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David Roberts Profile picture
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16 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
To state the obvious: every day that goes by without the BBB passing makes it less likely to pass. This has been true from the very beginning.
Slowdown "looms" in the Senate. Like it's weather or something & not the deliberate choices of corporate fuckfaces. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
... aaaand voters should start experiencing benefits shortly after they elect a Republican House. politico.com/news/2021/11/1…
Sure, let's take it back up just as "inflation is ruining Christmas!" stories hit their peak & the mid-terms get going in earnest. Should work out great. politico.com/news/2021/11/1…

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More from @drvolts

David Roberts Profile picture
16 Nov
I despair of screaming this into the void, but voters are not primarily responding to inflation, they are responding to a massive, highly coordinated propaganda campaign across multiple media designed to freak them out about inflation.
Replace "inflation" in that tweet with literally anything else. The notion that voters are carefully assessing the evidence of their own local experience to draw conclusions about national affairs is a bit of folk wisdom US politics just won't let go.
It's like looking at hurricane damage & asking "how will voters respond to climate change?"

Yes, the damage is real, but what it *means* -- the emotional resonance, what it portends, who is at fault, the larger frame into which it fits -- is thoroughly mediated.
Read 19 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
15 Nov
A lot of commentary about COP26 seems to forget this basic background. COP agreements are just lists of voluntary national policies. The action is in domestic national politics. COP agreements can't make anyone do anything or punish anyone for failure. vox.com/2015/12/15/101…
There's no "breakthrough" at COP26 because that's not where policy is made -- it's made in national governments. Diplomats can only report what national governments will do, not determine it.
The best way to think about a COP is as a flash for a camera: it shines a big light that reveals where everyone is. And that's a good thing -- transparency & peer pressure can move national gov'ts sometimes. But a COP has little motive force of its own -- such is int'l politics.
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
14 Nov
Zuckerburg, Jack, Musk ... they all started with mixed tendencies & over time have become utterly horrible (Jack is an inflation truther now!). IMO this has to do with the epistemic bubble that surrounds wealthy people in the US.
One of the best tools the 1% has developed is that when someone gets super-wealthy, there's a whole industry, a whole apparatus, that descends upon them to flatter them & fill their head with reactionary bullshit. Prevents any class traitors from emerging.
Adding: this also explains Joe Manchin, IMO. Sure his Dem colleagues plead w/ him, but in private, on the yacht, with his *real* buddies (other rich white guys), everybody just *knows* progressive policy is silly & unrealistic & causes "entitlement."
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
14 Nov
There's really no way to exaggerate how fatalistic I feel about the next decade of US politics. nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/…
“The prospect of being in the minority with Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House and Jason Smith as chairman of the Budget Committee — God, I could go down the list — is horrible." washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/styl…
Republicans have made Congress so viscerally unpleasant that it's making Dems want to retire, which of course is part of the point. If governing is nothing but endless reality-tv culture war, people who care about governance will flee.
Read 6 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
14 Nov
Thinking about the swing trend makes me think about how, back in the 90s, pop culture was still slow enough to allow a trend to clearly start, flourish, & end -- it had a kind of legible lifecycle we could move through together.
These days every young person is hyper media savvy before they're out of diapers. Social media is ubiquitous. Trends start, are critiqued, prompt backlash, prompt backlash-to-backlash, & lead to weary ironic over-it meta-takes ... all in a matter of hours.
Read 5 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
13 Nov
I'm old enough to remember when, around midnight, TV would just ... end. The 2 networks would play the national anthem & then show static until the following morning.

Kids These Days can't imagine anything different, but the 24-7 hose of content is a relatively new thing.
Er, 3 networks. Weird typo.
I'm also old enough to remember when VCRs came along (at like $500 a pop at first). Kids These Days probably can't imagine, but the default until then was that video content (TV or movies) aired once & then ... was gone forever. *Owning* a piece of content was a mind-blower!
Read 5 tweets

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