Post

@pickathon

@TankandDaBangas

More from @drvolts

David Roberts

@drvolts

Jul 27

I'm enjoying that the couch jokes are bugging Republicans but I'm enjoying it almost more that they are bugging harumphing, self-consciously morally superior Dems. "We're better than this." No we're not. Knife those fuckers.

The couch thing is an example of what @joshtpm used to call "bitch slap politics" (I think has wisely used different terms since. "Dominance politics"?) It's not rooted in fact, it's not a substantive critique, it's got nothing to do with policy, it's just ...

@joshtpm ... "we're mocking you because you're pathetic & we feel like it." The irrationality of it, the fact that it's made up & kind of ridiculous, is the *point*. This is not about exchanging semantic information. It's about kicking sand in someone's face. It's a dominance play.

Read 12 tweets

David Roberts

@drvolts

Jul 23

One thing's already clear: Harris's Happy Warrior persona a) is incredibly appealing to meme-happy young people, and b) drives the right craaaaaazy. It infuriates them on such a deep level. The best thing she can do is: stay happy, stay laughing, mock these clowns, have fun.

It's going to be difficult. The harumphing jackasses on the right will be joined by harumphing centrist columnists and harumphing cable news anchors, all of whom will harumph about how this is Serious Business and she needs more gravitas & etc. Ignore them.

One thing conservatives (and lots of conservative Dems) feel in their gut is that a black woman in public life shouldn't be happy, or joyful, or silly. She should be grateful that we let her in the door, right? She should be genuflecting & making us feel magnanimous, right?

Read 6 tweets

David Roberts

@drvolts

Jul 19

I watched the entire @AOC IG thing and I encourage you to do the same. Lots of people are on here caricaturing or mischaracterizing what she said. She is *not* ride-or-die for Biden. She's not dismissing anyone's fears about him. She's not telling anyone what to think.

What she's doing is acting like a fucking adult, ie, thinking through the problem in a systematic way, raising concerns that have been obscured by the unbelievable groupthink stampede of pundits & rich donors.

She's speaking to her constituents honestly, without bullshit. She wants them to know that the people behind this are not just averse to Biden, they want to parachute in the exact white moderates of their choosing, despite the near-impossible logistics of it.

Read 12 tweets

David Roberts

@drvolts

Jul 17

In their int'l bestseller How Democracies Die, scholars Levitsky & Ziblatt point to one phenomenon above all others: democracies die, not just when there's a reactionary authoritarian movement, but when *center-right political & business elites join it*.
amzn.to/3ycYLrj

Those center-right elites think they can manage the movement, use it to their own benefit, without letting it get out of hand. It never works. It always gets out of hand.

We are watching that process play out, here in the US, in the most flat-footed, explicit way possible.

Things might be different if those elites ran into a unified wall of social disapprobation when they tried this. They'd drop it like they touched a hot stove.

But that's not what's happening. Instead pundits are casting them as savvy operators. They're being rewarded.

Read 4 tweets

David Roberts

@drvolts

Jul 13

One of the most shocking things you discover when you start covering US politics closely -- at least naive young me found it shocking -- is that most political journalists don't seem to give even a tiny shit about policy.

My take on politics, though I'm not sure I could have articulated it, is "I want good results -- increased welfare -- for my fellow citizens, and to get it, I have to figure out how this stuff works." I kind of assumed that's why anyone would pay attention to politics.

But I've spent a *lot* of time over the years talking to or working alongside political journalists & it is just wild how little it comes up & how little curiosity they evince about it, except insofar as it represents some sort of power play in the Great Game.

Read 4 tweets

David Roberts

@drvolts

Jul 11

🧵The main thing Americans do not understand/appreciate about presidential elections is that you are not voting for a person, you are voting for an *administration* -- cabinet members, appointees, military leaders, advisers & analysts, the whole civil service, etc. etc.

You're voting for an executive branch -- that's an *enormous* organization. The president himself makes only a tiny fraction of the decisions in the day-to-day management of that org. It's a whole apparatus, vastly larger than one individual.

Yet people instinctively think -- and the media reinforces this misperception at every term -- that the president, this one person, is "in charge" of the US & responsible for everything that happens, that their unique personal capabilities determine the country's fate.

Read 17 tweets

Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

David Roberts

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @drvolts

David Roberts

David Roberts

David Roberts

David Roberts

David Roberts

David Roberts

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Send Email!