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18 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Just a real cool, vox.com/2020/11/18/215…
totally normal, not-at-all-trying-to-steal-an-election-no-way, vox.com/2020/11/18/215…
Republican Party we've got here vox.com/2020/11/18/215…
Imagine if the GOP were as committed to crushing COVID as they are to fighting the election results: vox.com/future-perfect…

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
13 Nov
To offer a comment on this (good!) thread by Ross, you have to decide what you're trying to explain: The GOP's turn towards Trumpism, or increasingly sorted disagreement between the parties.
In the case of that piece, my focus is narrow: countermajoritarian institutions explain why Trumpism has been viable.

In their absence, American would still be very polarized. But it'd be polarized between better options, and the conflict would play out with better incentives.
Something I try to make clear in my book is that polarized disagreement isn't going away, and *nor should it*. What's important is how that disagreement maps onto other political institutions, from elections to parties to congress to the media. That's where our dysfunction lies.
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
13 Nov
One thing @anneapplebaum and I talk about towards the end of this podcast, and that I keep coming back to, is Trump wasn't even the hard test of our institutions.
He’s not an omnicompetent autocrat demanding we choose between effective governance and liberties. He’s not a strategic autocrat who hides his narcissism or nepotism. He’s not a beautiful speaker who cloaks his lust for power in glittering ideals.
And yet, the Republican Party fell so easily to him. So what happens when a more competent, capable, would-be autocrat tries this strategy, in a party where Trump already laid the groundwork? vox.com/21562116/anne-…
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
12 Nov
So @ronklain is a very good choice here, particularly right now, and I want to say a word on why
In 2014, the Obama administration made Klain "Ebola czar," and it was a controversial choice. Klain isn't a doctor, he didn't come with a deep public health background. His resume wasn't the obvious one.
But as I wrote here, and as proved true, the Obama admin understood what that job required, and the kind of talent you needed to run it. Responding to Ebola was a maddeningly difficult problem of intergovernmental coordination. vox.com/2014/10/17/699…
Read 9 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
11 Nov
America's only been a stable, real democracy since the 1960s, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. The roots are shallow.

The idea that its survival is assured, that the political forces that fought democracy for so long are gone, was fanciful.
I've been thinking a lot lately about something about something @ProfCAnderson once told me:
“America is aspirational. That is part of what sets it apart. Marginalized people have used those aspirations to say, ‘This is what you say you are, but this is what you do.’ But what also happens is those aspirations get encoded as achievements."
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
9 Nov
If we saw the head of the ruling regime, and his party, react to the election results this way in any other country, we'd know exactly what we are looking at.

And I'd say here, too, it's time to be honest and say we know exactly what we are looking at. vox.com/2020-president…
And it's not just Trump. It's a Republican Party that endlessly puts their short-term electoral interests over the stability of the political system.
And, to add:
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
8 Nov
There needs to be a name for this strategy of projecting emotional solidarity with Trump’s rage tweeting while actually saying something banal that Democrats agree with, and that Trump actually doesn’t agree with. Because *lots* of Republicans are using it.
Still my favorite example. This tweet is so carefully composed to seem like it’s in solidarity with Trump while not actually supporting his claims. It’s art.
And just to be clear, I think this is rank cowardice that’s going to hurt the country.
Read 4 tweets

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