Perfect fall day in Harbor Springs, Michigan. Thanks to the folks at @Pond_Hill_Farm for having me. pic.twitter.com/sYAQAUrDBA
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) September 30, 2024
I’ve checked all the usual sources, and it looks like my best decision of the week to date might well have been taking a nap instead of watching the vice-presidential debate. Our guy did his best, their guy tap-danced for an audience of cultists, and no minds were changed. (Although there may, of course, be a backdraft yet to come.) To save time, here’s a report from the Washington Post — “Vance, Walz square off in what could be final meeting of presidential campaigns”: [gift link]
… In marked contrast to the September presidential clash between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — who hardly concealed their disgust with each other — the running mates often went out of their way to be gracious, while focusing more on policy differences than personal slights.
They offered praise, sympathized and acknowledged that they agreed on how to address some of the country’s most vexing and divisive issues. At the same time, neither man shied away from the dirty work they had to do for their campaigns.
Vance referred to “our Democratic friends” even as he suggested that Harris had “enabled the Mexican drug cartels to operate freely in this country” and set the stage for the global instability that has sparked a widening war in the Middle East…
Walz turned from the first question about the Middle East to argue that the nation doesn’t need “a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” to solve the situation. He quoted Trump’s recent dismissal of the traumatic brain injuries sustained by U.S. troops during his presidency as “headaches.” And he chided Trump for conducting diplomacy on Twitter and for not paying federal taxes.
Walz followed up by criticizing Vance for repeating unsubstantiated claims that immigrants in the senator’s home state had been eating the pets of their neighbors, a claim that local officials say lacks evidence. He also said Trump had helped to scuttle a bill that would have solved the immigration problem, because he wanted to run on immigration reform…
In one of the sharpest exchanges of the debate, Walz directly asked Vance whether Trump had lost the 2020 election, a fact the former president has refused to admit.
“Tim, I am focused on the future,” Vance deflected.
“That is damning,” Walz said. “That is a damning non-answer.”…
One of the only other truly contentious moments in the debate came when one of the moderators, Margaret Brennan, pointed out that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, falsely accused of eating pets are there legally under a Biden administration program. Vance objected.
“The rules were you weren’t going to fact check,” Vance responded, before speaking out of turn to argue that the Biden administration’s policy was not proper. After repeated requests that the debaters stop speaking out of turn, the moderators cut the microphones of the candidates and changed topics…
More importantly, IMO, Vance’s boss is not doing well. Also from the Washington Post, “Trump mixes up words, swerves among subjects in off-topic speech”:
MILWAUKEE — Republican nominee Donald Trump spoke for 33 minutes before his first mention of the ostensible focus of his remarks.
Signs reading SCHOOL CHOICE, EDUCATION FREEDOM NOW and LET PARENTS DECIDE decorated a small auditorium, and a panel of speakers preceding the former president focused on using public funds to let families choose between public and private, especially religious, schools. Trump read from a binder containing a prepared speech on the subject, and he switched abruptly between the text and a jumble of other topics…
He spoke of “a million Rambos.” “Turnarounds” and “gotaways” and “dead-head spending.” He mixed up Iran with North Korea and strained to pronounce United Arab Emirates. He marveled at Hurricane Helene coming so late in the storm season, which typically runs through November. He falsely claimed government agencies can’t name the U.S. population, and he compared the conflict between Israel and Iran to “two kids fighting in the schoolyard.”
Trump, 78, often speaks in a digressive, extemporaneous style that thrills his fans at large-scale rallies. But Tuesday’s event, in front of almost entirely reporters, was especially scattered and hard to follow. Polls show voters’ concerns about Trump’s age and fitness have increased since President Joe Biden, 81, withdrew and was replaced as the Democratic nominee by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump spoke slowly and appeared tired. It was his second stop of the day, and he has picked up the pace of campaigning in recent weeks.
“I think I’m booked every single day for 33 days,” he said at the end of the news conference, incorrectly citing the number of days until the election, which is 35 days. “I’ve worked for 17 or 18 days when you say in a row, and I’m working even when I’m not working.”…
Asked whether as president he should have retaliated more forcefully to Iran’s missile strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq in 2020, Trump responded as he did at the time, by denying the severity of the more than 100 injuries, including traumatic brain injury. “They had a headache,” he said…
Overall, Trump’s speech was a far cry from the preview from former governor Tommy Thompson (R-Wis.), who introduced him at the lectern.
“It’s going to be a great day because Donald Trump is going to talk to you about his beliefs, his opportunities, his views and vision for education,” Thompson said.
Don’t you think he looks… tired?
And then there’s the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Given the spate of depressing stories, I’m going to focus on the closer for the Associated Press article on “How to help those affected by Hurricane Helene”:
… — Consider waiting. Rebuilding efforts following Hurricane Helene will take months, if not years, and the full picture of need is not available yet, experts say. They say that following disasters donations start out strong following the event and then slow down when it is no longer top of mind, even though that’s when the need made be growing when government benefits expire.
On The Road – Captain C – Road Trip, April 2024 Part 5: Melissa Caruso’s TARDIS Bookstore (AKA the Lyrical Ballad Bookstore) Part 1
Baud
Re-upping
“I was told there’d be no
mathfact-checking.”Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Talk about telling on oneself!
Raoul Paste
That’s a great cartoon
And 33 minutes is rather short for a Trump appearance.
satby
Sounds like WaPo cleaned up quite a bit of the convict’s appearances in WS. Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky in Public Notice were quite a bit more blunt.
Ken
@Baud: “We’re not fact-checking, those aren’t facts…”
Oh, and Trump also called the Iranian attacks on US soldiers “a very nice thing“. As Aaron Rupar says elsewhere in that Bluesky thread, if Kamala Harris had said that, she would be forced out of the race the next day.
Kay
This story really sums up political media:
It’s all about them.
Scout211
Trump is definitely unwell. So much so that yesterday he backed out of the 60 minutes interview that was set to air next Monday. No reason was given but VP Harris will now be the only one interviewed.
ETA: Steven Cheung’s statement in response to CBS:
And Harris campaign advisor Plouffe:
Trivia Man
And Tommy reports he was told to “get the hell off the stage” less than halfway into his introduction. So he smiled and stepped talking and left. I don’t understand why they ALL bow down so meekly. Thompson was a really big deal in the state for a long time, has a huge ego, and is ild enough he can’t possibly be angling for a cabinet spot.
hrprogressive
Some people expressed some dismay at Tim Walz not literally mopping the floor with the Fauxbilly Fascist the way MVP did with CFDT, but it was two different scenarios, for two different audiences.
I think perhaps an exchange between Simone Sanders & Joy Ann Reid on MSNBC after the fact sort of encapsulates it fairly well;
Sanders noted that she was a bit miffed that Walz hadn’t come out and thrown haymaker after haymaker at Fashwad, and Reid countered with the following (paraphrasing):
“Walz was speaking to an audience that wanted two things; To hear a lot more substance, and they didn’t want a fist-fight. They got both from him, a lot of substance, and no fist-fighting”.
Reid noted that, to the extent there is a “small, narrow slice, of actual undecided voters” this is the audience Walz was trying to speak to, and he did a fine job of it.
Most people who were commenting on Vance noted how “sleazy” he came across, which is likely how a lot of “normie” voters would perceive him. He felt like a slimy, smarmy, used-car salesman, which isn’t a stereotype a lot of people intrinsically trust.
Yes, I understand some people don’t like all the “I agree with him” moments. Fine, I get that.
But again, for a small subset of people for whom things like “bipartisanship” actually matter, this is important.
I’ll note that MAGA-World doesn’t like bipartisanship either, and on that front, the Nonbilly did his best job agreeing with Walz too, so, you know, there’s that.
Pundits who pontificate about “civility” have been conditioning the masses since GWB if not longer to just quiet down and accept things that keep their power and status in check, so that sort of shit doesn’t bother me much.
Virtually nobody is going to be voting against Harris/Walz because of this.
Virtually nobody not already inclined to vote in favor of the Fascists is likely to find themselves “more inclined to do so” after last night.
GOTV, GOTV, GOTV and bring all the Dems and Dem-Leaners home. That’s what matters in the next 30 days.
eclare
That first video of Walz at a farm is adorable.
I’m doing postcards to swing states for NC, but if I have any addresses in or around Asheville I’m going to feel weird sending it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: Olivia Nuzzi has bad taste in men.
Matt McIrvin
I keep remembering the vice-presidential debate in 2000 between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman. They spent most of the time agreeing with each other. All the talk the day after was “Oh, so civil and positive after the negativity that’s been going around–why can’t we swap both campaigns and have THESE guys as the presidential candidates?”
DICK CHENEY AND JOE LIEBERMAN. Yeah, there’s a reason they spent so much time agreeing with each other and it wasn’t good.
Ksmiami
@eclare: write something sympathetic and mention that Democratic Party members don’t abandon the citizens
eclare
@satby:
Hi! William is getting more comfy. He sat on my lap last night and this morning in my living room with my dog and other cat feet away. I still put him in his own room at night, with a litter box, water, treats, a big window and a comfy futon, but so far he is settling in well.
satby
And as far as helping after disasters, it’s just as important a few months on as it is in the immediate aftermath. Right now the experts are deployed: FEMA, medical, military, the big (often maligned charity orgs); and they’ll be there for a few weeks to a couple of months. But after the immediate disaster the emergency teams leave (because there’s always more emergencies) even though a lot of the real clean up and recovery will barely have started. That’s when volunteers and money can really have an effect.
And in honor of Pres. Carter, I am hoping to join a Habitat project when they get restarted in NC. I think they’ll really need the help.
TBone
@eclare: that’s where my cousin met him and got two really cool photos, one with Tim Walz and one with Gwen Walz. We were (are) all thrilled!
J Divanka lost in no uncertain terms. The fact check meltdown is the Meme of the Week.
suzanne
@Baud:
Has someone made an updated version of the Barbie “MATH IS HARD LET’S GO SHOPPING” meme yet.
Put Couchfucker’s face on it, emphasize the eyeliner….. FACTS ARE HARD LET’S GO EAT DONUTS.
I don’t have time today, else I would totally do it.
Scout211
@Kay: The consensus in the discussion about this last night was hoping for injuries to all three.
3Sice
He was propped up on the lectern. Sad. Low energy.
They’re gonna flog the old bastard right to the glue factory.
New Deal democrat
Barring a catastrophe, the election really has stabilized, per Dan Guild:
https://nitter.poast.org/dcg1114/status/1841443954895585410#m
Harris has held a steady lead of 4% in the popular vote for nearly two months in the aggregation of high quality State polls. That is equivalent to Biden’s 4% victory. But the Electoral College composition has changed slightly. The northern “blue wall” States look more secure, Harris is a slight favorite in NV, and NC is basically a dead heat. Meanwhile GA and AZ look more secure for Trump than in 2020. As he concludes, “make no mistake. Harris is the favorite.”
eclare
@Ksmiami:
That’s a good idea. Maybe “I hope you and your loved ones are safe.” There is nothing political in the script, it’s all just voter turnout.
What does the crowd think?
I think I’ll put it on all cards, since people in Raleigh, for example, may have relatives in affected areas.
Chris
@Kay:
The mainstream media continues to be the American republic’s own royal court of Versailles.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I didn’t stay up to watch the debate, but if the main criticism of Walz was that he was civil, I’m not going to worry about it.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Lizza was fired from the New Yorker for sexual misconduct so I assume she knew that when they became engaged.
satby
@eclare: I figured he would 😊 I think you and he were made for each other!
I just woke up after sleeping almost 10 hours in the hostel I’m staying at in Seattle. I was bushed! But all the kitties found their forever homes with a LOT of support from jackals in adopting or donating to cover costs, so thanks everyone!
Soprano2
@Baud: That sounded whiny to me. Republicans want people to believe every immigrant is here illegally, at least the brown-skinned ones. It gets tiring, doesn’t it?
Shalimar
Glad it’s over. Getting really sick of the constant stress of 45% of this insane country still supporting Trump after he has proven over and over that he is one of the worst people on earth.
3Sice
@Baud:
I was profoundly disappointed in the lack of hot dish repartee.
Baud
@Kay: Sad to say I’m happy Lizza exposed Nuzzi. Who knows how long she’d be writing political stories without disclosing her conflict of interest otherwise.
eclare
@satby:
Thank you! Sounds like you have a fun day planned for tomorrow. Enjoy yourself!
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
BUT, Nuzzi was also an anti wokester so maybe she thought the women who said Lizza sexually harrassed them were lying – until Lizza went after her.
The anti woke people are the worst.
eclare
@3Sice:
Hahaha…
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
“The important thing is that our politicians don’t do unpleasant and upsetting things like disagree with each other, or heaven forbid, fight for the things they were elected to do!”
Centrism is a cult. There’s a name for a society where people always agree with each other. It’s called totalitarianism.
Baud
@New Deal democrat: Disappointing because I’ve heard that GA and AZ have booming economies, but Biden/Harris isn’t getting the credit. But as long as we win, I don’t care much about the final EC count.
Ken
@satby: Another option for help is Appalachia Service Project (www.asphome.org).
The Audacity of Krope
I wasn’t thrilled with the moderating last night. There were at least two points during the debate where legitimately interesting conversation threatened to break out about salient differences between the candidates and the moderators quickly and forcefully changed the subject.
Kay
@Baud:
The political media industry is insanely thin-skinned and self absorbed so I’m hoping this episode busts it open a little and lets some higher quality people break in.
Kosh III
@3Sice:They’re gonna flog the old bastard right to the glue factory.
I wish they’d hurry up and do it, at least then the Felon would be useful.
The Audacity of Krope
At least the right wing wants to make everyone agree by force. Those sick fucking centrists want to nag and gaslight everyone until everyone agrees with their common sense.
MattF
Somewhat OT. WaPo endorses Alsobrooks for Senate. Notable since they recently endorsed Hogan for re-election to governor.
satby
@Ken: Cool, thanks! I’ll check them out.
I have to be judicious though, I don’t have nearly the energy I had back when I was a disaster volunteer nearly 20 years ago. Go figure 🤔
sab
@satby: I just finished Tim Miller’s book from a couple of years ago. He contacted Republican friends and former colleagues that were anti-Trump and yet went to work for Trump to find out what the the hell they were thinking.
In Trump world the one unforgiveable sin is to say that 2020 election was not stolen. Other criticisms of Trump can be forgiven with enough flattery and self-debasement. But go against Stop the Steal gets you irreparably banished
ETA I had no idea how different the economic ecosystem is between our side and theirs. Those guys can get really well-paying jobs on the donor gravy train while still in college, while our side has to decide whether to continue living on friends couches or Mom’s basement to work for Democratic causes or to go out in the world and get a real job.
There go two miscreants
And that’s exactly what he did. That’s what all that gibberish was.
Baud
@MattF: That is somewhat surprising, since Hogan tries to present himself an old-school, reasonable, anti-Trump Republican, the type that the media usually falls for.
BC in Illinois
Several times last night, JD Vance made basically the following argument:
** this issue ** = reproductive rights, child care, family issues, health care, or the like.
To this, I think there are two responses:
First, a montage of tapes of Vance and Trump, explicitly saying what Vance denied last night.
And second, this declaration of [my] political position.
+ + +
ISSUES ON WHICH I DO NOT TRUST THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
I do not trust the Republicans on the issues of
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: There is cultural cachet in backing a winner.
Falling Diphthong
To pass on: My 20-something watched the debate and liked it much more than the last two, as it had more of the exchange of ideas that she in the abstract thought a debate should have. (She is not undecided; she does have expectations for how this stuff should work in a civil society.) I think this debate–as most expected–regressed to the debate mean.
• Nothing terribly exciting happens.
• Each side believes their candidate won.
• There is no 7-second zinger that becomes a shorthand for the debate.
There was a line after Trump v Harris along the lines “It’s 2348, and each candidate for president of the Galactic Federation must debate a madman. No one remembers whence this tradition arose.” Which was hilarious, but I now think captures the essence beyond that one debate: The main function of the modern debate is to reassure partisans that their candidate can hold his or her own when tossed into a stressful situation. This year had two wildly anomalous debates where a major party candidate couldn’t do that.
Kay
@New Deal democrat:
They’re going to lose ugly though. All the Trumpsters where I live believe he is cruising to victory. We will have a real reckoning to deal with when Harris wins. They aren’t even contemplating the possibility they might lose. They’ll riot again, guaranteed.
sab
@3Sice: Ohioans who marry Californians don’t know anything about hotdish. I doubt if Vance has ever even tasted one. Hotdish is Upper Midwest, not whole Midwest.
Chris
@Baud:
The question at this point is “just how many of these people are fucking the people they’re writing about.” Remember when Paula Broadwell got caught having sex with Petraeus after having basically been his publicist forever?
Baud
@Kay: I’ll take a small riot now over a large civil uprising later.
sab
@Chris: Wasn’t Judith Miller allegedly screwing around with Scooter Libby?
Soprano2
@The Audacity of Krope: I noticed last night that Vance talked about “common sense” several times when he was disparaging experts. That is designed to appeal to those centrist voters who think experts are educated but don’t have any common sense. Sad to say I’ve had experience with people like that, so I know they do exist. People without degrees are particularly apt to criticize experts in this way, at least in my experience. “They may have a lot of book-learning, but they don’t have any common sense” is a pretty common statement I hear.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin, y’all.
Off today … some kind of stomach bug (?) going around. Went to bed early last night so I saw none of the debate. Looks like there were no real surprises.
Baud
@Falling Diphthong: Very interesting.
While I’m pleased Harris slapped Trump in the first debate, I have felt at times that we sell ourselves short when we think we automatically lose a substantive debate.
Scout211
Rex Huppke at USA Today
Today his commentary is not satire or even a little bit funny
Yes, that Trump is deteriorating is definitely the story. Let’s hope more news stories cover this and not just opinion pieces.
Bold added
Geminid
@Baud: The riot might not go on too long in Greene County because it will be huntin’ season.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think they believe it here, too. It’s a consequence of living around people who mostly agree with you. They can’t conceive of a world where Harris is popular with most people. If they ever say to me that they don’t know anyone who likes Harris, I tell them it’s not true because they know me! There are several other people I work with who are Democrats, too – I’m not alone.
3Sice
The ground is so saturated in the mountains that cell towers and trees are still falling over from mud slides.
Very difficult conditions to patch roads that have washed out, etc.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@New Deal democrat: That, or the pollsters are simply running old polls through a randomizer and posting them as fresh new ones to save a buck. They are for profit organizations, are they not?
Chris
@Soprano2:
Yes. It’s what people who don’t have any kind of learning about a subject, book or otherwise, say to reassure themselves that they’re smart! They can handle things! They’re not like everybody says, like dumb! They’re smart and they want respect!
Princess
It’s not going to get the play it should, but Trump dropping out of the 60 Minutes interview is a real shocker. Those interviews are traditional and they are usually fairly gentle. The fact that he and his people don’t think he can cope with it is very telling and disturbing.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
rikyrah
@Princess:
Cause they were going to check him about his lies in real time
3Sice
@sab:
What’s one more lie on his tab last night?
sab
OT: Echo the rehomed sister cat has fully adjusted into the household (except she doesn’t like the dog.) She comes upstairs at all hours, wakes me up for snacks, mills around with everyone else in the kitchen waiting for breakfast (the dog always sleeps in) and is just being normal.
She sat on a table beside me for a couple of hours last night while I worked on a project instead of watching the debate. Dobby sat on the floor under her. Sadie and Meg wandered by a few times.
Brother Solly is still lurking around mostly hiding.
Soprano2
@satby: I read that column, and holy shit now I’m on Team He Definitely Has Dementia of some kind. What they described sounds exactly like how a person with certain types of dementia would talk. It affects everyone differently – so far my husband doesn’t do much repeating of things, it’s that he can’t remember things I told him just a few minutes ago (He keeps calling our girl cat a boy, I think he is mixing her up with a cat he had when I first met him!). If he had to give a speech like TCFG did I shudder to think what it would be like.
eclare
@Chris:
And there was that woman writing a biography on the MOTU of GE. His name was Welch, IIRC.
Baud
I think we have this false dichotomy where a candidate can either engage in substantive discussion or can launch zingers and bitch slaps the whole time, but can’t do both. A good debater needs to be able to do both, and needs to be prepared to handle both.
3Sice
@rikyrah:
He’s also a prima donna that stormed off the Apprentice set on the regular. As noted above, he pulled that in a previous 60 Minutes interview.
satby
@Soprano2: and you’re handing me the perfect lead-in line to a link I was going to share anyway: A Return To Common Sense, the new book by Politics Girl. I’ve been reading it and it’s really well done. She weaves the actual history of our country into how we got here today, but in layman’s terms and for a “normie” reader. I’ve been reading it and it’s really well done, going to pass it on to my kids and their cousins. Highly recommend.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The difference: when they do it, Donald Trump won’t be in control of federal law enforcement or the National Guard.
Baud
@Soprano2: I don’t know about last night, but Dem candidates use “common sense” a lot, so much so that I find it a little irritating.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Dark Brandon’s final swan song.
Kay
A lot of Trumpsters are “power of positive thinking” people. It’s almost a religion with them. We see them delude themselves about the viability of their small businesses with this belief system in the law practice. They also apply this kind of pseudo religion to elections, so they shout down anyone who says there’s a possibility they might lose because it’s essentially superstition so to utter it out loud is to call it into being. Hence…they absolutely lose their shit if it crashes.
K-Mo
Drop Bowen Yang from the SNL Vance impression and bring in Jon Lovitz.
”Donald Trump saved Obamacare, yeah, that’s the ticket “
Geminid
@MattF: Angela Alsobrooks is a strong candidate. Her main problem early on was low statewide name recognition, but recent polling shows she’s gotten past that.
Alsobrooks will bring valuable experience to the Senate. She’s in her 6th year as Prince George’s County Executive managing a county of almost 1 million. Before that Alsobrooks served two terms as County prosecutor
Alsobrooks is 52 years old, 28 years younger than the man she’ll replace, Sen. Ben Cardin.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s what my husband says. They also won’t refuse to do an orderly transition, like the low quality Trump hires did. They don’t get enough shit for that. That should have been career ending.
They think they are going to win Colorado and Virginia in addition to all the swing states. Some of them say they will win NY.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I think a lot of people in our side are “power of negative thinking” people. Optimism summons the Evil Eye. Worry wards off disaster. Knock on wood after you say something positive.
I *know* I see it in myself.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Choosing Lieberman as his running mate was the biggest mistake of Gore’s political career. Not to mention, if he’d picked anyone else, hardly anyone outside of Connecticut would have any idea who Lieberman was. That would have been a blessing all by itself.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: In 2016 and 2020 I saw Trumpsters saying they were going to win California. They’d post these maps of a Reagan style landslide. They were preparing themselves to say the real result was fake. They thought they DID win California.
satby
@sab: weird how their personalities ended up being the opposite of what the daughter said. I bet Echo is loving the new attention. And Solly is feeling displaced from being king of the house.
Jeffro
“in a digressive style” EPIC EYE ROLL HERE, POST!
Kay
The moderators war mongering on Iran bothered me last night. Media really can’t wait for another war. It exhausts me. They’re not happy unless the US is sending troops to the mideast. I have flashbacks to how they sold the Iraq invasion. They learned nothing.
Baud
@Kay: I agree it can go too far to the point of delusion, but as someone who has too often let negative thinking deter action, I can sympathize with people who seek to avoid that at all costs.
lowtechcyclist
@suzanne:
How about “facts are hard, that’s why I lie.”
Chris
@Kay:
Of course, the flip side of that is that when their small business fails, they also have a whole host of scapegoats to blame for it: the socialists taxed us too hard, the employees were lazy because nobody wants to work anymore, the consumers were demanding and unreasonable… Combine the two things and you end up with a whole bunch of wannabe-businessmen who have never done an accurate assessment of their business.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
It started before Trump. They never really accepted Romney’s loss. The difference was Romney accepted Romney’s loss. It gets worse every cycle now though. They don’t accept any results where they don’t win. They may not always riot but they don’t accept it as legitimate either.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: You’re too kind. I’m hoping this episode results in members of the political media industry throwing (admittedly, wimpy) punches at each other, live-streamed in their various studios. Maybe some spitting and screeching, too. They’re garbage harpies. Maybe a few of them will choke (briefly!) on cocktail weenies and barf on the others.
Jeffro
@New Deal democrat: that feels right (that the race is essentially frozen for now)
What’s heartening is, there’s nothing trump can do to pull in a single person who wasn’t already going to hold their nose/bury their head in the sand/finalize the sale of their soul and vote for him…but he sure could get some folks to write in some other Republican (Reagan, McCain) or leave the top of the ballot blank. Not many, but a few.
Plus, my 300 postcards to NC are going to swing that state, so we’re good there. ;)
Baud
@Kay: They never accepted losing to Bill Clinton. Bush was a savior to them, a restorer of the natural order, until he ruined everything and we elected Obama. That’s when they really lose all their grip on reality.
Jeffro
me too…and then I remember it’s actually all our fault, for telling them what shits they are for supporting trumpov.
///
satby
@Baud: well, in the case of the book I just rec’d, it’s a call back to Thomas Paine and the pamphlet that galvanized opposition to the Crown in the Revolutionary War. Which I thought was clever.
Scout211
I see that here in the “good news” threads. I appreciate your explainer because it’s been confusing to me to see so much negativity in the threads that are for good news and positivity.
Kay
@Baud:
I think we prepare our people for the possibility of a loss better. It’s important too. It’s essential for a democracy.
I think uncertainty makes some people uncomfortable so they go to extremes – they won’t entertain any possibility of a loss OR they are sad sacks who always think they’ll lose. I think both positions come about because of an inability to handle uncertainty.
Matt McIrvin
@Scout211: I often stay out of the “good news” threads because they make me feel worse–like, if you need a “good news” thread identified as such, that must mean things are really bad!
Chief Oshkosh
@sab:
It’s pervasive, and I have to remind myself semi-regularly that a lot of what would otherwise be inexplicable in the world is due to our political system ceding power to the rich. It’s happened throughout history and in every society, but we need to keep pushing against it. On any given day, though, it sure seems like the first round of the French Revolution had a lot to recommend it…
Baud
@Kay: Agree. The big reason for the rise of authoritarianism and fascism is the increasing uncertainty of a rapidly changing world. IMHO.
Chris
@Kay:
The public at least is tired of wars in the Middle East, barring another 9/11 like event. To somewhat give credit where it’s due, Trump sensed this: it was the right time for isolationism to make a comeback in the GOP. The media may want another excellent American adventure in the Middle East, but nobody else does.
The thing is, though, no one’s expecting America to really get involved in this one – just continue supplying the side that’s doing most of the fighting, and occasionally provide some protection like we have when Iran sends rockets. So this mess is going to continue, even if it doesn’t involve our boots on the ground.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Matt McIrvin: Mr DAW is like that. He constantly expects the worst so he can be pleasantly surprised.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The things that are bad are the media and social media environment we live in, which works to depress our side. That’s why we have “good news” threads.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
I’d be embarrassed to be part of an industry or profession who spent so much time talking about themselves.
Who told these people that their dumb industry was so utterly fascinating that we all are riveted by their analysis of their own work?
Dana Bash went out and did interviews about Dana Bash moderating a debate after her (shitty) job moderating the debate. I mean, WTF? Why are they always talking about themselves? Who cares what Dana Bash’s personal views on the candidates are?
They make themselves the story, which should really be a career-ending sin in that business. They need to GET BEHIND.
Mel
@eclare: That’s precious little orange William, the rescue kitty? Such good news!
frosty
@satby: You’ve done a great job rehoming those kitties. Thanks to everyone involved!
Belafon
@Soprano2:
As someone who grew up with a mom who liked to throw the phrase “common sense” at me, that phrase generally means “I know I’m right, and I don’t have to explain to you why” because their statement would fall apart under inspection.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
Also, ordering donuts is hard.
satby
@frosty: very much a team effort. I hope Bunny recovers quickly from her terrifying plane trip. I can’t imagine how much more terrifying it is for animals in the cargo hold.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Sales people are deep in the “power of positive thinking” culture; theater people are the opposite and have superstitions that are all about warding off disaster.
I heard one from a (Swedish) doctor the other day, but apparently it’s international: people who work in hospitals refer to “quiet” as “the q-word” and avoid saying it for fear it will bring a flood of emergency patients. It’s like theater people saying “break a leg” and refusing to mention the Scottish Play.
Kay
@Chris:
I’m not as confident as you. I know this wasn’t intentional on your part but I also don’t like characterizing an anti war position as “isolationist”. I’m not an isolationist. I opposed the invasion of Iraq and I will oppose the invasion of Iran. They’re ginning it up. I can HEAR it. One of Biden’s closest ME advisors was an Iraq war cheerleader. He’s back! Jonesing for another invasion!
I don’t think Biden learned anything from Iraq and either did Hillary Clinton. She’s sounding war mongery too. Christ. Not again.
eclare
@Mel:
Yes! He is so floofy.
clay
This is the thing that irritates me the most about modern journalism. Either the claim lacks evidence, or it doesn’t. Why the need to source this through a third party?
It only serves to create a “he said/he said” conflict, and allows a reader to dismiss the whole issue. Gosh, people are saying different things; who knows what the truth is?
Kay
@Chris:
I have some hope that Harris will be clearer eyed about this. A different generation, not as much baggage, not as indebted to the ME hawks in the D party. I think at base she is a sensible person, and sensible people don’t gin up invasions.
Jeffro
@Kay: agreed. My brother is like this and it’s why his political, football, and other predictions are pretty off: he always conflates what he wants to happen with what he thinks will happen.
No wonder these people walk around disappointed and bitter all the time. And of course, it’s always someone else’s fault, right? It’s never their fault for going on wishes instead of data.
The Audacity of Krope
Prima Donald has gotten used to everything being according to his preferences in advance, lo these 80 years.
I think this emerged because the chattering class and logo wearing team fans think the zingers are the substance.
Jeffro
trumpism in a nutshell: it’s always someone else’s (someone brown, of course) fault
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
What, Macbeth?
Chris
@Kay:
An anti-war position per se isn’t isolationist, to be clear. Trump’s position, and the one currently in vogue in the GOP, is isolationist.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay:
Au contraire, they re-learned how lucrative it is to have a war to report on.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Some people have a very hard time regulating the emotional shock of disappointment and learn to spend a lot of time girding themselves against it in advance.
I think I had a very powerful reaction of that sort in childhood, and it’s much more muted now but I still have these learned behaviors oriented around it.
Raising my daughter, I eventually came to realize that I spent a lot of time trying to manage her expectations down, even for fun things like vacations, to the point that it eventually annoyed her, and I think I was subconsciously playing on how I felt about disappointment at age 6 even though she didn’t have nearly that strong a reaction.
Falling Diphthong
@Baud: I think people want this formalized battle to include a definitive knock down in which their candidate will formulate something in such a way that voters all nod and say “You know, excellent point, this is the person I should choose” while the opponent sputters helplessly, the paucity of their ideas laid bare.
This is much more likely to happen with a movie script.
eclare
@Jeffro:
What I have learned from being a UT football fan (TN not TX), on any given day, any team has a non-zero chance of winning. I don’t care if we’re playing St. Mary’s School for the Blind, they have a non-zero chance. I was disappointed in 2016, but not surprised.
Most coaches in the SEC know this. Yeah, our opponent is 0-8, but they’re the best 0-8 team in the country.
Chris
@Falling Diphthong:
Which is why I continue to maintain that presidential debates are pro wrestling for nerds.
Frankensteinbeck
@Soprano2: and @Belafon:
Common sense = What is obviously correct = What feels true = Truthiness = Bias. Trust common sense as far as you can throw it. Scientific theory exists because what is obviously correct is so often false. Republicans love common sense, because the actual facts don’t agree with them.
Matt McIrvin
@Falling Diphthong: I didn’t watch the Harris-Trump debate but it sounds like Trump absolutely fell apart during it, and I think people were hoping for a repeat of that, but Vance isn’t Trump and Walz isn’t Harris.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: I spent years training in a scientific field where the actual facts are mostly gross affronts to common sense, so I ended up with a reflexive aversion to such appeals even where they’re mostly appropriate.
catclub
Like having television shows to present industry awards?
suzanne
@Chris:
Bingo.
I will also note that there is absolutely no reason that someone has to have a formal education to be educated. One could go to, you know, the library. And read books. Or other media! If only there was a way to transmit what we know across time and space!
Or one could just be uneducated and resentful. I mean, it’s a choice.
Dave
@Jeffro: I’ve noticed a lot of people plan like this. What’s the outcome they want? What’s the action they want to take? Well the action they want to take will inevitably lead to the outcome they want because they want it to be the case.
Some are better at masking this and some are ridiculously obvious about it. During overseas tours and in train up for them I was often forced to take the naysayer role and that doesn’t make you particularly popular at least with hope-chest type planners.
Unfortunately for myself it’s followed me into normal life so I expect things to fail which can close off possibilities and lead to an Eeyore effect (not helped by the realities of Iraq and Afghanistan particularly Afghanistan where we would have been better off just playing one of those complex fifty page rule book strategy board games and calling it a day for all the impact that peoples plans had).
catclub
@Kay:
Wow, I definitely do NOT hear enthusiasm for an invasion of Iran. Enthusiasm for shooting down missiles from Iran – yes.
Sending US soldiers on the ground? No way.
Navy shelling, missiles, probably.
Kosh III
@Soprano2:
Ages ago when a college student, the teacher of my Philosophy class, an Episcopal priest, did one whole class on demonstrating why “common sense” is nonsense. I don’t remember the reasoning but I did take it to heart.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m currently in the middle of my coursework (about a dozen online courses that bank employees have to take every year to confirm that they’re up to date).
Every time I get a test question where I go “… well, I don’t actually remember the answer, but it SEEMS like the answer OUGHT to be this,” I regret it.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: Reminds me of seeing some fancy baseball-explaining graphic on the TV recently. It showed a distribution of hits by some player across a ballfield, showing the “trajectory” of the dozens of balls.
A lot of the infield hits were drawn like canonballs in the middle ages. Hey, it’s drawn by a computer, so it must be right!!11
All Hail Impetus!!11
:-/
Common sense is something our brains constructed over millions of years to help keep us from being eaten by smilodon. It’s not actually how the universe works – it’s quick shorthand and quite often wrong.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
Quantum theory or evolution?
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck: or topology
Dave
@Chief Oshkosh: It’s also exciting and sexy for a lot of the overseas reporters most of them are able to experience the highs of curated danger and the excitement and drama of operations without incurring significant risk (this not a ding against serious war reporters though they risk turning into a different sort of adrenaline junkie in the way that multiple tours can do someone) so it’s a grand game with glory and pathos and excitement. A lot of sex and plenty of booze are available for them as well since everyone is a heightened state or bored and looking for an outlet.
It’s also perfect for the talking heads because they can focus on the easily available images and feel in the know while never actually digging below the surface. And this is even easier than for their normal day to day. That’s not even accounting for profit incentive and so on.
Kosh III
@Baud: I’ll take a small riot now over a large civil uprising later.
Will the police treat the (white) rioters like they treat black protesters? Ain’t holding my breath-too many cops are fascist devotees of the Felonious Pussy-grabber.
oldgold
Sadly, these debates and most of the other live campaign events end up being a tales
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Baud
@Kosh III: “like”? No. But the police will put down a riot in their local communities at some point.
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
Medicine is pretty bad, too. The human body is absurdly complex, it does utterly off-the-wall stuff, and everyone’s body is different. There is vast room for even well educated and sincere doctors to go off the rails with their biases.
Chris
@suzanne:
We’re also all educated. Anybody who’s ever held a job has been “educated” in a profession. Somebody at some point had to sit that waitress down and explain to her what was expected of her in that job. That mechanic at some point had to learn how cars work and how to fix them. That metro operator at some point had to sit down and learn how to drive a metro. Etc.
But somehow, for some reason, when the job training involves sitting in a classroom for four years and reading a ton about, say, Middle Eastern history, politics, religions, and languages, it becomes “ivory tower,” “not a real job,” and something that you, the average guy who’s never done any of that, could totally do better than the expert. After all, you’ve watched The Kingdom, 13 Hours, and American Sniper, and gosh darn it, you’ve got a gut you can follow. What more could you possibly need?
Kosh III
@Baud:until he ruined everything and we elected Obama.
Yep. They lost it when we elected an illegal alien Muslim nigger to their WHITE House.
eclare
Hopefully good news for FL:
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1841478999555399967
Plus the abortion amendment is on the ballot.
Chris
@Dave:
My general theory of life is that things tend to work best when you put an optimist in charge, and give him a pessimist second-in-command whose job is to reality-check everything he does.
Of course, for this to work, these people have to actually be optimistic and pessimistic, as opposed to simply delusional and nihilistic. The optimist has to be grounded in reality enough that he’s at least willing to listen to the pessimist, consider the possibility that he’s correct, and take steps to guard against that possibility. And the pessimist has to actually be grounded in reality enough for his criticisms to be useful, not just striking a cynical pose between bong hits.
Jinchi
Great quote from a man who wants to rule the world.
Scout211
Update on Trump’s cowardice and the “60 minutes” interview:
. . .
Geminid
@catclub: I think the US will only attack Iran if they start to produce nuclear weapons; we’ve said we would. But Israel has a lower threshold in this area so I expect they would hit Iran’s production facilities before we did. They’ve been planning and training for this operation for years now.
Some of the training is very public. Every so often Israel will fly 30-some fighter jets and a couple of tankers around the eastern Mediterranean until they’ve logged the distance to central Iran, break off for simulated bombing runs over the Negev Desert, and then circle around until they’ve logged the distance back. The Israelis don’t need to say what this is for because everyone knows.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kosh III:
Yep. For a lot of white Americans, it was their definition of the Apocalypse. What’s funny is, on a lot of it they were right. The stuff they predicted as the nightmare world that might follow, like gay marriage, interracial and same sex couples becoming normal on television, men turning into women, and their own kids suddenly turning gay, all followed. There was a lot more, but the queer and interracial stuff is what leaps to mind.
EDIT – So often “This is the world liberals want” ends up being stuff that, yeah, looks awesome. I’m reminded of Limbaugh’s horrified and mocking declaration that liberals think any kind of sex is okay if it’s consensual. Their value system is utterly different.
Dave
@Chris: Absolutely cheap unearned nihilistic type cynicism is utterly corrosive.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: I just saw something about how much is still unknown about human anatomy! It sounded crazy. How long have people been studying that? But individual variations are large and absolutely wild, there are ethical barriers to studying it too intensively, and people cutting into a human body are usually trying to solve a specific problem on the clock.
Soprano2
@Kay: Here’s an interesting thing – the man who wrote the book “Learned Optimism” says that the one place where positive people have a disadvantage is being business owners. He said that when things go bad, they fool themselves about it for so long that they usually can’t recover. I find a little skepticism and pessimism can be a good thing if applied in the right context.
Geminid
@Scout211: What a whiner Trump is.
Dave
@Jinchi: Such a whiny response. It’s like being in a street fight and whining that they had agreed not to punch you in the face except orders of magnitude more pathetic.
“The rules say I can lie as much as I want and you aren’t supposed to note that” is just pathetic. Not as ineffective as it should be but nonetheless pathetic.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: My philosophy is usually “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”.
satby
Gotta say, I did not anticipate the phrase “common sense” triggering so many people. Way to attract the normies folks.
It’s actually a phrase we can use in communicating with lower info voters, i.e. “why are so many laws making it harder to vote being passed by Republican run states? Isn’t everyone eligible voting a good thing? That’s just common sense, we learned it in grade school.”
Soprano2
@Kay: The first question was mega stupid. How can you answer the question “Would you be OK with Israel doing a pre-emptive strike on Iran” without any context at all. They were both right to not answer that question. I thought many of the questions were OK, but that one was dumb. They could have asked it better.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
The human body is absolutely god damn insane. Genetics is worse. It’s all friggin’ emergent phenomena. Instead of genes for livers or arms, somehow the combination of genes for much simpler stuff ends up with you having livers and arms, but you can’t draw a line from the bottom to the top.
eclare
@satby:
That makes sense. My Republican aunt is “voter fraud is a huge issue” adjacent. I asked her, ok, if there were provable voter fraud on the magnitude you think there might be, wouldn’t Fox et al be screaming it with actual numbers? She said I guess so. I told her to get back to me when there is a real headline of X number of people voted fraudulently.
None of this people are saying, we will present proof in the next two weeks BS.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: The comments on Facebook ads are a rich source of resentment about depictions of interracial couples. So many people weirdly cheesed off about them.
Note, Kamala Harris is married to a Jewish white man. I suspect a lot of the “no biological children” nuttiness is really aimed at highlighting that fact.
MC
I’m surprised that biology is aging Trump to death. I would think that with all his wealth, charisma and influence in society that biology would look the other way and let him have a perpetually young body and perfect health.
kalakal
These ‘debates’ only really matter in 2 ways.
Walz is the guy you’d have a beer with
Vance is a corporate executive where the corporation is Weyland-Yutani
Dave
@MC: It’s my personal pet hypothesis that some of our more deranged billionaire set is losing it because they can’t buy functional immortality but unlike the past they can kinda sorta see how it could work even though if it is possible (good idea or not) that it is almost certainly much too far down the road for it to be helpful to them.
So the possibility is both more concrete and yet just as much a pipe dream as it was for an ancient king pursuing immortality.
Ok this is mostly about Thiel but there are probably others.
narya
Harris/Walz has already turned J Divan’s BS about whether TCFG lost the election into a 30-second tv spot, with the debate words interleaved with J6 footage.
Chris
@Soprano2:
Yeah. Like I said in one of the debate threads, it used to annoy me when politicians dodge and refuse to answer a question, but not anymore. Most of the questions they’re asked are bad faith misleading bullshit that falls into the “when did you stop beating your wife” category, and they treat these questions exactly as deserved.
Matt McIrvin
@MC: Trump’s parents lived to ripe old ages, late 80s and 90s. Genetically, he may have another decade in him. But he’s getting up there and his habits are not healthy. All the medical help in the world won’t help you if you don’t listen to it.
MisterForkbeard
@Princess: “live fact checking” in an interview like this just means they’re going to ask follow up questions sometimes.
If trump can’t handle that, he’s well off the map.
That said, a bunch of it is probably just Trump realizing his cult will like him giving the finger to news and tradition again.
Citizen Alan
@Chris: This is why I still hate sarah palin so much even though she is politically irrelevant. Anti intellectualism has always been with us, especially on the right. But to me, she was the one who really crystallized the idea that the opinions of learned individuals who have devoted their entire lives to a particular field of study are less valuable than what some ignorant hick knows to be true in their heart.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: You overthink things. The “no biological children” is a dogwhistle to both the tradwife evangelicals and to the resentful rural folks whose children left for better lives in the big city, refusing both to stay home and (often) to get married and have grandchildren.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: “If your wife were raped and murdered, would you support the death penalty?”
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: I met a store proprietor once who claimed that he was a mirror twin and had situs inversus:
Bodies are complicated, even without the curveballs nature occasionally throws!
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@Dave: i have often thought that a significant percentage of the billionaire class was actually trying to destroy the world simply because they knew they were growing old and dying, and they could not bear the thought of the world continuing on without them. I was always absolutely certain that was the mentality of the koch brothers.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I thought the question might have given the proper context if it had started with “If Iran were to expel the IAEA team monitoring their nuclear facilities, would you support a preemptive attack by Israel.” It would have been educational too, because many Americans are only dimly aware of this IAEA mission.
But overall, I was relieved that the question’s result was a wash, which I think it was. This issue is easy to demaguogue, and there is a lot of animus towards Biden and Harris in some pro-Israel circles.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
Back when she was the hot new item, somebody here was saying that they expect white rural culture’s problems to get a lot worse as a result of adopting situations like Sarah Palin’s, where laziness, ignorance, and lack of educational achievement are celebrated as the only authentic and aspirational.
Only a decade or so later, boy, they didn’t know how right they were. And we’re still nowhere seeing the end of it.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Ha! I didn’t even think of that one.
Christ, when the fuck have you ever seen a media outlet, any media outlet, ask a question like that from a Republican candidate? Meanwhile Sarah Palin is asked such weighty and difficult questions as “what sort of newspapers do you read,” she still somehow manages to be unable to answer that, and runs sobbing to Fox News about the mean liberal media asking gotcha questions.
Dave
@Chris: They are so cossetted and addicted to rage and petty bullying that they can’t handle any questions. The base has been trained to view even friendly slow softballs over the plate as illegitimate partly because they want the rage and partly because “they” really shouldn’t have the right to ask their betters questions.
See Vance and his weird angry response to “What makes you smile or happy” or whatever the exact question was. The softest of softballs.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
With the Koch brothers, I think it’s more specific. There you’re talking specifically about a dynasty whose founding patriarch was a pre-New-Deal oligarch, fascist/Stalinist sympathizer, and John Birch Society co-founder.
My theory with the Kochs is that they grew up being told about the New Deal as the most gigantic mugging in history, when FDR and his union thugs stole the hard-earned money of people like Daddy at gunpoint under the threat of revolution.
They don’t want to destroy the world, per se. They want to destroy the modern middle-class society that came out of the early twentieth century’s reforms. Because that society, in their eyes, is built on their stolen birthright. When they look at it, they don’t see a healthy, stable, and functioning country. They see Smaug sleeping on a pile of their lost gold in their lost homeland.
catclub
Sane billionaires versus insane billionaires:
https://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2012/04/quote-of-day-what-passes-for-hope-these.html
Almost all political conflict, especially in the US, boils down to a fight between the Sane Billionaires and the Insane Billionaires. It generally follows this template:
INSANE BILLIONAIRES: Let’s kill everyone and take their money!
SANE BILLIONAIRES: I like the way you think. I really do. But if we keep everyone alive, and working for us, we’ll make even more money, in the long term.
INSANE BILLIONAIRES: You communist!!!
So from a progressive perspective, you always have to hope the Sane Billionaires win. Still, there’s generally a huge chasm between what the Sane Billionaires want and what progressives want.
Sadly, Schwartz’s title notwithstanding, current indications are that we are, in fact, 100% doomed.
rikyrah
@Kay:
it always was, Kay.
rikyrah
@Scout211:
lips so pursed.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: If recall correctly, Donny Osmond is one of those. Has mirror-reversed organs.
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: A statement that screams to be prefixed with “Fun fact: “.
Soprano2
@Kay: Most people hate uncertainty. They also hate that things just happen for no reason. They always have to have someone or something to blame. My husband has several health problems that have happened – I don’t blame anyone, these are things that happen in life. That’s hard for some people to accept.
K-Mo
@Kay: Agreed. Their top question for VP candidates is, what would you do if this very specific hypothetical war situation occurs? I suppose I should be glad they didn’t go all night this way. … what would you do I if Taiwan shoots down a Chinese plane?
K-Mo
@Belafon: Championing the common person’s wisdom over that of the experts is a powerful drug. Although in general I disagree with the impulse (the experts aren’t always right but they are still right more often than the common wisdom), it’s also important to get the story straight as to who did what.
Vance’s line of reasoning around trade vs protectionism is a prime example. It is true that the consequences of NAFTA and especially the opening of trade with China have been worse for US workers than most economists expected. It’s not true, however, that economists said that these things world be “good for the middle class” in the US as Vance claims. They mostly said it would be a mixed bag and some workers would get hurt, and advocated for supports manage the disruption. Who were the biggest proponents of opening trade? Not experts in the academic sense. It was big businesses who everyone (experts included) knew would benefit that pushed these policies most.
Now we come to the common wisdom of the worker. Apparently they think huge tariffs will be good for us? Well the experts (the economists) say it will be a disaster. I think there works in fact be some winners and losers, I doubt anytime denies that. But overall it’s awful policy.
K-Mo
@clay: word
StringOnAStick
@Dave: I suggest these bored journalists go report from Ukraine but it’s apparently a lot more dangerous than Afghanistan and not as exotic so they can’t get their exotic jollies, but some decent reporting from Ukraine would be damned helpful right now given that Russia has cranked up the genocide/ecocide machine and we’re not hearing about it in the MSM!
Falling Diphthong
@Matt McIrvin: In my lifetime, ’24 Trump is the only candidate on whom “I will mock his crowd size until he has a meltdown. That’s it. The strategy is to make fun of him, on this specific topic that I’m telling everyone in advance, and then he will have an embarrassing public meltdown” would actually work. It was an illustration of Trump’s mental degeneration: Full kudos to Harris and her team for pulling it off, but it wouldn’t work if she debated Vance, or half a dozen other Republican pols. Maybe the current iteration of Rudy Giuliani, though you probably need a different topic to set him off.
Origuy
The phrase “Don’t you think he looks…tired?” predates its reference on Doctor Who. It goes back to the Thatcher era, when one of her aides said that she looked tired, which was the beginning of the end of her time in office.
dnfree
@Baud: As my father used to say, “if it’s common, it’s not sensible, and if it’s sensible it’s not common.”