“For the politician, jobs are not a means to some end — Cadillacs, bales of cotton, iPhones — but an end in and of themselves.”
Read MoreTrump will not go away because 1) despite his flaws he reaches a demographic no one else reaches and 2) the left will not want to give up the lucre of Trump click-bait.
Read MoreTrump’s behavior was less foreign to their local norms than it was to the national audience. He resembled the local party bosses that protected their constituents, spoke plainly, and responded quickly and harshly to criticisms and disloyalty. Muravchik spoke of an honor culture in these towns very much like that found in groups of ethnic minorities. What seemed thin skinned to the coastal elite appeared normal to them. Trump spoke the language of local politics on a national level.
Read More“It turns out that the only place that blue wave existed was on Twitter or in a poll — never once in an experience or an interview.”
Read MoreWe remain a divided nation with two competing and incompatible narratives. One says we are irredeemably morally flawed and the other says we remain the land of opportunity and freedom, even if we are an unfinished and imperfect work. Trump may have lost but the latter vision remains intact.
Read More“And he’d warn that the damage being done — to civil order, public property and, most of all perhaps, to the values demonstrators claim to champion — may not be easy to undo. “Rage and phrensy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation and foresight can build up in a hundred years.””
Read MoreThe voters, however, cannot escape some responsibility for this outcome. The more dependent we become on the government to solve our local and personal problems the more disappointed we will become with the results and the more likely we will be seduced by radical solutions.
Read MoreBernie is the moral supremacist progressive of the first Progressive Era of 1900-1920 that reacted to the Gilded Age and inequality of that period. Bloomberg is the elite technocrat Progressive of the second Progressive Era of 1932-1980; beginning with the New Deal and ending with the Great Society. The irony of a “progressive” reclaiming old and exhausted positions from fifty to a hundred years ago is lost on most who accept progressivism.
Read MoreThe problem with greater federal power is no longer legitimacy but competence. The failure of the left to maintain control of their sacred institutions has not led them to decry it’s competence but to question its legitimacy; but by not supporting the institutions they relied on they have brought their own legitimacy into question.
Read MoreThe impeachment seemed liked a hail Mary from the inception, motivated more by rage than reason. That is precisely why the constitution designed the process as they did to start in the House and then move to the Senate. Rather than viewed as a Constitutional crisis, it should be affirmed as its proper functioning. It does not become a threat to the constitutional order just because you disagree with the outcome.
Read MoreA moderate Democratic party could have leveraged this impeachment to certain victory in Congress and the Whitehouse. The new radicalized Democratic party will have a much tougher time.
Read More“The president has become a convenient straw man for all the political anxieties on the left, which have manifested in an unhealthy obsession and antagonism toward the constitutional system that allowed Trump to win. “
Read MoreWhatever you may think of Trump, he has been the strongest unequivocal supporter of Israel since its independence and his recent executive order strikes a strong blow to anti-Semitism on college campuses. To draw a conclusion from this that he is a tool of the alternate right requires a willing suspension of the obvious.
Read MoreBy using their big weapon early in the campaign, the Democrats will be in weaker position during the campaign. Adam Schiff will be Pelosi’s fall guy; she warned against impeachment before she succumbed to the mob. And the Democrats will have yet learned the lesson from their previous fiascos: rage makes you stupid.
Read MoreA political party is a coalition of interests designed to convince a majority to trust it enough to let it govern. The Progressive Era in its aim to neuter the constitutional speed bumps to majoritarian democracy pushed for democratic primaries. Initially the parties retained some ideological commitment, but in the age of instant outrage media, they have descended into tribal warfare where emotions rule over ideas. The two sides do not share common information or common narratives that define us as a nation. There is no mere disagreement on how we arrive at common goals; we no longer agree on who we are.
Read MoreThe big question when Trump won in 2016 was whether his victory was the result of the rejection of the ideology of the left or the rejection of the deeply flawed Hillary Clinton. The question few of us considered was if it was the attractiveness of either the character or policies of Donald Trump.
Read More“The U.S. criminal justice system, because of the corruption of the plea bargain system that facilitates the prosecutors’ extortion of perjured inculpatory evidence with impunity, is just an immense kangaroo court.”
Read MoreTrump maybe correct in recognizing China’s destructive trade policies, but he is wrong to think that alone justifies a trade war. He is wrong to think that Twitter is an acceptable negotiation platform, and he is wrong to think that he is the only national leader with stubborn pride. Xi does not face an election in 2020 and has the political advantage of waiting him out, even if there are in a weaker economic position.
Read MoreThis is the slow-motion suicide of identity politics. When everything is about race or sex it loses its power because it becomes impossible to identify. The Squad cannot even disagree with its own party and leaders without attributing differences to racism. Pelosi tried to minimize the power of these few House Democrats yet was unable to pass a meaningful anti-Semitic resolution against the support these few actors garnered. Yet they had little trouble passing a resolution condemning Trump’s ‘racist’ comment.
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