MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

Man, this election cycle is off the freaking hook, isn’t it?

So much so that I think I’ll espouse my opinions grouped by party. I shall do the Demos first.

1. Biden is out, and Kamala is effectively in. And, you know, good.

And also, wow. As I posted before, it was always up to Biden and Biden alone to step aside, and I didn’t really expect that he would. And I have to say I respect him for it.

And also also, while I personally didn’t think Biden needed replacing in terms of winnability, I’m happy to vote for Harris – who, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, was one of my top 3 choices in 2020 (Biden, I must say, was not).

2. Some are complaining that it’s not democratic – “What about all the people who voted for Biden in the primaries?”

Well, first of all, this is how the DNC system has worked for decades. Delegates have the flexibility to change their minds as circumstances warrant – this being one of them.

Also, the people who voted for Biden were voting for an incumbent who was running virtually unopposed, which is incredibly normal. Biden seemed fine then – he seems less fine now, and might get worse as the election goes on, in which case I would think you’d want the flexibility to switch horses before it’s too late.

Which is why the answer to the Big Question – “Who do we replace him with?” – really had to be Harris. As I’ve also said before – and as Josh Marshall at TPM points out far more eloquently – a Thunderdome convention would be risky, messy and a much harder sell to everyone who voted for what was essentially a renewal of the Biden-Harris package that also comes with the presumption that, should Biden (for example, and God forbid) die or otherwise be unable to continue, Harris would take the wheel. That’s a relatively easy pitch in a unique situation like this, as opposed to giving every other POTUS hopeful a last-minute shot, which IMO would be a far more egregious middle finger to primary voters. And as Marshall notes, about the only people calling for a contested convention are news columnists who want a good fight.

3. That said, I think another reason Biden waited as long as he did is probably down to his simply being an elderly man coming to terms with the fact that he’s finally getting too old for this s***. I’ve dealt with a number of elderly people, including my mom, and sometimes the decline is slow, sometimes it’s rapid, but either way it’s hard for them to accept that once it starts. It’s also difficult for friends and family to accept it too sometimes.

And I’m sure Biden felt slighted by what he saw is his closest allies starting to turn on him, whether their intentions were noble, practical or opportunistic. I mean, Biden wouldn't be the first octogenarian to resent both his declining health and his closest family and friends essentially saying "Look Pops, we love you and you did great but you're no use to us anymore", even if they're right, and even if he knows deep down that they are.

4. John Scalzi makes the interesting (and possibly correct) observation that at least some of this has been strategic on the part of the DNC – which is to say, at some point their initial panic over Biden’s debate performance and subsequent desire to convince him to drop out transformed into an actual strategy to manage the transition with two particular goals: (1) make a plausible case for handing off to Harris after the primaries to ensure the handover was executed as legitimately as possible, and (2) completely throw Team Trump off their game.

I think he’s on to something here. Considering that Harris raised hundreds of millions and secured all the delegates she needs to get the nomination within the first 48 hours of the news, it’s possible that a lot of that groundwork was laid before Biden announced he was stepping aside.

Either that or it was a huge gamble that luckily paid off. But political parties aren’t known for Hail Mary plays unless they’re desperate. So I think it’s more likely that the DNC probably did some planning and legwork here.

As for the goal of catching Team Trump by surprise, between Trump’s tweets and Stephen Miller’s meltdown on live television, well, yes, mischief managed.

5. The GOP freakout over this is, I have to admit, kind of delicious. And while some are posturing about the democratic fairness of it all, I don’t think they really care about that. I for one will certainly not sit here and be lectured about democratic processes and fairness by a party whose current candidate is a convicted felon who literally tried to overthrow the last election because he couldn’t accept the fact that he lost.

Anyway, I think they’re mainly panicking because they thought they were going to walk all over Sleepy Joe Biden and now they’ve got an actual fight on their hands.

I mean, look at some of the wild ideas they’re throwing out there. It’s a Kamala Koup to overthrow Biden! Let’s impeach Harris! Biden must resign! We’ll sue the DNC to put Biden back on the ballot!

The first one is silly (and possibly projection of some kind). The second and third ones are even sillier, and I have no idea what they think either action would accomplish that benefits them in any way.

As for the lawsuit, well, good luck with that, since Biden wasn’t on the ballot anyway, and the DNC literally did nothing illegal or unfair. On the other hand, as Ian Millhiser at Vox notes, the one thing going in the GOP’s favour is that it’s very likely to get the suit in front of a pro-Trump federal judge who may well do them a solid, and inevitably end up before the Supremes, and we all know about them by now.

6. As for Harris’ potential running mate, I don’t really mind who she picks as long as it’s someone reasonably sensible who also won’t poison the well. That said, I think would be hilarious if she picked Biden, if only to see Trump and the MAGA Party just lose their flipping minds. I’m not saying I actually want her to do that, or that she should. I’m just saying it would be funny. At first, anyway.

7. Now, of course, assuming the DNC convention goes off without a hitch and Harris' nomination becomes official, she has to go out there and win – and that includes withstanding the vile shitstorm of hate coming from Team Trump. I think she can withstand it just fine. A lot can and will happen between now and November, but at the moment, her chances look promising. If nothing else the switch to Harris has energised the base, which is good – and also gives further credence to the notion that that dropping Biden was a good idea.

(I'm not sure how Biden feels about that. But you don’t stay in this business 40 years without developing a thick skin, so I think he’ll be okay.)

8. Meanwhile, Harris’ greatest ally is probably Trump and his new sidekick JD Vance coming up with stuff like “She can’t be President because she’s never given birth” (which makes no sense at all) and then run with it to pitch ideas like “People with biological kids should get more votes than people who don’t” (which makes even less sense).

More on that in due course.

Kamala ye faithful,

This is dF

As you probably know, Joe Biden and Donald Trump held their first debate of 2024. And everyone is freaking out about it, so I thought I’d better post something, mainly to organize my own thoughts in my head. So:

1. No I didn’t watch it. I rarely watch live debates anymore – partly because I’m in the wrong time zone, but mainly because (1) it’s rare that any candidate says anything of substance that I haven’t heard them say before, and (2) in this case, I already know who is getting my vote – and it’s not the pathological liar who has been convicted of one felony (so far) and literally whipped a mob into trying to overturn the 2020 election results by force. So the highlights reel is usually enough for me.

2. Based on that, I’ll be the first to admit Biden had a bad night, whether it was the cold medication or whatever. That said, I don’t think it justifies either the crowing on the right or the freakout on the left. I certainly don’t agree with the hot takes that Biden lost the debate because he wasn’t as loud and energetic as Trump – which is a silly way to declare the winner of a debate. I’ve actually seen some Demos say “Yes, Trump lied his ass off and made little sense, but he did it with confidence and energy.” Well, okay, but if you think that’s what makes him seem more presidential, then I don’t really know what to tell you.

3. Perhaps understandably, part of the freakout is that it plays into the GOP’s whole “Biden’s too old” meme (despite Trump being just a few years younger and obviously in far worse health, but okay), so now we’re back to the “replace Biden” meme, backed by (1) Demos who are afraid he can’t beat Trump in what’s looking like another close election and (2) hardcore liberals who viscerally hate Biden for his Israel/Gaza policy and have threatened to vote for Trump just to hold Biden accountable unless he drops out.

4. Anyone who knows about how party politics and US elections work will tell you that’s not likely to happen. Biden has won all the primaries and most of the delegates that go with them, and a brokered convention will be too messy and risky. Also, no one seems to agree on the answer to the most important question: replace Biden with who, exactly? Apart from Kamala Harris, there are a few other names being thrown about (none of which are RFK Jr, thankfully). But the fact of the matter is that of the bunch, Biden is the only one with a proven track record of beating Trump in a general election. Throwing that away for someone else over one bad debate performance would be a major gamble. So unless Biden dies or willingly steps down – and there’s currently no reason to believe that he’ll do either – we’re probably stuck with him.

5. This where a lot of people will complain about the party system and DNC mechanisms and the electoral college and whatnot, and that’s fine, but that’s a whole separate set of problems that has no bearing on who gets to be the Demo nominee for 2024, because it’s way too late for that. That’s a discussion for 2028 and beyond, and it’s worth having now, but, well, see above.

6. The bigger question of course is what all this means for November. As the saying goes, five months is a long time in politics, so even if the debate moves the needle in Trump’s favor, Biden has the time and opportunity to turn that around. Meanwhile, we’ve already seen a couple of post-debate talks where Biden was already back on form, and one of the first post-debate polls suggests that Biden’s debate performance didn’t hurt him. So Demos can probably stop panicking now.  

7. However, we’re still looking at a close race that Biden can still lose. And honestly, while I’m not officially calling the election for Trump yet, I have to say, my gut feeling is that he is going to pull this off. Again. And this time with the full backing of the GOP, which is now his party. Trump won in 2016 despite all conventional political wisdom saying it was impossible AND losing the pop vote. There’s no reason to assume he can’t do it again – especially if the far left really can’t bring themselves to vote for Biden and go with Trump, RFK Jr or a blank protest vote.

8. The nihilist in me can’t help thinking that if a slim majority of people is willing to vote for Trump despite being a blithering pathological liar and a wannabe dictator who has been convicted of one felony (so far) and literally whipped a mob etc etc etc – even if the reason is that Biden is too old or whatever – maybe democracy should die?

9. Okay, not really. But for me, there’s no mystery here. We know what a Trump presidency looks like, and that was when the GOP wasn’t fully onboard and things like Project 2025 were just a gleam in Kevin Roberts’ eye. We also know what a Biden presidency looks like, and at least on paper, it’s been reasonably good more often than not and relatively sane compared to the previous admin. Which is why it’s inexplicable to me that people outside of the MAGA party would want to put Trump back in charge.

10. But as I’ve said elsewhere, people vote for all kinds of personal, idiosyncratic reasons, and in the current reality schism, I don’t know what can be done to change that, especially since a complex problem usually requires an even more complex solution. All I can say for now is that if Trump does win, and if we somehow survive his second term, we might want to think long and hard about how we got here and what we should do about it.

I’m not going to debate you Jerry,

This is dF

Well, it doesn’t get more bloggable than this, so …

1. To get the obvious out of the way, of course we don’t know how airtight Bragg’s case is, and it is entirely possible that even Trump’s legal team could find a way to dismantle it enough to get an acquittal, a mistrial or whatever. Some have said it’s the weakest case of the four that have been brewing the last few years. We’ll just have to wait and see. I will say that Trump's tactic of publicly attacking the judge and his family probably isn't going to go the way he thinks.

2. However it plays out, I will be very surprised if it ends with Trump doing time. Billionaires rarely go to jail. At most he may be slapped with hefty fines (which, true to his character, he probably won’t pay). 

3. If we’ve learned anything from this so far, it’s that the GOP is very much Trump’s party. We knew this already, of course, but there was the usual buzz that the GOP has wanted to drop him like 3^rd Period French for awhile now, especially because of his looming legal problems, and an indictment would be the perfect political excuse to finally wash their hands of him.

Turns out, ha ha, no. Just about everyone apart from the handful of dedicated Never-Trumpers (your Romneys and Liz Cheneys and whatnot) has firmly defended Trump as the totally innocent victim of a vicious gay liberal witch hunt/conspiracy to steal the 2020 election and jail/punish all opposition to the resulting Biden Dynasty. Or words to that effect.

4. One big reason for this, of course, is that they’re afraid of the MAGA base, who has made it clear in no uncertain terms that Trump is the second coming of Jesus and that anyone who says otherwise will be dealt with accordingly. Of course, the GOP is largely responsible for enabling that base, so, you know, hey ho.

Which is also why the usual metric the GOP uses for this sort of thing – “Will this cost us the White House in the next election?” – isn’t that reliable. There’s no law preventing Trump from running for office even if he goes to jail, and the MAGA base is very likely to vote for him regardless. So the risk of a split vote is very real. If they can’t convince the base that, say, Ron DeSantis is an acceptable Trump substitute, I think the GOP will have no choice but to rally behind Trump and take their chances.

5. One silver lining, I suppose, is that the MAGA base has not been inclined to take to the streets en masse and rip shit up, despite being urged to do so by Trump himself, as well as the usual lackeys like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But the potential for political violence is the highest it’s been since the 1960s, so I’m expecting to see more isolated incidents as the trial goes on.

6. The GOP has also been offering a predictable litany of defenses, my favorite of which is “We don’t arrest former Presidents / current POTUS candidates in this country!”

… Well, you know, maybe we should?

Seriously, though, it’s worth unpacking that statement, because it basically implies that we don’t arrest former Presidents / current POTUS candidates because it’s not allowed, or it’s an unwritten rule or something.

In the first place, POTUS (and other) candidates have been arrested before, so it’s not unprecedented. Also, one reason former POTUSes haven’t been arrested before is because only a few have ever faced possible criminal charges. Of those, Warren Harding died in office and Richard Nixon was pre-emptively pardoned by his loyal sideman Gerald Ford. As for Bill Clinton, he was successfully sued by Paula Jones while in office, and while he did face possible criminal charges for perjury and obstructing justice, he did what a lot of rich and powerful people do – he avoided indictment by cutting a deal, which in his case resulted in a $25,000 fine and suspension of his law license for five years.

Trump, incidentally, probably could have done something similar to avoid indictment, but that would mean admitting wrongdoing (as Clinton had to do as part of his deal), which he is constitutionally incapable of doing.

7. In any case, I for one refuse to be lectured by the party of “LOCK HER UP!” about the inappropriateness of indicting POTUS candidates and former Presidents.

8. I do think the “We don’t arrest former Presidents” meme raises the question of accountability and to what extent we think Presidents (current or former) should be above the law. Impeachment is supposed to be the preferred remedy of high crimes and misdemeanors in the White House, but it’s a political solution, not a judicial one. And the politics makes it risky, lest we get into an endless cycle of political revenge (as various Repubs are now threatening to do).

The dilemma is: If it’s politically too dangerous to impeach or arrest a POTUS, what incentive remains for a POTUS to follow the law – especially a POTUS who turns out to be a pathological liar with no regard for the law and a willingness to burn the country to the ground if it means staying out of jail?

9. The other big question of course is: what does this mean for his re-election chances? It’s not clear yet, although we’ve already established that (1) you can still legally run for (and win) the Presidency from a jail cell, and (2) the MAGA base will vote for Trump no matter what. And it’s a given that Trump will milk this for everything it’s worth, so I think he’s still just as likely to at least win the nomination. He might not win the general election, but that may have been true before the indictment.

10. The one thing we can be sure of is that the political climate in the US is going to get a lot worse. The indictment will feed the MAGA crowd’s persecution complex and fuel the GOP’s apparent commitment to embrace fascism and turn America into Hungary to save it from the Soros-Backed Woke Trans Antifa Drag Queen Biden Army.

However, in my opinion, that’s no reason not to indict Trump. The fact that he’s been indicted at all speaks volumes – I think few DAs, and no grand jury, would bring a case like this if there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the expense and the extraordinary sociopolitical consequences. And again, this is only one of several cases brewing – Trump has pushed the limits of what the “norms” of not arresting Presidents will accept.

Trump has basically forced the nation to reckon with a major dilemma: When a POTUS unabashedly crimes with impunity, our choices are (1) indict him and uphold rule of law, or (2) accept that any POTUS can crime all they want with no consequences apart from losing their re-election campaign (which they could also claim was stolen and refuse to accept).

Which will it be?

Stormy weather,

This is dF

Or, “My late and unnecessary hot take on the 2022 mid-terms”. Because, you know, blog.

PRODUCTION NOTE: Not that you’re wondering, but I’m posting this a month after the election partly because I’ve been too busy to write this, and partly because there were enough outstanding races that hadn’t yet been called that I was waiting for a definitive result first. Which we now more or less have.

1. As many have observed, the expected Red Wave didn’t happen. Neither did a Blue Wave, for that matter. In the end it was more or less business as usual – which is to say, another polarized race with the President’s party losing Congressional seats. And they didn’t lose wery many. The GOP will likely end up with 222 seats in the House – which is what the Demos had going in. As for the Senate, the Demos have at least held the status quo, and will gain one seat if Raphael Warnock beats Herschel “The Badge” Walker in the Georgia runoff (which the polls suggest is a real possibility). [Edited to add (6 Dec 2022): He did.]

2. There is much speculation on WHY there was no Red Wave. The Left credit the Supreme Court, Gen Z and January 6. GOP stalwarts blame Trump. It’s probably a mix of that, plus the fact that (as I’ve mentioned here a bunch of times before) people vote for all kinds of reasons that may never occur to the hardcore political junkies who follow this stuff like pro baseball and actually understand the issues at stake.

For example, it may seem obvious to YOU why the GOP should either lose bigly (they’re Nazis!) or win bigly (they’re cheating Nazis!). But a lot of people don’t vote based on the same information or criteria. They vote on single issues, or they vote because the candidate seems nice or talk a good game or pwns the libs or whatever. Yes, that’s terrible. But that’s how it is.

3. That said, I do think Gen Z gets some credit here – apart from the youth vote turning out in reasonably big numbers, it turns out the many young people are not especially big on a party whose platform in 2022 was essentially taking rights away from women, ethnic minorities and LGBTs (especially the Ts, which are the bugaboo of the moment for Republicans). Not to mention the whole election-denial thing. (Which, yes, should have resulted in a Blue Wave, but see point 2 above.)

4. Is Trump now persona non grata? Not likely. Or at least not for long. GOP politicians may feel he’s worn out his welcome, but that’s really only because he didn’t deliver the Big Red Wave they were expecting. And that can’t possibly be THEIR fault, so Trump is the most obvious scapegoat – and a potentially safe one, now that Ron DeSantis seems to be rising as a viable Trump alternative (see below).

On the other hand, the MAGA Cult is still very much a thing, and the GOP can’t afford to alienate them for the same reason they couldn’t do so before – they can’t risk a split vote if Trump goes third-party. If FiveThirtyEight is any benchmark to go by, Trump still polls well with rank-and-file GOP voters. That is the GOP base now, whether they like it or not, and honestly they’ve liked it just fine since 2016. So I think once the GOP gets over the shock of not winning as bigly as they’d hoped, they’ll go with whoever the political winds favor.

5. Will that be DeSantis? I’m not convinced yet. There is talk that he could be the next evolution of Trumpism – all of the xenophobic authoritarian bigotry without the paranoid batshit klepto chaos-monkey shenanigans. Maybe. The thing is, the aforementioned MAGA Cult base seems to enjoy paranoid batshit klepto chaos-monkey shenanigans over the Woke Washington Corporate Interest Swamp that they think only Trump can fix. It’s on DeSantis to prove otherwise.

So, I think that as things stand now, the only sure way DeSantis will gets the GOP nomination is if Trump dies before Super Tuesday 2024 – or maybe if Trump goes to jail, but I wouldn’t bet on that. It’s entirely legal to run for and serve as POTUS from a jail cell. Of course it might depend on what he goes to jail for. If he’s convicted over the Jan 6 insurrection, that could pose a problem for him, but not an insurmountable one.

As for the Please-Not-Trumpers, I suspect they’ll do what they did in 2016 – bad-mouth him until he wins the nomination, then pretend they were behind him all along.

6. Is democracy saved? Not yet, no. There may not have been a Red Wave, but the GOP didn’t lose by much either. Many of the losing candidates still managed to pull over 40% of the vote, and on a generic national level, the Repubs actually pulled over 3 million more votes than the Demos. Which basically means that a little over half of the voting pop is still willing to vote for an increasingly openly white supremacist fascist party that reserves the right to never accept any election result in which they lost (although, as I said, lots of people voted GOP for all kinds of reasons besides supporting white supremacist fascism ).

That said, it’s interesting that, as far as I know, nobody – apart from Kari Lake – seems to be pushing a #stopthesteal argument for the midterms like many people (including me) thought they would. Maybe they only do that for Presidents? Or maybe it’s just because many election deniers didn’t do so hot, so now is not a good time?

Anyway, the point is that the GOP (1) is continuing to embrace white supremacist fascism, (2) sees Hungary as a swell template for America’s future (i.e. an authoritarian conservative dictatorship dolled up as a democracy for the sake of appearance), and (3) still has half the country behind it. If Trump wins in 2024, we’re in trouble. If he gets the nomination and loses, we may still be in trouble because, as we’ve seen, he does not lose well.

White riot,

This is dF

PRODUCTION NOTE: I wrote a version of this post back in 2008, inspired by this post by John Mark Ockerbloom, a digital library architect and planner at the University of Pennsylvania, on why it matters that we have a Banned Books Week.

And given current events, it seems prudent to update it. –Ed.

As you know, the GOP has been on a book-banning spree, and not just for the usual rationales (i.e. fear of naughty words, nipples and gay people, although these are still very much in play). Now it’s all about getting rid of books that teach that fascism and racism are bad, on the apparent fear that these books will make white people feel guilty about supporting either. Or something.

Anyway, nothing says “we’re not Nazis” than holding a book burning event, right?

The good news is that while efforts to ban books are on the rise, it’s still not as widespread as social media makes it look. At least not right now.

Also, at least some kids aren’t having it, and are going as far as to form Banned Book Clubs to read these books that Republicans are telling them they shouldn’t be reading. And various groups have been buying and sending copies of banned books to people who live in states where they’re being removed from libraries. Meanwhile, Art Spiegelman is going to see a boost in his royalty cheques thanks to the McMinn County School Board.

So, great.

However, this is usually where the GOP and their apologists like to claim that they’re not banning books because all of these books are still for sale and easily accessible via Amazon or whatever booksellers are still left. So all of the dithering over book banning is liberal schadenfreude propaganda to cancel Republicans, etc.

By perhaps no coincidence, this is the same argument that many of the same people use to justify defunding libraries completely in the name of fiscal responsibility. If you can’t ban books, you can at least close the libraries. And again, they say, there’s always Amazon et al.

In both cases, the “there’s always Amazon” argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what libraries are for. Neil Gaiman makes a better case for libraries here than I ever will, and part of it covers why forcing libraries to remove books to protect children is not only a bad idea, but unnecessary.

In short, a primary function of libraries is to foster a love of reading in kids. Not everyone can afford to buy books whenever they want to read one. Libraries ensure every kid can benefit from books, and that people of all ages have equal access to whatever books or other useful information and services libraries offer. And in order for this to work, libraries must be free to offer books that matter to readers of all ages.

Yes, libraries have to make editorial decisions because of limited budgets and shelf space. And yes, patrons of schools and libraries should have the freedom to question those decisions. But as Ockerbloom points out here:

… There’s a world of difference between saying “isn’t this more appropriate for the YA shelves than for the early readers section?” or “Would this title be a better fourth-grade book on this topic than the one currently being used?”, and insisting “None of our kids should be reading about this kind of thing!” when “this kind of thing” is already on the minds of those kids, or something that they should be thinking about.

This is the thing about library book bans – they ensure no one of any age can have access to it. The “just buy it on Amazon” meme is simply arguing that free speech should only be available to those who can pay for it. And again, it’s also beside the point. To paraphrase Ockerbloom, freedom of speech isn’t just about the freedom to write what matters to you, but also the freedom to read what matters to you: “An unread book, after all, has as little impact as an unpublished book.”

Meanwhile, it’s also worth pointing out that while none of this is really new, the current book ban trend is more insidious than the usual handwringing.

Apart from being more coordinated across various states, it’s also happening within the broader context of the current and broader white conservative mindset that they are losing the Great American Culture War against the Evil Gay Black Liberal Communist LGBTQA-CRT Horde, and the only way they can win now (and save America) is to take control of schools and universities – not just with book bans, but also with legislation that censors teachers and restructures curricula along right-wing ideological lines to ensure students are taught their ideology, which will also teach them how to view everyone else’s ideologies.

Which of course is a direct contradiction to the GOP’s stated opposition to Big Govt and Cancel Culture. Also, as a resident of Hong Kong – where book bans and control of education is very much a pillar of Beijing’s current effort to stamp out all dissent and turn us all into unquestioning CCP patriots whether we like it or not – I also find it grimly ironic that the GOP delights in criticizing China for what it’s doing to HK whilst simultaneously trying to employ similar tactics in America.

But if Trump taught us anything, it’s that authoritarianism doesn't have to be consistent, or even make sense – it just has to appear to empower you and your tribe at the expense of everyone you hate.

Anyway, book bans are silly, is what I’m saying.

Read me like a book,

This is dF

Well, we all knew how that was going to go, I suppose.

And I do have a few thoughts that I have time to write down:

1. As is often the case with trials like this, people wanted this case to be about more than what it was. Liberals saw it as a referendum against an increasingly violent right-wing push for fascist white supremacy, while conservatives saw it as a referendum in favor of shooting liberal protesters. In reality, the case wasn’t a referendum on anything – it was a very narrow legal question over self defense. In this case, Wisconsin’s self defense law (like many others across the US) is permissive enough that Rittenhouse’s claim was good enough for the jury – and the prosecution wasn’t able to overcome that. For better or worse, that’s how the judiciary process works – you can’t determine a man’s guilt or innocence solely on what the sociopolitical consequences might be.

2. What Rittenhouse did that night was dangerous, stupid, malicious and likely motivated by racism. Showing up with a gun undoubtedly escalated the violence to the point where he felt he needed to use it – and it’s a fair bet he was counting on that. Like Trevor Noah, I don’t really buy that he went there genuinely hoping to defend a business – I think he went there to play cop, hoping he’d get to use his gun.

The thing is, none of that is illegal in Wisconsin, and in most of the country. Neither is deliberately putting yourself in a position where you will have to shoot people who might attack you.

(The unwritten caveat, of course, is that it helps to be white when you do these things. As much as I hate “what if” alternate-timeline arguments, it is more than reasonable to assume that if a black man showed up in Kenosha with an AR-15 to “help”, he wouldn’t have been welcomed by the police and handed a water bottle. He likely would have been shot on sight.)

So for my money, it’s worth stepping back to ponder about why this is – and why many Americans (most of them white) seem to want to live in a country where it’s legal to do what Rittenhouse did, because they clearly do.

3. Meanwhile, the even bigger problem is that the GOP is generally hailing Rittenhouse as a hero and a victim of liberal media witch hunts, and we all know why – he represents the current GOP fantasy that liberal antifa creeps who stole the election from Trump are out to kill all the white people, and (white) good guys with guns are exactly what we need to stop them. Put another way, they LOVE the idea of ordinary white Americans showing up at BLM protests and killing some of them.

And of course now this is going to get worse, because the Proud Boys and all these other pro-Trump militias and white supremacist groups and the January 6 bunch and whoever are celebrating this as a green light to open fire at the next protest that gets out of control. I take little comfort in the fact that a big chunk of the online support is probably via overseas bot farms – real mainstream conservatives are offering him internships and jobs, while others are chuffed that it’s officially legal to shoot liberal protesters as long as you yell “it’s coming right for us!” before opening fire.

4. As for the obvious question – are we now going to see more right-wing gun violence at liberal protests ? – I think we probably will, though not at the scale some people are imagining. I do think it will be limited in scope initially, similar to the Rittenhouse incident. But some more people are probably going to be killed as a result, and it may well escalate from there, especially as we get closer to the 2024 elections.

The ugly truth is that this has gone beyond the usual fringe groups of far-right extremists and neo-Nazis rattling sabres – as we found out on January 6, the GOP is mainstreaming violent rhetoric in the hopes that the hardcore guys will go out and do some in the name of defending White America from the godless non-white liberal hordes. And the more that deadly political violence becomes socially acceptable (and deemed legal under the right circumstances), the more likely we’re going to see another January 6, only this time it may well be better organized and more heavily armed.

I should add I don’t think the embracing of political violence will be limited to the right wing. The more the GOP endorses political violence, the more likely the left may respond in kind, if only in self defense (ironically). Violence is cyclical because it invites a response. I shoot your guys, you respond by shooting my guys in retaliation self defense, and over and over it goes. 

That will be Rittenhouse’s legacy, whether he understands that or not. And sadly, a guilty verdict wouldn't have changed that.

Guns are drawn,

This is dF

A while back, I posted my wrap-up assessment of Trump’s POTUS record. I usually also post my feelings about the new incoming admin, but in this case I decided to wait until the traditional 100-day mile marker, if only because my writing schedule ain’t what it used to be.

And yes, I know, 100 days is a completely arbitrary measurement, but then so is any other number, so why not?

So, let’s talk about Joe:

1. To get the obvious out of the way, Biden’s first 100 days will inevitably be compared to the preceding administration, which was essentially four years of gibbering egotistical white-supremacist fascist-adjacent word-salad alt-reality rage-tweets. So honestly, that’s a really low bar to clear.

2. As for how he’s doing so far, it’s about what I expected – a mix of reversing Trump’s more egregious executive orders and dealing with the COVID train wreck and resulting economic devastation Trump personally created and left for him to fix. And again, when you think about how things would be going now if Trump had won re-election (or successfully stolen it) Biden can only look good in comparison – unless you ask the GOP, of course, in which case, well, they’ve been inhabiting an alternate universe for years now, so who really cares.

3. There are of course plenty of people in the liberal camp who are happy that Trump is gone but unhappy that Biden is not Bernie and are angry that he is not doing everything that they imagine Bernie would be doing if he’d won, etc. And while I think it’s unrealistic to expect Biden to fix all the damage Trump did on Day 1 (or even Day 100), I would agree there are some things on Biden’s priority list that should probably be higher than they are at the moment (policing and the border crisis come to mind).

On the other hand, I do think that COVID-19 and an economic stimulus plan that helps the people that need it most should be the top priority. And sure, Biden is capable of doing more than one thing at a time, but these are deeply rooted and complex problems that will take more than a bill or an EO to deal with, and anything he does is going to make some people unhappy (and that’s excluding Republicans). It’s good to put pressure on him to keep these issues in front of him, but I don’t expect him to do it all at once.

4. Nice speech – and by “nice” I mostly mean “coherent”. Which was a nice change, as was hearing a POTUS both acknowledge the problems we face and express reasonably believable optimism that we can overcome them by working together.

That said, it's worth mentioning that Biden’s speech had its share of exaggerations and untrue statements, and he needs to be called out on those. But again, compared to the egregious firehose of lies Trump unleashed on America literally every single time he opened his mouth, Handsome Joe comes out looking pretty good.

In terms of the content … all I can really say is that it sounds good in a speech –now he has to deliver on it. As a political realist, I think that if Biden implements everything he wants, the results won’t be as good as he promises, if only because that’s been true of almost every Presidential promise ever. In any case, the GOP (especially those in the Senate) seem jolly determined to derail as much of his policies as they can. So I’m not too optimistic on that score.

And of course, the batshit GOP opposition runs deep down to the state and local govts, so I expect plenty of street-level resistance. When you’ve got close to half of the population determined not to wear masks or get vaccinated for the sole and simple reason of pwning the libs, expect things to go wrong. There’s a lot of debate over whether bipartisan compromise is advisable when one side is operating in bad faith – I don’t really have any wisdom to share on that, but I do think it’s difficult to reach a reasonable compromise with a party that bought Trump’s election fraud nonsense and openly supported Trump’s self-coup attempt until it was clear it wouldn't succeed (after which they started pretending it was no riot, or it was Antifa in disguise, or whatever).

Anyway, Joe has a lot to prove, is what I’m saying. I fully expect him to succeed in some ways and fail in others. But the outcome will still be better than a second Trump term.

5. Tim Scott’s rebuttal: lol sure.

6. Conclusion: Considering Biden has a full load just dealing with the mess Trump left behind whilst contending with a wilfully obstructionist GOP minority that delights in repeating QAnon conspiracy theories and making it even harder to vote in future elections, I think he’s doing okay. As I’ve said elsewhere, while Biden was far from my first choice in the 2020 Demo field, he’ll do. And one of my top 3 choices is his VP, so close enough. If nothing else, it’s nice to have a POTUS who seems to actually like people and care about them. Whatever you think of his politics, Biden has always struck me as an amiable and empathetic guy. If he’s faking it, he’s a master at it.

Time will tell if he blows it. But for now, he’s off to as good a start as you could hope for under the circumstances.

Steady as she goes,

This is dF

So the debate about making Washington DC a state is now a thing again, and boy do I have opinions about that. Let’s blog them!

1. I should lead off by pointing out what ought to be stupendously obvious: the argument over DC statehood is chiefly about getting more Democrats in Congress, particularly the Senate. That’s pretty much the only serious reason Republicans oppose it. And if we’re totally honest, it’s a key reason (if not the only reason) Democrats are pushing for it. So let’s not pretend that’s not what this is actually about.

2. That said, the Demo strategy is not strictly unreasonable, given the fact that Republicans have disproportionate voting power based on the number of people they actually represent. This is because of how the Senate works, so normally this shouldn’t matter, except that the GOP is currently operating in bad faith regarding almost everything these days – to include backing an insurrection against the Capitol (at least up to the point where the insurrection didn't succeed). So I understand why the Demos would want whatever edge they can get.

3. The strategy is also not unprecedented (for example, reportedly, 19^th-century Republicans supported the North/South Dakota in large part because of the Congressional gains they would get from it).

4. Strategies aside, there are a few good reasons for making DC a state – namely, the fact that residents there have no govt representation yet still pay taxes and are subject to the same federal regs as everyone else. The population is higher than some states, yet they have no say. They can vote for POTUS and VP, and that’s about it.

5. However, there also a few actual decent reasons not to do it, although they’re more like obstacles than negative outcomes.

For one thing, there’s a couple of Constitutional hurdles: (1) Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 (the clause that specifically defines DC as a federal jurisdiction and not a state), and (2) the 23^rd Amendment, which grants specific voting rights to DC. Neither of these are unfixable, but it would probably require some kind of Constitutional amendment, which would require a two-thirds majority in both houses plus 38 out of 50 state governments.

And, you know, good luck with that.

The other challenge, as I understand it, is that they might need permission from Maryland, who supplied the land that DC now occupies. And of course there’s the question of expense – DC would have the extra cost of running a state government, while the federal government would have to shell out more for things like prisons and courts.

6. So, while I personally don’t mind if DC becomes a state, I think there are significant obstacles (the GOP alone being the biggest one) that make it unlikely to happen.

7. While we’re at it, I feel the same way about Puerto Rico statehood. I’m not against it, but there are tradeoffs. For example – unlike DC – PR citizens don’t pay federal income tax. Statehood would change that, and most of the people there probably couldn't afford it.

Point being: I’m fine with adding more states, as long as everyone involved understands both the benefits and the potential disruptions, as well as the legal snags.

8. Meanwhile, here’s a great statehood math joke.

https://twitter.com/DaveGragg/status/1374091442893815811

The state I'm in,

This is dF

I am not hear to dance upon his grave, as I’m generally not into grave-dancing. Actually I normally wouldn’t post anything at all, but as a political junkie who worked in radio (to include news/talk radio around the time that Limbaugh and conservative talk radio in general was ascending*), I feel compelled to say something.

And that’s only really because of this piece by Conor Friedersdorf dunking on conservatives who have been giving Limbaugh credit for advancing conservatism in America throughout his career. Friedersdorf argues this isn’t true. Many liberals have responded along the lines of “oh yes he jolly well did”.

It’s possible many of the latter group didn’t read past the standfirst. Friedersdorf is specifically referring to “conservatism” as the political and economic ideology championed by the likes of William F Buckley and Milton Friedman – the general ideology of small govt, free trade, balanced budgets and personal responsibility. Friedersdorf argues that conservatism as defined above has been on the decline since Reagan left office, and while Limbaugh kicked off his career pushing a Reaganesque conservative agenda, he eventually abandoned it (as did the GOP in general) in favor of the current GOP ideology of culture wars, manufactured outrage, lib-pwning and the defense of Straight White Christian America at all costs.

Therefore, Friedersdorf says, Limbaugh was never the champion of conservatism that modern conservatives make him out to be.

And ... well ... okay.

But ...

The question, I suppose, is whether conservatism can be fairly and accurately defined strictly as an economy-based political ideology.

I don't think it can.

For one thing, you have social conservatism, which has been around in the US for a long time but became a serious political force in the 1960s and went mainstream during Reagan’s term, thanks in no small part to the rise of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. From that point on, the GOP spent as much time talking about traditional “family values” (and the alleged left-wing agenda to destroy them in favor of turning American children into gay Commie Satanic baby-killing multicultural dope fiends) as they did about free trade and tax cuts. By the mid-90s, social conservatism was inseparable from economic conservatism as far as GOP ideology was concerned.

While Limbaugh was never a conservative Christian in any meaningful sense, he was definitely onboard with social conservatives in terms of their basic political stances, even if he mainly used them as a way to bash liberals over the head. (Fact: Limbaugh was triggering libs before triggering libs was cool.)

Meanwhile, by the time Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution brought their Contract With America™ to Congress in 1994, the GOP had adopted a noticeably and increasingly more aggressive tone in its rhetoric – they weren’t just opposed to liberal policies, they were ANGRY about them. Anger and indignant outrage increasingly became the default setting for the GOP as the party tapped into (and encouraged) the anger, fear and frustration of their mostly white base that lived in fear of liberals turning the US into Cuba, or whatever they thought the Radical Liberal Agenda™ was. The other side of the aisle was no longer mere opposition – it was the Enemy of America. The GOP became less interested in bipartisanship and more interested in demonization, polarization and obstruction.

By perhaps no coincidence, conservative talk radio was expanding fast by exploiting that particular fear, and Limbaugh was leading that charge. Things took off from there, and now here we are in an era where the GOP is now the Trump Party that lives in a universe of alternative facts where libs are demonic anarchists who stole the election and are out to cancel white culture etc and so on.

So basically I’m not convinced by the argument that Limbaugh didn’t advance “conservatism” in the Buckley/Friedman sense, because that’s too narrow (and slightly dishonest) a definition of what “conservatism” has become. Friedersdorf kinda touches on this, and acknowledges that the GOP is no longer the party of Reagan in an economic-policy sense. But the party of Reagan was also the party of social conservatism, which Limbaugh and the GOP exploited to varying degrees of intensity for the last 30+ years to the point that the resulting culture war is now the dominant ideology. The economic side of GOP conservatism is now limited to ensuring that rich people live as tax-free as possible and this will somehow benefit the rest of us. (Spoiler: it won’t.)

Ironically, of course, many people who call themselves conservatives in the modern 21^st Century sense still tend to fancy themselves as liberty-loving tax-cutting small-govt Reaganites. But at least some of those are from the conservative intellectual crowd who lost their usefulness around the time that Sarah Palin became a household name. They’re also being disingenuous – the GOP hasn’t embraced any meaningful form of economic conservatism or fiscal responsibility for decades. Even Reagan raised taxes, and he also more than doubled both the deficit and the national debt. In my lifetime, the deficit had only even gone down during Demo admins, not Republican ones. (There are complicated reasons for this – I'm just saying.)

Limbaugh himself occasionally complained about this and went after who he considered to be RINOs. But he ultimately went along with it, I think, because the Loud Angry White Populist schtick of the GOP suited his radio style. He was always a demagogue and an outrage merchant, and he delighted in stoking white fear of a black planet under Obama. Trump was the first President to successfully trade in the kind of xenophobic white-identity insult comedy that Limbaugh had pioneered. 

Rush is often credited with countering the alleged liberal narrative of the Mainstream Media™, but it’s more accurate to say he helped create a new conservative narrative for an alternate universe that only ever made sense if you never questioned it. Which of course was part of Limbaugh’s whole brand – his loyal “dittohead” audience openly bragged about believing every word he said without question, if only to make the libs scream in frustration.

Limbaugh didn’t do that on his own, of course – he had help from fellow radio hosts, Fox News, right-wing bloggers and the GOP in general. But his dittohead army was arguably the rock upon which the Trump Party built its alt-realty church.

So in my opinion, Limbaugh didn't just help advance conservatism in America – he played a role in transforming it to the ugly hateful beast it is today.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, etc.

*FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked at a news/talk radio station from 1994 to 1996 in Southern Illinois, but we didn’t carry Limbaugh’s show. Our mainstay was Chuck Harder, who at that time tended towards centrist populism of the kind you typically heard from Ross Perot, Pat Choate and Ralph Nader. He also entertained Clinton conspiracy theories.

Radio silence,

This is dF