320 Comments

Strong disagree Harris ran to the center. She hemmed, hawed, and delayed any attempt to pin her on policy. I still have no substantial evidence of her foreign policy.

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Concur. Not saying anything isn't quite a centrist movement.

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I feel like this is one of the biggest things that’s going to get beaten to death about this election. Harris supporters will point to things she said or promised during the campaign or that Biden took some actions on the border and say, of course she ran to the center, or at least moderated. And relative to her past run and the progressive wing, they’re right! She did run a more moderate campaign.

But clearly anyone remotely engaged with the last few years of politics is gonna see or know about the 2019 primary videos for her and the broader progressive/woke stances of democrats. She didn’t have as much time as a regular candidate would to convince anyone about being more moderate, but if you’re going to avoid media and weasel away from even fairly straightforward policy questions then it makes a lot of sense when voters who are plugged in or who even have a general sense of democrats bad aren’t going to believe that she’s moderated, even if they do hear about those efforts! It’s not just the words, people have decent BS meters when someone isn’t being straight with them.

Long story short, I can see both sides of whether or not she moderated (and who knows how she would have governed) but fundamentally voters didn’t see her as moderate despite her efforts.

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Everyone's going to start blaming Kamala and her campaign for losing a winnable election by not taking their stance on their pet issues, but the reality is that when inflation hits levels unseen for 40 years the incumbent is probably cooked no matter what. She was a much better candidate than anyone expected and her team managed to effectively halve Trump's gains in swing states and cancel out the standard electoral college disadvantage. They still lost, but they went the distance. A lot of people on both sides are getting hard to work learning the wrong lessons from this result, although I think Dems will have to learn a couple of right ones: they can't count on winning the popular vote and blame everything on the EC, and woke identity politics is completely useless for holding onto black and latino voters.

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She may have done the best she could, but the empirical evidence shows that she was a bad candidate.

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The problem our not-very-bright electorate voted for the candidate who is more likely to make inflation worse.

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"her team managed to effectively halve Trump's gains in swing states and cancel out the standard electoral college disadvantage"

Can you provide some stats on this as I thought (and like, Jeff, I might be wrong) that Trump did better than expected in swing states.

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He did do better than expected, but just not as well as he did in blue states. Now, no one can *prove* that Harris moved that needle, but we know she campaigned hard in swing states, so it's not a crazy hypothesis.

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My frustration is that the Republicans were not moderate. Their platform was extreme and, from what I understand, supports a lot of things that most americans do not support. So on one hand you have someone losing because they are too far left because...they are on record supporting trans rights, and on the other hand you have someone openly saying they want to do fascism and most voters were like, sure.

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Within six months, the talking heads will have moved right on from "Democrats in disarray!" to the latest of ten Trump goof-ups. Guaranteed.

Fact is, Trump is an unpopular guy who does unpopular things, and who seeks out conflict and drama. Americans will remember that, soon enough.

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"Extreme?" I'm frustrated by that framing. When more than 50% of the electorate agrees with who they voted for (at least on some factors, we have to assume this), it no longer can be defined as "extreme." Sure, around the fringes everyone has some "extreme" view, I guess--but is that really the right focus?

"Extreme" is the thing the normies want (me, and your neighbors)-that's "normal." Tough to come around to that perspective, but I think it's true and important to reconcile that.

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Yeah, that’s why I would immediately hit the button labeled “European style, multi-party democracy” if presented. Would help moderate things, but also generally prevents people feeling like they have to vote between the lesser of two evils. I disagree with those who voted for trump, but I have sympathy for those that did so out of a legitimate desire to be civically engaged and make the best choice they can.

When Trump says no national abortion ban or I won’t touch social security or I won’t involve us in foreign wars, I think that goes a long way in moderating his imagine specifically because of how it contrasts with the positions on those issues republicans have had for decades. The GOP has moved so far right that Trump was seen as an actual moderate by voters in 2016! https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15941846/trump-moderate-republican. Curious to see if that will be the case again for 2024🫠🥲.

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Her strategy was joy. She was going to joy on America for four years.

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If only she'd gone for Palmolive instead of Joy. She could have soaked in it.

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Joy cometh in the morning

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This line kills me. It’s peak Selena Meyer.

Also, a bit of empathy for Harris, not only due to her tough last minute campaign, but for having to do it as veep (as explained by Selena):

“Being Vice President is like being declawed, defanged, neutered, ball-gagged, and sealed in an abandoned coal mine under two miles of human shit”

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"Joy, all over the podcast."

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"Can someone fetch a cloth? Kamala's got joy everywhere again."

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I haven't listened yet but if they made this argument I am already going to downvote it. And report them to ICE

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Who would've guessed that radical ambiguity wasn't a winning proposition?

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I think the "radical ambiguity" is what happens when you stand for something but really can't tell anyone you stand for it. You certainly can't promote the other side's perspective (of course)--so what are you left with? Can't promote your true views, can't promote theirs... so "ambiguous" it is. And I think we saw through that.

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She clearly ran to the center, if only because of omission of the expected left nonsense that all of us here agree is nonsense. I get that "centrist due to omission of identitarian & defund the police-type wokery" is not a rousing cry for centrism. But it is strikingly different from the Kamala of 4 years ago. I'd also say that larding her campaign with the Cheneys and bragging about gun ownership were also moves to the center - or at least that's what her campaign thought. The center was her natural place, pre-Senate career. Many progressives here in California still loathe her due to her centrist stances in SF and later in the state itself.

I should probably make clear that I'm not a Kamala apologist. Didn't vote for her. (I'm one of those class-first progressives that still loathe her.)

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Clearly you looked really hard and this is totally not just based on vibes and sentiments.

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I am glad Katie gave Jesse the day off to deal with election stress. Katie is truly a kind manager.

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Swing voters' top reason for not choosing Harris was that she "is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class." https://x.com/milansingh03/status/1854941926207651857 As the NYT noted, the trans stuff was really damaging - https://archive.ph/CjxVg . In the last month of the campaign, Trump put $100 million+ into ads on this and the NYT notes that these ads were insanely effective, the Dems leading Superpac found that they "shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor after viewers watched it." As Jon Chait noted this showed Harris had a "position so unimaginable to most Americans it suggested she could not possibly have sensible views on anything else." https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/americans-didnt-embrace-trump-they-rejected-biden-harris.html

So that was #1 for swing voters. #2 was inflation and #3/4 was illegal immigration. Contra to what was alluded to, issues like crime or Israel or COVID lockdowns or "Democrats are too liberal" did not get any traction as a reason for swing voters not to vote for Harris.

Plagiarizing from myself on the open thread because I feel these are two very different groups of commenters, thus, we can lay the blame of the election on (1) The landmines laid in the Great Awokening half a decade ago such as causing the 'government-funded sex-change operations for illegal aliens in prison' position Harris took and also the fact we even had Harris as a nominee and (2) decisions the Biden administration made on the stimulus fueling inflation and illegal immigration.

Back on February 14 of this year, I commented on Ezra Klein's argument as to why Biden should drop out, saying that his "solution [of a thunderdome convention] is completely incoherent. If Biden steps down then Harris is the nominee. Period. And Harris would be a terrible candidate."

While this was all correct Harris actually ran a surprisingly good campaign... on a tactical level. She was disciplined, didn't campaign on wokeness, ran good ads and had a great debate against Trump. She did better in the swing states than nationally... which means that mechanically her campaign's ads and her ground game etc. worked well. But while the tactical decisions were generally pretty good she did not make the right strategic choices to overcome the two main problems.

The reason I thought she would be a terrible candidate (and, again, she did a lot better than I thought) was that she had run a disastrous campaign in 2019/2020 where, due to the Great Awokening, she had taken on all sorts of incredibly insanely unpopular woke positions and didn't have the communication skills to wriggle out of them. And she couldn't! She was disciplined enough not to campaign on wokeness and to pivot away, but as Chait said noted: "She treated questions about her change of mind as an accusation rather than an opportunity to offer a convincing narrative of her evolution."

The second problem caused by the Great Awokening was that the only viable candidate (two former mayors who have B-names don't count) who didn't go incredibly insanely to the left was Biden... who was way too old.

Then, the third problem caused by the Great Awokening was that Biden promised that he would name a black woman as his veep... and Harris was literally the only person who fit this description as she was the only black female Senator or Governor (Biden was literally looking at mayors and a diplomat who had never held any kind of elected office). So Harris was locked in as the veep.

The fourth problem caused by the Great Awokening was that Biden cut a deal with Bernie and Warren to staff key parts of his administration with their acolytes.

That transitions nicely into the Biden Administration. I actually think that the Biden administration did a good job overall. However, they made some bad calls and some good calls that they thought would be popular but were insanely unpopular. I'm not fatalistic enough to say that inflation doomed Harris from the start. But inflation is insanely bad for incumbent parties! In Canada, the (federal) Trudeau Liberals are very unpopular. But in our three provincial elections this year we saw it too, across the political spectrum. In Saskatchewan the Conservative Party lost ground to the (leftist) NDP who went up 8 points, in New Brunswick the Conservatives lost ground (and the election) to Liberals who went up 14 points and in BC the NDP lost ground to the Conservatives who went up 40 [!] points. The incumbents held on in Sask and NB - but the point is that if you are an governing party where inflation hit (even if the rate of inflation slows) you are going to have an uphill battle.

The Biden Administration did not realize this. Their entire political economy was wrong. Biden looked at Obama and thought his stimulus was too small as it led to unemployment (but did not have inflation). Unemployment is really bad for the people effected not just at the time but long term. Instead of that concentrated pain on a few people, Biden rolled out a big stimulus that led to great employment and led to inflation. Unlike unemployment's concentrated pain, inflation spread out less pain to everyone. Plus, thought the Biden administration, it's not even really rolling out pain because inflation's increase in prices will be matched by an increase in wages. It's win/win/win!

Well, as a matter of economics it actually worked out. The Biden economy not only had very low unemployment but led to an increase in real wages (i.e. wages adjusted for inflation) compared to 2019 with those at the bottom getting the most and steadily decreasing the richer you get (per quintile). As a matter of politics it was a fucking disaster. As it turns out, spread out the pain to a lot of people is a really bad idea politically-wise. Everyone, every day, is confronted by the increase in prices. And no one sees their increase in wages as due to inflation (or the fact that they didn't get unemployed), it's because of their hard work.

So going into the election, the Biden economy - rather than a source of strength - was a big source of weakness. It didn't mean that Trump was destined to win, but it did mean that the Democrats were losing, i.e. going in via weakness. And they thought they were winning. That means that while the tactical choices were good, the strategic choices were bad. Skipping Rogan and the opportunity to address 45 million voters directly for 3 hours? Well if you're winning and your candidate isn't a great communicator, good tactical choice not to take the risk. If you're losing, you have to gamble. Her choice to completely embrace the Biden administration and say she wouldn't have done anything differently was also a blunder, although again, to a certain extent she was boxed in because it was the Biden/Harris administration.

Immigration similarly was a problem. Just like with inflation, the Biden administration had ultimately been able to reduce the rate of increase (and with immigration actually start decreasing). But politically the increase was still there even if the rate changed.

I don't know if Harris could have made better choices in her campaign to have won it starting where she did (she at least could have saved Bob Casey's senate seat). It might have been possible for, say, Mark Kelly to have run a campaign embracing some parts of the Biden legacy but as I noted back in February there was never a viable path to get a non-Harris person installed if she wanted the gig. Just really unfortunate that the Great Awokening is still causing problems all these years later and I think it will come back under Trump. Although, early signs are hopeful with Dems reflecting rather than doubling down.

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TL;DR : Dems need to politically detransition.

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If only "self-identifying" as Moderate was as slam-dunk-iron-clad as one's 'gender.'

I don't see how they can do that. Either the Left clearly has principles they believe it, will fight for, and won't change... or they have to give up (??) on those principles? Maybe it's a question of focus and emphasis, then?

I'll always think of the Left as the Party Of Woke--donning Kente cloth and kneeling, painting BLM on the streets, over-valuing "identity," accusing everyone of some -ism, climate-scare-mongering, EV's by force/mandate.... it goes on.

Political-replacement drugs truly cause irreversible damage.

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Clicking through to the article: “The lowest-ranked concerns were that Harris wasn’t similar enough to Biden (-24), was too conservative (-23), and was too pro-Israel (-22).”

I’m embarrassed that I know people who really and truly believe that Harris lost because she tacked toward the center rather than the left, as if the average American’s top gripe is, “The Democrats aren’t telling our ally in the Middle East to effectively surrender to Iranian proxies who are hell-bent on their destruction as well as America’s!”

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(Sigh) McCarthy was right

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Cormac? Or Joe?

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Melissa.

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Sadly in this case it’s probably Jenny

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They’ve been citing things like the fact that 6% of registered Republicans didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 and only 5% in 2024 and that’s proof positive her “run to the right” is the issue.

Without considering the move was never to capture republicans, and a non-trivial amount of republicans have deregistered since Jan. 6th.

The remaining registered republicans are dyed in the wool. She wasn’t wooing them. She was wooing the genuine independents, who voted for Obama x2 and Trump x2 who are pro-choice and pro-recreational cannabis.

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This is all really well said. I'd only argue that Bernie and Warren are not part from the Great Awokening. The most interesting voices to listen to on the left right now are the left but not woke crowd (Jay Kang, Tyler Austin Harper, John Ganz, Know Your Enemy). Even James Carville was on the Bulwark talking about the preachy females problem and that some one needs to approach the DNC like a private equity firm: tear it apart, sell off the bad parts and install people who actually know how to communicate.

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Warren, and to a lesser extent Bernie, were hit hard by the Great Awokening (just as Harris was). Before the 2019 primary, Warren had a very tailored message really emphasizing class solidarity. She went full Great Awokening way beyond parody (like saying that some random 4 year trans kid could pick the Secretary of Education). Even Bernie shifted during this time. More importantly, their acolytes and team were fully woke.

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Warren is perhaps the best example of a candidate going from “promising, has a real chance to win” to “utterly cooked” because they leaned hard into the mistaken belief that Twitter is real life.

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I liked her a lot in the beginning (pre-wokism) but by the end she turned my stomach.

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Same, alas.

Like the actual quote I alluded to above is bonkers. "I’m going to have an education secretary that this young trans person interviews on my behalf, and only if this person believes that our secretary of education nominee is committed to creating a welcoming environment, a safe environment, and a full education curriculum that works for everyone, [only then will] that person advance to be secretary of education.”

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The “trans child” is all knowing.

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Yep. A couple years ago, she and Markey were writing letters to the bigots at FDA demanding to know why they were making it so hard for teen girls to get testosterone

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Thanks, I didn't know that. I've been living outside of the country for the last 20+ years, so often I just get the top line. I had a toddler during the pandemic and only got bits and bobs of the whole thing when we'd visit home. Still I do think they were playing the game as it needed to be played at the time. Not a defense, just acknowledging they are politicians.

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"Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy." - Elizabeth Warren

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She really said that? Not that I'm surprised . . .

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Yeah - it was a systemic problem. It didn't just hit Warren, Bernie and Harris... but people like Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke who could've been centrist contenders.

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Well done, Jacob! I think this is the first comment that I've shared. (Not that that matters, I have no audience.) Really appreciate the thought and the detail that you put into this. It's better than many takes I've read from established pundits.

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Thanks!

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I think you’ve nailed something: Harris ran like a front runner who just needed not to lose. When I reality she was playing from behind, and needed to take some risks to win. Risks like going on Rogan, or openly disavowing her past positions. Throwing Biden under the bus. Or hell, leaning into the positions to at least get the left more fired up. Anything other than just lamely running down the clock and hoping not to get blown out.

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Enjoyed this, but I was disappointed Jesse didn't make it. I don't mind the occasional guest, but the episode following a huge election feels like one where we should get the hosts we subscribed to.

Please don't do this again four years from now.

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I think this was a wise choice, actually.

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I do too. I feel like I already know Jesse's position so it was refreshing to have a new voice.

I also get the impression from the last few months that Jesse is thoroughly burnt out juggling the pod, his book and his Twitter addiction, to the point where I wondered if he'll eventually move to full-time writing.

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Yeah I think Jesse would’ve been a bummer in this episode. Ben actually was able to add some useful context.

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Did you have any expectations of NM going red? For a moment I had really wondered. But in the end I wasn’t surprised. My vote was useless but GODDAMNIT I VOTED! AMERICA!!!

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I don’t understand why it’s not closer than it is, honestly.

The areas that are culturally left are Taos, Los Alamos (hilariously,) and the part of Santa Fe that people bother visiting. Those areas will remain holdouts no matter what. But they’re relatively small.

I think that a little more publicity for Michelle Lujan Grisham’s awfulness, and people will at least vote a Republican governor in.

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I suspect Jesse's Twitter addiction seriously hampers his professional life. Every single time I check my feed he is near the top in the midst of some paragraphs-long argument against no one of consequence. He is never not there. The man cannot log off.

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I hope we still get an episode from them about post-election meltdowns online.

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I agree. It would really put a damper on Trump's magnanimous 3rd term after he gets the 22nd Amendment repealed.

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You're in a tremendous minority here. This is the comment section of the embarrassed Trump supporter, otherwise known as centrists.

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I would hope it was overwhelmingly obvious that I am being sarcastic. I mean...ugh...of course I don't want the 22nd Amendment repealed or multi years of Donald Jefferson Trump. Fuck do I have to put /s after everything I post that is meant to be sarcastic?

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It IS possible to criticize the left and not be a Trump supporter.

This seems to be a really difficult concept for a lot of people. I'm not sure why, but anything other than Blue Team Good Red Team Bad is unacceptable.

The good thing is that plenty of people here can walk and chew gum at the same time.

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I’m sure they schedule these things far in advance. Jesse has other professional obligations. It was a joke that he’s just too distraught. I’m sure he was just not available to record.

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Omg no this was the best choice. You could just relisten to the pre-election episode to get Jesse’s take.

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Ben Kawaller, yay! I anticipate that he & Katie will have splendid chemistry.

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Agree! I love and watch anything Ben publishes. His pre Covid interviews at the gay club in Los Angeles were delightful.

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Hadn’t heard of him before, but now I’m a fan. He and Katie have great vibe sync.

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If you’ve never heard of him, PLEASE look up videos of him interviewing Gaza protesters.

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Ben was great. Loved the vox pop clips he played.

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Ben Kawaller and Katie (typically) were great. However, what was that remark Katie made about the comments section getting its claws into Ben??? We're the best comments section, we don't have claws, just gentle suggestions tenderly proffered after pondering at length!!!

All kidding aside a fun show. I enjoyed both the political and the non-political (although the celebrity contestant courting clout was a little meh but I enjoyed the lightness of it).

All the best BarPod folks. I'm as always so happy for this podcast and community (with or without claws).

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I was glad she said something!

The episode thread posters usually unload on whoever the guest is. it sucks.

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This episode was how I learned who this person is, and I am so interested in his Ben Visits America series!

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There were a lot of things that worked against Harris, but her inability to answer basic questions was damning.

-How she would differ from Biden?

-The whole country saw Biden’s cognitive decline. You work with him almost daily. When did you see it, and why did you do nothing about it? Or did you try to do something? As Vice President of the United States, you had a duty to do something if the President was incapable of functioning.

-why did you change your opinion on everything? (Other than the obvious- I want to win Pennsylvania, so fracking is awesome. Border walls are awesome because shockingly people don’t like open borders, and I want to win).

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It should have been so easy for her to answer that one TV interview question about what mistake she regretted. A chance to show she wasn’t simply Biden in a different guise. An acknowledgment that not everything had gone well for the middle class and working class and that she was committed to changing that. But instead she tossed up a word salad. Would it have made a difference? Maybe not, but it probably wouldn’t have made things worse.

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James Carville just made this exact point on The Bulwark podcast.

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Nov 10·edited Nov 10

“It’s the economy, stupid” has proven remarkably elegant in its simplicity and longevity.

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yep, and 'voters vote with their pocketbooks' is even older. The funny thing is Biden admin had the numbers to brag about, but inflation hurt paycheck to paycheck Americans. We're no longer in the era of, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” it lifts the 'haves' boats, the 'have nots' sink deeper. The general economy no longer works for middle America. Corporations and the wealthy have designed the economy to suit them, and them alone.

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I've concluded the Bidens must have some serious blackmail material on Harris, which they threatened to use if she said anything negative. What else could explain her inepititude?

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I guess. I think an easier answer is that she is not a particularly good politician, and was put into a terrible position, in which even the most gifted politician would have had trouble. What Biden and/or his closest advisors did - either hiding his clear mental decline, or being blind to it - was unconscionable. I think the lack of any real pushback from within the Democratic Party against her coronation may have been a sign that a lot of very ambitious and more capable politicians thought that this cycle was a loss. There also may have been a lot of wish casting that she was a more capable choice than she clearly was. I can imagine any number of people who could have done better, but I don’t know if they could have won. The fact that virtual every jurisdiction (except Colorado) saw a huge shift to the GOP, including New Jersey and New York, does not suggest that a Democrat has a chance. I think the more interesting question is how the Democrat’s theory of the electorate - what gets all the groups on which they base their coalition, and for whom supposedly speak for to vote - was so utterly wrong.

Her presidential campaign in 2019 was a disaster. Up to that point, she had only one competitive election, against a Republican opponent, for attorney general in 2010, which was very close…in California. California has not had a Republican AG since 1999. Otherwise, her career was intra-party politics, based in the Bay Area. What she actually believes or thinks is pretty unclear, and she has a reputation of not reading briefing materials. Most successful politicians with staying power have long term advisors who can tell them what they don’t want to hear. She has had terrible turnover with her staff, which isn’t a good sign.

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Nov 10·edited Nov 10

Yes. Political junkies (sigh, I'm trying not to be one) remember how abysmal her primary campaign was in 2019. I remember hearing her do a very friendly interview with the NPR Politics Podcast. She was asked what her campaign was about and said, "For the people," which was her campaign slogan at the time but was certainly not a meaningful answer. (Sound familiar?!)

There was a devastating NYT piece about her disastrous 2019 campaign after she dropped out. It discussed the problems you mention--terrible staff management, not being able to decide what to campaign on--and won't surprise anyone who reads it following her 2024 effort.

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I've wondered if the WaPo and LAT knew something.

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Maybe. Will it leak now that she's done?

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Inshallah.

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Agreed, but they’re being held to completely different standards. Trump “weaved” around every direct question he was asked.

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For hopefully the last time, Trump is an economic elite, not a cultural elite. He likes pro wrestling and eats his steak with ketchup.

Love you, Ben. Keep looking baffled as you interview incoherent protesters.

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founding

Not a cultural elite? Have you ever actually seen and felt a Trump necktie up close?

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I think I actually owned one at one point.

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Ever been to Trump Tower? Now that's culturally elite. Classy!

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My older kid went on a marching band trip to New York City in spring 2016 and they played in the atrium of Trump Tower. I got hilarious reports from him about the gold plated toilets. Back then, everything about Trump was still a joke.

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You can’t spell “gold toilet” without… I forget where I was going with this.

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He’s a famous billionaire who went to an Ivy League school for undergrad. He’s every kind of “elite”.

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I think he is pretending to not have expensive tastes. I also think people are talking about economics when they criticize people for being “elite”. Trump’s taste in TV doesn’t really matter. His economic policy does. To the average voter, “elite” just means “rich”. It’s far simpler than you’re suggesting.

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So, you think people just don't realize that he doesn't have money? His garishness was on full display as a TV personality. There are guys making really good money owning a plumbing business that will look at a Harvard professor a an "elite" even though the plumber is making more money.

People make fun of Trump for speaking in one and two syllable words, but it makes him sound like he's not a snob, and that he would fit in better with the people who don't speak the language of the "faculty lounge."

I think you (and Katie) are oversimplifying it.

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Trump wasn’t a failure at reality tv. It was actually his biggest success - no bankruptcies, good ratings.

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The Apprentice is probably the only show of its popularity in its era that isn't available on any streaming platform.

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Nov 9·edited Nov 9

“The least racist country to ever exist” has to be the most America-centric thing I

have ever heard. America is not a racist country, but of developed countries it lags behind others in things like interracial marriage, and “tolerance”. The Conservative Party had just elected its fourth woman and second non white leader, and the uk has a higher rate of interracial marriage despite being less diverse. Most other developed countries do not have a history of de jure race bars; George Orwell wrote of his shock at the American army trying to get British hotels and entertainment venues to enforce segregation during WW2. And, a race-based slavery is not a thing on the European continent-minus the Nazis.

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Nov 10·edited Nov 10

I’ll relay what a friend of mine told me.

They’d lived in multiple countries in Europe. As well as the US. They’d considered permanent citizenship in a couple. Several of the other countries had various things they thought were done better.

But they eventually moved to the us and got citizenship here. I asked why. Why not Switzerland or Norway or the UK.

His answer was that of all the countries they lived, no matter how long they were there, they were always foreign. Even after generations their non-native friends were considered Indian or African or Asian, but not Swiss or British or Norwegian.

But in the US, once you’re a citizen you’re American. And that made the difference for him.

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I’ll buy that. I lived in Berlin, Germany, for a decade and despite being completely fluent in the language I was always an outsider.

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My BIL is Ecuadorian, and now a USA citizen living in Michigan.

A lot of his friends call him Mo, he goes hunting just about every weekend, and competes in shooting competitions.

He's a red blooded American now, and very happy to be one.

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Is Mo anywhere close to his name?

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That’s just not the case in the UK-the groups consider themselves Afro Caribbean, or British Asian. Britain is not a settler colony, so the notion of Britishness having an ethnic component is obvious, the same with every other European ethnicity. You’re compare apples to oranges. And, de jure racism is not a thing; no chattel slavery and no Jim Crow. There is obviously racism but it is not of organised systematic type. The first black person voted in Britain in 1774.

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Nov 9·edited Nov 9

One thing to note is that the plurality of inter ethnic marriages in the official UK statistics are “white British / other white”. They consider other white people as inter ethnic marriages.

I think if, in the US, we included mixed German/irish/British/etc in our statistics it would dwarf the UKs 10%.

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I said interracial not inter-ethnic. I was basing it on the statistics for interracial marriage. Which is higher than the US. The inability of Americans to not do American exceptionalism is baffling.

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LOL. This is such a perfectly British response. "Why aren't you admitting that British culture is superior to American culture? I specifically to you that it was."

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founding
Nov 10·edited Nov 10

If everyone in the world were given a now or never choice of if or where to emigrate to with their family, so many people would come to the US the axis of the earth would nearly tilt from the weight. But of course it’s incredibly important to dote on how terribly racist “we” are.

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I mean, migration is just proof of that, isn’t it? People are willing to hike through the Darién Gap, one of the most awful places on earth, to get here. They make it through the jungle from hell and they don’t think, OK, I’m going to stay in Mexico, I’m safe enough, I speak the same language. They’re willing to be overcrowded on mattresses in tiny apartments and do jobs Americans don’t want, just to live here. The US is still a land of opportunity no matter how many kids paying six figures for education pretend it’s a hellhole. The world votes with its feet.

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Like swimming across the Mediterranean? Are you just ignorant of the European migration crisis?

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Who's swimming across the Mediterranean? I think you meant to say "floating on a dingy and waiting to be picked up by the Italians when it 'accidentally' springs a leak. That's how many Cuban's escaped to Florida, with the exception that if they were caught by the coast guard they'd be turned sent home. If you're crossing the Med (in a boat. Nobody is swimming it) you're praying to see the Italian Navy because that's just a cashed ticket. Getting to the U.S. from Central or South America is an arduous, dangerous trek. These people are are risking a lot more that someone leaving - on a boat - from the coast of Libya and landing - on a boat - in Europe.

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I said the USA wasn’t racist. I love the fact your response was “USA! USA! USA!”. I said it was ludicrous to say the US was the least racist country in history.

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Come off it. Your entire comment was a paragraph of "the US isn't racist, but Europe is a lot less racist". That's simply not true. Europeans do multiculturalism. Americans do multiethnicity. There's a lot of racial tensions is Europe that just doesn't exist in the US because Europeans don't see people who move to their country from a different country as being German, or British, or Belgian.

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founding
Nov 11·edited Nov 11

I guess I can see why you interpreted my comment as you have. I was meaning more to respond to the sense of Ben Kawaller’s statement you quote than to your points about other developed countries. Unlike you I believe the US is definitely a racist country. But in scale it is the most dynamically diverse society in history and tens of millions of people want to come here- and will come here-to prosper and set down roots. In light of this the endless perseveration on “our” racism from so many quarters just seems tiresome and kind of irrelevant. I think that is what’s being expressed by statements like Ben’s. I wasn’t intending to react to or deny your point about UK etc.

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The recent riot in Amsterdam suggests all is not well in Europe racism-wise. But yes, the USA is obsessed with race to the extent that many of the 'anti-racists' among them come off as racist too.

But I'm not sure how meaningful an apparent lack of racism is in extremely homogenous, wealthy countries like Norway or Sweden. Japan outperforms the USA on some racism indices, which is more indicative of how flawed the indices are are I think, rather than how racist the US is.

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I chose the UK because it’s one of the most diverse countries in Europe. My point is was it was a stupid bit of American exceptionalism to say it was the least racist country in history, and it comes across incredibly ignorant of the outside world.

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What country is the least racist? I hope you don't say one of those in the U.K. That would come across as incredibly ignorant of the outside world.

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Agreed

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If not the least racist, certainly one of them. I’m generally of

The opinion that people who don’t agree with this have never visited a country that isn’t first world.

Countries with homogeneous populations across the world are pretty racist-even if it’s relatively benign. We don’t see that much here because of the melting pot mythos. We are so sensitive to race here politically it’s pretty absurd a lot of the time.

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Americans also export their own specific definition and concept of racism and see it as the one true type. Elsewhere in the world, like in India with how the caste-based system has made people generationally impoverished based simply on their birth, the American definition of racism doesn’t apply but it’s essentially disadvantage being built into the social structure with the same consequences even if on paper it’s been outlawed.

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Also in India there is absolutely a lot of dark skin bad light skin good racism.

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Or making out US white supremacy and Nazism are ideological parallels.

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Europeans inflicted race-based slavery on the Americas.

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Yeah before that it was just tribal based slavery, much better!

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Nope and not my point.

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There absolutely was A LOT of slavery int eh Americas pre Columbus. in Mesoamerica, in Canada, in the PNW, in the Caribbean.

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What’s your point? Europeans create America. And European countries did not for the most part have race based slavery or segregation. So why, therefore, is America the least racist country in history?

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Yeah, I mean they did butcher the native inhabitants of many continents the world over, but at least they didn't enslave them. Okay so they did, but they stopped before the US did. Ipso facto, some country in Europe is the least racist.

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No, I didn't say that the US is the least racist country in history, as that is a questionable and highly debatable point. I simply observe that it is hypocritical for a European to cite the lack of race-based slavery in Europe as a mark in its comparative favor vis-a-vis racism given that it was the Europeans who inflicted the abysmal institution on the Americas while keeping their own shores "clean." Read, for instance, Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration (which obviously could not have been issued as such given the southern slaveholders as part of the independence coalition):

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

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I can't be the only one who thinks the jokes about Jesse aren't jokes 😂 sincerely though I hope he's ok

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"He's looking for his pussy hat" is unambiguously funny.

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Yeah absolutely, I'm sure he'll be back to phone in another episode in a few weeks.

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I sometimes get the vibe that Katie and Jesse actually do dislike each other.

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Regarding Ben voting for Sanders twice because Bernie cares about the poor and middle class. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ask a Venezuelan.

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I like Bernie in the way I like Libertarians. It's fine to have them around communicating their ideas but things would go to Hell if they were ever given the reigns of power.

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I agree. Any of them in power would lead to an awful place, but they have thought provoking ideas. It's also a way to know where some of the boundaries of the Overton window are.

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Reins

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How much transing is just attention seeking? Some? All? None?

The anger at this guy is predicated in part on the concept of “true trans”: that some people are truly trans but others are LARPing.

I know many will disagree but What if it’s all LARPing? If so, then what did he do wrong?

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I doubt its all LARPing. But lets say 25-75% is? To just pull some numbers out of my ass. Some significant and important portion.

Or as I would say a nose piercing or visible tattoo from 1995. It is a trendy way to be different and stick it to the "squares"/"man"/"your parents"/etc. .

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I don’t think you can dismiss “true trans”. To do that, you would have to say that brains are not subject to any influence from the physiology of sexual dimorphism, so there is simply no such thing as a female brain or a male brain. Or you would have to say that there is such a thing, but the process works perfectly 100% of the time and there are never any errors. Otherwise, you’re left with the conclusion that, as much as the gender unicorn is stupid, it must be possible to have something like a male brain in a female body, and vice versa.

However, if you take basic signal detection theory and apply it to rare events, bearing in mind that most intersex conditions are extremely rare, it is easy to see how the false positives could overwhelm the true cases.

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Weird how (true) trans is still just a western culture thing then.

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Not really. I mean, something strange is going on here, but intersex conditions are quite rare. In general, there probably isn’t enough bandwidth for most people to know anything about them. Even in the U.S., prior to 2010 or so there were only a handful of clinics that treated these people in the entire country. And we have a large population, liberal norms, and lots of high-end expensive medicine.

Do you know anything about how the Inuit deal with osteogenesis imperfecta? Seems like those people would be constantly falling on ice and breaking bones. I have no idea how they deal with it, or even if a community that small experiences this condition. Similarly, I would not expect the issue of how people with intersex conditions are handled in Malaysia to be something that an average person would have any knowledge of whatsoever.

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Oh, sorry, you’re talking about DSDs. I thought you meant trans-identifying people.

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My understanding is that what you’re calling true trans would be a DSD.

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DSDs are either male or female, they are not “intersex” or “true trans.” Unfortunately TRAs have mobilized DSDs for their cause.

See Colin Wright or Emma Hilton for in depth discussion of this.

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If he's LARPing he's gonna fuck around and fight out. I have my prison queens shank his bitch ass in women's lock up. Gonna set him up on a date with Karen White, she's my real nigga.

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I think there are genuinely people who experience gender dysphoria. I know many in these comment sections don’t agree but, whatever. I know many such people and even if you and I don’t believe they’re truly the “opposite” sex they really do.

This guy was just lying. He didn’t even believe that he was trans. I think that’s a pretty clear difference.

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Yes, but I think “gender dysphoria” is probably a severe form of anxiety, analogous to anorexia, for example, in which a person’s body becomes a focus of distress.

We can take that distress seriously without enabling it, just as we wouldn’t send an anorexic for liposuction.

This guy Josh may in in fact have an anxiety disorder of some kind (his behavior seems unhinged), in which case, if his expression of it was to LARP as trans, I’m not sure if he deserves censure necessarily.

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Fortunately this area has been researched and HRT and other medical treatments do, in fact, mitigate gender dysphoria.

Transitioning is the least bad outcome for a lot of people.

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I suppose it depends on how one defines the success of a treatment. Anorexics might feel better after getting liposuction. The placebo effect is well documented.

Rather than asking if someone feels better, an entirely subjective and difficult-to-measure question, perhaps a better question would be “How is that patient’s overall physical health?" Exogenous hormones are known to have detrimental impact on a number of body systems. Is the trade worthwhile? Some, of course, will say yes.

An excellent source for the history of how exogenous hormones have been used (for just about everything and by just about everybody, so not limited to the trans discourse) is Bob Ostertag’s Sex, Science, Self: A Social History of Estrogen, Testosterone, and Identity.

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Success for me has meant being able to leave the house without a sense of dread and function in society instead of being largely confined to bed.

`Exogenous hormones are known to have detrimental impact...'

A fact that I am very much unhappy about and consistently reminded of but, again, it's the least bad outcome. Transitioning also cuts you off from society in many ways---it's not what most of us wanted but therapy isn't always able to resolve gender dysphoria.

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I appreciate that--and am glad for you.

As to your future health, I hope you can pursue real answers and not take the gender profession's claims at face value. Detransitioners have been publicizing some of the effects.

Bob Ostertag's book isn't about specific medical effects but it certainly is informative as to how and why we got to this place. He has been a gay/trans activist and writes from a place of concern for his community.

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For starters, he kept his face and body hair. You don't keep male levels of either if you're trying to blend in and be accepted as a woman.

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Jeffrey Marsh? What is s/he doing w/ facial hair? I thought it had become a thing among some in the trans community to mix up the signifiers of sex?

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Whatever they identify as, this trans woman is not referring to them as any sort of woman.

`I thought it...'

Yes, there is a disagreement about what it means to be trans within the LGBTQ community. Being trans is a medical issue and, to my mind, demands and accommodations should only be made on society, for this issue, based on that fact.

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Yes, Brianna Wu has made a similar point. Yes, these disagreements (over whether or not trans is a medical condition) are making a mess of what used to be a consensus.

But that goes back to my point: this guy Josh wasn't doing things so differently from certain members of the LGBTQ community: mixing up the signifiers, declaring it doesn't have to be a medical condition, etc. And so it's difficult to assess: is he LARPing? is he sincere? is he mentally unstable? Does it matter? Maybe not.

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`wasn't doing things so differently from certain members of the LGBTQ community: mixing up the signifiers, declaring it doesn't have to be a medical condition, etc.'

A significant portion of the trans community has little, and increasingly less, tolerance for this type of stuff. Things have gotten to the point, politically, where it's no longer just irritating* but will cause harm to actual trans people---like having our medical care taken away---and I imagine we will be much more definitive on what and who needs to be protected.

*I'm an Xennial professor and don't have time or interest in gender fuckery, etc. There are more important and rewarding things in my life than playing with gender.

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This image might be one of the most horrifying yet, and this includes the current Open Thread graphic. WHY ARE WE BEING PUNISHED?

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My theory of the disturbing AI pics is that it's Katie's revenge on those of us who retain images in our heads. She can't be haunted by them.

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THIS is genuine insight. (Did I make a pun??)

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If Kamala was such a moderate, why pick one of the most progressive governors as her running mate?

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She wanted someone who was a bigger doofus than she was.

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I read it as she was throwing a bone to the progressive wing with her VP pick.

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A Grade A Midwestern Goober.

The Goobernator?

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Now that’s a rank he earned!

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How hot do I need to get in the next four years to have a seat at Reason’s election night party?

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Not much. Libertarian events have a total open borders policy when it comes to ladies.

In fact you might want to tone it down a bit so you dont frighten anyone.

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once again Katie having incredible chemistry with a guest host. She really does raise up anyone she is hosting with.

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