold on culture and jobs and, once the Reagan-era started, politics (Lee Atwater and Karl Rove are classic Boomers), for the next 20-40 years. They’re the reason why what someone did or didn’t do in Vietnam, or when a joint was passed around, was a major political issue in this country until Obama was elected. (I had to hear from them, and the media, about how wonderful they were for most of my life.)
For people born after that cohort (including the “late boomers” born between 1953-1964, who had very different life experiences than the people born between 1940-1952), the question was always “Why do we have to listen to this shit? Why is this shit even an issue?” It was an issue because the classic Boomers thought that they, and what was important to them, were the most important things on the planet.
Kent
Also who you marry or consort with. My wife is 6 years younger than me. That puts us solidly in Gen-X territory as a couple, even if I’m borderline boomer.
Jay
@PJ:
64% have no clue where we are or how we got here, but know the ending to Lost, can name every Kardashian, and believe that “For King and Country” is a band.
NotMax
@PJ
|
Mother and step-father, both born during the 1920s, attended Woodstock. Their Boomer children were off being too busy working to do so.
JWR
Well, at least they watch Fox News, which is kinda like a newspaper on TV, right? /s But can you imagine seeing the world through the lens of Fox? Scary, ain’t it?
Elizabelle
C-Span is covering the hearing, streaming. Not started yet. The GOP has its idiotic whiteboards up.
sdhays
@jk: He’s a 77 year old who looks like he’s a vigorous 90. That alone terrifies me if he’s the nominee. What happens when he breaks his hip in the middle of the campaign? They practically wrote Hillary‘a obituary when she had a case of pneumonia.
cwmoss
@Sab: I always thought boomers were those born from ‘46 to ‘64. Being a Feb ‘65 baby, I missed being a boomer by *that* much!
Wapiti
@JWR: That’s mind-boggling. WTF was Sondland supposed to do? His smartest move was to kneecap Trump. I’ll admit I didn’t quite expect the “I vas chust followink orders” gambit, but they put the guy into an untenable position.
Dev Null
Wait, wut?!? Are you implying that not everyone over 55 is evil?!?
W00t! Wait til I tell the smaller Nulls! [1]
[1] in a set theoretic sense, of course.
waysel
I’ve watched Rachel in the past and gave up on her because of her tiresome intros and in depth histories. I tried her out again at the beginning of the impeachment inquiry and I think she’s an amazing source of facts put forth in an assimilable manner. She occasionally does a tedious history bit, but most nights she struggles, successfully to stay on top of the days ‘firehose’ of news. She’s often a day or two ahead with important tidbits and news of extraneous crooks and how they relate to the Trump international criminal enterprise. I would recommend her show to anyone who wants to stay well informed, at least until things calm down. (Fingers crossed)
Jay C
@Adam L Silverman:
I think Schiff has decided to prime-time it again: Hale and Cooper are reported up now.
danielx
This, to an exponential level.
All the discussion about taxing billionaires, tax reform (both inextricably linked), universal health care, you name it – is nothing other than what our Brit cousins would call a wankfest unless control of the White House and Senate passes to Dems, along with maintaining the House majority. Everything is subordinate to this. I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck about whose programs are better as long as they focus on that goal.
I’d like to see a debate in which the candidates focus on nothing but except getting Trump out, along with Mitch McConnell and a baker’s dozen of his Republican co-enablers. Getting bogged down in details about electability and how to pay for universal health care and/or a trillion dollar infrastructure plan, or the deficit*…is a waste of time.
*Note: if – as I hope and trust – a Democrat wins the 2020 presidential election, on January 21, 2020, THE DEFICIT WILL INSTANTLY BECOME THE WORST PROBLEM EVAR!
NotMax
@cwmoss
Can remedy that right quick.
Gibble gabble, gibble gabble, one of us.
;)
dnfree
@billcoop4: I agree. The so-called “silent generation” was named based on the idea that the 1950s were a conformist era. The younger war babies were more aligned with the early boomers, but the boomers were named because there were so many of us per year—the baby boom, literally.
JWR
I can get the hearings on PBS, but none of the other Big Three (available w/ rabbit ears) stations seem to be covering it. Maybe they OD’d after this morning, and they just can’t take it anymore!
danielx
@Elizabelle:
They don’t call us jackals for nothing, but I hear what you’re saying. :) ***cough***Bernie is an egotistical shithead***cough
Dev Null
The, uh, pendancy of your commentary is, uh …
[…]
uh, I’ll come in again…
debbie
@germy:
Yeah, that won’t happen, but what if they instead brainstormed on stage about how to deal with Trump, how to return the country to its previous state, and how to prevent anything like this happening again?
Jay C
Well, here’s a snippet of good news for a change:
Scott Warren, the guy who was busted, charged, and put on trial for the heinous crime of leaving water in the Arizona desert for any needy wanderers (i.e. those “criminal illegals”) – has been (finally) found Not Guilty
(first trial ended in a hung jury, next time round, NG).
Small victory to be sure, but better than otherwise….
Dan B
@The Moar You Know: I agree that people, mostly white middle class, want things to be less “polarized” / be nice again. That seems to be the basis of Pete’s current surge in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. Also his “I will talk to all sides.” and “Medicare if you want it.” tap into policies that poll very highly.
I believe that people feel we are in a cold civil war, unless you are black, brown, trans, or all of the above. Then the war is onyear three or 19 with a four year pause and a four year slow boil. I’ve felt we’ve been in WWIII since Reagan, especially the Southern Strategy. Unlike Pete and many other people I was involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the mid 60’s, and in Gay Liberation, the Peace Movement, Native American Movement, etc. since the beginning of the 70’s. It’s interesting that I’ve come to the same conclusion as Adam that we are in a war between authoritarian oligarchy and participatory democracy, between unquestioning surrender and ingnoring brutality or honoring human dignity.
I like Warren but believe that her logical approach has limited appeal. People want a simple narrative, not something that demands time to understand. Her proposals seem best suited to Senate leadership.
Harris seems to be making a run for Attorney General and doesn’t seem to pushing a narrative except she’s for people and and a super prosecutor, even though she is my favorite.
Pete seems to be telling the story that he gets along with most Americans and that he’s bright and really nice. This may work in the orimary and set up a narrative in the general that he’s the one to bring back nice and the GOP will bring on more angry (angry Uncle at Thanksgiving). It sorta misses the point to POC that the well mannered white supremacist and the cultured bankster are a million times worse than the angry uncle. Few angry uncles kill you over candied yams or rob you of your home and savings on Black Friday.
So, our candidates may be oblivious to WWIII but they, and the public, are feeling it and at a loss to understanding what is happening and how to respond.
And I hold out hope that our best candidates have a deeper understanding of our peril and realize they cannot get elected if the public does not. A recent poll – sorry, no citation – found that 49 percent of Americans believe we need a king-like president to brrak the logjam in D.C. Sorta like panicked animals running into the wildfire.
Miss Bianca
@dnfree: My sibs and I span the entire Baby Boom in one family. My eldest sister was born in December 1945. My younger brother was born in September 1964.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Wow, is that it? I may be able to finish my Ph.D after all, simply by applying to Oxford for a D.Phil!
Drdavechemist
Sometimes the latter group of Boomers, born from late ‘50s to mid ‘60s gets the moniker “Generation Jones” since our experience (I was born in 1960) was much different from the early post-war cohort. I came of age with disco and power pop instead of the Beatles and Hendrix and came out of college in the wake of the oil crisis and stagflation. There was definitely a pig in the python ahead of us in the job and career advancement pipeline, but some of us also managed to save money when interest rates were high and buy houses after the early 90s decline. So on balance I guess we’ve done OK, but my experience certainly wasn’t the same as that of my older cousins and I don’t see myself as part of that generation.
Cacti
Funny thing though. Most boomer musical icons are late silent generation, including Hendrix (b. 1942).
Dan B
@Dan B: To be clear I feel Pete has some big blind spots even if he’s decent at crafting a narrative, and he’s more progressive than Biden or according to the MSM narrative. I know some super progressives here who relentlessly reach out to conservatives, much like Pete. It doesn’t give me more than a sliver of hope that they recognize WWIII but several do and believe we need to know how to address the fears and the brainwashing our GOP suffers from. Staking out common ground may prep the field for their retrearmt from the brink if the war goes hot and spreads to attacking straight white progressives. I’d rather have very conservative people who believe we are good, though foolish, people than ideologues who say we brought it on ourselves for dissing salt of the earth folks.
I believe Pete would govern in a more progressive but incrementalist manner. At least South Bend seemed to feel that way. But there are those blind spots, lack of national experience, and overconfidence in his abilities.
My #1 Kamala has some shortenings. So did Obama.
My #1.1 Warren could benefit from some take it slower – don’t promise to fix everything.
But we all would benefit from aiming our metaphorical guns in a non circular pattern.
Spider-Dan
@Adam L Silverman:
Again, if you think M4A is a bad idea and Dems should be running on protecting/improving the ACA instead, fine. But those are policy issues. Running on healthcare issues worked out great in 2018, and running against Trump’s unfitness didn’t work in 2016. So why should we believe that the best strategy for 2020 is to focus on Trump to the exclusion of policy?
It’s one thing to say that you don’t agree with the policies being offered by Dem candidates, but it’s another entirely to say that a policy focus is itself bad.
Mart
I used to love the Norman Ornstein pieces on Air America with Al Franken. Don’t trust his employer AEI (still?), but even on mainstream or right wing media he seems to play it straight.
Also too, Adam’s post is linked at LGM.
Cacti
@Drdavechemist: It’s also worth remembering that for demographic purposes, “generations” as such tend to get lumped together based on birth rates over a period of time, rather than some universal cultural experience for the group.
A silent born in ’44 would have a lot more in common culturally with a boomer born in ’47 than a silent born in 1926, who was a child during the depression and old enough to have served in the final years of the war.
Same thing for a boomer born in ’64 and an Xer born in ’67, versus another boomer born in ’46.
Dan B
@debbie: Love your idea of the candidates brainstorming how to avoid Trump 2.0 but they would have to first agree to ignore or pivot from the moderators questions. Is Tulsi on tonight? Too lazy to check but the contrast between yhe other candidates agreeing to save our country, and T’yranny, could be most pleasing.
Shana
@Elizabelle: I’m not arguing with your assessment of Biden and Pete, but let’s just savor the fact that the first openly gay serious candidate for President is considered “boring.”
Bill Arnold
Adam,
BTW, nice to see the reverse-Clausewitz formulation; it’ll catch some attention; did at LGM.
Richard Guhl
Rachel Bitecofer, the political scientist at Christopher Newport university, who almost nailed her prediction of the 2018 election outcome, asserts that the most powerful force operating today is negative partisanship. It’s the fear and loathing of the other side. She believes that as long as the Democrats don’t nominate an avowed disrupter, the nominee will beat Trump. What she terms “a terrified electorate” will produce that outcome.
She also believes that the Democrats have a great chance of expanding their hold on the House.
The heavy lifting here is capturing the Senate. Which candidate will do best, not only in Maine, Colorado and Arizona, but also in Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia, to help drag our candidates over the finish line?
Perhaps one reason Sleepy Joe is leading is because he is so comforting.
Shana
@Sab: I find that if I know the background of what she’s talking about, Rachel is boring. Occasionally though I get a good history lesson about something I knew nothing about and I find her fascinating.
She does repeat things a bit too much though.
Shana
@Yarrow: Case hasn’t been dropped unless it just happened because I follow her (cows are female – I have no idea if the person behind the Twitter handle is male or female, although I do know someone who I know did work on a CA congressional race in 2018 who claims to be behind the Twitter handle) and the cow hasn’t said the case has been dropped.
misterpuff
@PJ: I was going to rant but PJ said it much better than me. I was born in 1956 which by most graphical representations of the post war baby boom was the maxima of the curve, which should mean I am the average Boomer. Ah! But no so. The lead Boomers as PJ said are considered the quintessential Boomers. The rest just had to fight for some recognition in the crowded classrooms, crowded colleges and very competitive search for fewer and fewer job openings that this flood of humanity caused, with no TIME covers for us. So I am Grumpy Boomer Lite.
FlipYrWhig
@Shana: Do you find that she repeats things? That she says them one time, and then, after a short interval, says them again? That, contrary to what the Beltway media would tell you, there’s a story there, a long story, with many parts, parts that interlock, parts that you should know, and are about to find out, if you didn’t before, or if you did, you’ll know again? Well, stick a pin in that, because we’ll be talking about it. In 1931…
#maddowstyle
J R in WV
@lamh36:
I have to say, in spite of her low polling numbers, Kamala Harris is STILL my favorite Dem Presidential candidate, just because I don’t believe she will let any of the scum scurry back into the darkness after the current administration bites the dirt 14 months from now.
Because we need someone with mad-dog prosecutorial skills in charge of the nation to rebuild the civil service and dig out the nazi ticks currently burying themselves into our government, hopefully to spend 20 years in a super max in the high desert of Colorado.