1) I think it's great that Harris is the candidate. Not just because she is more likely to lose, but because I feel she is the perfect avatar for the left at the moment. Biden was pretty good, but Harris is even better. Like a much worse version of Hillary Clinton.
If she loses, we can say that not just Harris but the entire vibe that makes her up has lost. We can't blame it on an old man.
By contrast if someone that terrible can win, it's time to give up.
I think it's interesting how the right likes the idea of "actual human beings" being in charge, while the left would prefer some kind of inhuman "process". The left would prefer there was no president. No Brexit. No single point of failure were people could plausibly reject them.
The preferred Democracy of the left would be something like what happened in France recently, where you can use the process to reject any revolt that occurs.
The whole thing reminds me more and more of the NICE from That Hideous Strength.
"I think sincere views are a little bit overrated."
This is fitting enough coming from Yglesias, who lies for a living and has repeatedly both explicitly expressed willingness to lie to advance the Democratic Party and actually done so. But Harris is not actually a cipher: she's got a long track record placing her very firmly on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, particularly on racial issues (Affirmative Action, immigration, "equity").
Ordinarily I dislike assigning motives to others, but given Yglesias' past statements of conscious dishonesty I will make an exception and postulate that he's running cover for Harris by claiming her positions are unknown since he's aware her most distinctive political positions (decriminalizing illegal border crossing, Medicare-for-all-including-illegals, extreme squatter's rights) are tremendously unpopular among swing voters.
The Instapundit post is more recent but in 2010 Yglesias said he found it acceptable to be dishonest if you think your opponents are also being dishonest.
I've read little of Yglesias and remember less so I don't know him. Maybe that's why I'm surprised by your reaction. I don't know whether that means my view is less biased or more likely to be correct but if CB is correct about what Yglesias said in 2010, maybe you should rethink your opinion.
Maybe you like Yglesias and don't want to be guilty by association?
When I think of shills for the Democrats, I think of Krugman. I can't help but wonder how you would have reacted if Arctotherium's comment had been about Krugman.
One more thing. There is one commenter in particular who has made numerous posts I find bordering, and sometimes outside, what I think is acceptable. As much as I disliked those comments, and even wish he were banned, I had a bit of respect for you not deleting them.
You've touched the 3rd rail. For AK, Yglesias is the Great Blue Hope -- someone on the Blue team who is an 'independent thinker' (July 16th post). But there is no such thing. It is a unicorn. The only intellectuals on the liberal/left end of spectrum who are truly independent thinkers are those who have explicitly denounced the Blue team, like Brett and Heather. But Brett is a conspiracy theorist, because he had the temerity to question the claim that mRNA 'vaccines' for covid are 'safe and effective' early on (for which he and Heather were demonetized on Youtube), and most unforgivably, he turned out to be right. I don't share Brett's enthusiasm for Bobby, but I give him credit for turning against Team Blue, and that was long before the series of events beginning with the Great Debate and ending with a successful coup revealed how utterly ruthless and unprincipled the Blue Team is.
With reference to the replies from stu and Roger, forumposter123's comment in response to today's (7/27) links to consider addresses this issue much better than I could have done ('within allowable limits,' as luciaphile paraphrased it). In my book, picking out a single issue (neoliberalism, identity politics, foreign policy/militarism) and expressing an ostensibly independent opinion on it 'within allowable limits' is not sufficient to make you an independent Blue Team thinker. Brett Weinstein has expressed dissident views on all three of these topics and a broad range of other topics, including open borders and the mRNA shots. Haidt is perhaps a different animal, being an academic who has also written books for a general audience, rather than a journalist (Wright) or a pundit (or whatever labels applies to Maher, whom I don't watch). I am not familiar enough with his work to judge; I can't tell whether he a hopelessly naive bookworm or deliberately obtuse. I have a special antipathy for Wright, but expressing my honest opinion of him would take us far behind the bounds of the original post to which AK reacted.
I don't know if he is "on the blue team" but Robert Wright is an independent thinker. I don't agree with a lot of what he says but I respect his intellectual courage. I would say the same for Freddie deBoer.
"The only intellectuals on the liberal/left end of spectrum who are truly independent thinkers are those who have explicitly denounced the Blue team."
What does this mean? Going to the Red team? Or does someone like Jonathan Haidt or Bill Maher qualify for speaking against identity politics and a few other central tenets of the left?
My usual response to Yglesias is that he can't possibly be as dumb as he sometimes seems. Then . . . If that is ad hominem, then so be it. But I find him pretty disengenuous a large part of the time.
"Who can actually feel genuinely energized about Kamala Harris?"
Arnold, I believe you are mistaken about this. Half a million new donors within one day after launch, over a hundred million raised to date, switches to larger venues to accommodate demand, and boisterous crowds responding especially powerfully to the muscular attacks casting Trump as a sex offender, fraudster, and cheat in the crosshairs of a career prosecutor who "knows his type"
Most importantly, she seems to be having fun with the crowds, the way Trump did eight years ago. If you watch the opening minutes of the Wisconsin rally you'll see what I mean. I was surprised to see itat first, but the excitement for her is comparable to that for Obama in 08.
Markets have her at about 45 percent which I think is a bit on the low side, especially if she picks Kelly.
I think part of the enthusiasm just stems from the fact that she seems like a normal political candidate for a change. IE, she isn't some doddering 80 year old like what both parties have become accustomed to these last 8 years or so. That might fade over time, but maybe not.
Yes there's definitely some truth to this, Trump is suddenly looking quite old and stale in contrast, whereas he was looking quite vigorous in comparison with Biden.
Again I suggest people watch the speech at the Wisconsin rally, especially the audience response to the red meat lines about protecting predators, fraudsters, and cheats. A large segment of the population have been thirsting for this language.
She is more skilled as a candidate than people have given her credit for, and the smarter Trump folks are realizing this. The insults could backfire spectacularly, if a former president loses to a "double DEI lady" (the term used by a commenter here) what will this say about him and about DEI?
Watch prediction markets closely, edging towards fifty now.
The higher quality democratic candidates probably did not like the idea of running a stunted campaign for less money. If you think about the glory of even a losing campaign, it involves being able to pay your friends and toadies millions of dollars for a fairly short duration job. With Kamala, it's the party higher ups pulling the strings and owning the donor relationships. That is not good for a real politician as opposed to a sort of puppet's puppet like Harris is. A real politician is a salesman extraordinaire with a golden rolodex. Kamala is a saleswoman with a list provided by her manager. She does not own the goodwill but can only borrow it.
I believe that the favored possible candidates just said no to the bargain offered. They would have also had to deal with the embarrassment of snubbing the double DEI quota lady for someone with negative quota points. This way, they get to lose while seeming like they are still cutthroat enough to shiv Biden while shedding some portion of the far left that has become too awkward for fundraising purposes. You don't envy the challenge that they have of reconciling the rainbow lobby with the Jewish lobby with the Arab lobby and the Iranian lobby with the radical grad student coalition with the coddled affluent professional lobby. For the republicans, we just have the rabble who love the American flag, but at least they seem to want one thing instead of many contradictory things.
A very base possibility is that the people running these campaigns simply care about spending donor bucks and the easiest way to get their hands on the Biden donor bucks was Harris.
It's not all that different from how the Ted Cruz people running De Santis's campaign didn't seem to give a fuck beyond cashing paychecks.
Hence the seemingly silly expressions of exuberance. If you unlocked access to accounts worth hundreds of millions of dollars without having to work for it, you would be ebullient too.
I don't think Yglesias is trying to cover for Harris here. Harris is a political figure, and her statements are public. Yglesias is aware of this. I interpret Yglesias as expressing uncertainty about Harris in a fundamental sense: How does Harris perceive the world? What are her basic instincts? What are her core beliefs? What kind of heuristics does she use to reach different conclusions and decisions? Politicians, and in fact most public figures, have to calibrate their statements depending on the context.
Politicians and most public figures have to calibrate their statements depending on the context. If Trump moderates his stance on abortion, it is understandable: he is not strongly pro-life and needs to win elections. If Biden says something, you understand that he calibrates his message towards the progressive part of the Democrats because he needs their support. In the case of Harris, it is harder to say. If I remember correctly, even during the 2019 primary campaign, Harris received criticism (including from Yglesias) that her campaign was all over the place: she said something that progressives liked, then backtracked; she said something that moderates liked, then backtracked. She tried to be everything for everybody but ended up being nothing for nobody.
Anyway, political commentators like Yglesias are not just interested in public statements from politicians; they also want to understand how a particular politician thinks, how they reach their conclusions, what their strategies and tactics are, and when they are authentic versus pandering. I interpret Yglesias as being unsure about Harris along all these dimensions.
It has been strange watching the machinations of the coup forcing out Joe Biden (with Nancy Pelosi perfectly serving the role as the mafia wife and real power behind the throne) and now the blatantly obvious top down directives to be enthusiastic about Harris, who had among the highest if not highest unfavorable ratings of any VPs in modern history and who was also the reason cited by so many people as the reason the Democrats were afraid to push out Joe Biden over fears that she'd do even worse. Suddenly she's a wise and capable woman! But it also gives me vibes of 2016 when the Democrats cleared the slates and blocked Bernie because it was HER TURN and while the enthusiasm by upscale white women was real, HRC always had the unlikeable factor among everyone else that ultimately cost her the election.
I browse reddit forums for certain cities to get a sense of what is going on locally, and did find it intriguing that the reaction by the predominately younger and progressive reddit posters to Harris was one of skepticism. Most admitted they'd still vote for her as they could never vote for a Republican, but the lack of enthusiasm was there. And it wasn't just because of Harris but also because of the political machinations within the party in rigging the primaries to prevent opposition to Biden and then the coup against Biden. And enthusiasm is the Democrats' real problem going into the election. The one thing that is also not talked about this year when trying to make comparisons to past elections is that 2020 was the year of George Floyd. The intensity of the movements around Floyd drove up turnout to record levels among what we can call low information minority voters, which explains why Biden got more votes from black voters than Obama ever did and helped him carry all the pivotal swing stages. I've a feeling the absence of a Floyd factor will play a real role this November and there's a distinct chance that any tight polling on paper will lead to a not so tight election result.
In a country of 330 million people and a lot of crime by black people, I'm pretty sure there will be at least one unjust killing of a black man by a stressed cop with poor impulse control. Whether it turns into a George Floyd situation is a different question.
Ditto that. I feel as though the media has a fairly refined ability to gin up discontent among minority groups when their might be some advantage in doing so.
Re: "leaders who want to be successful will have to be able to contend with an environment in which the information flow cannot be managed by the elites."
When people think critically about information flow issues, they naturally tend to focus on supply-side "management"; for example, secrecy, censorship, "misinformation," and the like.
However, information filters/distortions on the supply side notwithstanding, every individual on the target/demand side must somehow "manage" a superabundance (often a barrage) of information. For example, *attention* is a scarce resource and is perforce *selective.* It seems that the mechanisms of selective attention are poorly understood. Furthermore, we seem to know little about how people evaluate information that gets their attention.
Advertising, propaganda, spin, "narrative," and other information-management techniques furiously labor under an illusion of control, whilst the resultant flow of information seems a lot like unmanageable "noise" to the audience.
“I mean, think it's odd to call the incumbent vice president of the United States a sort of unknown political enigma”
I think you can gain some good insights of someone’s general disposition and ability as a leader based on anonymous reviews of direct reports and of the overall staff. In the corporate world, this used to be referred to as getting 360 feedback, which can be quite effective and enlightening.
In the case of Harris, things don’t look too good. There is no truer sign of a toxic environment than staff turnover:
“Kamala Harris’ office has had a staggering 91.5 percent turnover rate since she became vice president, an investigation from government watchdog organization Open The Books (OTB) revealed on Monday. Of the 47 staff members hired when Harris took office in 2021, only four reportedly remained in her employment as of March 2024.”
> There is no truer sign of a toxic environment than staff turnover
There is much truth to this.
H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, Sean Spicer, Gary Cohn, Rob Porter, Tom Price, Omarosa Manigault-Newman, Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, James Comey, Steven Goldstein, Josh Raffel, Rick Dearborn, George Sifakis, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Walter Shaub, and I am barely past year one! If you are interested I'm happy to cover the other years -- where we get to the likes of Bill Barr and Mr. Bolton.
Another true sign is what such staffers have to say once they have left. It is a rich buffet to choose from. If you have time for just one, I would recommend John Kelly, recipient of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, among over 20 other decorations. He served as Secretary of Homeland Security and later as Chief of Staff.
Indeed. But, that has been obvious to anyone watching since *The Apprentice* originally debuted back in 2004. What’s let’s obvious and less discussed, for obvious reasons, is the concept of female toxicity.
And what does 91.5% turnover mean? I can't see it tells us anything and here is why:
Brookings has a few reports looking at turnover of past and current Presidents. I don't know which of these reports I looked at a couple days ago but one showed Trump with an almost identical turnover. Obama too. Bush somewhat higher. Biden way lower.
Going off of Claire Lehmann's rather personally-disqualifying quote (I don't read/see her so it may be much of a piece) from the comment above, endorsing Kamala for "looking great for her age" ... and off of the reports of VP office turmoil (which reports may reflect cattiness all up and down the elite food chain):
Kamala Harris does look *very* well-preserved for age. She has nice skin and hair that younger women might envy. Her makeup flatters her and never looks ridiculous. She is not late-middle-age saggy at all. White women have sometimes been heard to say that black women don't seem to age as rapidly, or that it is harder to tell a black woman's age. But I don't think anybody in America is aging well anymore ...
I doubt male pundits have given much thought to how much effort this takes - not *once a week at the hairdresser*, not once every 6 weeks at the brow or lash place (though we are talking a 3-hour session ...) - but no small amount of time out of *every day*. And that's assuming she doesn't require "me time" or "treat yo'self time" on top of that (she may not, I wouldn't want to suggest all women are made up that way).
I don't particularly mean to single out KH for this - but the reality is that a female politician whose looks can be traded on - is going to be out of commission for a substantial chunk of the week, in a way that a good-looking male candidate is not (unless it's a narcissism or hedonism thing - I can imagine Newsom is the male equivalent).
I am not prepared to say that KH's staff turnover is a sign of petty tyranny on her part. (Petty because nothing of importance can have ever issued from that office, and an intelligent VP would know that, and ignore it, content to let it be mostly a stable for supporters' kids.)
An office or workplace that is heavily woman-staffed as I am quite prepared to believe hers is, will always be a scene of inter-personal drama from day to day. I'm sorry but on this point I'll brook no opposition.
If her White House can be recreated on exactly those lines - and if she continues her time-consuming beauty regimen, which has to be pretty punishing even given her genetic gifts in the looks department - so that Kamala's posse is internally focused on their own status or grievances - there will be a perfect setup for the youngsters among the current admin team to continue their domestic agenda, centered around printing money for their special clients among their base; and keeping the border open to honor their anti-American moral commitment.
Given her marriage to a Jewish man who seems to have the conventional attachment to Israel, her pointed attack on Netanyahu must have been carefully thought out to get maximum media attention and draw the campus protest people and their sympathizers. Maybe someone on the campaign watched her whipping an audience of grade school teachers into happy delirium at the prospect of restoring abortion at the federal level - and realized that was not exactly a slam dunk, issue-wise.
Even if the data scientists are going to help you figure out which precincts matter most/"must" be won - you still have to put yourself in the position to make that possible.
I think she's the perfect candidate for the 21st century.
I love especially that her looks are being openly touted, too, in comparison to what one must acknowledge is Trump's utter failure in thay way (he's paid nobody to style him, or else they tell him untruths to keep their positions; even his suits are so terrible, very odd in a rich man married to a European woman). This is a marvelous feminist moment. After all, feminism somehow - and directly - led to rampant cartoonish plastic surgery and "Project Runway" and "The Bachelor".
There was a funny bit on 30 Rock years ago where the white guys on the writing team try to guess how old Samuel L Jackson is, and the guesses come in all the way from 25 to 55. It's not a mystery, though. Melanin helps protect your skin from the harmful effects of UV radiation. Without out, we caucasoids accumulate damage to our skin earlier and thus begin to look older, sooner.
Yglesias has probably developed a kind of shame. He knows Harris is an imbecile and he knows what all of her policy positions on any issue are going to be. When you are ashamed of lying about something, it is definitely easier to claim ignorance. Still dishonest but with semi-plausible deniability.
Her big drawback - having been handed the border by presumably cynical Biden staffers*, and then rather sniffily declined to dirty her hands with it, whatever her own inclinations might be, if she has any - is really all most of us know about her, and with Yglesias it is obviously no drawback at all.
Maybe his own ambitions leave him deflecting somewhat from the theme of what I believe was his last book.
*Of course, they are trying to destroy America - but one shouldn't perhaps give them too much credit even for that. After all, it is John Roberts who ultimately will oversee the coup de grâce of the work thus far of the judicial branch in eliminating the idea of a country, of a Here and a There.
The Kamala Enigma..... according to one of her Tik Tok groupies apparently she is a "girl who is a little messy and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it"
I thought you were kidding (about your horoscope) ....now I'm not so sure?! It's out of my depth anyway. But 'political malaises'... now you're talking my language and since we're trading links, here's one on that subject: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
The Dem big guns endorsed Biden as candidate insisting it was certain he would run, and the same have endorsed Harris as the certain candidate, because really it was a case of Hobson’s choice. It depends what you mean by certain, of course.
The same people will choose her running mate at which time my advice to Kamala is hire a food taster and stay away from sloping roofs.
I'm lost whenever anyone says we don't understand who the true Harris is. She was a prosecutor which by definition means she was genuinely a horrible person who had no qualms ruining people's lives, imprisoning known innocents, and protecting criminal cops all for personal gain.
We also know she's Indian, not black but plays the black card when political convenient and spent her whole life proving it from marrying a Jew to vigorously prosecuting blacks at all cost as they aren't her people. I mean we can all say prosecutors are a necessary evil but let's quit pretending any successful career prosecutor is a good moral ethical person, who you would truly want your kids to be like. We all understand criminal offense lawyer's are generally personality wise some of the worst people in existence and she excelled at it.
Other than that she's just another vapid HRC whose only real core political beliefs are power and misandry. Everything else she just goes with the wind and whatever her handlers tell her will keep her in power / make her wealthier.
Wow, who else was blown away by BLM raising concerns about the process? That makes two things I agree with them on.
The Dems likely had planned to sub Harris in after the midterms, but she had come across too badly. Instead, they tried lawfare, which made Trump a martyr (then Trump's courage under fire stirred anyone with eyes to see). After the debate, which presumably they forced on Joe, the need for the switcheroo was obvious.
The 2nd most liberal Senator (Obama) anointed the most liberal Senator (Harris). Anyone else and they lose the money. There is nothing more the Dems can tell us about Trump (after you've called someone Hitler, there's nowhere else to go), but there is plenty more we'll learn about Harris. Let's hope it's live.
Whichever team of liars get in, I am heartsick for this beautiful country.
Most Dems know the “real Kamala” is lousy—which is why so many were so willing to lie for the semi-senile Biden.
Will Dem media lies, plus email-in ballot stuffing & other cheats, be enough to win over the even-more popular Trump?
Know anybody who supported Trump in 2020 who’s alive but not supporting him in 2024?
Any who didn’t vote then, but will vote Trump 2024? (I know a couple)
Until 2020, no candidate had gotten 75 million votes, as Trump got in 2020, with Biden counting 81 million including about 80% of mail-in ballots (65*0.8=52 million insecure mail-in ballots. No EU democracy allows the fraud friendly mail-in ballot).
Arnold made a good start quantifying Trump around 3.5 vs Biden 2.5, but has yet to separate the need for good policies from personality. I don’t like Trump the vulgar, funny, braggart. But strongly prefer most of his policies over the Dems.
1) I think it's great that Harris is the candidate. Not just because she is more likely to lose, but because I feel she is the perfect avatar for the left at the moment. Biden was pretty good, but Harris is even better. Like a much worse version of Hillary Clinton.
If she loses, we can say that not just Harris but the entire vibe that makes her up has lost. We can't blame it on an old man.
By contrast if someone that terrible can win, it's time to give up.
2) Let's check in on "classical liberal" women:
https://x.com/clairlemon/status/1815933856018751885
3) I think the republican campaign strategy should just be ad after ad of Kamala speaking from the last four years. Unedited, its already perfect.
4) https://www.fromthenew.world/p/there-is-no-one-in-charge
I think it's interesting how the right likes the idea of "actual human beings" being in charge, while the left would prefer some kind of inhuman "process". The left would prefer there was no president. No Brexit. No single point of failure were people could plausibly reject them.
The preferred Democracy of the left would be something like what happened in France recently, where you can use the process to reject any revolt that occurs.
The whole thing reminds me more and more of the NICE from That Hideous Strength.
Personally, I think Trump biggest asset right now IS Kackles.
"I think sincere views are a little bit overrated."
This is fitting enough coming from Yglesias, who lies for a living and has repeatedly both explicitly expressed willingness to lie to advance the Democratic Party and actually done so. But Harris is not actually a cipher: she's got a long track record placing her very firmly on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, particularly on racial issues (Affirmative Action, immigration, "equity").
Ordinarily I dislike assigning motives to others, but given Yglesias' past statements of conscious dishonesty I will make an exception and postulate that he's running cover for Harris by claiming her positions are unknown since he's aware her most distinctive political positions (decriminalizing illegal border crossing, Medicare-for-all-including-illegals, extreme squatter's rights) are tremendously unpopular among swing voters.
I disapprove of the ad hominem attack on Yglesias. This comes very close to being the type of comment that I remove.
I believe Arctotherium is referring to a tweet by Yglesias reposted at the bottom of this post on Instapundit
https://instapundit.com/613274/
The Instapundit post is more recent but in 2010 Yglesias said he found it acceptable to be dishonest if you think your opponents are also being dishonest.
Remove? How very Left of you.
I was surprised by his response and don't know his reasons but one possibility is that the comment borders on libel. There is nothing Left about that.
Oh, good, it’s Stu, again.
Instead of being a jerk, why don't you comment on why you are right or I am wrong? Please.
YOU calling anyone a jerk is pretty laughable. Everybody you reply to is wrong, needs to rethink their positions, and so on.
I've read little of Yglesias and remember less so I don't know him. Maybe that's why I'm surprised by your reaction. I don't know whether that means my view is less biased or more likely to be correct but if CB is correct about what Yglesias said in 2010, maybe you should rethink your opinion.
Maybe you like Yglesias and don't want to be guilty by association?
When I think of shills for the Democrats, I think of Krugman. I can't help but wonder how you would have reacted if Arctotherium's comment had been about Krugman.
One more thing. There is one commenter in particular who has made numerous posts I find bordering, and sometimes outside, what I think is acceptable. As much as I disliked those comments, and even wish he were banned, I had a bit of respect for you not deleting them.
You've touched the 3rd rail. For AK, Yglesias is the Great Blue Hope -- someone on the Blue team who is an 'independent thinker' (July 16th post). But there is no such thing. It is a unicorn. The only intellectuals on the liberal/left end of spectrum who are truly independent thinkers are those who have explicitly denounced the Blue team, like Brett and Heather. But Brett is a conspiracy theorist, because he had the temerity to question the claim that mRNA 'vaccines' for covid are 'safe and effective' early on (for which he and Heather were demonetized on Youtube), and most unforgivably, he turned out to be right. I don't share Brett's enthusiasm for Bobby, but I give him credit for turning against Team Blue, and that was long before the series of events beginning with the Great Debate and ending with a successful coup revealed how utterly ruthless and unprincipled the Blue Team is.
With reference to the replies from stu and Roger, forumposter123's comment in response to today's (7/27) links to consider addresses this issue much better than I could have done ('within allowable limits,' as luciaphile paraphrased it). In my book, picking out a single issue (neoliberalism, identity politics, foreign policy/militarism) and expressing an ostensibly independent opinion on it 'within allowable limits' is not sufficient to make you an independent Blue Team thinker. Brett Weinstein has expressed dissident views on all three of these topics and a broad range of other topics, including open borders and the mRNA shots. Haidt is perhaps a different animal, being an academic who has also written books for a general audience, rather than a journalist (Wright) or a pundit (or whatever labels applies to Maher, whom I don't watch). I am not familiar enough with his work to judge; I can't tell whether he a hopelessly naive bookworm or deliberately obtuse. I have a special antipathy for Wright, but expressing my honest opinion of him would take us far behind the bounds of the original post to which AK reacted.
I don't know if he is "on the blue team" but Robert Wright is an independent thinker. I don't agree with a lot of what he says but I respect his intellectual courage. I would say the same for Freddie deBoer.
"The only intellectuals on the liberal/left end of spectrum who are truly independent thinkers are those who have explicitly denounced the Blue team."
What does this mean? Going to the Red team? Or does someone like Jonathan Haidt or Bill Maher qualify for speaking against identity politics and a few other central tenets of the left?
My usual response to Yglesias is that he can't possibly be as dumb as he sometimes seems. Then . . . If that is ad hominem, then so be it. But I find him pretty disengenuous a large part of the time.
I, on the other hand, have no issues calling her what she is, which is a racist fuck. Maybe as much as Obama.
"Who can actually feel genuinely energized about Kamala Harris?"
Arnold, I believe you are mistaken about this. Half a million new donors within one day after launch, over a hundred million raised to date, switches to larger venues to accommodate demand, and boisterous crowds responding especially powerfully to the muscular attacks casting Trump as a sex offender, fraudster, and cheat in the crosshairs of a career prosecutor who "knows his type"
Most importantly, she seems to be having fun with the crowds, the way Trump did eight years ago. If you watch the opening minutes of the Wisconsin rally you'll see what I mean. I was surprised to see itat first, but the excitement for her is comparable to that for Obama in 08.
Markets have her at about 45 percent which I think is a bit on the low side, especially if she picks Kelly.
It will be interesting to see whether your impression holds.
I think part of the enthusiasm just stems from the fact that she seems like a normal political candidate for a change. IE, she isn't some doddering 80 year old like what both parties have become accustomed to these last 8 years or so. That might fade over time, but maybe not.
Yes there's definitely some truth to this, Trump is suddenly looking quite old and stale in contrast, whereas he was looking quite vigorous in comparison with Biden.
Again I suggest people watch the speech at the Wisconsin rally, especially the audience response to the red meat lines about protecting predators, fraudsters, and cheats. A large segment of the population have been thirsting for this language.
She is more skilled as a candidate than people have given her credit for, and the smarter Trump folks are realizing this. The insults could backfire spectacularly, if a former president loses to a "double DEI lady" (the term used by a commenter here) what will this say about him and about DEI?
Watch prediction markets closely, edging towards fifty now.
*prosecuting (not protecting)
The higher quality democratic candidates probably did not like the idea of running a stunted campaign for less money. If you think about the glory of even a losing campaign, it involves being able to pay your friends and toadies millions of dollars for a fairly short duration job. With Kamala, it's the party higher ups pulling the strings and owning the donor relationships. That is not good for a real politician as opposed to a sort of puppet's puppet like Harris is. A real politician is a salesman extraordinaire with a golden rolodex. Kamala is a saleswoman with a list provided by her manager. She does not own the goodwill but can only borrow it.
I believe that the favored possible candidates just said no to the bargain offered. They would have also had to deal with the embarrassment of snubbing the double DEI quota lady for someone with negative quota points. This way, they get to lose while seeming like they are still cutthroat enough to shiv Biden while shedding some portion of the far left that has become too awkward for fundraising purposes. You don't envy the challenge that they have of reconciling the rainbow lobby with the Jewish lobby with the Arab lobby and the Iranian lobby with the radical grad student coalition with the coddled affluent professional lobby. For the republicans, we just have the rabble who love the American flag, but at least they seem to want one thing instead of many contradictory things.
A very base possibility is that the people running these campaigns simply care about spending donor bucks and the easiest way to get their hands on the Biden donor bucks was Harris.
It's not all that different from how the Ted Cruz people running De Santis's campaign didn't seem to give a fuck beyond cashing paychecks.
Hence the seemingly silly expressions of exuberance. If you unlocked access to accounts worth hundreds of millions of dollars without having to work for it, you would be ebullient too.
I agree with you. I think she was the designated patsy of the machine this go around and Joe made her part of his bargain.
I don't think Yglesias is trying to cover for Harris here. Harris is a political figure, and her statements are public. Yglesias is aware of this. I interpret Yglesias as expressing uncertainty about Harris in a fundamental sense: How does Harris perceive the world? What are her basic instincts? What are her core beliefs? What kind of heuristics does she use to reach different conclusions and decisions? Politicians, and in fact most public figures, have to calibrate their statements depending on the context.
Politicians and most public figures have to calibrate their statements depending on the context. If Trump moderates his stance on abortion, it is understandable: he is not strongly pro-life and needs to win elections. If Biden says something, you understand that he calibrates his message towards the progressive part of the Democrats because he needs their support. In the case of Harris, it is harder to say. If I remember correctly, even during the 2019 primary campaign, Harris received criticism (including from Yglesias) that her campaign was all over the place: she said something that progressives liked, then backtracked; she said something that moderates liked, then backtracked. She tried to be everything for everybody but ended up being nothing for nobody.
Anyway, political commentators like Yglesias are not just interested in public statements from politicians; they also want to understand how a particular politician thinks, how they reach their conclusions, what their strategies and tactics are, and when they are authentic versus pandering. I interpret Yglesias as being unsure about Harris along all these dimensions.
It has been strange watching the machinations of the coup forcing out Joe Biden (with Nancy Pelosi perfectly serving the role as the mafia wife and real power behind the throne) and now the blatantly obvious top down directives to be enthusiastic about Harris, who had among the highest if not highest unfavorable ratings of any VPs in modern history and who was also the reason cited by so many people as the reason the Democrats were afraid to push out Joe Biden over fears that she'd do even worse. Suddenly she's a wise and capable woman! But it also gives me vibes of 2016 when the Democrats cleared the slates and blocked Bernie because it was HER TURN and while the enthusiasm by upscale white women was real, HRC always had the unlikeable factor among everyone else that ultimately cost her the election.
I browse reddit forums for certain cities to get a sense of what is going on locally, and did find it intriguing that the reaction by the predominately younger and progressive reddit posters to Harris was one of skepticism. Most admitted they'd still vote for her as they could never vote for a Republican, but the lack of enthusiasm was there. And it wasn't just because of Harris but also because of the political machinations within the party in rigging the primaries to prevent opposition to Biden and then the coup against Biden. And enthusiasm is the Democrats' real problem going into the election. The one thing that is also not talked about this year when trying to make comparisons to past elections is that 2020 was the year of George Floyd. The intensity of the movements around Floyd drove up turnout to record levels among what we can call low information minority voters, which explains why Biden got more votes from black voters than Obama ever did and helped him carry all the pivotal swing stages. I've a feeling the absence of a Floyd factor will play a real role this November and there's a distinct chance that any tight polling on paper will lead to a not so tight election result.
In a country of 330 million people and a lot of crime by black people, I'm pretty sure there will be at least one unjust killing of a black man by a stressed cop with poor impulse control. Whether it turns into a George Floyd situation is a different question.
Ditto that. I feel as though the media has a fairly refined ability to gin up discontent among minority groups when their might be some advantage in doing so.
Re: "leaders who want to be successful will have to be able to contend with an environment in which the information flow cannot be managed by the elites."
When people think critically about information flow issues, they naturally tend to focus on supply-side "management"; for example, secrecy, censorship, "misinformation," and the like.
However, information filters/distortions on the supply side notwithstanding, every individual on the target/demand side must somehow "manage" a superabundance (often a barrage) of information. For example, *attention* is a scarce resource and is perforce *selective.* It seems that the mechanisms of selective attention are poorly understood. Furthermore, we seem to know little about how people evaluate information that gets their attention.
Advertising, propaganda, spin, "narrative," and other information-management techniques furiously labor under an illusion of control, whilst the resultant flow of information seems a lot like unmanageable "noise" to the audience.
“I mean, think it's odd to call the incumbent vice president of the United States a sort of unknown political enigma”
I think you can gain some good insights of someone’s general disposition and ability as a leader based on anonymous reviews of direct reports and of the overall staff. In the corporate world, this used to be referred to as getting 360 feedback, which can be quite effective and enlightening.
In the case of Harris, things don’t look too good. There is no truer sign of a toxic environment than staff turnover:
“Kamala Harris’ office has had a staggering 91.5 percent turnover rate since she became vice president, an investigation from government watchdog organization Open The Books (OTB) revealed on Monday. Of the 47 staff members hired when Harris took office in 2021, only four reportedly remained in her employment as of March 2024.”
https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/23/92-percent-of-kamala-harris-staff-left-in-her-first-three-years-as-vp/
> There is no truer sign of a toxic environment than staff turnover
There is much truth to this.
H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, Sean Spicer, Gary Cohn, Rob Porter, Tom Price, Omarosa Manigault-Newman, Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, James Comey, Steven Goldstein, Josh Raffel, Rick Dearborn, George Sifakis, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Walter Shaub, and I am barely past year one! If you are interested I'm happy to cover the other years -- where we get to the likes of Bill Barr and Mr. Bolton.
Another true sign is what such staffers have to say once they have left. It is a rich buffet to choose from. If you have time for just one, I would recommend John Kelly, recipient of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, among over 20 other decorations. He served as Secretary of Homeland Security and later as Chief of Staff.
I don’t know who is left for him to hire. Of course, plenty of positions could be left vacant without harm.
I would hope the opportunity does not arise.
I'm sure many prominent people are working their damnedest to make sure it does not.
Indeed. But, that has been obvious to anyone watching since *The Apprentice* originally debuted back in 2004. What’s let’s obvious and less discussed, for obvious reasons, is the concept of female toxicity.
And what does 91.5% turnover mean? I can't see it tells us anything and here is why:
Brookings has a few reports looking at turnover of past and current Presidents. I don't know which of these reports I looked at a couple days ago but one showed Trump with an almost identical turnover. Obama too. Bush somewhat higher. Biden way lower.
Going off of Claire Lehmann's rather personally-disqualifying quote (I don't read/see her so it may be much of a piece) from the comment above, endorsing Kamala for "looking great for her age" ... and off of the reports of VP office turmoil (which reports may reflect cattiness all up and down the elite food chain):
Kamala Harris does look *very* well-preserved for age. She has nice skin and hair that younger women might envy. Her makeup flatters her and never looks ridiculous. She is not late-middle-age saggy at all. White women have sometimes been heard to say that black women don't seem to age as rapidly, or that it is harder to tell a black woman's age. But I don't think anybody in America is aging well anymore ...
I doubt male pundits have given much thought to how much effort this takes - not *once a week at the hairdresser*, not once every 6 weeks at the brow or lash place (though we are talking a 3-hour session ...) - but no small amount of time out of *every day*. And that's assuming she doesn't require "me time" or "treat yo'self time" on top of that (she may not, I wouldn't want to suggest all women are made up that way).
I don't particularly mean to single out KH for this - but the reality is that a female politician whose looks can be traded on - is going to be out of commission for a substantial chunk of the week, in a way that a good-looking male candidate is not (unless it's a narcissism or hedonism thing - I can imagine Newsom is the male equivalent).
I am not prepared to say that KH's staff turnover is a sign of petty tyranny on her part. (Petty because nothing of importance can have ever issued from that office, and an intelligent VP would know that, and ignore it, content to let it be mostly a stable for supporters' kids.)
An office or workplace that is heavily woman-staffed as I am quite prepared to believe hers is, will always be a scene of inter-personal drama from day to day. I'm sorry but on this point I'll brook no opposition.
If her White House can be recreated on exactly those lines - and if she continues her time-consuming beauty regimen, which has to be pretty punishing even given her genetic gifts in the looks department - so that Kamala's posse is internally focused on their own status or grievances - there will be a perfect setup for the youngsters among the current admin team to continue their domestic agenda, centered around printing money for their special clients among their base; and keeping the border open to honor their anti-American moral commitment.
Given her marriage to a Jewish man who seems to have the conventional attachment to Israel, her pointed attack on Netanyahu must have been carefully thought out to get maximum media attention and draw the campus protest people and their sympathizers. Maybe someone on the campaign watched her whipping an audience of grade school teachers into happy delirium at the prospect of restoring abortion at the federal level - and realized that was not exactly a slam dunk, issue-wise.
Even if the data scientists are going to help you figure out which precincts matter most/"must" be won - you still have to put yourself in the position to make that possible.
I think she's the perfect candidate for the 21st century.
I love especially that her looks are being openly touted, too, in comparison to what one must acknowledge is Trump's utter failure in thay way (he's paid nobody to style him, or else they tell him untruths to keep their positions; even his suits are so terrible, very odd in a rich man married to a European woman). This is a marvelous feminist moment. After all, feminism somehow - and directly - led to rampant cartoonish plastic surgery and "Project Runway" and "The Bachelor".
There was a funny bit on 30 Rock years ago where the white guys on the writing team try to guess how old Samuel L Jackson is, and the guesses come in all the way from 25 to 55. It's not a mystery, though. Melanin helps protect your skin from the harmful effects of UV radiation. Without out, we caucasoids accumulate damage to our skin earlier and thus begin to look older, sooner.
An interesting take, for sure.
Yglesias has probably developed a kind of shame. He knows Harris is an imbecile and he knows what all of her policy positions on any issue are going to be. When you are ashamed of lying about something, it is definitely easier to claim ignorance. Still dishonest but with semi-plausible deniability.
Harris is not an imbecile. Neither is Biden. Neither is Trump. None have the qualities I'd prefer in a President but that doesn't make them imbeciles.
Your ad hominem attack seems even more out of line than calling Yglesias a liar. I wonder if it will get deleted.
Only an imbecile could listen to any Kamala Harris interview and not come to the conclusion that she is less than a midwit.
But, by all means, Stu, inform all of us the proper descriptions of Harris' intellect with some proof since it matters so much to you.
Her big drawback - having been handed the border by presumably cynical Biden staffers*, and then rather sniffily declined to dirty her hands with it, whatever her own inclinations might be, if she has any - is really all most of us know about her, and with Yglesias it is obviously no drawback at all.
Maybe his own ambitions leave him deflecting somewhat from the theme of what I believe was his last book.
*Of course, they are trying to destroy America - but one shouldn't perhaps give them too much credit even for that. After all, it is John Roberts who ultimately will oversee the coup de grâce of the work thus far of the judicial branch in eliminating the idea of a country, of a Here and a There.
In the 21st century, the issue may be more of creating the information that people receive rather than controlling it. There is a difference.
The Kamala Enigma..... according to one of her Tik Tok groupies apparently she is a "girl who is a little messy and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it"
That was my horoscope this morning.
It's your party and you'll get a little messy if you want to?
The Kamala hype train is a bit crazier than I expected. I wonder how long this lasts until the usual political malaise sets in. https://stylecaster.com/lifestyle/zodiac/1818362/kamala-harris-birth-chart/
I thought you were kidding (about your horoscope) ....now I'm not so sure?! It's out of my depth anyway. But 'political malaises'... now you're talking my language and since we're trading links, here's one on that subject: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
“genuine human being”? a politician?
The Dem big guns endorsed Biden as candidate insisting it was certain he would run, and the same have endorsed Harris as the certain candidate, because really it was a case of Hobson’s choice. It depends what you mean by certain, of course.
The same people will choose her running mate at which time my advice to Kamala is hire a food taster and stay away from sloping roofs.
I'm lost whenever anyone says we don't understand who the true Harris is. She was a prosecutor which by definition means she was genuinely a horrible person who had no qualms ruining people's lives, imprisoning known innocents, and protecting criminal cops all for personal gain.
We also know she's Indian, not black but plays the black card when political convenient and spent her whole life proving it from marrying a Jew to vigorously prosecuting blacks at all cost as they aren't her people. I mean we can all say prosecutors are a necessary evil but let's quit pretending any successful career prosecutor is a good moral ethical person, who you would truly want your kids to be like. We all understand criminal offense lawyer's are generally personality wise some of the worst people in existence and she excelled at it.
Other than that she's just another vapid HRC whose only real core political beliefs are power and misandry. Everything else she just goes with the wind and whatever her handlers tell her will keep her in power / make her wealthier.
Wow, who else was blown away by BLM raising concerns about the process? That makes two things I agree with them on.
The Dems likely had planned to sub Harris in after the midterms, but she had come across too badly. Instead, they tried lawfare, which made Trump a martyr (then Trump's courage under fire stirred anyone with eyes to see). After the debate, which presumably they forced on Joe, the need for the switcheroo was obvious.
The 2nd most liberal Senator (Obama) anointed the most liberal Senator (Harris). Anyone else and they lose the money. There is nothing more the Dems can tell us about Trump (after you've called someone Hitler, there's nowhere else to go), but there is plenty more we'll learn about Harris. Let's hope it's live.
Whichever team of liars get in, I am heartsick for this beautiful country.
Most Dems know the “real Kamala” is lousy—which is why so many were so willing to lie for the semi-senile Biden.
Will Dem media lies, plus email-in ballot stuffing & other cheats, be enough to win over the even-more popular Trump?
Know anybody who supported Trump in 2020 who’s alive but not supporting him in 2024?
Any who didn’t vote then, but will vote Trump 2024? (I know a couple)
Until 2020, no candidate had gotten 75 million votes, as Trump got in 2020, with Biden counting 81 million including about 80% of mail-in ballots (65*0.8=52 million insecure mail-in ballots. No EU democracy allows the fraud friendly mail-in ballot).
Arnold made a good start quantifying Trump around 3.5 vs Biden 2.5, but has yet to separate the need for good policies from personality. I don’t like Trump the vulgar, funny, braggart. But strongly prefer most of his policies over the Dems.