I Overacted. You, Too? June 29, 2024June 29, 2024 I stand by what I said yesterday, after Thursday night’s horrible debate. But privately, like almost all my friends and donors and the press, I was ready to pull the emergency cord. Open convention! Open convention! But, boy, did Lawrence O’Donnell last night provide the perspective we all need. I cannot urge you strongly enough to watch or to listen (wherever you get podcasts). And to share with everyone you know. Two personal notes. First: I was at the 25th annual LGBT fundraiser we started back when President Clinton came to a small dinner . . . and got to watch the President in action. He was terrific. But let me put it in perspective. In my case, knowing I would have to meet and greet lots of donors and then speak for four minutes, I didn’t get out of bed until 11, took it easy all day, suited up around 5, armed myself with an Advil and some Hall’s menthol eucalyptus lozenges, took the subway down to the Hammerstein ballroom and, after an hour of pre-event reception, glad-handing new and old friends over fairly loud background music, had lost my voice. And had that weird thing where one of my ear drums had gone into a hard-to-describe “echo” mode. (Has that ever happened to you?) So I stopped talking (“yes!” I hear those of you who know me best cry) and eventually the 400 or so of us at that reception went downstairs to the main event. I knew I was the last speaker on the program and, one way or another, would make it through my little remarks and welcome Alan Cumming back on the stage to close the night out. (If you don’t know Alan Cumming, look him up. He is as charming and cheeky and talented as anyone on the planet.) And I did get through my four minutes. My voice had returned and my eardrum had righted itself. But that was my day. For a four-minute talk. In the President’s case, he got up after however much sleep he had after that debate (I’m guessing not all that much?), flew to a rally in Raleigh where he was strong and terrific (watch or listen for clips), shaking hands and interacting with dozens of people, flew to New York for a rally with Elton John and loads of dignitaries at the Stonewall Inn, shaking hands and personally connecting with dozens more people, and then arrived at the Hammerstein ballroom, met individually for photos with each of more than 50 couples, interacting with each, then spoke to 900 of us SO well and SO forcefully that one of the attendees — who is no billionaire, by the way — came over to me afterward and gave another half million dollars. See the difference? And even I, with the bandwidth to do just one event moderately well, would be a vastly better president than Trump. (Hold that thought.) But in a debate? And that brings me to my second personal note. A long time ago I wrote a book about the insurance industry. And back then, I used to get paid tons of money to “speak” — typically, 45 minutes followed by Q&A followed by book signing. The book made it onto the Times best-seller list for 10 weeks because the publisher got me onto a few national TV shows and every local radio show in the world. The speeches were easy. I was usually pretty good. The occasional standing ovation, even. Only bombed three times (seared deeply into my memory). But the TV and radio appearances — which had always been a breeze with prior books — were a nightmare. Because the insurance industry had somehow obtained my schedule and gotten the stations always to book one of their people “for balance.” And I was terrible, even after the first few times, because I could do little more than sputter. They were saying so many things that were simply untrue or misleading or designed to keep me from finishing my point. It was combat, and I’m not good at combat; or at keeping my cool when someone lies and I know I should keep my cool, but . . . it was awful. I was awful. And yet I really was the one telling the truth. And the subtitle of the book (“Everything the Insurance Industry Never Wanted you to Know”) was true — there was a lot they didn’t want you to know . . . and were really good at keeping people from knowing it. And making my head explode. I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had had, in addition, a lifelong stutter to overcome. And still I’m telling you: I would be a vastly better president than Donald Trump. Joe Biden is a vastly better president than I could ever be. Please, please, please watch or listen to that Lawrence O’Donnell. Have a great weekend. One way or another, we’re gonna win!
Snap Your Fingers June 28, 2024 All I’m going to say for now is that Joe Biden has been a great, great president — his record is terrific; his decency, exemplary — and will do, I believe, whatever gives us the best chance of defeating Trump . . . an existential threat to everything the Founders risked their lives to create, and that so many since have risked — and lost — their lives to defend and preserve. In the meantime, check out this one-minute spot a friend created. I think it’s worth taking viral. More to come.
The Debate June 26, 2024 I’m guessing the President will do fine, especially if anyone cares about the dignity of the office or the direction of the country. (Or competence or integrity.) Trump is a magnificent human specimen — his doctor tells us there’s never been such a healthy president — and his testosterone level is off the charts. He’s quite literally in the fake wrestling hall of fame. As a showman and demagogue, no one beats him. But testosterone and entertainment value are not what the presidency is about. Richard Greene nails the age issue in 30 seconds. To the two issues he highlights, add any that matter to you: Climate? Voting rights? Health care? The rule of law? The peaceful transfer of power? Infrastructure? Ukraine? The bi-partisan bill Trump killed that would finally have ended the border crisis? (That’s his crisis! He needs it to regain power! How dare any Republican vote to end it!) Or — to go back to the most basic issue of all — how about the economy? As noted yesterday, not one Fortune 100 CEO is a Trump contributor. Does that tell you they think he’d be good for business? Good for the economy? Good for the country? Good for your 401(k)? Good for the price of all the goods and raw materials consumers and businesses import? He promises to raise all those prices by imposing tariffs. Mr. Trump continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party. The reality is that the top corporate leaders working today, like many Americans, aren’t entirely comfortable with either Mr. Trump or President Biden. But they largely like — or at least can tolerate — one of them. They truly fear the other. Not a single Fortune 100 chief executive has donated to the candidate so far this year, which indicates a major break from overwhelming business and executive support for Republican presidential candidates dating back over a century.” They fear him. However brilliantly and cogently — and with however much factual accuracy, dignity, and decorum — Trump performs in tomorrow’s debate, we should fear him, too.
A Contest Not Between Two Men, But Between Two Systems June 25, 2024 One where, if you oppose the elected leader — be he Putin, Orban, Xi, Kim Jong Un, or Trump — you have to fear “retribution.” The other — loosely known as liberal democracy (small “L,” small “D”) — where you don’t. That’s been the system I’ve enjoyed all my life and believed I always would. Yet Robert Kagan — Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — argues that: One of liberalism’s great weaknesses has always been the belief in its own inevitability. Depending on the outcome 133 days from now, it will remain our system — or it won’t. . . . The institutions that America’s founders created to safeguard liberal democratic government cannot survive when half the country does not believe in the core principles that undergird the American system of government. The presidential election of 2024, therefore, will not be the usual contest between Republicans and Democrats. It is a referendum on whether the liberal democracy born out of the Revolution should continue. Today, tens of millions of Americans have risen in rebellion against that system. They have embraced Donald Trump as their leader because they believe he can deliver them from what they regard as the liberal oppression of American politics and society. If he wins, they will support whatever he does, including violating the Constitution to go after his enemies and political opponents, which he has promised to do. If he loses, they will reject the results and refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the federal government, just as the South did in 1860. Either way, the American liberal political and social order will fracture, perhaps irrecoverably. Although this crisis seems unprecedented, the struggle that is tearing the nation apart today is as old as the republic. The American Revolution did not just produce a new system of government dedicated to the protection of the rights of all individuals against government and community, the first of its kind in history. It also produced a reaction against those very liberal principles, by slaveholders and their white supporters, by religious movements, by those many Americans who have sought to preserve ancient, traditional hierarchies of peoples and beliefs against the leveling force of liberalism. This struggle between liberalism and antiliberalism has shaped international politics for the last two centuries and dominates the international scene today. But the same struggle has also been fought within the American system since the time of the Revolution. The idea that all Americans share a commitment to the nation’s founding principles has always been a pleasing myth, or perhaps a noble lie. We prefer to believe we all share the same fundamental goals and only disagree on the means of achieving them. But, in fact, large numbers of Americans have always rejected the founders’ claim that all men are created equal, with “unalienable” rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and they have persistently struggled against the imposition of those liberal values on their lives. Great numbers of Americans, from the time of the Revolution onward, have wished to see America in ethnoreligious terms, as fundamentally a white, Protestant nation whose character is an outgrowth of white, Christian, European civilization. Their goal has been to preserve a white, Christian supremacy, contrary to the founders’ vision, and they have tolerated the founders’ liberalism, and the workings of the democratic system, only when it has not undermined that cause. When it has, they have repeatedly rebelled against it. A straight line runs from the slaveholding South in the early to mid-nineteenth century to the post-Reconstruction South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, to the Dixiecrats of the 1940s and ’50s, to Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society of the 1950s and ’60s, to the burgeoning Christian nationalist movement of recent decades, to the New Right of the Reagan Era, to the Republican Party of today. The issues change—from fluoridated water in the 1960s to vaccines today, from allegedly communist-inspired Girl Scout handbooks in the 1950s to elementary-school curricula today. The circumstances have varied—these movements have arisen in hard times, such as after the 2008 financial crisis, and in good times, in the boom years of the 1920s, the 1950s, and the 1980s and ’90s. The media environments have shifted, from newspapers to radio and TV to the internet. But the core complaint has been the same, as is the proposed remedy. All these antiliberal groups—the slaveholding South, the white Southern populists of the Jim Crow era, the Klan, the Birchers, the followers of Pat Buchanan—have feared that their idea of America as a nation of “small government, maximum freedom, and a white, Christian populace” was under attack. All have believed elite cabals involving “Wall Street,” Jewish bankers, “cosmopolitans,” Eastern intellectuals, foreign interests, and Black people have conspired to keep the common white man down. All have sought to “make America great again,” by defending and restoring the old hierarchies and traditions that predated the Revolution. The most successful leaders of these populist movements have always played to popular fears and resentments of the “elite,” the “liberal media,” and government bureaucrats who supposedly have contempt for “the people.” Like Trump, they have flouted conventional norms of political and social behavior. William Buckley noted that the very “uncouthness” of George Wallace seemed to “account for his general popularity.” James Burnham marveled at how Joseph McCarthy’s “inept acts and ignorant words” had a “charismatic” quality that well expressed the fears and angers of his devoted followers. Opponents of the late-nineteenth-century white-supremacist populist Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina called him “a transparent charlatan,” recklessly appealing to “the passions and prejudices of the ignorant” and wielding “the dynamic power of hatred.” What their critics saw as boorishness and malevolence, however, their followers saw as strength and defiance against a world stacked against them. These were not the tame “conservers” of classical liberalism that some intellectuals claim as the true “conservatism” of America. They have been rebellious opponents of the system, “wreckers,” unabashedly antiliberal in both thought and manner, and that is what made them popular. The Trump movement is no freakish aberration, therefore. Like the demon spirit in a Stephen King novel, it has always been with us, taking different forms over the decades, occupying first one party, then another, sometimes powerfully influential, other times seemingly weak and disappearing. Today it has taken control of the Republican Party as it once controlled the Democratic Party. And although people can point to many recent, proximate causes of its latest manifestation as the Trump movement, the search for such causes misses the point. The problem is not the design of the American system. It is not the Electoral College, which not so long ago favored the Democratic Party much as it today favors Republicans. It is not political polarization per se, which has often shaped American politics. It is not the internet or Fox News. It is not the economy: these movements have flourished in good times as well as bad. It is not this or that war, or any particular foreign policy. The problem is and has always been the people and their beliefs. As in the past, millions of Americans are rebelling against the constitutional order and the liberalism it protects, and millions more, out of blind political allegiance, fear and hatred of the Democratic Party and “woke” culture, and out of ignorance or indifference to the consequences, are willing to go along with their party’s radical antiliberal wing even if it leads to the overthrow of the American system of government and perhaps the dissolution of the nation. . . . Writing like that may be over the head of some Trump (and Biden) supporters but it is certainly not over the head of Steve Schwarzman — one of the few major CEOs openly supporting Trump.* Steve, a friend of more than half a century, has, I believe, at least temporarily lost has way (having nicely found it not that long ago). Nor is it over the head of most Republican Senators or Congresspersons who privately detest Trump but lack the patriotism to put country over career or the courage (more understandably) to risk their own personal safety. November’s election is between two systems: One, where you have to live in fear if you criticize the leader; the other, where you don’t. *“Not a single Fortune 100 chief executive has donated to the candidate so far this year, which indicates a major break from overwhelming business and executive support for Republican presidential candidates dating back over a century.” — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld IN CASE YOU MISSED IT EARLIER THIS MONTH What to expect If He Wins.
A Frightening Study In Debasement — And More June 23, 2024 1. Andy Borowitz, famed for his satirical headlines, gets serious about V.P. hopeful Elise Stefanik. A frightening study in debasement. How good people can succumb to pressures that turn them into bad people. It happened in Germany 90 years ago, too. 2. This happened in Philadelphia Mississippi the summer I graduated from high school. As reflected on by today’s residents, black and white. One, Dawn Lea Mars Chalmers, was a freshman at Ole Miss when ‘Mississippi Burning‘ hit theaters. I was just so ashamed that I didn’t know much about [the murders]. I can’t even believe that the sensationalism of Hollywood is what made me understand what a big deal it was. I remember calling my parents and being, like, ‘What the hell?’ My father talked very little about it. [When] I pressed him, he said, ‘Dawn Lea, there are things that I just do not think it is safe for you to know.’ And that’s where he left it. All these years later, she concludes: “My God, can we not move forward while still talking and understanding what happened in the past?” 3. Campaigning on Inflation Leaves Egg on Trump’s Face — Yolk’s on Him. But as with immigration — his other big issue — the yolk’s on him only if enough people know the facts. And right now, most don’t. The fact on immigration, and the very real border crisis, is that Democrats have for decades been trying to work with Republicans to fix immigration. > Obama was all set to sign a bi-partisan bill that passed the Senate 68-32 and that would have passed the House with a bi-partisan majority — had the Republican Speaker allowed it to come to a vote. The Republicans killed it. > Biden was all set to sign a bi-partisan bill that would have passed Congress — and flooded the border with the resources and rule changes needed to solve the crisis — had Trump not killed it. But he did. That’s right: Trump killed it. He insisted the crisis continue so he could ride it to re-election, his only chance to shut down the three serious criminal prosecutions he faces. People need to understand: it’s his crisis now. He owns it. He‘s the only reason it’s been prolonged. He could solve it tomorrow if he told his stooges in Congress — like Elise Stefanik — to pass that bill. The fact on inflation is that COVID disrupted the global supply chain and sent prices soaring. Those high prices caused — and continue to cause — terrible hardship. But Biden didn’t cause the hardship; he averted a depression — while fighting to get inflation back down very close to where it needs to be, even as wages are rising and almost anyone who wants a job can find one. He wants to finish the job. Trump, by contrast, plans to send prices SOARING by imposing tariffs — which American companies and consumers will have to pay — on everything we import. And by tightening the labor market and disrupting supply by moving millions of undocumented workers into “camps.” (Of course, he doesn’t pitch it that way.) “Despite all the noise Trump makes about Biden’s inflationary policies, Trump’s own prescription—much higher tariffs, a politicized Fed, a devalued dollar, and record federal deficits—is sure to make inflation much worse.” If you can find time, read — and share — the whole piece. It even explains the price of eggs.
Macro Economics June 21, 2024June 20, 2024 Paul London in The Hill: History Tells Us the Danger the Economy Faces Is Recession, Not Inflation U.S. economic history warns that raising the cost of public and private borrowing increases the danger of recession. In 2024, this risk far outweighs the risk of renewed inflation. Geopolitical challenges from Russia, China and Iran, and today’s fast-changing, disruptive, tech-driven economy instead require more and less costly credit and spending to promote the expansion and modernization of defense industries and civilian economic transformation. Worth reading in full. As is: Ian Simmons in Forbes: Why Extending Trump’s Tax Cuts Should Concern Long-Term Investors . . . That Trump wants to extend his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act should come as no surprise. . . . [But the TCJA dramatically increased the national debt and was arguably a senseless giveaway to foreign investors, a topic I wrote about in March. Another one of the law’s troubling elements was a new deduction for owners of so-called pass-through businesses. The provision was 50 times more likely to help the top 1% of earners . . . than those in the bottom 50% . . . . . . Tax cuts for billionaires are a bad deal for the vast majority of investors. R.I.P. EDWARD RYAN Ralph M.: “Thank you for posting this. It reminded me of a moment early in the 2004 Presidential race. Howard Dean was campaigning in Iowa in what looked like a middle school cafeteria. An older woman in the back got the mike and expressed her displeasure over Vermont’s Civil Union law. His answer (paraphrased from memory): I understand your concern. I grew up in a conventional family and a culture that was not comfortable with homosexuality and I was no different. But as Governor, I was confronted by people who said that if civil marriage conveyed certain benefits and privileges then those same benefits and privileges should be available to anyone — no matter whom they loved. At a campaign rally, an older gentleman came up to me and said, “I was on the beaches of Normandy, and I think I earned the right to love whoever I love.” “Howard Dean won my vote that night and, more importantly, he may have won the vote of the woman questioner.” Diane D.: “I’ll always believe that love wins out; but it is often a small, quiet win. R.I.P. Edward Ryan — may you and Paul have the life in the afterlife that you should have been able to have here.”
R.I.P., Edward Ryan June 20, 2024June 20, 2024 One of you sent me this obituary from the Albany Times Union with no other explanation than to read it to the end. At first it made no sense — is this someone he thought I had known? — but then it did. It speaks volumes about the way life used to be and how much progress has been made. With our Republican friends fighting it every step of the way. Rest in peace, Edward Ryan.
WHY They Want Him To Win June 19, 2024June 18, 2024 But first . . . Glenn Price: “Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion elevates dogma and the dictionary over a commonsense interpretation of the Second Amendment. Originalism? Originally, bump stocks didn’t exist. Watch this video showing how a bump stock works and tell me it is not a machine gun.” Thomas and Alito are embarrassments to the Court and the nation. If Trump wins, they would be induced to step down, replaced by equally partisan right-wingers 30 years younger . . . extending their minority views beyond 2050. (Surely it is a minority view that abortion should be illegal and bump stocks, legal.) And now . . . PUTIN wants Trump to win so he can subjugate Ukraine and then move on to conquer adjacent states. THE KLAN wants Trump to win because they believe America should be a white Christian nation. CARL wants him to win because he believes trans women are “ruining women’s sports.” And because he is rightly distraught over the border crisis – though not so distraught as to favor the bi-partisan bill Trump killed that would have ENDED the crisis. TRUMP, a convicted felon surrounded by other convicted felons, wants to win so he can be the world’s strongest strongman — like Putin, Orban, and Kim Jong Un, only stronger — and because it’s his only way to beat the raps for attempting to overturn the election and for lying to the FBI about documents he claimed not to have and then took pains to conceal. TENS OF MILLIONS OF OTHERS want him to win because they have been misled into believing the country is going to hell when, in fact, unemployment is low; the stock market, at record highs; infrastructure, at long last being revitalized; manufacturing jobs, coming home; violent crime, down (murder, “plunging”); and the border in crisis — this bears repeating — only because Trump killed the deal to fix it. And inflation? His followers have been misled into believing that the sharp two-year spike in the cost of living was Biden’s fault, when it was largely the result of COVID’s supply-chain disruptions. Prices and interest rates are painfully high; but no longer rising as fast as wages. And even as Biden continues to make progress on inflation, Trump has vowed to impose huge tariffs, making imported goods more expensive; and to deport millions of workers, tightening an already tight labor market, driving up wages and prices. “In our nation’s 247-year history, there has never been an individual who is greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” — Dick Cheney, Sep. 7, 2023
Three Alerts June 18, 2024June 17, 2024 TERROR ALERT “The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again.” Everything policy makers need to know. All I think we need to know is that, should a terrorist succeed between now and the election, we shouldn’t jettison democracy in favor of authoritarianism. That would be a tragic over-reaction — much like our over-reaction to 9/11 . . . strengthening Iran by attacking Iraq; attempting to remake Afghanistan at a cost of trillions; all while creating millions more potential terrorists. IRONY ALERT The 13-million-member Southern Baptist Convention has officially come out against IVF, a fertility method that now accounts for about 2% of American births. The next Republican frontier is to forbid women (and men) from having babies they desperately want, even as they force poor women (and men) to have children they desperately don’t. Both links tell powerful stories. TALENT ALERT Did you watch the Tony’s? They were hosted by Ariana DeBose, the Oscar winning actress named by TIME Magazine one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She’s one of the stars who’ll be joining the President and First Lady in New York a week from Friday. Come join us! Help save the democracy so many fought and died to create and preserve. Straight allies hugely welcome.
If He Wins June 16, 2024 Yesterday, I shared Norm Ornstein’s must-read essay. Today, Tom Hartmann’s take: If Trump wins, this will be referred to as “the age of Trump,” Laura Ingraham told her Fox viewers, dreaming of a repeat of the kind of consequential presidency that stamps political eras. “He dominates the policy debate in ways that no one has done since Reagan. And if he picks a strong VP… this coalition could be in power for 50 years.” Ingraham — who I also once debated, at a Heritage Foundation event — could be right. If Trump becomes president this fall, he and his Project 2025 allies will transform America in ways that go far beyond FDR’s New Deal or Reagan’s war on working people. The Christian Taliban that has surrounded him will take over public school instruction and birth control policy, racist militias and skinheads will be running elections and immigration policy, the media will be finally and fully seized by rightwing oligarchs like in Russia and Hungary, unions and equality movements will be functionally outlawed, and Trump’s “enemies” (including reporters and commentators like yours truly) will end up in prison. Each of those things is already promised explicitly by Trump himself or part of the Project 2025 program for the next Republican presidency. Unthinkable? So was the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Likewise, the idea that two-thirds of the Court would have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Or that a twice-impeached convicted felon — an adjudicated rapist found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties, now awaiting trial in three much more serious criminal cases — who cheated to get into college and cheated to get out of the draft, cheated on his wives, cheats at golf, cheated on his taxes, cheated contractors, cheated with his charity and stiffed creditors of the four companies he put into bankruptcy — “the undisputed world champion of destroying things,” as Tucker Carlson put it, whom dozens of his own former top staffers consider dangerously unfit for the job — could actually be the next president. If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention — which is just what Trump and Putin want. If you can help, click here (cash) or here (effort). We’re going to win because, unlike the Germans or Italians 90 years ago, we have the benefit of hindsight. And if you think all this is alarmist — that even if he wins “the system will hold” — read Norm’s essay again and tell me where you think he’s wrong. THANK YOU!