I’m a TPM subscriber, and a big supporter of the site. I know that it caters to a number of different tastes, but am I missing something when it comes to John Judis? Whenever I read his pieces, I feel like someone took a smug liberal, put them in an isolation chamber in about, say, 2003, and then released them periodically into a soundproof room stocked with a copies of the New York Times to create a column. Here’s his latest, but I’ve felt this way a long time. But, since everything else on TPM is pretty good, I wonder if I’m missing something.
(Just to be clear — what got me about his latest was kind of a false equivalency between protests in Kenosha and Minneapolis, and the Seattle occupation as well as the Portland riots, with the actions against Gov. Whitmer and the general Q-Anon conspiracies, followed by a claim that he’s not trying to show them as equivalent (so why did he use those examples), topped off with a link to Andrew Sullivan, who is just a racist crank nowadays.)
Chetan Murthy
He’s also a nativist and George Borjas [anti-immigrant nutjob econ prof, quite happy to fiddle the evidence in order to get his desired outcome] fanboi. Yeah: I don’t get it either.
I started reading that column; it went on and on, and didn’t seem to be getting to any sort of conclusive point, with a lot of meandering instead. So I gave up.
Matt McIrvin
Judis has always seemed way, way too fond of the old Thomas Frank/Berniecrat notion that Democrats can somehow win bigoted whites over through economic leftism if we just soft-pedaled the cultural stuff.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, I made an effort because I had just been skipping everything he writes, but I decided to give it a shot, and blegh.
MisterForkbeard
John Judis is the guy I pay the least attention to over there. That said, he doesn’t sound wrong most of the time, but he certainly has a different perspective and not one I really agree with.
Cameron
I haven’t heard his name in years – IIRC, he used to be a RW apologist. Sounds like he still is.
rivers
I think that’s a perfect description of Judis. I’ve no idea what he’s doing on TPM which I’ve followed from the beginning and I find Josh Marshall’s take on politics consistently interesting and often ahead of the curve. (Like everyone else he has his stumbles, but he takes you through his thinking very transparently so I always feel he’s honest with his readers.) John Judis’ pieces always come as a shock – my sense is that every time he appears he diverges even further from the basic ethic, mood, point of view of the website so now he’s like a visitor from another planet. His latest piece enraged me. He explains that no, he’s not equating a bunch of teenage vandals who have no connection with the Democratic Party with the attempt of Republican elected officials to steal an election – but that’s after he’s spent several paragraphs equating them. My take is Marshall was once allied with him or may be friends with him and can’t quite bring himself to stop inviting him to the party.
Hawes
No. You are absolutely right about Judis.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@rivers:
Nobody I read regularly is better on Trump. He’s really come into his own during the Trump era.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rivers:
As I recall he had a similar thing with Mickey Kaus
marcopolo
Agree with the criticisms. I think the only reason Judis is at TPM is because Josh has a soft spot for him, but his POV doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the site. I’ve read TPM since its incarnation (on & off though I’ve been a regular member since you could join), but I just ignore anything with Judis’ byline on it. For me, his rep never recovered from The Emerging Democratic Majority (2004) which just gets so so much wrong about where politics in the US was going.
sab
I tried to subscribe to TPM back when they first went subscription. Apparently their site and my kindle didn’t like each other. Every time since I have tried to subscribe they say my email is already in their system and I don’t know my own password. So no way to resolve the issue. I have no intention of giving them my non-commercial email.
I would have liked to subscribe to them over the last ten years, but at this point I do not care at all. I wanted to, and they couldn’t be bothered.
Plead on for funds all you want Josh. I don’t give a fuck.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hell, for a short while they let Steve Sailer (professional white-supremacist troll) post stuff there, though I think it was more as a blogger.
And Larry C. Johnson, the “whitey tape” guy. Remember him?
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@sab: Dude, just write to them. [email protected] I had a subscription issue once and they cleared it up pretty quickly.
Hildebrand
John Judis is yet another writer who came through the New Republic at just the wrong time. I swear the editorial staff must have encouraged those folks to find ways to get into a defensive crouch whenever Democrats tried to push bold new plans and then turn around and smack the Democrats for never being bold enough.
sab
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Back in the day there was no way to contact them. I have not forgotten.
Cameron
@Matt McIrvin: Special Agent Whitey Tape has found a new home at SST, where he holds forth on the Enormous Deep State Election Fraud that is denying Trump a second term.
Mary G
Is he still alive?
Matt McIrvin
@Cameron: I think the moment I realized Johnson was full of crap was when he insisted that some incident involving erroneous handling of a nuclear weapon was actually cover for a planned nuclear strike on Iran. It wasn’t so much that he reported that in the first place, it was that when people debunked the claim with knowledgable sources, he doubled down and doubled down. And this is actually the kind of thing he did over and over. The whitey tape was after that.
schrodingers_cat
Judis is an anti-immigration, xenophobic bigot. He is also a liar. Judis is one of the reasons why I don’t take TPM as gospel. Their nativist undershirt is on display occasionally.
Williamc
Been a reader of TPM since its inception, and got to say, I feel like JMM is giving his audience a reverse Thomas Friedman. If you look at the “evidence” just from this thread (and my own sense from reading him), it seems that most TPM readers treat him like the David Brooks of TPM: someone who seems like they are full of wisdom just by the vocabulary that they use and their rep as a Villager in good standing, but who ultimately has nothing of interest to share and whose only purpose is to inflame the readership to write to the editor over how wrong his analysis is.
KBS
I skip everything under his byline–he’s awful.
Ohio Mom
I’m another vote for “Josh doesn’t know how to ease him out.”
Every now and again I think back to the earliest incarnation of TPM. It was only Josh, his little photo of himself staring off into space in the upper left corner, and he was beyond verbose. Scroll, scroll, scroll, I could never finish a post.
You gotta give him credit for evolving and building up a very credible journalism outfit. And learning how to be succinct.
Martin
So, the ‘field hospital’ near my house is expanding. Some new tents went up, and a bunch more refrigerated trucks have arrived.
My sense is that it’s a morgue not a hospital, but everyone is being very coy about how they talk about it. There are two hospitals up the street from me and both have some level of patient care in the parking lot, and I’m not sure it makes sense for any of them to have additional locations for care when it makes more sense to just further expand into their parking area.
Hospitals here can no longer divert patients. They need to free up ambulances. So hospitals need to make do best as they can. We’re not yet at LAs ‘don’t bother with low survival patients’ policy. Looking like just a matter of time, though.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@sab:
I have to admire someone with an airtight titanium grudge carrier, even though TPM has been easily reachable by email since the site was founded.
Shalimar
@sab: Are you sure? I had an email conversation with Marshall way back in 2005 or so when it was still just him. I had to have found the addy somewhere.
Jim Appleton
I’ve long ignored him.
JOHN MANCHESTER
I have deep affection for Josh Marshall. He’s first in line for my 50$ a year. So I forgive him for John Judis just as I forgive Bob Dylan for New Morning along with a multitude of other sins. I seem to remember reading Judis way back when at the New Republic and he wasn’t so bad. Or maybe I was bad then.
Slightly OT, but someone mentioned Andrew Sullivan. I followed his Daily Dish even though it often enraged me—it was my token cross-the-aisle friendship with a gay Catholic conservative Brit. But since seeing Seasons 3&4 of The Crown and seeing him brag of his youthful worship of Margaret Thatcher, I’m done. Not to speak of the fact that The Daily Dish is now the Weekly Dish and still 50$.
marcopolo
@Ohio Mom: One of the biggest tells for me about Josh & TPM’s success & influence is I now regularly read stories by writers/reporters who started their careers (or started moving up in their careers) by going to work for him there and who now work for the majors.
sab
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I was a very earlier follower and he did not give a shit. Not going to jump through hoops now he needs money. Especially since we know what news sites needing money means.
A
Love TPM but Judis is a dipshit for all of the reasons you’ve articulated.
Calouste
Cleta Mitchell has been resigned from her law firm for taking part in the shitgibbon’s Georgia extortion call.
RandyG
@sab:
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
For subscription issues write to [email protected]. (Personal experience.)
NotMax
I do cruise by TPM on most weekdays to look at straight news reports in order to get an idea of what currently might be of enough interest to read more about elsewhere. So far as can remember I have never looked at any opinion pieces there.
May I also take a moment to say that over the years each update of their site has rendered the place more cluttered and less user friendly than before?
marcopolo
Also, now I’m curious how many of us have been in email exchanges w/ Josh. I can remember 2 or 3. There was a time when he’d do a post and then ask readers to provide details about what was happening on the ground where they lived–like during the US Attorney firing situation under Bush. Does he ever do that anymore. I don’t remember seeing things like that for a bit but then I don’t read his site as thoroughly or frequently as I once did.
A
Also, since he was mentioned earlier multiple times, although I was an early Dish subscriber and sad when he closed up shop, he was a disaster at NYM, and it’s going to take a long while before his new subscribers “edit” him into actual respectability again…if they ever do.
Matt McIrvin
I honestly think one of the reasons the Republican Party has gone so insane is that liberals used to put up with a shocking amount of their shit in the name of comity and broad-mindedness that we mostly don’t any more, and they’re reacting to that. John Judis’s thinking is a remnant of the old world.
WaterGirl
@Martin: That is horrifying. That is what everyone who was paying attention to Italy in March knew could happen, and sane people did everything we could to make sure we didn’t get to that horrifying place.
I feel physically ill just thinking about this.
And you know the same people who wouldn’t wear masks and said “you’re not the boss of me” are the ones who will be first to sue doctors, hospitals, and the government when they are denied care because there is no room. At least when I think about this part I feel angry instead of feeling like I am going to throw up.
Martin
@marcopolo: I’ve been in at least a dozen. And a few Twitter convos as well. Some of those is due to a local connection, but he seems relatively easy to reach. I see him also troubleshoot subscription issues if you @ him.
sab
@Shalimar: I am sure. Granted my life was busy with a fulltime job and an elderly extremely disabled mother, but I did not find any way to contact them and God knows I tried. So he cleaned up his act a couple of years later. Nobody contacted me, and I had tried to contact them.
I am not accepting your remedial history. I was there. They did squat.
piratedan
well the way that you guys describe Judis makes me wonder why he doesn’t already have a FTFNYT gig….
getting way too tired of all of the political cosplay as the GOP tries to re-enact the sub-plot from Star Wars I into our political reality.
Chetan Murthy
@JOHN MANCHESTER:
Odd way of saying “would dig up her grave and skull-fuck her skeleton”. *grin
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
If I see John Judis’s name on a column over there, I skip it. If I start to read something and it seems really off, almost always it’s because I forgot to check the author & sure enough, it’s Judis. Your characterization is spot on. I’m surprised at Marshall’s fondness for his opinions, since I find the JMM perspective incisive and perceptive, even when I don’t agree with him.
Balloon Juice is my first read in the morning, but TPM is my second. I even got the ad-free membership (I decided I needed to do something similar and set up a monthly paypal donation to BJ awhile back). I respect their journalism. But I don’t care for Judis.
Martin
@WaterGirl: It’s hard. We were doing reasonably well for a long time. Not great, but a bit better. But I think we convinced ourselves that the things we were doing pre-holidays would work during the holidays, and people got overconfident, and well, they didn’t work.
I mean, it’s hard to be this diligent, for this long, with so little cultural messaging. I mean, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ is still recognized 80 years after it was used as a cultural message. So I have to keep reminding Ms Martin to be diligent. She works really hard to be safe, but it’s hard to keep it front of mind 24/7.
This is the problem with extreme individualism, it just fails catastrophically as soon as any collective problem arises. China has a lot of structural advantages to fighting a pandemic, but most important of all they have a collectively minded population, so that messaging is just so much easier there. Not only is really, really hard in the US, but we also never even tried at the national level.
Ohio Mom
Marcopolo @28:
Thinking about what you said about TPM alums going on to work for larger, higher-profiler places, and turning that lens on Judis — I guess he has been peter-principled into his current spot. He’s not moving up or even on because he’s at his pinnacle.
Miss Bianca
@Calouste: Ah, good! I was rooting for that particular injury, I have to say.
rikyrah
Phuck John Judis ??
Martin
@Miss Bianca: Not good enough. The bar needs to weigh in and revoke their ability to practice law. All of them.
cthulhu
Judis is 80 and his takes definitely seem of another era compared to all the other writers at TPM.
planetjanet
@sab: I agree that their content is good, but the website puts all the latest gizmos, popoffs, autoplays and other tricks to engage the reader. It made the site unreadable on my phone and I stopped trying it all on my browser at work. I will follow the occasional link, but just can’t read it consistently for fun.
zhena gogolia
For anyone who wants a lift, commenter Carol DuHart has been gathering Biden news at her site. I find it so soothing.
https://www.carolduhart.com/whitehouse/
Roger Moore
@Ohio Mom:
Josh can still ramble at times, often, I think, because he’s working out his thoughts as he’s writing and doesn’t revise that part out. That said, he’s on Twitter a lot, and the restricted format teaches you to be concise.
Elizabelle
@Martin: Field morgues. In sunny California. So sad.
And we should see those photos, a lot. Do not hide them. Remind people of the cost of their
freedomindividualismselfishness.Put them on the nightly news, and prominently in newspapers.
Patricia Kayden
Because undocumented workers can’t spread COVID-19 to anyone else, right?
Ksmiami
@Chetan Murthy: my spouse knows Josh M from a Princeton, I can pass this along
beckya57
Judis hasn’t made sense to me for awhile, this piece included, and I’m frankly baffled as to why Josh M still lets him publish on TPM. As others have said, his thinking is woefully out of date.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
Agree.
Elizabelle
WaPost:
Baud had suggested that her law firm might have been taken by surprise, because she didn’t run a conflicts check.
Punchy
Those 2 digits have to be reversed to even be close to accurate.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin: Where?
Cameron
@Elizabelle: I agree, and the stupid selfishness is criminal. But…unlike most of the horrors of the last 4 years, which Republicans can collectively shoulder the blame for, I blame the virulence of the pandemic in America on one man: the swinish oaf in the White House. The goobers and loonies were whipped up/deluded by him; almost every action of his made things worse, not better.
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: Unbelievable.
Although: I can see the undocumented being afraid to be vaccinated because it will lead to deportation.
How cruel.
Roger Moore
@Ohio Mom:
That seems like an excellent take.
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: This right here, this kind of thing is exactly how Republican values kill people. Every time.
Mary G
@Elizabelle: Thoughts and prayers, Ms. Mitchell.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
They never bother to, do they? Entitled pricks.
Martin
@Elizabelle: Ginni Thomas will keep her employed.
namekarB
@sab: Just contact TPM. I had the similar issue and after struggling through multiple devices and browsers, I gave up and sent them an email and my problem was identified and fixed within 24 hours.
Brachiator
Shouldn’t the owners of the meatpacking plants be subject to massive fines?
Cameron
@Brachiator: That’s a hot nut for Yertle and his crew: no employer liability.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brachiator: So they can die to support America’s food chain and line the pockets of the plutocracy but otherwise they’re on their own?
Roger Moore
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yes. SATSQ.
Elizabelle
WaPost:
Cleta Mitchell, a key figure in president’s phone call, was an early backer of Trump’s election fraud claims
What a journey this woman took politically. Her banker husband was convicted of fraud 8 years into their marriage, and seems to be the turning point where she flipped out, although I am no expert on Cleta Mitchell.
Chetan Murthy
@Ksmiami: Josh has to know: Judis has written articles peddling Borjas’ bullshit at TPM. Yeah, I know: “ffs!” Sigh.
BTW, Delong had a few repeat bouts with Borjas’ “body of work”. Really wiped the floor with him. So it’s not as if I’m basing this on my own reading of Borjas’ work: I mean, I’m not an economist, how could I tell if his methods were crooked? Delong can, and did.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Apparently, a conservative is a liberal who marries into money.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Money that gets perp walked!
Miss Bianca
@Martin: I don’t disagree, but this is a good start.
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: Damn, what is it with these Trumper lawyer ladies who started out normal or even admirably high-functioning and then somehow turned into these batshit loons?
Chetan Murthy
@Miss Bianca: “Money changes everything” [with apologies to Cyndi Lauper]
whistlingcat
@sab: sab likes pie.
Elizabelle
@Miss Bianca: Truly.
And we have the marvelous Elizabeth Warren, also from Oklahoma, who took the other trajectory.
Ohio Mom
John Judis is 80?! That explains a lot.
Funny thing, I went to google that to confirm it, and I couldn’t find his age/birthdate. He must hide it somehow. Which also fits with him being 80.
About the undocumented slaughterhouse workers: that’s just what we need, an unvaccinated pool in which the virus can keep mutating into who knows what. What do people think the “herd” in herd immunity means?
I’m mildly amused that the governor doesn’t even pretend he doesn’t know his major employers are continually breaking the law by hiring people they aren’t allowed to.
I read recently that although the first polio vaccine dates from 1955, the Western Hemisphere was not declared polio-free until the mid 1990’s — forty years later! (Wild polio still exists in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.)
Miss Bianca
@Chetan Murthy: I wouldn’t know. Hey, quick…social experiment time! Find me a millionaire to marry and I can report back on what happens!//
(Actually, probably all it would take for me to start railing about how my tax rate is too damn high would be for me to open a small business!)
MattF
@Elizabelle: Cleta Mitchell has resigned from her law firm.
WaterGirl
Speaking of the ERA, did anyone else notice the dismissive tone Trump took when addressing the female attorney in question?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Roger Moore: A conservative is a person who thinks tax revenue belongs to them personally.
Elizabelle
@MattF: And her law firm is better for it.
Everything Trump touches dies.
I was enjoying the WaPost reader comments on that one. Like “now she’s got one client, and he is not going to pay her.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ohio Mom: We still don’t know if herd immunity is possible with this virus.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Yes. Noticed. Par for the course.
Jim Appleton
@Shalimar:
I agree. I was in contact with TPM back then.
Jinchi
Oh yeah. Right after one of those empty pauses when he asked if anyone had heard about one of his crazy conspiracy theories. It was obvious the Georgia crew wasn’t going to chime in, so she did. Trump pretty much told her he didn’t need her opinion.
E.
@Ohio Mom: What? He’s learned to be succinct? This I do not believe. I absolutely cannot read that Josh Marshall at all. The repeated false starts, the constant on-the-other-hand, the persistent “Now I am not saying that such and such is true,” all those verbal tics in one place are too much for me. A good editor would cut his pieces by 80 percent and improve every single thing about them.
Jinchi
Republicans are still struggling with the basic concept of infectious disease theory.
glc
@Ohio Mom: When I search John Judis date of birth on google the first entry is
Not as a link though, just in a box with a photo.
Just Some Fuckhead
@E.: And his takes are fairly short so that would leave us with what, two sentences?
WaterGirl
@Jinchi: You described it perfectly.
Roger Moore
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Josh still has a lot of editorials where he’s just dumping his thoughts on the page and needs an editor to demand he clean it up, but he also has occasional ones that are just a couple of paragraphs or just a couple of sentences. As I said above, he’s on Twitter a lot, and that teaches you to be concise.
Ohio Mom
glc @93: so it is! I think I tried “age” and “bio.” At any rate, you definitely have better google-fu than me.
E. @91: now that I think about it, I’ve slowly gravitated to Josh’s twitter feed, and mainly use those comments to see what I want to read his thoughts about in more depth. I think there is some value in being able to observe how someone as informed as Josh is process the news. But on his twitter, he’s snappy.
Jae Kennedy
I recommend reading the article, folks, it’s actually kind of illuminating and reassuring.
Democrats, Republicans, and almost everyone else is freaked out by the pandemic, but so were people in 1919, during the worst pandemic in modern history (as a proportion of the population, the Spanish flu was a lot more deadly, and it came at the end of our first World War). So pandemics are a major mind fuck – dying becomes less of an existential worry, and more of a real and immediate threat.
People in 1919 and 2020 dealt with their isolation, economic insecurity, doubts about the future, and significantly heightened fear of death, by projecting their fears onto others – minorities, immigrants, corporate overlords, politicians, communists, capitalists.
I know I’ve become more paranoid and radicalized this year, and if a significant number of other people are too, then that helps explain the intensity and ugliness of the current political zeitgeist. Judis is very clear that people concerned about the state sanctioned murder of black people have much more logical and compelling reasons for being alienated and angry than QAnon folks angry about Democratic lizard pedophiles. But the anxiety is real and pervasive.
I agree with him, and really hope we will get to return to our baseline craziness after enough people get immunized and our loved ones stop dying so frequently.
Lee Hartmann
You had me at “link to Andrew Sullivan”.
cwmoss
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Agreed. Josh’s “In the Abuser’s House” essay soon after the 2016 election is one of the best things I’ve read about Trump.
joel hanes
@Matt McIrvin:
And Larry C. Johnson
Taylor Branch ?
Armando?
Corrente Blog?
sherparick
@Matt McIrvin: I remember reading John Judis back in the late seventies when he was the original democratic socialist editing “In These Times” magazine. Where I have drifted right during my time in the Army and then swung left pretty hard as reality smashed me upside the head the last 20 years, he kind of meandered into the middle with that fond nostalgia for the unionized, blue collar, white working class of the mid-20th century, now long gone due to automation and outsourcing. Thomas Frank shares it to.
A.J.
@marcopolo: Yes, Josh asked for people with first-hand info on the PPE debacles in the spring and summer.