288 Some Thoughts on the Democrats Alleged Failure of Messaging
New student-led PAC revitalizes Democratic Party, rivals Turning Point USA – The Arizona State Press
The whole media narrative about the alleged toxicity of the Democratic brand couldn’t be more frustrating. Which is par for the course in terms of media narratives. Generally speaking media narratives are at best dubious and question begging as is the whole “the Democrats are toxic” narrative. In our Orwellian age of American politics-ie the Trumpian era-more than ever these kinds of narratives are at best misleading very often based on a completely false premise.
Like the zombie idea that Biden was weak on the border. As we discussed in Chapter Mitch McConnell and Adam Jentleson-this idea has the inconvenience of being false. Yet even many elected Democrats apparently believe this false premise. Which is problematic to say the least-if you start from a false premise you’re never going to get the a solution as the diagnosis is wrong.
In anything in retrospect it’s clearer than ever to me that much as I hate to agree with Hasan he has been proven exactly right on immigration, the real problem is that the Democrats visibly moved to the Right on immigration the last four years. What’s so frustrating about this is that while OTOH I pretty much hate Ygelsias’ “popularism”-as it’s entirely reactive and passive and falsely presumes that there’s something called PUBLIC OPINOIN that is timeless, changeless, and entirely static as if you can never seek to CHANGE public opinion-as we discussed in Chapter McConnell vs Yglesias precisely because the GOP agenda is unpopular and they know this they better understand that public opinion can be moved not to say manipulated brazenly-the further frustrating irony is that the Democrats position that supports immigration reform which includes doing something for the dreamers as well as a path to citizenship-which was clearly the position of Hillary Clinton circa 2016-is actually very popular but for some reason the Democrats decided during the Biden years that public opinion is virulently opposed to anything that smacks of humane treatment of this issue
So this is like a compound problem of the Democratic consultant class who poll test and focus group when it’s best time to go to the bathroom-OTOH popularism is a very passive and reactive theory of political engagement aka prevent defense but yet OTOH most Democratic positions are actually popular but the Dem consultant class a la Adam Jentleson cum Ezra Klein have convinced themselves of the opposite.
In fairness to Klein at the very minimum I always find his presentation engaging and I am curious to read about his “politics of abundance” even though I approach it with some significant skepticism. I do think there actually COULD BE something in his discussion of the idea of making government more EFFECTIVE-to paraphrase the cultural conservatives from the 1970s when I hear the word “efficient” I get my gun as by definition the government is SUPPOSED to have “inefficiencies”-redundancies, etc so it IS efficient in the sense of functioning. Like right now the problem is Trump-Musk have fired all these government workers making it LESS efficient-like I do think there might be something there on the issue of “NIMBYISM” etc. Certainly Klein is right that as the party of government the Democrats have to make sure government is effective-though major reason not to say the main reason is that the GOP for 59 years has done everything it can to make sure it’s not effective-aka their agenda has been to shrink the government to the point it can be drowned in the bathtub.
But I have heard him say things along the lines of 2024 was a cultural victory for the Republican party and that allegedly there are no issues that favor the Democrats right now except healthcare.
Again this is a completely flawed premise so what hope do you have of getting to an effective strategy down this road? To be sure I think this was based on some poll-again this is the problem with poll testing: you can make a poll say anything if you frame it the right way. What polls have long showed is that Americans favor the Democratic position on most issues-abortion, gun control, immigration… Yet over time the party consultants have decided gun control and immigration in particular are fraught issues for the DEMOCRATS. Yet the reality is polls have consistently shown 90% of Americans support sensible gun control, immigration reform, and 90% oppose denying abortion for a woman who was raped or in cases the life of the mother is threatened.
Yet the Democrats keep conceding ground on these issues-indeed, it’s been notable how silent the Democratic party has been about abortion post election. This stems from their tendency to assume because they lost the popular vote the country has repudiated them on every issue and everything they’ve ever said or done. Which is amazing-they lost it by 1.5% and have decided they need a lobotomy of their entire worldview yet before 2024 they had won the popular vote seven out of eight years and the GOP responded every time ultimately by DOUBLING DOWN.
FN: I should also say that on immigratoin the party’s abdication is particularly appalling now that Trump is literally kidnapping anyone he wants and transferring them out to El Salavdor-but remember they empowered him by voting for Laken-Riley.
Again what makes this so frustrating is that the Democratic agenda remains very popular-as it has done since FDR. But the party consultants believe the opposite always believe the opposite. Is it because of donors? This question of the “Bernie Bros” can no longer be dismissed out of hand as the opinions of these consultants are so wrongheaded. Ken Martin as we saw in Chapter Sometimes had vowed a reckoning for the consultant class-but have heard nothing about this happening since his election.
Indeed, as noted above the page in a screenshot of a discussion I had on Bluesky early April 4 after Trump’s destructive tariffs basically every good thing that’s happened in America both domestically and in foreign policy has been thanks to the Democratic party. There’s your “messaging.” We discussed this in Chapter McConnell and did the math.
Every time since FDR the Democrats fix the economy then the next GOP President destroys it again. Speaking of which:
It’s almost like there’s a trend.
FN
El Howieson: “OH THE WINNING 🏆🤬🤬🤬” — Bluesky
Again if you’re looking for “good messaging” how about just saying this? As Keith Olbermann would put it: you’re welcome.
Speaking of which regarding-the admittedly very premature-discussion of 2028-I mean how do we survive 45 more months of THIS?- it seems to me right now there are two kinds of Democrats: those who get it and those who don’t. And going back to Ezra Klein for the moment it’s notable to me that it’s the Democrats who don’t get it who seem to be the ones interested in “the politics of abundance”-again I’m not saying his book isn’t worth a read and I do intend to read it but then I like to read…
UPDATE: However… I was just watching CNBC and saw: Derek Thompson and was actually pretty impressed with his performance here-on a day the market is down 2000 two days after Trump begun his pointless trade war-reinforcing my suspicion that wether you agree or not this is likely a very engaging and thought provoking book.
Thompson rightly called out all the sudden anti free traders on CNBC-sure in no way are they sucking up to Trump with this poise-saying that this is good FOR THE WORKING CLASS. I do agree with his bromide against what can be aptly called the politics of scarcity.
Let’s start by looking at two Democrats who conceivably could be on a 2028 ticket: Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz. Clearly Newsom DOESN’T get it and Walz clearly does. Indeed, Newsom actually invited Walz on his podcast a few weeks ago.
(544) And, This is Governor Tim Walz | This is Gavin Newsom – YouTube
Again I did NOT come into watching Newsom’s new podcast negatively disposed towards him and unlike some I also don’t agree at all that there’s something wrong or cringe about him doing a podcast-I think that’s potentially very smart and effective. After all many of us have been arguing that the Democrats have to join the 21st century in media so how can you then criticize a leading Dem for doing his own podcast. No I’m all for that-good for him.
And it is a very good podcast stylistically and aesthetically-in terms of presentation-again Ezra Klein similarly always has excellent presentation which makes his shows very watchable even when you don’t agree. The trouble with Newsom’s show however is the content. Which is kind of important seeing as determined as he is to be the next President of the United States. Indeed, Charlie Kirk himself-Newsom’s first guest-wrote a piece on why he did the podcast and what he learned and his topline find was that Newsom “Really wants to be President.”
One zombie defense of Newsom is a defense Cenk Uyghur has made of his own knee bending sessions on Right wing radio that progressives shouldn’t be afraid to talk to conservatives. It’s not about afraid it’s just about tactics and strategy. It’s interesting that if anyone has debated a lot of conservatives in his time it’s the pretty big streamer Destiny. But he has over time concluded that often there is little to no benefit in debating conservatives-as they don’t engage in good faith debates. This beyond the-compelling in my view-argument that there are certain people you don’t want to elevate and normalize-an argument actually of the US pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty.
FN: We discuss Rorty in the Chapter on Orwell. It’s hard not to feel Rorty was the lucky one not living to see Trump’s America…
Vaush too used to debate conservatives-he like Destiny has debated Kirk and many other conservatives, indeed Vaush and Destiny used to double team conservative teams. But Vaush came to see debates with conservatives as a waste of time-again they are unprincipled and bad faith. Vaush sometimes seems to suggest that there was a time when there was some value in debating the Right but the last few years that period has expired.
I think if you as a progressive ARE going to debate conservatives you should have some idea beforehand as what you hope to achieve. The question of persuasion-like how it happens-much less the actual effectiveness of debates remains very much an open question. It’s notable that too of the top “debate bros” out there in Vaush and Destiny have come to be more skeptical-Vaush has stopped debating altogether. Destiny still does sometimes but definitely is more cautious about debates with conservatives.
I’d say that if you are going to debate conservatives at least push back. Newsom like Cenk did very little of that. Indeed if anything Cenk did do SOME very mild anodyne push back-though he also sucked up so much that it was totally neutralized and then some. Both Cenk and Newsom let Newsom troll and mock them without pushback.
But it was actually his recent interview with Bill Maher that best illustrated the problem with Newsom’s whole approach in the podcast. To crystallize this let’s begin though with Maher’s interview with Chris Cuomo-generally I never watch Chris Cuomo on purpose but it’s necessary here to frame it. Chris Cuomo’s one of the ‘contrarian sensible centrists’ of which Nate Silver admits to being a member-however unlike most of them he’s now admitting that these centrists have tended to be too complacent regarding the threat of Trump.
The base case remains that the American system is bowed but not broken. Particularly the elections component of the system. But I’ve increasingly found myself thinking that contrarian centrist types, a group of which I suppose I’m a card-carrying member, are too complacent about this, too insistent on mean-reversion and related heuristics when things clearly aren’t going well.”
FN: I discuss this article in more detail in Chapter Have a Nice Day
End FN
While Bill Maher has long been a self identified liberal it’s been clear the last few years he’s been becoming more sensible centrist who seems to think “the Left” is a bigger problem than Trump
FN: -Meanwhile Cuomo’s narrative is that ‘the Left is so much more intolerant than the Right-not if you’re trans or an immigrant or a woman who needs to have an abortion to save your life
Like in his interview with Cuomo OTOH he insisted that he’s the same guy he’s always been but then he says this:
FN: Starting at 8:48
End FN
“”…what do I really think is going to get me um I don’t think it’s Trump although I obviously have my issues i think probably the likeliest source immediately would be a car accident and after that it’s plastic and the air I breathe here in Los Angeles…”
Overall this little stream of consciousness strikes me as being incredibly privileged. I mean if Trump isn’t the biggest threat in your life you’re a fairly privileged person. Tell that to the 240 men locked up in a concentration in El Salvador with zero due process-where innocent people are locked there for not having the right tattoo. Tell it to students being snatched off of campuses because of an editorial that criticized Israel. Tell it to the seniors who are seeing their life savings crushed in Trump’s pointless trade war. Tell all the fired government workers that Trump is not such a big threat.
I mean maybe he’s not such a big threat TO YOU Bill Maher a very wealth and privileged older white dude but those with less fortunate material circumstances feel differently. To be clear calling Maher privileged is not in itself meant as an insult-it’s a positive not a normative point. In principle there’s nothing wrong with being privileged-as Gary Wills argued all those years ago back in 1979 a society NEEDS its elites. I agree with Richard Hanania-who I discussed in Chapter Have a Nice Day-and Tom Nichols that populism’s facile attack on expertise is a real problem.
What matters-as Wills argues persuasively is what you do with your privilege. For many years it had seemed that Maher while privileged was an ally of the marginalized, the working class, etc. But now despite his denials to the contrary this is no longer the case.
Which brings us to Cuomo’s last question: Maher’s-then future-dinner at the WH with Trump.
“…last question you’re going to meet with the president…”
Starting at 13:27
Bill Maher Explains Why He’s Having Dinner With Donald Trump – YouTube
Kid Rock made this, uh, grand summit happen.
“…why are you doing it which I’m totally for by the way and I love it i get it well I’m I’m doing it…”
Chris ‘Everyone is in their silo’ cum ‘the Left is more intolerant than the Right’ Cuomo doesn’t want us to for even one moment think he doesn’t LOVE THIS IDEA and Maher doesn’t want Cuomo to for one moment to have any doubts that he’s doing it-‘I love it’-‘I’m I’m doing it…’
The first reason Maher says he’s doing it-as we’ll get to in a moment he’s now already done it-was it was presented as a dare. That might not seem like the best reason to break bread at the dining room of the American Hitler-I’m sorry it’s hard to argue against the Hitler analogy after what he and DHS did in El Salvador
though if you prefer the American Mussolini-or the American Putin OR the American Netanyahu-I’m fine with that too-but it turns out this was his best reason for meeting with him-it was a dare. Wait until you hear his larger, deeper reason for meeting with Trump-it will be clear why I argue responding to a dare was this BEST reason for it.
“…just like maybe…”
Maybe-
“…this is a beginning to heal America no I…”
No I… This is such an embarrassing and narcissistic idea that even Maher is aware enough to be a little embarrassed by it-he straight away feels compelled to assure us he DOESN’T have a complex. Well I don’t know about you but I’m reassured.
“…I don’t have some sort of complex where I think I can heal America…”
Oh you don’t-certainly relieved to hear it.
“… can’t okay let’s get that clear i’m not going to be healing America but…”
I’m not going to be healing America BUT I’m uh-going to be healing America. Or at least maybe begin the healing of America?
Picking up at 14:05:
“…but if two guys who’ve been at each other for so long I mean I I it’s kind of a Nixon to China thing i have the credentials there was nobody who was harder on Trump or more precient about the fact that he wasn’t going to leave office voluntarily…”
FN: This has the inconvenience of not even passing the laugh test as Keith Olbermann laid out in his incomparable and granular way.
If I want later I can find the exact location-and wether or not this was the right show…
End FN
“… uh than I was i feel like I have the credentials uh but they also respect me…”
Do they respect him or do they know a mark when they see one?
“…because I’m honest about the woke train to Crazy…”
What’s striking is the more than casual family resemblance between Maher’s narrative here and the Cenk Uygur narrative-see Chapter Uygur-we’ve been seeing from Cenk post November 5. He like Maher talks an awful lot about the alleged “woke train to Crazy…”
Or the more than casual family resemblance between both Mayer and Cenk AND Gavin Newsom himself. Indeed what’s so interesting about Newsom is despite all the shade Cenk and his co-host Ana Kasparian throw at the California Democratic party leadership Newsom himself has been using this very same playbook-the REAL PROBLEM is the alleged intolerant Left-the Right is tolerant throwing 240 men into a concentration campa in El Salvador without even the slightest amount of due process or snatching a law student off a college campus because she wrote a NYT article critical of Israel ISN’T intolerant in the mind of Chris Cuomo-Mayer-Cenk-Ana Kasparian.
But sure-Trump and his co-conspirators really respect Maher-just like Elon Musk and Don Jr really respect Cenk and Trump met with Morning Joe and Mica soon after the election because of his deep and abiding “respect”-despite all the terrible things he had said about both of them the last few years.
Just like Cuomo and Cenk, Maher goes on and on about this tired narrative that ‘people are stuck in their silos’ why can’t we just GET ALONG? as Rodney King once plaintively asked.
A little after his interview on Chris Cuomo, Maher had Newsom himself on his show. Like Cuomo, Newsom lauded Maher’s decision. Maher started the conversation by citing another great hero of REACHING OUT TO THE OTHER SIDE-John Fetterman who himself went down to Mar-a-Lago to eat dinner with Trump-I always wondered did Fetterman pay for his meal there or not? In a way either way it doesn’t look great-or as Cillizza would put it-if the subject were Hillary Clinton’s emails-IT JUST LOOKS BAD.
“John Fetterman was in the news today. He said, “If–“Talking about the Democratic Party, he said, “If we don’t get our shit together, we’re gonna be a permanent minority.”
Gavin Newsom on “Platforming” | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Apparently, the solution is to go on bended knee to eat dinner with Trump-it’s what Fetterman did and what Maher at that point was about to do.
Newsom’s response was two words: “I agree.” I would argue this by itself is enough to disqualify him from serious consideration in 2028. It’s enough by itself for me to rule him out categorically. For the very claim that the Democrats are on the cusp of being a permanent minority party is not just an entirely flawed premise but ludicrously so.
What is the basis for such an absurd premise? Ok Trump won the popular vote-by 1.5% the smallest popular vote margin in years. This is after the Democrats had won the popular vote seven of the previous eight elections. In 2008 Obama won by 7 points and 10 million votes and McConnell vowed to make him a one term President-not unless we start doing Maddow we are going to be a permanent minority.
Meanwhile the GOP’s majority in the House is tiny-also the smallest in many years and if not for Act 10 in Wisconsin-or the chicanery of the NC GOP Supreme Court-the Dems would actually have won back the House. This is on the cusp of being a permanent minority? This is such a ludicrous take it’s disqualifying wether Newsom really believes it or not. I’d like not to insult him too much and assume he’s just gaslighting because he finds this absurd narrative somehow beneficial to himself politically. Of course this gaslighting would mean he’s a sociopath and disqualified for 2028. OTOH if he really believes such nonsense that wouldn’t say much for his intellectual judgment which would also be entirely disqualifying for Democratic nominee 2028. As Zizek says Stalin would say ‘either possibility is worse.”
FN: ?
If he honestly believes the Democrats are in imminent danger of becoming a permanent minority party-even in light to all their 2025 wins culminating in Wisconsin a few weeks ago-it’s disqualifying as he’s completely misinformed to the point that he fails the basic SAT test to be Dem nominee OTOH if he knows this is bs but says it anyway then he’s a sociopath who’s clearly not in it for the voters and he’s disqualified for that reason. Is he evil or just stupid? Either way he’s not the guy. Judging by the comments on YouTube many Democrats feel the same way.
Cuomo goes on to glaze Newsom-‘you’re doing something and I think that’s great.’
“You’ve got this podcast. You’re talking to people. You know, it’s amazing to me. That even that is controversial to some people.”
Oh gee we just want to TALK TO PEOPLE. Like Tucker Carlson just wanted to TALK TO Vladimir Putin-and channel the lies Trump and Vance have been moving like propaganda mules. Much as I hate to go here I have to reference the anti Nietzschean Communist Geoff Waite. I kind of hate to do it as I’m a liberal Nietzschean cum Zarathustrian. But he does make some important points about what to paraphrase Nietzsche you might call the uses and abuses of discourse or “just talking to people.”
FN: It’s amazing to me how expensive this book remains though it’s well worth the read. However if you’re famiiar with Waite’s work you’ll understand that this is a tactical perferene of his that this book still be priced out of the market for those who might be interested in an impulse buy
End FN
Certainly as the late great pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty-who we looked at in Chapter Orwell-argued who you choose to speak to and not speak to says a lot. Like supposedly we progressives are the ones who are “intolerant” as we won’t sit down with neo Nazis, Putinists and fascists-though I repeat myself-without preconditions.
Again as I discussed in other chapters both Vaush and Destiny-who used to be classic “Debate Bros” came to see debates with the toxic Far Right-or the toxic Tankie Left thinking of Vaush’s debate with Jackson Hinkle-as far more problematic than they had at one time. Vaush has gone 180 and now doesn’t do any debates while Destiny is still willing to he’s far more circumspect about it than he used to be and doesn’t have as many as he used to.
As Kyle Kulinski and Destiny have shown it’s possible to have conversations with toxic people like this but you have to have certain ground rules for yourself and know what you’re walking into-like the utter lack of good faith. And you have to be willing to be adversarial . Kid Roch himself had sort of teased the idea that Maher should go in and challenge Trump and cause big drama and Maher couldn’t have more tersely ruled this idea out of hand. That wouldn’t bring the country together!
Keith Olbermann documented Maher’s horror at the very thought of saying anything Trump doesn’t like-that’s not what this is about! It’s about UNITY.
FN
End FN
Newsom goes on piously to declare the country is divided between “owners and healers”
“I feel like this country is divided into owners and healers, people who think you can own the other side.” -“Gavin Newsom owned DeSantis.” -Yeah. “DeSantis destroyed Gavin Newsom.”
Newsom is above “owning”-he wants to heal you see.
“Or people who want to talk and heal. And I feel like the next president’s gonna be at least if it comes from this party the Democratic Party, someone who wants to talk and heal.”
Cuomo intones “And I feel like you’re doing that.”
To quote The Church Lady-now isn’t that special.
A few thoughts strike me by way of response to this panegyric-a word Nietzsche liked as Geoff Waite well knows.
In this world of “owners and healers” where do the marginalized people who are defenseless to fight back against Trump’s virulently lawless and authoritarian regime fit in? The trans people, the immigrants who have commit no crime yet still find themselves in a concentration camp in El Salvador, the many workers who were already living paycheck to paycheck before Trump 2.0 and the world’s most pointless trade war to say nothing of the women who Trump’s GOP co-conspirators are trying to put in prison if they had abortions-or even miscarriages? These same women who the “Savers Act” which just passed the GOP House-with four Democratic voters looks to disenfranchise.
Jared Golden-who in July 2024 declared ‘Trump is going to win and it won’t do democracy any harm’-blithely declared that requiring only citizens to be allowed to vote is “just common sense”-nothing about the fact that this is already the law and there is no predicate for this bill that this explanation is just pretextual-the real goal is to prevent women who changed their names-which is a large percentage of adult women from being able to vote.
Just common sense-and if that disenfranchises millions of women from voting he’s going to lose no more sleep over it than when Trump won the election.
Where do these folks fit in Gavin’s world of “owners and healers?”
The second thought that strikes me-well let’s continue with the Newsom-Maher show-Newsom is almost hyperventilating:
“I mean, this idea that we can’t even have a conversation with the other side.”
The very idea! Maher then responds with a rather shockingly facile rejoinder: You have to. They won.”
But that’s just it-why do you have to speak to them just because they won a very narrow election? Never one time in the previous seven out of eight elections we won did the Republicans come out of it saying ‘We simply must speak to Rachel Maddow-we have to they won.”
“Or the notion that we just have to continue to talk to ourselves or we’re in the same damn echo chamber. These guys are crushing us.”
But again, that’s the thing-they’re really not crushing us. This is a false premise which is why Newsom-wether he believes this false premise or not has disqualified himself undermined his chances in a few episodes of his podcast. They’re not crushing us at the electoral level-where they are crushing us is with the Supreme Court-from Bush v Gore to McConnell to Dobbs to Chevron. Or James Comey electing Trump in 2016. But that’s at another level that Democrats like Newsom act as if they’re wholly unaware of. But at the electoral level they have NOT BEEN CRUSHING US quite the opposite. Now the problem is they’ve been able to pass their agenda despite winning the popular vote for just the second time since 1988-both wins were total squeakers.
But if you think we have something to learn from them because they won the popular vote in the 2024 election-while completely forgetting we’d won the popular vote seven of the previous eight elections then look at what they do? They stick to their own echo chamber on Fox News or on social media and win without in any way shape or form “reaching out to the other side.’
The big STRATEGIC and TACTICAL problem-we discussed the principled problem above-with Newsom’s “owners vs healers” framing is that the GOP is clearly a party of owners and to the extent they win they win by owning NEVER by healing.
Like Maher claimed that he wanted to eat dinner with Donald Trump to in somehow start the HEALING PROCESS. Again healing for who? For the relationship between Trump and Maher two extremely rich and privileged older White men? Or for the millions of Americans suffering under the fascist Trumpian boot-to say nothing of the many being hurt by the Trumpian regime abroad-the Ukrainians he’s betrayed, all those losing the promises we’d made them through USAID, etc
After the great Trump-Maher Summit-move over Yalta or Reagan-Gorbachev Kyle Kulinski on Secular Talk quoted from Trump official that they figured that after Maher spoke to Trump he was less likely to criticize Trump as much in the future. Just like with Cenk it was obvious to everyone but him that he was being played for a propaganda win by Charlie Kirk and Friends so it was with Maher who alone pretended not to see this is what Trump got out of their dinner.
The first public accounting we got of the Trump-Maher cum Kid Rock Summit was from-aptly enough-Kid Rock. Kyle played his video for a few minutes.
REVEALED: The TRUTH About Bill Maher’s Dinner With Trump | The Kyle Kulinski Show
What was notable was that it brought the Cenk Syndrome back to mind. Kid Rock noted that Maher was absolutely bowled over at the invitation. That he was absolutely on cloud nine over it came out in his Cuomo interview we looked at above. Maher apparently commented that he had spent thousands of dollars donating to Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama but was never invited to the WH unlike with Trump. This was similar to what happened to Cenk after Musk answered ONE Of his tweets where Musk said ‘we can look at’ cuts to the Pentagon-which in any case have not happened. But Cenk too noticed he never got this kind of response from Democrats.
Which yet again shows that it’s not principles and values motivating the Why I Left the Left folks it’s personal pique. As Kyle argues it’s pretty much impossible to believe that Maher gives a damn about policy or principles while “you know giggle and hold hands and sing Kumbaya and caress his cheek under the moonlight what’s the point of that and people pretend like this is some acceptable thing to do…”
Starting at 8:35
As he argues in reality everyone draws some line on who they would meet and socialize with:
“…should you uh you know hold hands and sing kumbaya with a serial killer who murdered 34 people skinned them alive and then ate them or would you say you know what I’ll pass on that…”
One thing Trump clearly understands is that silence equals consent and tacit acceptance. The fact that Maher doesn’t mention say Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia who Trump keeps locked up in a concentration camp in El Salvador despite him being innocent-just a few days ago even Trump’s Supreme Court ruled that he should bring Garcia back yet he continues to defy the court order-implicitly says he doesn’t care TOO MUCH about him.
Kyle finishes with a crucial point that goes to the motivation of this entire production-a political propaganda win just like when Cenk went on bended knee to Charlie Kirk, Tim Pool or Anna Kasparian bending the knee to Glenn Beck-Beck had oohed that ‘we’re finally in the cook kid’s club’-again it’s about personal vanity not principle.
This part starts at about 11 minutes in and unfortunately starts with the always unctuous and obnoxious Jesse Waters: “that’s why I never want to meet AOC it’ll make it harder for me to ridicule her.”
Kyle Kulinski observes: “that point is actually super important that’s so important now that Mah met with Trump it’s going to be harder for him to criticize him.”
In case there was any doubt about this last night we finally heard directly from Maher himself and it’s pretty striking how right Kyle turned out to be on this score as Maher espresses amazement that Trump was entirely “gracious and measured.” Wish I was kidding.
Not the same man seen on tv. Was he “the same man on tv” who ambushed Zelensky? Or crashed the world economy with harmful tariffs? How about Signalgate? Did “the man on tv” preside over Signalgate? How about kidnapping a young engineering graduate student for the sin of criticizing the state of Israel in an editorial? Or kidnapped 240 men many of them running from political oppression in Venezuela and locking them up in a concentration camp in El Salvador?
That Trump was “gracious and measured” is the opposite of a surprise-of course he was as he knew he had Maher in his back pocket.
“Real Time” host Bill Maher revealed details Friday of his meeting last week with President Donald Trump at the White House, saying Trump was more gracious and good-humored than he expected.
“You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured,” Maher said. “And why isn’t that in other settings- I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw, and I wasn’t high.
What hero he is right what a truth teller. It’s the opposite of difficult to answer-Trump knew he was a mark and therefore could afford to be gracious and measured-why he’s not this way in other settings is because he was just pretending to be nice as there was a political benefit for him.
Maher mocked those who treated the White House visit like it was “some kind of summit” brokered by their mutual friend Kid Rock, calling them “ridiculous.”
“I have no power. I’m a f—ing comedian, and he’s the most powerful leader in the world!” Maher exclaimed. “I’m not the leader of anything, except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there’s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.”
Yep that was the problem during the Holocaust too-Hitler killed too many Jews while liberals hated Hitler too much for killing too may Jews. Both sides were equally wrong.
The HBO host expressed his surprise about how Trump laughs, something he said he had never seen him do in public, telling his audience, “He does, including at himself.”
“And it’s not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it,” Maher said.
Maher credited Trump for being “much more self-aware than he lets on in public,” revealing the subject of the 2020 election came up during his tour of the White House and that he “didn’t get mad” how Maher brought up Trump’s rare admission that he had lost.
Maher himself is the opposite of self-aware here. The fact that Trump acknowledges he lost 2020 is even worse-there are many credulous pundits even today who insist that Trump “really believes” he won in 2020. Of course, 90 years ago Gobbels himself explained the “conundrum”:
TOP 25 QUOTES BY JOSEPH GOEBBELS (of 105) | A-Z Quotes
Despite it all MAGA still hates Maher-Laura Loomer still says he’s a “poopyhead”
So he accomplished nothing other than cucking himself just like Cenk and Ana just like Gavin Newsom himself has been doing. And similarly Gavin Newsom has accomplished nothing-no worse than that. He didn’t just fail to gain ground he lost ground. This is what he did in his first podcast interview against Far Right Charlie Kirk.
Again there’s this striking paradox where OTOH he insists that we have to learn from the Far Right because “they’re kicking our ass” yet OTOH he not here to “OWN THEM.” I mean these two sentences are contractionary:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the point of his new podcast is not to “go viral” or “own the conservatives” by winning any debates. Instead, the Democratic politician said his new podcast is about “exploring” what Republicans think — and why their message resonated with more voters during the 2024 election.”
“It’s just exploring the other side. Why are they kicking our ass?” Newsom said in an interview with Semafor out Sunday. “Why are these guys so successful? They are. I mean, I’m sorry, Democrats, they are.”
Newsom launched his podcast, aptly dubbed “This Is Gavin Newsom,” earlier this month. So far, he has had several conservative guests on, including Steve Bannon and commentator Charlie Kirk. The host told the outlet his goal is merely to talk to the other side of the political aisle with his new show.
“I’m not trying to own the conservatives like these guys try to own the libs. I’m not trying to go in and kick their ass and get a viral moment,” Newsom said. “I’m not trying to be that guy.”
But again as I noted above while I might disagree with just to what extent they are truly kicking our ass to the extent you want to understand how they won in 2024 they DO seek to OWN THE LIBS NOT an Obamaesque ‘dialogue for the sake of dialogue.’
The GOP never confesses to any interest in “breaking out of our silos” so they can “talk to the other side.” The GOP strategy very clearly is to own the libs, not understand them.
But again it’s worse than that as Newsom threw trans people under the bus in an apparent bid ingratiate himself to Kirk.
Still, the governor did go somewhat viral when he had Kirk on his show; Newsom said he “totally” agreed with Kirk that transwomen should not play in women’s sports — breaking with Democrats on the hot-button issue.” “I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness — it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom told Kirk. “I am not wrestling with the fairness issue.”
Really, he’s not wrestling on fairness? Because deadnaming and discriminating against trans women hardly sounds fair.
He further said, at the same time, it is possible to not “talk down to vulnerable communities” and also treat people with “decency.”
Oh-so he thinks it’s possible to “not talk down to vulnerable communities” while deadnaming and discriminating against them?
Newsom’s willingness to talk to conservatives has led to some criticism from his Democratic base, he noted, for failing “some ideological purity test.” Still, he told Semafor that having these conversations is important because progressives can typically come across “so f–king judgmental.”
There’s literally no ideological purity test. In a sense it’s folks like Newsom-to say nothing of Cenk Uyghur-who have created the “ideological purity test” that the only way Democrats can supposedly win another election is by throwing trans people under the bus-while NOT talking down to them presumably.
It’s also rather surreal to hear that it’s not folks like Nancy Mace trying to ban trans women from bathrooms who are “so f-king judgmental” but those of us who just think they should get the same civil rights any other citizen is entitled to. This entire narrative is simply upside down. Neither was this simply a no gainer-it was more like a pick 6
Gavin Newsom Gave California Republicans Ammo to Try to Pass Anti-Trans Bills
Interestingly there was an article in The Hill just yesterday that asked the question:
“Will Gavin Newsom be the heroic sheriff of Democratville?”
Will Gavin Newsom be the heroic sheriff of Democratville?
The short answer at this point is no-quite the opposite.
The problem is he doesn’t understand the assignment.
“Everyone, including me, has a podcast now—so it’s hard to begrudge Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, for indulging his God-given right to produce audio content. “This Is Gavin Newsom” is five episodes into its run and, outside of a four-minute emergency update on the Menendez brothers’ trial and a lengthy conversation with Governor Tim Walz, each episode has featured Newsom interviewing right-wing figures, namely Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage, and Steve Bannon. The point of all this, Newsom explains in an introductory segment, is “tackling tough questions, engaging with people who don’t always agree with me, debating without demeaning.” Newsom seems to believe that regular Americans have grown tired of polarization and want to see ideological enemies find common ground.”
What Gavin Newsom’s Embarrassing Podcast Suggests About the Democratic Party | The New Yorker
That is NOT what Democratic voters want-quite the opposite. And I should know as I’m a lifelong Democratic voter who voted for Bill Clinton in my first election and have voted Blue ever since. Democratic voters don’t want our leaders to break bread with Far Right fascists we want to defeat them.
This is what Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark found in her always impressive focus groups-there is in fact little difference between “centrist” and “Progressive” Democratic voters-they all just want Democrats who honestly are as freaked out and angry about Trump as they are.
This is why Cory Booker’s record setting filibuster struck such a cord among Dem voters-also it seems to me at least something of a cord with his Dem colleagues in the Senate. Many Democrats were just happy to finally see someone in the party taking the moment with some sense of urgency rather than just another day of coffee and donuts.
(581) Democratic *voters* feel like they know how to respond to Trump – YouTube
The tendency of the conventional wisdom seeing the divide as “moderate vs left” misses the fact that both want to see a fighter rather than any particular ideological checklist-which belies Newsom’s assertion that this is about an ideological purity test.
But as the New Yorker documents what Newsom has been doing is literally the opposite of what voters in his own party want-maybe his ambition is to follow the Jeb Bush strategy-losing the primary to winning the general we saw how well that worked out.
I’ll be blunt: Up until the Walz episode (more about that in a moment), “This Is Gavin Newsom” was the strangest political podcast I had ever heard. And not in a good way. In the first four episodes, Newsom seems incapable of interrogating any right-wing position—whether on tariffs, book bans, trans women in sports, wokeness, or the mess at the border. It feels like a stretch to even describe these episodes as interviews, because Newsom sounds fairly uninterested in what his guests are saying. Bannon, for example, says more than once to Newsom that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. And, though Bannon acknowledges in passing that Newsom disagrees with him about the election-fraud claim, Newsom offers zero pushback to the idea and acts almost as if he didn’t hear it.”
What the episodes really offer is an opportunity for Newsom to say that he agrees with various conservative talking points, including the unfairness of trans women competing in sports, and the weakness of Kamala Harris’s campaign, and the unnecessary vilification of the white male. These may be electoral soft spots for liberals, and might warrant some debate or even a shift in messaging. But Newsom doesn’t offer his own thoughts on these topics so much as nod along with his guests. He makes a few meek objections about marriage equality and tax policy, and says something brief about having compassion for the trans athletes whom he believes should not be allowed to compete. But the impression that the podcast has left so far is that the Democratic governor of a deep-blue state mostly agrees with everything Kirk and Bannon think about this country. Throughout the episodes, he claims to “appreciate” this or that point his guests are making—so much so that Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, later said, on his own podcast, that he thought Newsom had been “overly effusive.” When Newsom offered the occasional rebuttal, he kept saying that he wanted to “stress-test” a claim that Kirk had made, as if Newsom, the fifty-seven-year-old governor of the most populous state in the country, were a McKinsey consultant giving cautious advice to a powerful client who didn’t want to hear any real criticism.”
As Newsom-and Cenk-is so eager for Democrats to agree with Charlie Kirk I agree with Kirk here: he certainly was “overly effusive” to say the least. This New Yorker piece does a great job of describing exactly the kind of Democratic consultant strategy that so many Dem voters have come to know and hate.
With his eyes presumably on that prize, Newsom is distancing himself as much as possible from the progressive wing of his party, and from any unpopular positions that his political allies might have adopted in the past decade. This attempt at reinvention has, so far, failed: the show has been panned by local and national media; Capitol Weekly, a news outlet that mostly covers Sacramento, conducted a poll showing a ten-point negative swing in opinions of Newsom among voters who listened to the podcast. Republicans said he was “pandering,” while many liberals were disgusted that Newsom would bend the knee to someone such as Kirk, particularly with such shameless enthusiasm.”
As I discussed above my reaction was very similar to the voters Capitol Weekly polled-I was actually open to the idea Newsom could be our heroic “Democratic sheriff” until I listened to his podcast-so much for first do no harm.
Newsom’s gambit, though ill-fated and embarrassing in practice, does come out of a coherent school of liberal thought, one that I find much more interesting than his Presidential chances. This school of thought seems to take it as a given that Democrats need to actively distance themselves from a whole host of positions that are now associated with the Party. Where does a politics of pure disavowal lead? In a few years’ time, will Newsom get up on a stage in Iowa and offer up a mantra of land-acknowledgment-like apologies? I can picture it: “I, Gavin Newsom, acknowledge and apologize for my party’s past support for trans athletes, open borders, defunding the police, school closures during a pandemic, the word ‘Latinx,’ and the Presidential campaign of Kamala Harris.” Would anyone like that?”
What’s so frustrating about this premise is as I discussed in Chapter Roger Stone Mitch McConnell Democratic positions on policy issues are popular but so many elected Dems like Newsom apparently believe the opposite. Throughout the years we’ve seen the Democrats back away from more and more allegedly “unpopular positions” when the opposite is true-gun control and immigration reform continue to poll at 90% as for abortion only 10% of the country agrees with all the red states and districts post Dobbs where abortion is illegal even in cases of rape and the life of the mother.
So while I don’t know who the 2028 candidate will be I can say pretty confidently Newsom is not the guy. As New Yorker accurately notes Walz seems far more likely as a 2028 candidate. YES because unlike Newsom Walz understands the assignment. Notice that his diagnosis of why the Dem ticket that he was part of lost is the 180 degrees from Newsom-Cenk and Friends:
WALZ: We let them define the issue on immigration. We let them define the issue on DNI — DEI, and we let them define what woke is.
We got ourselves in this mess because we weren’t bold enough to stand up and say, you’re damn right we’re proud of these policies. We’re going to put them in and we’re going to execute them.
This is good-really good-because he’s not talking about retreat like Newsom and Friends, he’s not repudiating every position the Democrats have ever had. And quite honestly we need to become the party of immigration again-Biden did many good things but his four years correlated with the Democrats concluding for some mysterious reason that Trump was right about everything-when he wears that hat he’s not right though apparently Newsom thinks he is.
“And what I’m saying is, are we going to turn away from being a country of legal immigration? Are we going to turn away from a country that thinks diversity and making sure that we don’t have gaps in income between blacks and whites? Those are policies that have strengthened America.”
FN: With Trump immigration which is beneficial economically has been repudiated while world wide trade wars have been brought back and they’re terrible for the economy. All the worst people and ideas have won with the rise of Trump.
End FN
And I think what we allowed ourselves to do is, we got timid. And then, when we got power, we didn’t pass things that improved people’s lives. This whole idea — I think the Democratic Party gets theoretical. We talk about food insecurity. People are hungry. Get them food. People don’t have a house. Make sure they have a living wage.
That’s the point that I’m saying is. FOX News will glorify, oh, he’s for DEI. Not your definition of DEI. My definition is rule of law that’s fair, that everybody gets an opportunity. And that’s the point I think we have to make.”
What I really like about this is he’s being contrarian Newsom to the contrary comes across as a guy who poll tests everything. The narrative is we lost because of “the woke.” But what voters actually want is for Democrats to be defiant against these bad narratives. Like I love what that former Labor MP-Alstair-on The Rest if Politics says-that he’s anti anti woke. Amen. We need to say immigration is good actually. Yet we have someone like Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia being falsely held in a concentration camp in El Salvador and you got Dems fretting that speaking out “doesn’t poll well.”
While Newsom as far as I’m concerned has disqualified himself-and I had prior to his “overly effusive” podcast considered him a possible 2028 nominee-others have also undermined their own chances including Gretchen Whitmer alas. Part of me feels like I get it-her heart is in the right place. Nevertheless this is not what we want to see in a leader.
An excellent Washington Post article asked why are the Demos pulling their punches on Trump’s disastrous trade war?Opinion | Why are Democrats pulling their punches on Trump’s disastrous trade war? – The Washington Post
Probably for the same reason they’ve pulled their punches about Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia being falsely held in a concentration camp in El Salvador. There was also an article in the NYT about Whitmer’s recent embarrassing photo when she was visiting Trump in the Oval Office.
Whitmer Shows How Democrats Are Playing With Fire in Cozying Up to Trump – The New York Times
At first glance I had thought Trump had just set her up-she wanted to discuss an important issue facing her state but instead set her up for the photo op-while he signs EO attacking those who dare critiicze his 1/6 lies. But on second glance it’s even worse than this. Far worse.
“These governors — exemplified by Ms. Whitmer but also including Gavin Newsom of California, Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Kathy Hochul of New York — have met with the president in the Oval Office, fielded his phone calls and toned down their language toward him.”
While part of me feels like she’s just trying to do the best she can for her state-she figures by sucking up she can avoid the fate of Democrats like the Maine Governor who Trump has done reprisals against. But even while I can understand this intellectually it’s NOT what we want in a 2028 nominee.
UPDATE: Krugman nails it though I’d quibble with one thing:
Donald Trump’s tariffs are bad economics. They’re also bad politics. I’m not an expert on issue polling, but public opposition to the Trump tariffs looks extraordinary. It’s especially amazing when you bear in mind that many Republicans would support him if he said that the sky was green and all this blue stuff was a deep state conspiracy. Associating yourself with those tariffs in any way is tying yourself to an anchor that has just been thrown overboard.
So Democrats need to stop giving Trump cover. They shouldn’t be saying, as Gretchen Whitmer unfortunately did, that they can understand Trump’s motivation. Similarly, Shawn Fain, president of the United Autoworkers, has done his members a disservice by endorsing Trump’s auto tariffs: Republicans don’t care about helping workers, so all he has done is throw away credibility.”
(14) Democrats Shouldn’t Support Tariffs – Paul Krugman
Fain never had any credibility for those who have been paying attention-remember he actually attended Trump’s convention and refused to endorse Kamala Harris-which drew the ire of much of his rank and file union membership. In fact it’s pretty hard to think of anything he’s been willing to criticize Trump for the last almost three months which is pretty remarkable as there are so many things. But Krugman is right-enough of this “Yes-BUT” stuff. But nothing this trade war against the entire world is a terrible policy full stop.
Neera Tanden gets it
“Democrats from the center to the left believe Trump is an autocrat who represents an existential threat to democracy and our rights,” said Neera Tanden, the chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a top liberal think tank. “They expect their leaders to meet the moment by fighting his dictatorial attacks, not placate, negotiate or assuage because doing so makes him stronger and bully others more.”
Exactly even if Gretchen’s gambit works in getting better treatment for the Michigan auto industry at the margins it further entrenches his abusive power. Voters want Democrats to fight and they’re right to want it.
Post November 5 there have been Democrats who get it and those who don’t. Certainly Chris Murphy gets it
Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) / X
As does Al Green
Al Green promises Trump’s impeachment within 30 days
My only complaint is that he’s the only Democrat talking about impeachment seeing that Trump has easily committed 100 separate impeachable offenses.
UPDATE: Dems need to hurry up the Texas Libertarian party is lapping them on impeachment
Donald Trump Impeachment Resolution Issued in Texas
I have no idea if she plans to run in 2028 again-many assume she won’t. But if she does this is the way-I disagree with the conventional wisdom that this was somehow “the wrong message.”
Just can’t get enough of it-she’s so great. What this country lost is incalculable
Again there has been a lot of theater criticism from pundits-much has been made that Walz has supposedly taken a “different stance.” But again if the name of the game is to actually represent the voters who are currently giving the party leaders only 28% approval rating then she nailed it here-as this accurately represents how many of us feel. We DID try to warn folks they insisted that we were “cringe” #ResistanceLibs and now they have #FAFO. Now you hear all these Trump supporters expressing shock-you even have shock on Wall Street and Silicon Valley-heck, Trump has been terrible even for Elon Musk’s interests. He #FAFOed too.
Scott Sumner-who’s predictions have often fared pretty well-argued against ruling out a Kamala comeback circa 2028.
PPS. Everyone has assumed that Kamala Harris is done. But if we see high inflation and recession in 2025 (which is not at all certain, BTW), this clip will run 1000 times in 2028. She can also say, “The Republicans imposed the biggest tax increase in American history, which fell especially hard on working class people, while cutting taxes on billionaires.” And these videos are always fun. BTW, Matt Yglesias has been killing it on twitter—pretty close to peak internet. Marginal Revolution has also had great stuff.”
Heck I myself could watch this clip 1000 times-and probably will.
UPDATE: For some reason the link to Yglesias’ Xitter feed no longer works but-Thank God-I found Kamala’s montage on YouTube
(582) They Didn’t Listen. Now Everyone’s Feeling It. – YouTube
Everyone is feeling it-ironically even Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk.
Finally let’s finish this chapter with-Zizek. Heck I already linked to Geoff Waite so it seems apropos.
I guess at this point I’ve pretty much forgiven him for his quasi “endorsement” of Trump 2016-mostly.. Fitting for me to finish with him considering that I discovered him THROUGH Geoff Waite’s great magnum opus-the magnum opus of all magnum opuses published in 1995.
Zizek comes from a Marxist-Leninist background-putting it mildly-but he’s always been a favorite writer of mine for years in terms of his use of Lacanian psychoanalysis for political analysis. Indeed it’s hard not to feel like his “endorsement” of Trump was the typical leftist mania for differentiating themselves from liberals-a historical watershed being the 1928 Comintern when Stalin directed Marxists not to fight against Hiter via electoral means-the Social Democrats were “social fascists” etc.
As I started to read him here, I had some mixed feelings:
Liberal critics regularly accuse Trump of a dictatorial style, characterized by improvised, contingent decisions: Trump proclaimed a state of emergency, which allows him to rule through executive orders, bypassing Congress and the Senate, as well as debates with members of his own party. It is true that he runs the show like a monarch, but I don’t think this is the problem—the problem lies in the nature of the measures he is imposing.”
I mean the content of what liberals want is the opposite of Trump. Yet the more I think about it the more I realize he does have a point:
In our epoch, when the standard multiparty liberal democracy repeatedly displays its inability to cope with the catastrophic prospects we are all confronting, and when more and more people are retreating into apolitical depression, a dictatorial figure—a new Master—is needed:
“The master is the one who helps the individual to become subject. That is to say, if one admits that the subject emerges in the tension between the individual and universality, then it is obvious that the individual needs mediation and thereby an authority in order to progress on this path. The crisis of the master is a logical consequence of the crisis of the subject. One has to renew the position of the master; it is not true that one can do without it, even and especially in the perspective of emancipation. This capital function of leaders is not compatible with the predominant ‘democratic’ ambience, which is why I am engaged in a bitter struggle against this ambience (after all, one has to begin with ideology).”1
We have to fully accept this fact: left to ourselves, we are not free but enslaved by our spontaneous prejudices manipulated by mass media. A master is needed—not so much to tell us what we want or what is really good for us—but to deliver a simple message: *“You can!”* You can reach beyond yourself and achieve what appears impossible. The large majority—including myself—wants to remain passive and rely on an efficient state apparatus to guarantee the smooth running of society so that we can pursue our work in peace. Walter Lippmann wrote in *Public Opinion* (1922) that the herd of citizens must be governed by “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond locality.” This elite class acts as a machinery of knowledge that circumvents democracy’s primary defect: the impossible ideal of the “omni-competent citizen.”
WHY THE REAL DANGER LIES BEYOND THE OBSCENE CLOWN
Zizek has truly the best cartoon image of Trump ever:
Perfect encapsulation of him.
Zizek now delves into a point he’s been making in some form or another for 40 years-since he first started publishing all those books in the 1980s-EEFORE the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course we now know that at the same time he was writing The Sublime Object of Ideology the Russians were already cultivating Trump to run for President-Chapter Russia First.
The Sublime Object of Ideology: Zizek, Slavoj: 9780860919711: Amazon.com: Books
But there is truth in it. Indeed the point about the “omni-competent citizen” is something that Hitler-of all people-took advantage of in Mein Kampf. I have to admit that I did read a little of it recently and was struck that some of his critiques of democracy were pretty apropos. These are some of democracy’s “contradictions?”
This is how our democracies function—with our consent. There is no mystery in what Lippmann was saying; it is an obvious fact. The mystery lies in our knowing this yet still playing along. We act as if we are free and freely deciding while silently accepting—indeed demanding—that an invisible injunction (inscribed into our very form of free speech) tells us what to do and think. This is why a proper politician does not merely advocate for people’s interests; it is through him that they discover what they “really want.” For individuals to “reach beyond themselves,” breaking out of representative politics’ passivity and engaging as direct political agents, reference to a Leader becomes necessary—a Leader who enables them to pull themselves out of stagnation like Baron Münchhausen lifting himself by his own hair.”
And now he touches on a very crucial point-FDR was this sort of leader.
Was Franklin Delano Roosevelt not exactly such a leader? He largely ignored Congress and made decisions relying on a narrow circle of advisers; he sought to directly address and mobilize people (recall his evening live radio addresses). Although there are significant differences between Roosevelt and Trump,2 both acted similarly by imposing radical breaks in U.S. society’s functioning: Roosevelt’s New Deal versus Trump’s MAGA. Of course, they moved in opposite directions: what Trump is doing largely undoes the welfare state. Roosevelt’s policies resulted in significant industrial growth and international aid (e.g., the Marshall Plan after World War II), making the U.S. even richer. Roosevelt was also a “militarist” who, against majority opinion, led America into war; exploding military investments were not steps toward fascism but helped drag Europe out of inertia and triggered economic renaissance.
The U.S. truly overcame its Great Depression only after 1940 through military mobilization—by 1945, even non-military production reached its highest levels. Today, both the U.S. and Europe need Roosevelt-like mobilization. Modern-day pacifists dangerously resemble pre-1942 American pacifists financed by Nazi Germany—the aggressor always opposes its victim’s militarization.”
YES-and the striking symmetry with the pro Russian propagandists of the Far Left and Far Right starting in the 2016 election-heck starting before that and as I argued in Chapter Useful idiots, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were part of this though many still fail to appreciate it, indeed Zizek himself has wrongly lauded them as heroes for years when they are the opposite-Snowden is a Russian citizen for God’s sake. You think Putin would give him that if he WASN’T getting A LOT from him?
But we’ve seen the agitprop of the Grayzone types claim that the “prowar” side is those who support Ukraine while the “pacifist dove” side is those who side with Russia. Clearly the Russian apologists of today are the direct descendants of the German apologists of the 1930s. To be sure there has also been a rise of outright WWII revisionism-those who claim Churchill not Hitler were the real “villain” of WW2.
Matthew Yglesias on X: “Hitler bad, Vandals good https://t.co/Dl3m8IU2Vq” / X
But as Zizek references this was the position of the American Right in the WWII years-and beyond. This was the view of Joe McCarthy-that the US fought on the wrong side in WWII.
Regarding the analogy of FDR-Trump that’s the whole point: Trump is the anti FDR, Counter FDR his goal is to destroy what FDR created. As I’ve argued elsewhere in this book 1965 remains the nadir of US liberalism when LBJ coming off a landslide victory signed the Voting Rights Act and passed the New Deal. Since then liberalism has mostly been on defense-there have been some wins-Obama 2008 who would pass ACA and the CFPA-but now Musk and Friends are seeking to destroy Elizabeth Warren’s agency-and the ACA.
Bernie himself said that Biden was the most progressive President since LBJ FDR-as a child of the 60s Left Bernie can’t bring himself to say LBJ. While Biden did many great things-the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, was the first President to ever marched on the picket line with labor-he didn’t do what was necessary to ensure Trump didn’t come back and now it remains to be seen how much of Biden’s legacy is left standing.
And this remains the problem with the process obsessed establishment liberals that run the Democratic party today who can’t countenance ever coloring outside the lines. It’s notable that Trump accomplished far more within a few days for his fascist agenda than Biden did in four years for liberalism at least on the level of personnel-and as AOC says personnel is policy yet after four years Biden still hadn’t fired Louis DeJoy. He would also never fire the Secret Service’s Tony Ornato or James Murray-despite having good reason after the supposed “accidental” deletion of the 1/6 texts. As for Christopher Wray while Biden failed to fire him Trump fired him before even getting into office-and Wray obliged rather than fighting it as he should have.
The paradox then is that we liberals need our own version of Trump in a sense-we need paradoxically a Liberal Dictator. Someone willing to use Trumpian means for liberal ends. Indeed contrary to those leftists who dismiss Ezra Klein’s “politics of abundance” as new bottles for the old wine of neoliberalism it’s become clearer to me that this is another way of framing his argument-government itself has been “overregulated” government itself needs to be unrestrained-to act in the public interest for liberal ends.
Indeed in other chapters I linked and discussed Marx’s 18th Brumaire of Louise Bonaparte
18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx 1852
RemainInHell agued that Bonapartism was the solution to the gridlock of French democracy in the 1840s. Find link.
Another way to put it is liberals want and need their own version of Bonapartism
But at this point liberalism has been on defense for 60 years-more or less ever since Reagan’s GE speech attacking liberalism at the 1964 convention. What the Democratic voters really want then is this Liberal Dictator. You see this in the support of the liberal progressive base for ANY sign of the Democrats playing a tougher game-Booker’s speech was enough to put him on the map for 2028, indeed after Booker’s history making speech none other than GOP pollster Frank Luntz argued his speech may well have changed the course of history
Indeed I myself wondered if this could be Booker’s version of Obama’s 2004 convention speech-which elected him.
What’s ironic is the water if very warm and there are $500 dollar bills for ambitious Democratic politicians all over the sidewalk. But who will answer the call? Tim Walz? AOC? Chris Murphy? Booker? OR Kamala Harris runs again-as someone who supported her since 2017 I’d be all for it so long as she gets the memo. Again IMO her first big mistake was stopping the crowd from chanting #LockHimUp-again Dem voters to put it simply want someone who hates Trump as much as they do. Someone else no one’s even talking about right now? Things have never been so wide open if someone will just scoop up the $500 dollar bills.
UPDATE this tweet yesterday by Voice of Reason says it all:
Voice of Reason on X: “Democratic Party https://t.co/8Xo1ozB78f” / X
In that vein Senator Chris Van Hollen demonstrates the kind of leadership we need
I've been clear: if President Bukele doesn't want to meet here in D.C., then I intend to go to El Salvador this week to check on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's condition and discuss his release.Kilmar was illegally ABDUCTED and deported by the Trump Admin. He must be brought home NOW.
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@vanhollen.senate.gov) 2025-04-15T02:05:40.653Z
UPDATE: Great hearing from President Biden again-this too is good as far as I’m concerned-and please save the talk about age-if he were legally dead I’d still take him at the Resolute Desk-and he’s far from dead indeed the talk of “cognitive decline” was greatly exaggerated and what he says is self evidently true and it is breathtaking.
UPDATE: Last night Senator Van Hollen demonstrated that pressure works and hopefully this is a lesson that other Democrats learn as Jamelle Bouie points out for any Dem with higher political ambitions this is where the bread is buttered not in Newson’s war against “woke”-rather the war against Trump.
Any Dem with any pretensions for 2028 should take this point to heart
fame, recognition and political power are all sitting there, waiting for democrats to take advantage of the moment!
OTOH any Dem suggesting this is a “distraction” should be primaried out of the party
The politics of the Kilmar Abrego García fight
UPDATE:
Jamie Raskin on the virtues of a shadow hearing
Mr. Raskin said it was “just as good or even better” than an official hearing Democrats could convene if they were in the majority because “we don’t have to waste our time hearing propaganda from Republicans.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/us/politics/democrats-trump-resistance.htm\
UPDATE:
Larry David skewers Bill Maher-Trump meeting in satirical Hitler essay