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You are here: Home / 2024 Elections / 2024 Primaries / Saturday Evening Open Thread: Nikki Haley Is Feeling Ignored

Saturday Evening Open Thread: Nikki Haley Is Feeling Ignored

by | 194 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Suspect this is leading to a campaign-suspension announcement Real Soon Now. Because, if TFG *did* pick a female running mate, at this point it’s gonna be either Mad Majorie Taylor Greene or Elise ‘I Am Never Going Back to Upstate New York’ Stefanik…

“I’m a woman, I’m a minority, and I’m the daughter of immigrants,” 2024 presidential contender Nikki Haley exclaimed at a less than successful CPAC appearance after launching her campaign. Despite decrying identity politics,

Haley has very clearly centered her ethnicity and gender on the campaign trail. In her launch video, she claims to fight bullies, noting “when you kick back it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.” The announcement opens, “I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants.

Not black. Not white. I was different.” Haley proceeds to spend the next three minutes bashing minority cultures around the world and denying America’s racist history. While some may celebrate Haley’s candidacy as a sign of progress,

as the grandson of Indian immigrants to the United States — Haley’s story is a cautionary tale. This is not the type of representation the Indian American community should be proud of.

As a white-passing Indian American, Haley exploits our community when it serves her, but has turned her back on the brown immigrant experience at every opportunity. Born Nimrata Randhawa, the former South Carolina governor prefers to go by her middle name, “Nikki.”

Ironically, despite her refusal to acknowledge the existence of institutional racism, Haley insists those who point this name change out are “racist.” True, other politicians have taken a similar tack,

but while I am happy to call Haley, who takes great issue with trans people identifying as they choose, whatever she likes — it’s hard not to read into the choice given her history of whitewashing her identity. Haley reportedly does not like to discuss her Sikh background,

but takes pains to remind everyone of her conversion to Christianity. Though she now finds her Indian American identity politically useful, in 2001, she identified as “white” on her voter registration card.

Identity aside, Haley has used her power to harm communities of color around the world. In Nikki Haley’s America immigrant families like mine (and hers) would never have been allowed here in the first place.

Just last year, she even called for American-born Black Senator Raphael Warnock to be “deported.”

As U.N Ambassador, she didn’t object to $52,000 curtains being installed in her New York City apartment, but did oversee $350 million in cuts to peacekeeping, development, and health programs at the United Nations.

She worked for the most bigoted president in modern American history and in that short tenure her sole impact was to withdraw the United States from the Human Rights Council. As Governor, she made a name for herself pushing racist voter ID laws and fighting against Syrian refugee

resettlement. Playing into white supremacist talking points, she recently called for every governor in America to ‘ban” funding for CRT (whatever that means).

To celebrate Haley as an Indian American presidential candidate would be a particularly empty exercise. Haley has no chance at all of winning the presidency, let alone the Republican nomination.

She is technically running for president, but in reality she is auditioning to be the Republicans token-shield. If she performs well enough, she could be a strong contender for Vice President.

In that role she would be propped-up as an offensive counter to Vice President Kamala Harris. She would serve to further gaslight the American public, with the GOP using her identity as a woman of color to deny indisputable charges of racism and sexism.

Fortunately for Indian Americans like myself, rejecting Haley’s representation feels like a positive benchmark. It has taken time, but Indian Americans are finding their political voice and even growing their numbers in Congress.

We need not settle for the kind of toxic representation Haley offers, when we have a rich cohort of Indian American political leaders to choose from. Unlike Haley’s shell candidacy, that feels like actual progress. [end of đŸ§”]

Reader Interactions

194Comments

  2. 2.

    bbleh

    See this is just what all you Elitist Libruls do, hating on Nikki Haley for doing what she had to do to make her way in this tough world: pander to White bigotry and take nasty shots at prominent Black people.  This just shows how you’re the REAL racists!

    And re if TFG *did* pick a female running mate, at this point it’s gonna be either Mad Majorie Taylor Greene or Elise ‘I Am Never Going Back to Upstate New York’ Stefanik, I’d bet he wouldn’t get within a country mile of MTG, because she might upstage him, and there is NO greater sin in TFG-world.

  3. 3.

    jackmac

    Never could figure out exactly why Nimrata is running in a party that would NEVER, EVER, NO POSSIBLE WAY nominate her.

    Trump’s Veep? Not likely.

    Grift? Are South Asian-American Republicans a constituency she could fleece? Doesn’t seem like there are many out there.

    She’s bored? Maybe.

    Delusional?  Yeah. That’s the one.

  4. 4.

    Alison Rose

    LOL I grew up during Reaganomics and AIDS and the waning years of the Cold War, so like…it wasn’t exactly a global paradise. I’m pretty sure folks older than me who grew up during Vietnam and the fight for civil rights and further back WW2 would also not exactly leap to go back to all that.

    God, she’s a fucking dipshit.

  5. 5.

    Calouste

    Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt?

    Niki Healy confirming that conservatives are people who have never grown up.

  7. 7.

    Alison Rose

    Also, that shit about Obama pisses me off. He fucking tried, Nikki, but your party made it clear all they saw when they looked at him was BIG SCARY BLACK MAN.

  8. 8.

    bbleh

    @jackmac: same reason almost all the others are: raise their profile, promote the brand, increase the fundraising haul, and thereby improve the chances ultimately to land in some sweet, sweet wingnut-funded sinecure.

  10. 10.

    Phylllis

    Her memoir is candid about what she, her siblings, and her parents dealt with regarding racism and ostracism in a small southern town stuck in the fifties. By which I mean the 1850’s. Disingenuous is too good a description for her, because you’d have to be smarter than the average box of rocks to achieve that, and she isn’t.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt women don’t need a Republican’s permission to have an abortion?

    Fixed, Nikki.

  12. 12.

    hells littlest angel

    A woman auditioning to be Trump’s VP should understand the audition won’t require her to say much more than “Oh Donald!”

  13. 13.

    Baud

    She only 90% supported Trump on the docs indictment. She’s not going to be his Veep.

  14. 14.

    Elizabelle

    I plan to ignore ALL the GOP contenders.  Yes, I will learn about them through headlines and posts here.  But not going to waste my attention on them.

    They’re an undeserving bunch.  Even if you got an appealing one (ha!), s/he’d still be captaining the Plague Ship Cholera.  Cannot trust that party, period.

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    A Democrat was a governor when Nikki was born and when she was a toddler, and another when she was in grade school.

    Maybe Nikki’s hankering for more Democrats running the government??

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  16. 16.

    Scout211

    Because, if TFG *did* pick a female running mate, at this point it’s gonna be either Mad Majorie Taylor Greene or Elise ‘I Am Never Going Back to Upstate New York’ Stefanik


    I thought that Kari Lake had the inside track.  Wow.  You mean that cozying up to Trump at Mar-a-Lago this year was for nothing!?

  17. 17.

    Jay

    @Calouste:

    yeah, growing up, life was simple. Try to avoid getting beaten, at home, try to ignore the rants and my mother’s screams, try to defend my Misfits against bullies at school, one was a teacher, try to get a passing grade in physic’s taught by a moron, try to navigate budding sexuality,

    life was so simple then,……

  18. 18.

    Cameron

    I thought Kristi Noem was in the lead for female Trump VP.  IIRC, she promised to put him up on Mt. Rushmore (which I’m pretty sure she has no authority to do).

    Nikki Haley’s father taught at Voorhees?  I’ll be damned.  I have a friend who works for Voorhees; I’ll ask her if this history ever comes up there.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    She is technically running for president, but in reality she is auditioning to be the Republicans token-shield. If she performs well enough, she could be a strong contender for Vice President.

    Except that Donald Trump absolutely doesn’t feel the need to have a ‘token-shield’ as a running mate and absolutely won’t listen to anyone who tells him otherwise. A huge part of his persona, a part that his base loves, is his willingness to be a loud and proud overt omniasshole.

  20. 20.

    rikyrah

    That her parents wouldn’t have been allowed into this country without the changes in immigration policy brought about by THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT..

     

    Yeah, Nimrata needs to keep Black folks names out her damn mouth!😠

  21. 21.

    Phylllis

    @Cameron: Yes, and her mother taught in the school district. The family owned a high-end dress & gift shop in town. Patronized predominantly by Voorhees, SC State College, and Claflin staff and spouses.

  22. 22.

    James E Powell

    Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt?

    Yes, McDonald’s menu only had like six or seven things & no breakfast.

    Because I was in a weird mood, I read through about a week of Haley’s twitter feed. Her grammar is better, but she is just as stupid & bigoted as Sarah Palin.

  24. 24.

    Anoniminous

    Just because you’re a woman, an immigrant, and a daughter doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole.

  25. 25.

    Another Scott

    Nikki was at the infamous Cabinet meeting where everyone praised Dear Leader:

    Nikki Haley, U.N. ambassador: “It’s a new day at the United Nations. We now have a very strong voice.”

    (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    This was about 15 months before TIFG went to the UN and the delegates laughed at him. He doesn’t like being laughed at…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    eclare

    @James E Powell:

    That’s the impression I got, she is trying to be this year’s Sarah Palin, proving yet again that Republicans have no idea why Democrats vote for Democrats.

  27. 27.

    Ruckus

    Barack Obama had 8 years to pull our country together, but he chose to further divide us by race and gender. Now he’s doubling down by accusing America of being defined by racism.

     

    That’s about the biggest load of crap that can be typed in 2 sentences.

    Also proof that she’s a rethuglican through and through.

  29. 29.

    Scout211

    Nikki Haley made news last week. Well, her husband did. But he was mentioned in all the headlines as “Nikki Haley’s husband” so it was all about her.

    Her husband left for deployment with the National Guard for a year to Africa.  He won’t be around for most of the 2024 campaign and I bet he is relieved. Being “Nikki Haley’s husband” for the next year could wear on a person.

    But she can burnish her military cred, just by being married to a deployed guard soldier. I guess that works for her.

  30. 30.

    Jackie

    @Scout211: Lake is a Loser. Strike 1. And, she, like MTG would upstage TIFG. Strike 2. And no one outside of MAGA Deplorables likes her. Strike 3.

  31. 31.

    Calouste

    @jackmac: There are commenters on this blog who are of South Asian heritage who can go into more detail than I can, but South Asian-American Republicans are definitely a thing.

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    “Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt?”

    Everybody’s life was simple when they were 10 years old!

    (Okay, now the counterexamples are flooding in.)

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    @Scout211:

    You mean that cozying up to Trump at Mar-a-Lago this year was for nothing!?

    Yeah, especially when he’s at Bedminster.

  38. 38.

    Scout211

    @Steeplejack: Yeah, especially when he’s at Bedminster.

    He moved there at the beginning of June. Kari Lake was around all the time (supposedly) when he was at Mar-a-Lago. She was being mentioned as a VP pick around March of this year. Not so much anymore, though.

  41. 41.

    Anoniminous

    1968 was really great!!!!

    I spent it wondering how many friends and relatives would be coming back from Nam in a box.

    Good times.  Good times.

  42. 42.

    JPL

    The biggest SC phony is not Lindsay or Nikki, it’s Nancy Mace.   Pick me because I don’t think females that were raped should carry the rapist child.   See she can help moderate the republican position and at the same time worship the dear leader.   trump knows that the republican position on abortion is not popular, so why not pick someone that you can dismiss once you win.

  44. 44.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Baud: ​
     at the very least sleep with some porn stars

  46. 46.

    JPL

    Most of them idolize the fifties, even though the republican president at the time wouldn’t be allowed in the party.   They want school segregation and the blacks at the back of the bus.   They don’t even hide it.

  47. 47.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     

    The Biden administration cannot just sit back and watch this. I urge the US to immediately provide Ukraine with an emergency aid package of additional popcorn.
    — Seva (@SevaUT) June 24, 2023

    đŸ€Ł

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @Camron

    Geologically speaking, Mount Rushmore is full. No sizeable area remains which does not include rock unsuited to sculpting.

    indeed, Jefferson had to be done twice, the first attempt blasted into oblivion due to discovery of the unsuitable composition of the area. Original plans were for Jefferson to be on Washington’s right. After that one was obliterated Jefferson was moved to Washington’s left.

    Trivia: It was Calvin Coolidge who pushed to include Teddy R., insistent that there be at least two Republicans represented.

  51. 51.

    different-church-lady

    Running as a minority in a party whose primary function is to hate on minorities. What could go wrong?

  55. 55.

    James E Powell

    @eclare:

    I have lost track of how many Republicans who will never get the nomination are running this time. If Haley wants to get traction, she has to attack Trump & DeSantis. There are no other voters available in this primary.

  57. 57.

    Redshift

    Promising a return to an idealized past that never existed is the essence of conservatism everywhere. The details don’t have to make sense for them to buy it.

  59. 59.

    JPL

    @Anyway: He’s all about the ism.  He’s anti wokeism, covidism, and all isms.   Ali Velshi did a clip of his railing against all the isms.  He’s the perfect example about how low one will go, to get a vote.

  63. 63.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @Anyway: he’s trying to get a FOX/Newsmax gig. He hasn’t realized his hue isn’t correct for either of those gigs.

  64. 64.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    Nikki Haley is just Booby Jindal 2.0 vagina edition. I am surprised she’s got pics of her with her dad wearing his turban. Booby told his family who attended his first gubernatorial election party to lay off the ethnic clothing.

  69. 69.

    zhena gogolia

    Am I perhaps the only BJ commenter who has actually been to Rostov-na-Donu?

  72. 72.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I was working on my dissertation then

    I agree, 1968 was a weird and wild year

    I had a box full of newspaper clippings, fliers, etc, from that year. I lost the box when I moved in 1989

    Sigh

  75. 75.

    Tim Curtin

    I remember the exact Pepperidge Farms commercials she does, apparently.  Gen X all have screen overdose.

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    SFB is never going to pick someone that is more human than he is for his running mate . Which rather drastically narrows the field down to 3 beings, and I’m thinking only one of them is actually from this planet.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    Open thread?

    Computer mouse’s travel felt off. Thought perhaps some grit and/or grime had built up on its underside. Turned it over for possible cleaning and discovered much to my chagrin the bottom had been protected during packing and shipping by clear film meant to be peeled off. After years of use without being aware of this, tiny part of that film had deteriorated and crumpled up, impeding movement on the mouse pad. So aged that it today only peeled off in little bits and strips; what would have taken at most two seconds when it was new took nearly a half hour.

    (retroactively slaps forehead)

  80. 80.

    mrmoshpotato

    Hi NYT! 🖕🖕🖕!!!

    Here's the deal: We won't tell you how to stack mountains of trash on the sidewalk and you leave our Italian beef alone. https://t.co/uM4ZBtFzIA— đ—źđ—žđ—źđ— đ—¶đ˜€đ˜đ—Č𝗿𝗝𝗼𝘆𝗘đ—ș (@akaMisterJayEm) June 24, 2023

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Reread your question.

    ;-)

    Baker is a persuasive writer of popular pieces on economics, IMHO.

    What do you think about the piece?

    I think he’s right that there should be more of an effort for the government to have more of a piece of the action in industries and inventions it funds, but (as someone pointed out here) there are lots of complications in trying to do so (e.g. research universities own many of the fancy drug patents, and without those royalties university education might be even more expensive).  Politics and changing economic incentives is complicated, with lots of vested interests.

    [Mayhew] 218-[51]60-1-5 [/Mayhew]

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    Baud

    Nothing to be taken too seriously, but it’s fun to read.

    Former Maryland GOP Governor Larry Hogan has poured cold water on Ron DeSantis’ hopes of being president, saying his campaign is one of the “worst he has ever seen” and predicting a swift end to his bid

  85. 85.

    JPL

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Nit picking and negative.   Why not write about the manufacturing jobs that are being created?   I can only speak for myself, but I’m tired of columns that point out the negative.  Biden has done more to distribute wealth than any other president since I’ve been born.

  88. 88.

    mrmoshpotato

    @different-church-lady:

    Running as a minority in a party whose primary function is to hate on minorities. What could go wrong?

    A LOT!  And hilariously!

    ETA – anticipating the GOP eating Nikki’s face because, well, we all know.

  89. 89.

    FelonyGovt

    @Alison Rose: I’m pretty sure folks older than me who grew up during Vietnam and the fight for civil rights

    That’s me. Also during that era, women could barely get credit without their husband’s approval and on job interviews, were asked (as I was) whether I intended to get pregnant.

    But yeah, Nikki, keep telling us how good the old days were.

  92. 92.

    Mike in NC

    Having lived next door to SC for 15 years, I can say without a doubt that Nikki Haley is every bit of a shit weasel as the rest of the GQP “presidential” field. Terrible governor easily manipulated by the white men in her state government. Most recently she casually repeated wingnut talking points about Democrats pushing for “abortion up until the time of birth”. What an asshole.

  94. 94.

    JPL

    @FelonyGovt: That was me.  My ex and I married in Louisiana which observed Napoleonic code, which is short for let’s keep women in her place.   At the time, I needed his permission for a credit card, and if I wanted to serve on a jury, I had to sign up for it.   We had the same position for a major company.

  95. 95.

    PAM Dirac

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

     

    OT. Any thoughts on this Dean Baker article?:

    Pretty worthless article because it kind of implies that it is the Biden administration’s choice not to try to retain control of patents that come from the money going out. In fact under present law (Bayh-Dole) the rights to control any patent that arises out of a government grant or contract is given to the inventor/institution. Doing as he suggests would require a new law to be passed, not just a policy choice by the Biden administration. Bayh-Dole is broadly considered a success so it would be hard to change or repeal it. And it wouldn’t be the drug companies or corporations that would resist the loudest, it would be universities/research institutions that get government grants. I would say that revisiting Bayh-Dole is a very reasonable thing to consider but it is far, far more complicated than he implies.

  97. 97.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our porn!

    ~ William Wallace

  98. 98.

    Alison Rose

    @FelonyGovt: Yeah, the credit card thing blows my mind. Especially because, at the other end of the crazy spectrum, my mom was able to get a new social security card in the mid 1970s with my dad’s last name before they were even legally married. (They lived together for three years before getting married, and she started using his name during that time to make things easier, I guess.) She just walked into the office and said “I got married and I need a new card” and they said “here you go”.

  100. 100.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Another Scott:

    My thoughts on it weren’t too different from the first part of your last paragraph. I agree with Baker that the government should make the tech patents it funds open-source, examples he gives in the article:

    (no government-granted patent monopolies or non-disclosure agreements for technology)

    I think you make good points on why this wouldn’t necessarily be easy or straightforward.

    I guess I was disappointed his thoughts were pretty dour on Biden’s efforts to make manufacturing jobs being better paying and reduce income inequality

  101. 101.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Baud: ​
      Yup. He’s a short, pudding fingered version of Scott Walker.

  102. 102.

    Suzanne

    @Steeplejack: Thank you. Like, of course it was easier! You were a kid and you didn’t have to go to work or run a household or be responsible for raising your own kids or pay taxes! Literally the easiest it will ever get!

    All of that was true for me, and yet I still would never have classified my outlook as “uncomplicated”. If your shit was uncomplicated, it’s because you’re juvenile.

  105. 105.

    Joseph Patrick Lurker

    If TFG picks a female VP candidate it’s going to be Kristi Noem.  On paper, she has far more impressive credentials (running a state government) and much better message discipline than either Marjorie Taylor Greene or Elise Stefanik.

  106. 106.

    different-church-lady

    If there’s any one group of people I don’t begrudge becoming rich, it’s the folks who rescued us from the plague.

  107. 107.

    Martin

    Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out. #RTM2023

    In the summer after 4th grade my best friends’s mom invited a bunch of us to his birthday party at a park down by the beach. It was a cool park with a big fake pirate ship and we’d run around on it and pretend to be pirates, and there’d be cake and shit. The day before I got food poisoning or something, I don’t remember but I was sick and couldn’t go to the party. So my friend mom picked up our other friends and threw them in the back of the station wagon (no seatbelts – it was the 70s) and headed down to the park. On the way needed to stop for gas. While she was inside (paying at the pump hadn’t been invented) some guy who had just robbed a store saw a running car and jumped in and took off, with my friends in the back. Police chased, and trying to evade them he hit a tree killing himself and 4 of my friends. I found out later that day. And they were kind of all of my friends – I wasn’t very popular (I got better at that as I got older). I cried a lot. I remember my mom taking me to therapy the next week for the first time. Talked to psychologist (learned what one was first). And we talked about it, and I cried there too. And he asked how I felt – if I felt bad because I was sick and wasn’t in the car. And it was like someone ripped all my organs out. I hadn’t even considered that. I had forgotten I was supposed to be there. Well, let’s just say I totally lost my shit right then and there with that image in my head. We didn’t do a ‘what did you do on summer vacation’ at the start of the next school year because the teachers knew where that was going to go for a bunch of us. I went to therapy and played alone in my room that summer. That Christmas I got an Atari – the only one in my class to get one. It was a very extravagant xmas for us. Made some new friends thanks to that, and then my parents told me they were separating.

    I know a bunch of pretty good stuff happened before those few months. I have some memories here and there. But anytime anyone says ‘do you remember when you were growing up’. Yeah. Yeah, I remember. It sucked. It sucked really bad. Things of course got better, but that’s kind of a big soul eating monster in the middle of your childhood that’s hard to see around.

    I’m sure Nikki had a great childhood. Maybe she kicked puppies and that made her happy, who the fuck knows. I don’t know anyone who thinks about country when they think about their childhood. I never went to church, so faith sure as shit isn’t on my list either. And my family split apart like a hell of a lot of other families did in the 70s. Mostly I learned to not look backward because shit sucked – and my story fucking pales next so many others. I never had to cover myself in my friends blood so some maniac wouldn’t shoot me. So I pretty much completely lack any sense of nostalgia for anything.

    And I’m not sure who she’s trying to reach here – is this just a message for boomers? My kids remember the Great Recession, millennials got 9/11 in the middle of childhood. The current crop of kids got sucked into Covid and culture wars and active shooter drills, if not actual active shooters.

    I remember when I started reading college applications in my job and I went to the guy who was doing the assignments and asked if I was getting a certain subset of them, or were these representative of all of them. You want to make sure your baseline is set properly. And he assured me they were representative, why did I ask. Because I did a quick analysis across 100 files and ÂŒ of them had household incomes under $10K, which was well below the poverty line anywhere in the US at the time, and it was unfathomable to me that a quarter of 18 year olds were coming out of really desperate poverty like that. The files are full of stories of drug using parents, abuse, being shuffled among relatives, family unable to get medical care, and so on. It’s grim. It certainly helps you feel less sorry about your own challenges. And it never got better – they were still rough to read at the end of my career.

    Those first files I read would be about 45 now. They are above the median voter in terms of age, and I don’t think very many of them would be nostalgic about ‘faith, family, and country’. I think their childhood, like mine, was about struggle and overcoming and a society that generally didn’t fucking care about them, that would read a story about 700 migrants slipping under the waves and without missing a beat think ‘we should impeach Joe Biden because he’s too nice to immigrants’. 

    Maybe this message appeals to Donald Trump’s kids or something. I don’t think it appeals to very many people I’ve ever met.

  108. 108.

    Ohio Mom

    I will be a bit contrarian and say I remember my school years, the early 1960s through the 1970s, fondly. The Civil Rights movement, the protests against the Viet Nam war, “Women’s Lib,” the Gay rights movement, everywhere it seemed people were taking power and demanding change to make things fairer, more humane and more open.

    As a child, some of the big changes went over my head: I didn’t know about the pill, which of course changed so much; I didn’t know about the 1965 Immigration Act which would make our communities so much more diverse; I hardly knew what a credit card was, much less what a big deal it was that women could finally get one in their own names; I had no idea the Disability rights movement was forming (the only disability I knew about was my neighbor in a wheel chair as a result of his bout with polio).

    And the arts! Rock and roll, the visual arts scene in New York — so much creative energy seemed to be being unleashed, all at once.

    Now granted, Nikki Haley doesn’t celebrate any of that, she’d rather none of it had ever happened. But I would love a full-fledged revival of that spirit of expansiveness.

  109. 109.

    different-church-lady

    Mostly I just remember getting tormented on the school playground.

  111. 111.

    James E Powell

    @JPL:

    Ev’rybody’s talking ’bout Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m

  112. 112.

    Another Scott

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Baker is a huge fan of productivity growth.  (That’s the engine that makes life better, cleans up the environment, pays for our retirement, etc., etc.) That means figuring out ways to make better stuff with fewer people bent over an assembly line, among other things.  That picture is contra the overly-simple idea that millions of manufacturing jobs are “coming back”.  They’re not “coming back”, there will be new industries employing people in new jobs.

    Of course, Biden says things like that all the time (“good, high paying, new economy jobs that don’t require a college degree…”), also too.

    Baker’s also a huge fan of making the economy – a human construct – work better for everyone, not just those who can collect monopoly rents from the patent system or from special laws that Congress passes for them.

    His free book, Rigged, goes into this in much more detail and includes a lot of steps left out of his CEPR piece that you cite.

    All that said, Baker is an economist. He argues for what he thinks are better economic policies. He (generally) stays in his lane and lets others figure out the politics of how to get there.

    My $0.02.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  114. 114.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    anointed by the media as “can’t miss” GOP candidates:

    Nelson Rockefeller
    John Connally
    Jack Kemp
    Phil Gramm
    Lamar Alexander
    Pete Wilson
    George “Felix Macacawitz” Allen
    John “Great News for McCain”
    Fred Thompson
    A noun, a verb, and 9-11
    Jon Huntsman
    Tim Pawlenty
    Rick “oops” Perry
    Bob “money is in the envelope” McDonnell
    Jeb!
    Lil’ Marco
    Kasich
    Chris Christie
    Bobby “happy Mardi Gras” Jindal
    Scott Walker

    and now DeeSantis and Haley

  116. 116.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    That’s totally fair

    @PAM Dirac:

    Thanks for your explanation. Like Another Scott explained, it’s not so simple to address

    @JPL:

    I get that. From commenters’ explanations, Baker doesn’t really address the nitty gritty of how the Biden admin would try to fix the problem of monied interests profiting so much on technology funded by government money

  117. 117.

    Gvg

    @Calouste: yes, but i talked to my parents. It wasn’t simple fot THEM while they raised and protected me. Is Nikki estranged from her parents?

  118. 118.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ohio Mom: I had a fairly happy childhood.  Of course, I was a child at the time and wasn’t really aware of all sorts of shit that was going on.  Part of Haley’s thing is an appeal to authoritarian followers who would rather not have to make any complicated decisions.

  120. 120.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    Agree not to be taken too seriously. DeSantis has enough money & enough supporters in the political press that he will be in it for a while. He’s betting that Trump will be gone and no one else will be in a position to get the nomination. I think he’s right about that.

  122. 122.

    Chetan Murthy

    @rikyrah:

    That her parents wouldn’t have been allowed into this country without the changes in immigration policy brought about by THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT..

    Heh, I learned of this only a few years back: certainly never learned in school that the Civil Rights campaigners were the ones who pushed the Immigration Act of 1965 thru Congress.  Then again, it seems that a lot of the American History I learned in school was not just wrong, but ideological.  Dunning school shite.

  124. 124.

    Mallard Filmore

    @FelonyGovt: 

    on job interviews, were asked (as I was) whether I intended to get pregnant.

    Ha! When I started my computer programming career, most of the male workers were gone to better paying programmer jobs at a different company before 9 months were up.

  125. 125.

    karen marie

    What the fuck is Haley going on about?

    When I was growing up, I was a fucking child.  Of course things were simple.  I was a fucking child without the responsibility of a job or paying household expenses.

    Yeah, I’d love to go back to that.  Somehow I don’t think Nikki “vote for me and I will pay for everything so you can live a carefree life without bills or responsibilities” Haley can make that happen.

  128. 128.

    different-church-lady

    @James E Powell: ​
      Yeah, this is like auto racing: you’re three laps off the lead, but you keep racing in case the lead pack has a spectacular crack up that takes six cars ahead of you out.

  129. 129.

    Martin

    @JPL: My parents are the oldest in the boomer generation and they barely remember the 50s. I don’t think they could contextualize segregation as kids – I think only black boomers would have that awareness.

    The median age voter for 2024 will have been born in 1980. The median age registered Republican was born in 1967. We’re not even old enough to have watched Leave it to Beaver, let alone lived it.

    This isn’t about appealing to what they remember, this is appealing to a childhood they never had – at least for the majority of the people she needs to win over for the nomination.

  130. 130.

    different-church-lady

    “Remember when you were a child? Well I think you’re still a child! And just as easily fooled!”

  131. 131.

    Suzanne

    I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. No big tragedies. I experienced normal stuff that happens in almost every family — divorce, alcoholism, terminal illness and death, mental illness. Bullying and outsider-y feeling, all within normal bounds for a weird nerdy left-y kid. And I would never look back on those years and consider them uncomplicated. I remember being terrified of AIDS. I remember being afraid of nuclear war. I remember the Central Park Five and Bernie Goetz. I remember lots of shit.

  132. 132.

    trollhattan

    I will now always think of Nikki as Pinto En Fuego because of that image. Well played.

  133. 133.

    PAM Dirac

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Baker doesn’t really address the nitty gritty of how the Biden admin would try to fix the problem of monied interests profiting so much on technology funded by government money

    I think the article is Biden bashing not because it doesn’t get into all the complexities, but because it doesn’t even hint that the Biden administration can not by law fix things by itself. I would also strongly argue that the extent that monied interests profit unfairly on government funded technology (at least in the biomedical field) is over stated but that is a different rant.

  134. 134.

    karen marie

    @Baud:   I certainly can’t take seriously someone who says “John McCain pulled a comeback.”

    I mean, WHAT?  What is Gerrard Kaonga smoking?

  135. 135.

    geg6

    @Martin:

    You ought to hear the stories the financial aid office hears.  Dependency reviews are especially fraught, but all professional judgment situations are.  And then there’s your typical single mom making poverty level wages with bad credit and a kid who desperately wants to come and who the mom also desperately wants to come.  This time of year, it’s emotionally draining in ways I can’t even describe.

  137. 137.

    Roberto el oso

    @Joseph Patrick Lurker: But didn’t she brag during her first campaign (for Senator?) that she knew how to castrate pigs? That seems like it might make Trump mildly squeamish/nervous.

  138. 138.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
    LBJ (praise be to Allah) signed it into law at the Statue of Liberty with Teddy and Bobby at this side (photo)​

  141. 141.

    Suzanne

    @Martin:

    The median age voter for 2024 will have been born in 1980. 

    HEY LOOK, I’m the median voter!

    Maybe I can go to an Ohio diner and the NYT can interview me!

  142. 142.

    OGLiberal

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: This, so much.  So sick of folks yearning for some forgotten, wonderful yesterday.  So many times I’ve heard people my age yearn to go back to the 50s.  I was born in 1970.  Only 50s most these folks know is from TV sitcoms and fables told by their parents/grand-parents.  Ain’t none of that reality.

    Haley is roughly my age.  I loved the span from 1970-1980 because I was a kid.  But I have been told many, many times that the 70s were a cesspool because of commie Carter.  I imagine that she’s imagining the 80s, when St. Ron the Gipper and Gordon Gekko saved us from liberal tyranny.  And when people like her learned to be greedy dickheads from Reagan’s BS and their parents.

  147. 147.

    OGLiberal

    @Redshift: To a certain extent, it’s not idealized…in their eyes.  Brown people and women knew their place, kids didn’t ask questions, gays/trans people didn’t exist….and white dudes ran everything.  That’s close to heaven for most Republicans today.

  151. 151.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Another Scott: as I understand it, the VA hospitals will partner with the local medical schools to work on drug development, and get the patent royalties. So at least they’re getting some of the money back.

  152. 152.

    kalakal

    I was a kid in the 60s & 70s and was lucky enough to have a happy childhood and, yes, for me it was simple. The world wasn’t though, just a few highlights, the Cold, Biafran, Vietnam, 6 Day, Yom Kippur wars ( evacuated in that one). Evacuated from Indonesia during Suharto’s mass murder spree in 1965. The golden age of hi-jackings, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the golden Age of European terrorist groups, Baader-Meinhof, Brigado Rosso, NAR, ETA etc et bloody cetera. Oil shocks, rampant inflation. And that’s before we get to sexism, racism, homophobia. For me it was a mostly happy and simple time, not so for adults.

    She’s an odious buffoon

  153. 153.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt?

    Even though Trump has significantly lowered the bar for political discourse, I’m blown away by the jaw dropping buffoonery of Nikki Haley’s statement.  This asshole needs to go away.

  158. 158.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Wyatt Salamanca: I’m 58: 7yr older than Nimrata Randhawa Haley.  I remember growing up in the 70s in the South (Texas).  It was ugly and unpleasant, and suffused with racism, sexism, and homophobia.  A hellhole.  A fucking hellhole.  I can’t imagine her childhood in South Carolina was different.

    Without a doubt she remembers that shit, too.  Without a doubt.  She’s just pandering, the little unworthy piece of shit.  Goddamn Kapo.

  159. 159.

    Ohio Mom

    @Omnes Omnibus:I am older than you, I was 13 in 1968. I lived in NYC, in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood among many Red Diaper Babies (my parents weren’t particularly political but others in my circles of their generation were).

    So my childhood was more politically-aware than many. But of course I also experience the carefree innocence of not having any adult worries about money and all the rest.

  160. 160.

    Martin

    Regarding Baker’s concern – I don’t think so. What data I’ve seen on construction spending for manufacturing due to the IRA, these are not IP rent seekers. At least, they aren’t *new* rent seekers. At the same time, I don’t think these are going to be the kinds of jobs he’s imagining. These are looking to be high skill labor or engineering degree jobs. The latter rarely unionize anyway (SPEEA being the only one I can think of) and the former don’t a ton either. But the main thing is I don’t think it’s a lot of jobs. I think it’s a lot of capital construction, but not a lot of jobs. The CHIPS act pushing fabs being built in the US. But these places are pretty empty. You spend $20B to build the fab and a 100 people run it. They’re heavily automated, often adverse to humans even being present, and while there’s a decent sized supply chain leading into it which might have a lot of jobs, those aren’t necessarily going to be in the US because they aren’t part of the bill or aren’t a requirement.

    So it’s a lot of money for construction (useful), it’s a lot of US GDP because we get credit for the output of these expensive plants, it’s some pretty good jobs and that will pay off by concentrating more expertise here in the US – universities will build into this demand, and maybe the next startup/spinoff isn’t a Taiwanese or Dutch company but a US one. But that’s way off on the horizon. Biden isn’t getting credit for that, even if he deserves it. It does buy some national security – the US military can make bigger demands from their contractors because there’s actually a place in the US that can do the thing they want, other countries lose some trade deal leverage, maybe we aren’t indirectly funding their private to military technology pathway.

    I think any billionaires that come out of this were already billionaires, and we have shown no interest in slowing that down. There should be some broad benefit to the economy. There will be local concentrated expertise benefit. There will be a modest number of pretty darn good jobs. And a lot of concrete will get poured.

    I will note, one benefit that has already arrived is that US made solar panels are now the cheapest on the market – by an amount that matters. That’s a consequence of these bills.

  161. 161.

    different-church-lady

    @Delk: Ugly clothes, disco, there’s no gas, the president is a burglar, and your parents are acting stressed all the time.

    But hey, at least there was Stevie Wonder.

  163. 163.

    apocalipstick

    @Calouste: I  remember how simple life was, how safe I felt…

    because I was a 12 year old dipshit.

    Actually, that is not true. I first experienced existential angst at my birthday party when I was 7 years old.

  165. 165.

    eclare

    @rikyrah:

    I think it was DL Hughley who had a funny bit about this exact thing.  “We don’t even know why we’re running, we gonna run.”

  166. 166.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ohio Mom: I turned four that summer.  I was at the Democratic Convention though.  My dad turned 25 that year.  He tells a story about picking up an Indonesian friend from a house at NIU on his birthday.  His friend lived with a number of black students, and, on that day, they were gathering up guns and ammunition to be prepared to defend themselves.  Did I mention that my dad’s birthday is April 4?

  168. 168.

    geg6

    @Ohio Mom:

    I was 9-10 in 1968.  My mom was a rookie newspaper reporter who had just finished her degree at 42.  We talked current affairs and politics at the dinner table every night, just like the Kennedys.  My dad was a union steelworker.  I had had one draft age brother and another quickly reaching that age.  I remember duck and cover exercises long after others had stopped because we had the first nuclear power plant in the US.  We stockpiled iodine.  I have no yearnings for those times.  None.

  173. 173.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I wish we could go back to the good ole days of the 50s with iron lungs, small radioactive black and white tee vees, chain smoking, bomb shelters, a military draft, cross country train travel at the lighting speed of 39 mph and no electricity in rural areas.

  174. 174.

    Martin

    @eclare: The reading application was not horrible. Maybe in the very beginning it was. It’s VERY grounding though. It really helps put a lot of things in perspective and helps you build a lot of empathy and patience for others, and I’m very thankful for that. I used to think my story was terrible, but in the grand scheme, it’s not that unusual – childhood is a pretty shitty place for a lot of people. But because of the nature of the job, you’re actively doing something to help them – you’re helping give them a shot at something that you think is pretty great – a chance to go to a college that you believe will really improve their lives. And we did that – a lot. That’s what got me out of bed every morning. Every year I looked forward to reading, and I read thousands every year – every night, every weekend. I loved it.

    I helped write a lot of those admissions policies, and we pushed very hard, and sometimes very away from the administrations gaze, toward helping those very students. There are actually some disincentives for doing so. And for a period we were the best university in the country for lifting students out of poverty, for increasing their earnings compared to their parents, for Pell grant recipients, etc. I’m incredibly proud of that work. It wasn’t what leadership wanted, we had to engineer it around meeting their other goals. Of course they were thrilled to take credit for what we did behind their back. At one point the institution faced a major decision and we warned them that taking a certain path would lose them all of those things that bragged about – they didn’t believe we orchestrated that – because we did it all out of sight (take credit for your work, people!). And when they took that path, it collapsed in 2 years. I remember resending the memo to the provost when I first laid out why it all worked and why it would collapse after it collapsed. They were getting some heat over it and they asked if I could find a way to repair it under the new system but we could never find one. In the process I figured out they were sort of cooking the books on admissions, and whistleblew to the state. Learned the real reason why they took that path, though.

    Still a little bitter I couldn’t go out on my high note. But I did a lot of good work all the same.

  176. 176.

    PAM Dirac

    @glc:

    but since we’re on the topic I’ll toss this in:

    The old “one trick pharma doesn’t want you to know” to get around Bayh-Dole. Of course to get there you have to ignore the legislative history, the direct comments of the people who wrote the law, and a host of other details. It is start from the conclusion you want and try to cobble a semi-plausible legal interpretation that gets you what you want. It is bad when Alito and Thomas do it and it is bad here. If Bayh-Dole should be changed, then change it, but don’t pretend that it is something that it is not.

  182. 182.

    Ohio Mom

    @geg6: I came from the socio-economic group that did college deferments. My BFF’s older brother did something to screw his up and high-tailed it to Canada.

    I’m not saying there wasn’t lots of turmoil and violence and suffering during those years. Of course there was.

    But it was also an era of social progress, a lot of which we now take for granted. It sounds trivial now but I remember the day women teachers in NYC were finally allowed to wear pants. We all trudged into high school thinking it was just another day, only to be greeted with a fashion show of every female teacher in a brand new pants suit. What a lit day that was.

    1975 was the year Congress passed the first special ed law, recognizing that children with disabilities had a civil right to a public education. How that changed lives!

    The 1960s saw Medicare and Medicaid being established, and Civil Rights legislation (including the now mostly defunct Voting Rights Act). In the 1970s, we celebrated the First Earth Day — it was the start of popular understanding that we needed to start protecting “the environment,” as we quaintly referred to our planet back then.

    When we all start looking back at our personal childhood experiences (a conversation I found interesting, my god, what Martin lived through), we inadvertently play into the Right-wing trope that there is no society only individual men and women.

    Our country made leaps and bounds socially even as we children duck-and-covered. Both things can be true.

  183. 183.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Darling Nikki is your typical child of privilege who believes that her experience in this country is the only possible valid one.

  184. 184.

    Martin

    @geg6: Oh, I’m familiar. I had a couple of undocumented students that were really struggling and decided I’d take some time to see what I could do. Worked a lot with financial aid on them specifically, and on undocumented students in general, and after so much running around wound up at a small business roundtable here in OC that had a lot of business owners that came here undocumented, got amnesty under Reagan or got documented one way or another. They asked how many students we had, I sheepishly told them, a bit of math was done, here’s how much per, a bit of negotiating, and they said they’d find the money – we just needed to work out a mechanism to tell them who and how to get it to them. We were blown away. I’m not sure what the state of things now is but 15 years ago or whenever we did that, a private scholarship program for undocumented students felt like finding a unicorn. 

    But so much stuff was around what mechanisms we could exploit for this party to pay for textbooks and that one to buy laptops and this other one to cover fees without getting anyone or the university in trouble. You could see the weight on the staff – everything was hard.

  185. 185.

    gene108

    I don’t think things were simpler when we were younger, but I think part of the nostalgia for our youth is how big and new the world seemed at every turn.

    First time riding a bicycle by yourself was a liberating experience. Riding my bicycle now is fun, but the feeling of doing it for the first time never comes back.

  186. 186.

    Martin

    @PAM Dirac: It is start from the conclusion you want and try to cobble a semi-plausible legal interpretation that gets you what you want. It is bad when Alito and Thomas do it and it is bad here.

    I don’t know. I broke a lot of bad rules on the way to helping a lot of students out. Hell, I would have gotten fired for all the rules I broke if the potential active shooter I was trying to warn the university about hadn’t turned out to be an actual active shooter the day before my termination meeting (that was a really shitty Fathers Day with that hanging on me). You do get a VERY new perspective on the validity of rules when you realize you’re thankful someone got shot at (even more thankfully not shot) because that was necessary to keeping your job. That is absolutely not how it should work.

    I struggle to think of any Alito or Thomas’s machinations that were morally good. I think that’s an important distinction. I don’t disagree with what you say – absolutely go for the change, but I think we are too inclined to trust the system when we know the system wasn’t designed to spit out neutral outcomes. I think in that case you have an obligation to smash the system – at least a little bit. I think it would have been worth it if in 2016 Obama said ‘you know what Senate, you’ve had 6 months to confirm this guy, I’m putting a robe on him and sending him over to the court and what are you going to do about it?’

  187. 187.

    AnneWith

    @different-church-lady:

    ::fistbump of solidarity::  I was class pariah in 4th grade. Things didn’t improve until my Mom moved us to the other side of town which was in a different school district.

  188. 188.

    karen marie

    Prolly too late for an answer but …

    Does anyone know what “RTM2023” means?

  189. 189.

    James E Powell

    @gene108:

    but I think part of the nostalgia for our youth is how big and new the world seemed at every turn.

    I mostly think about how I was skinny with a full head of hair.

  191. 191.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @Martin: i think people forget normies like voting for the percieved winners.  Gen Xrs coming into voting age had the smiling happy Ronald Reagan who won in a landslide and then George Bush with the successful first Iraq War. Remember Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Top Gun. Companies were selling products named after Desert Storm. I am a strong believer in people sticking to the party they initially voted for which is why I am excited about the people whose first vote was for Obama.

  192. 192.

    Stuart in Austin

    @Martin: I suggest you use Google Earth to peruse the Samsung Austin fab. It produces 5% of the world’s supply of semi-conductors, There are a couple of thousand of poorly paid contract workers who keep the fab lines running 24/7. At one time my step-son was one of them. The construction jobs for the never ending facilities upgrades pay better than the majority of fab jobs! Samsung Austin is about 5 miles west of where I live and Samsung Taylor is being constructed 12 miles north of us. It will be 3 times the size Samsung Austin.  Also, about 6 miles from us is the Austin branch of Applied Automation, their equipment is every bit as necessary to the global semi-conductor market as that produced by ASML I worked for a fabless semi-conductor company in the late nineties and you are missing many of the essential steps in the production process. Where do the silicon wafers come from, after the fabrication process who dices and packages the parts, and where is the final testing done?

  193. 193.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @karen marie: Religious grifting:

     

    The Nation’s Premier Pro-Faith, Pro-Family Event
    June 22-24, 2023 – Washington Hilton, Washington D.C.

    Nothing says gospel of Jesus like the Hilton ballroom

  194. 194.

    Miss Bianca

    @Steeplejack: Jesus Christ in a handcart, my childhood NEVER felt simple. Even its best moments were marred by constant feelings of terror, shame and a burning desire no longer to be a helpless child. WTF. Who are all these conservative idiots who long for “simpler times back then”? What is their damage?

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