Post by aj2hall on Sept 4, 2024 22:31:05 GMT
I thought these different perspectives were interesting.
Ross Douthat is kind of an assh&t, I rarely agree with him. He doesn't give Kamala the credit she deserves for uniting the party and saving a sinking campaign. He also doesn't blame Trump and Vance enough for alienating voters and potentially losing the election.
I think David Brooks makes a few important points about conservatives and rural America being left behind, but he left out important context like the fact that Republican tax policy and the elimination of regulations starting with Reagan is a significant factor in income equality. And I'm not sure that he's right about people liking the red model more than the blue. Yes, there is a divide between working class and college educated, but Republicans are partly responsible for that division, for perpetuating falsehoods about critical race theory, DEI and other liberal ideas. Republicans and conservative media are completely responsible for creating culture wars, wars on wokeism etc. Democrats are not responsible for the skyrocketing cost of college education. Republicans are the ruling class in the more than half of the states. Republicans were the ruling class during Trump's years but only widened the gap with tax cuts for the wealthy. David Brooks blames privatized morality for poor mental health. Mental health is complex and there are a lot of other factors involved. He also predicts that choosing Walz over Shapiro could cost Democrats the election. I like Shapiro and initially, he was my first choice initially, but he would have widened and drawn attention to the rift in the party over Gaza. And the sexual harassment settlement against his chief of staff would have been problematic. In addition, I think Walz might help win over some rural voters. He reaches them in a way that Shapiro does not.
Gift articles - no paywall
OPINION
ROSS DOUTHAT
How Harris Wins (and Trump and the Republicans Blow It)
www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/harris-win-election-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IE4.NISh.f98h1DyI_fSq&smid=url-share
Since 2015, the remarkable resilience of Donald Trump has depended on making himself an avatar for these varied discontents — a symbol of rebuke and rebellion and a natural leader for a coalition of alienated and disappointed outsiders, plus a few disillusioned insiders as well. When Trump was riding high in the early summer of 2024, his outsider coalition seemed to be adding members at a rapid clip — picking up young men and recent immigrants and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, none of whom had necessarily embraced a consistent right-wing agenda but all of whom were looking for a countervailing force against Democratic orthodoxy.
Harris did stake out some moderate positions, promising border enforcement and touting her prosecutorial credentials. But mostly she followed a Marie Kondo strategy, applying the life-changing magic of tidying up to the Democratic platform. She didn’t offer a comprehensive moderate agenda or seek out a Sister Souljah confrontation with some left-wing interest group. Instead she offered a form of progressive minimalism, reducing a cluttered agenda to a few popular promises and just leaving everything else out.
Suddenly the absence of a coherent conservative policy agenda actually mattered. Suddenly it was a problem that Trump’s path to victory depended on both anti-woke secular voters and pro-life evangelicals, on conservatism-curious minority voters and aggrieved blue-collar white people, on mainstream business elites as well as the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on traditional movement conservatives and moderates who had no interest in the policies favored by the Heritage Foundation.
If there was a synthesis that would satisfy all these varying constituencies, Trump was not the man to find it. All the way to Election Day, his supporters complained that he was too undisciplined — which is to say, too much himself — to drive a consistent anti-Harris message. But the deeper problem was that his ticket needed an affirmative alternative to defeat her Marie Kondo-fied progressism, and he was far too steeped in personal grievance and reflexive oppositionalism. He needed an obvious foil, a unifying threat to make his fractious anti-progressive alliance into a majority, and her minimalism refused to give him what he needed.
Of course, it was still a close-run thing. The Harris message wasn’t the basis for any kind of great realignment or sweeping new majority, and Harris herself was still the inherently limited politician that she appeared to be as vice president — propped up by the media’s anti-Trump and pro-Democratic tilt, dependent on Trump’s weaknesses to compensate for her own rhetorical deficiencies, white-knuckling it through debates and interviews.
But winning on the most limited agenda and by the narrowest of margins is still winning. The 2024 campaign didn’t permanently bury Trumpism or populism, fix progressivism’s internal problems or claim a mandate for sweeping change of any sort. It merely won the tens of thousands of swing votes required to carry the handful of swing states that decided the election. A minimalist message yielded a minimalist victory — and that was, for Kamala Harris and her supporters, quite enough.
www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/trump-win-election-harris.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IE4.ayC3.4hRpXN57p3zh&smid=url-share
OPINION
DAVID BROOKS
How Trump Wins (and Harris and the Democrats Blow It)
Trump had several fundamental issues that drove support to him, no matter how jerkish he could be. Trump being victorious in 2024 comes down to these five turbines of Trumpism:
People like the red model more than the blue model. The fastest-growing states by population are mostly governed by Republicans, including Florida, Texas, Idaho and Montana. The fastest-shrinking or -stagnating states are mostly governed by Democrats, including New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. The red model gives you low housing costs, lower taxes and business vitality. The blue model gives you high housing costs, high taxes and high inequality.
Democrats are the party of the ruling class. The most important divide in American life is the diploma divide. College-educated folks tend to vote for Democrats, and high-school-educated folks tend to vote for Republicans. Thus, the richest places tend to be Democratic. The Democrats dominate the media, the universities, the cultural institutions and government.
Social and moral cohesion. Republicans can be rugged individualists when it comes to economics, but Democrats can be rugged individualists when it comes to morality. They are more likely to hew to a code of moral freedom that holds that individuals should be free to live by their own values. Individuals get to choose their own definition of when human life begins. Any form of family and social life is OK so long as the individuals within it give their consent. This is the privatization of morality.
Privatized morality leaves even many progressives with existential insecurity. Forty-one percent of very liberal men and 60 percent of very liberal women report that they are in poor mental health more than half the time.
But the lack of social and moral order is a practical calamity for less-educated folks. For them, economic policy is not separate from social issues and moral values. The things that derail their lives are broken relationships, infidelity, out-of-wedlock births, addictions, family conflict and crime. When Republicans talk about immigration, crime, faith, family and flag, they are talking about ways to preserve the social and moral order. Democrats are great at talking about economic solidarity, but not moral and cultural solidarity.
General dissatisfaction. Kamala Harris practiced the politics of joy in this election, running a hope-filled and sunny campaign, as any incumbent party tries to do. But many Americans are not feeling it.
The Blue Bubble problem. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lived in the shadow of Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s victories. Clinton and Obama both understood the Blue Bubble problem: If you spend your life listening to what Democrats in the big cities say to one another, then you will misunderstand America. Both Clinton and Obama took tough stances to show that they were not Blue Bubble natives: the crime bill, welfare reform, Obama’s stances on illegal immigration, gay marriage and fossil fuels. Clinton triangulated and Obama talked about transcending left and right.
Pennsylvania was the most important state in this election, the hinge around which all sorts of election scenarios pivoted. But as Nate Silver noted in August, there weren’t many polls showing Harris ahead there. Clinton and Biden led in polls there, and Clinton lost and Biden barely won. In hindsight, Harris’s decision not to select Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania as her running mate looked like a terrible act of overconfidence. But Shapiro was perceived as a moderate. The progressive wing lobbied against him. So Harris went with a guy who helped her win a state she was always going to win anyway.
I know who I fervently wanted to win — Harris. But many Democrats were always a little over-ebullient about her. A Trump victory has never come down to running a brilliant campaign. It comes down to those five turbines driving enough support in enough key places in his direction.
Ross Douthat is kind of an assh&t, I rarely agree with him. He doesn't give Kamala the credit she deserves for uniting the party and saving a sinking campaign. He also doesn't blame Trump and Vance enough for alienating voters and potentially losing the election.
I think David Brooks makes a few important points about conservatives and rural America being left behind, but he left out important context like the fact that Republican tax policy and the elimination of regulations starting with Reagan is a significant factor in income equality. And I'm not sure that he's right about people liking the red model more than the blue. Yes, there is a divide between working class and college educated, but Republicans are partly responsible for that division, for perpetuating falsehoods about critical race theory, DEI and other liberal ideas. Republicans and conservative media are completely responsible for creating culture wars, wars on wokeism etc. Democrats are not responsible for the skyrocketing cost of college education. Republicans are the ruling class in the more than half of the states. Republicans were the ruling class during Trump's years but only widened the gap with tax cuts for the wealthy. David Brooks blames privatized morality for poor mental health. Mental health is complex and there are a lot of other factors involved. He also predicts that choosing Walz over Shapiro could cost Democrats the election. I like Shapiro and initially, he was my first choice initially, but he would have widened and drawn attention to the rift in the party over Gaza. And the sexual harassment settlement against his chief of staff would have been problematic. In addition, I think Walz might help win over some rural voters. He reaches them in a way that Shapiro does not.
Gift articles - no paywall
OPINION
ROSS DOUTHAT
How Harris Wins (and Trump and the Republicans Blow It)
www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/harris-win-election-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IE4.NISh.f98h1DyI_fSq&smid=url-share
Since 2015, the remarkable resilience of Donald Trump has depended on making himself an avatar for these varied discontents — a symbol of rebuke and rebellion and a natural leader for a coalition of alienated and disappointed outsiders, plus a few disillusioned insiders as well. When Trump was riding high in the early summer of 2024, his outsider coalition seemed to be adding members at a rapid clip — picking up young men and recent immigrants and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, none of whom had necessarily embraced a consistent right-wing agenda but all of whom were looking for a countervailing force against Democratic orthodoxy.
Harris did stake out some moderate positions, promising border enforcement and touting her prosecutorial credentials. But mostly she followed a Marie Kondo strategy, applying the life-changing magic of tidying up to the Democratic platform. She didn’t offer a comprehensive moderate agenda or seek out a Sister Souljah confrontation with some left-wing interest group. Instead she offered a form of progressive minimalism, reducing a cluttered agenda to a few popular promises and just leaving everything else out.
Suddenly the absence of a coherent conservative policy agenda actually mattered. Suddenly it was a problem that Trump’s path to victory depended on both anti-woke secular voters and pro-life evangelicals, on conservatism-curious minority voters and aggrieved blue-collar white people, on mainstream business elites as well as the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on traditional movement conservatives and moderates who had no interest in the policies favored by the Heritage Foundation.
If there was a synthesis that would satisfy all these varying constituencies, Trump was not the man to find it. All the way to Election Day, his supporters complained that he was too undisciplined — which is to say, too much himself — to drive a consistent anti-Harris message. But the deeper problem was that his ticket needed an affirmative alternative to defeat her Marie Kondo-fied progressism, and he was far too steeped in personal grievance and reflexive oppositionalism. He needed an obvious foil, a unifying threat to make his fractious anti-progressive alliance into a majority, and her minimalism refused to give him what he needed.
Of course, it was still a close-run thing. The Harris message wasn’t the basis for any kind of great realignment or sweeping new majority, and Harris herself was still the inherently limited politician that she appeared to be as vice president — propped up by the media’s anti-Trump and pro-Democratic tilt, dependent on Trump’s weaknesses to compensate for her own rhetorical deficiencies, white-knuckling it through debates and interviews.
But winning on the most limited agenda and by the narrowest of margins is still winning. The 2024 campaign didn’t permanently bury Trumpism or populism, fix progressivism’s internal problems or claim a mandate for sweeping change of any sort. It merely won the tens of thousands of swing votes required to carry the handful of swing states that decided the election. A minimalist message yielded a minimalist victory — and that was, for Kamala Harris and her supporters, quite enough.
www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/trump-win-election-harris.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IE4.ayC3.4hRpXN57p3zh&smid=url-share
OPINION
DAVID BROOKS
How Trump Wins (and Harris and the Democrats Blow It)
Trump had several fundamental issues that drove support to him, no matter how jerkish he could be. Trump being victorious in 2024 comes down to these five turbines of Trumpism:
People like the red model more than the blue model. The fastest-growing states by population are mostly governed by Republicans, including Florida, Texas, Idaho and Montana. The fastest-shrinking or -stagnating states are mostly governed by Democrats, including New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. The red model gives you low housing costs, lower taxes and business vitality. The blue model gives you high housing costs, high taxes and high inequality.
Democrats are the party of the ruling class. The most important divide in American life is the diploma divide. College-educated folks tend to vote for Democrats, and high-school-educated folks tend to vote for Republicans. Thus, the richest places tend to be Democratic. The Democrats dominate the media, the universities, the cultural institutions and government.
Social and moral cohesion. Republicans can be rugged individualists when it comes to economics, but Democrats can be rugged individualists when it comes to morality. They are more likely to hew to a code of moral freedom that holds that individuals should be free to live by their own values. Individuals get to choose their own definition of when human life begins. Any form of family and social life is OK so long as the individuals within it give their consent. This is the privatization of morality.
Privatized morality leaves even many progressives with existential insecurity. Forty-one percent of very liberal men and 60 percent of very liberal women report that they are in poor mental health more than half the time.
But the lack of social and moral order is a practical calamity for less-educated folks. For them, economic policy is not separate from social issues and moral values. The things that derail their lives are broken relationships, infidelity, out-of-wedlock births, addictions, family conflict and crime. When Republicans talk about immigration, crime, faith, family and flag, they are talking about ways to preserve the social and moral order. Democrats are great at talking about economic solidarity, but not moral and cultural solidarity.
General dissatisfaction. Kamala Harris practiced the politics of joy in this election, running a hope-filled and sunny campaign, as any incumbent party tries to do. But many Americans are not feeling it.
The Blue Bubble problem. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lived in the shadow of Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s victories. Clinton and Obama both understood the Blue Bubble problem: If you spend your life listening to what Democrats in the big cities say to one another, then you will misunderstand America. Both Clinton and Obama took tough stances to show that they were not Blue Bubble natives: the crime bill, welfare reform, Obama’s stances on illegal immigration, gay marriage and fossil fuels. Clinton triangulated and Obama talked about transcending left and right.
Pennsylvania was the most important state in this election, the hinge around which all sorts of election scenarios pivoted. But as Nate Silver noted in August, there weren’t many polls showing Harris ahead there. Clinton and Biden led in polls there, and Clinton lost and Biden barely won. In hindsight, Harris’s decision not to select Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania as her running mate looked like a terrible act of overconfidence. But Shapiro was perceived as a moderate. The progressive wing lobbied against him. So Harris went with a guy who helped her win a state she was always going to win anyway.
I know who I fervently wanted to win — Harris. But many Democrats were always a little over-ebullient about her. A Trump victory has never come down to running a brilliant campaign. It comes down to those five turbines driving enough support in enough key places in his direction.