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Scott Lemieux Profile picture
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29 Dec 21, 4 tweets, 1 min read
The young leftists who remember Hitch as a shallow-thinking warmonger whose writing no longer matters are entirely correct
Ian Anderson beat him to the "British guy first person ever to discover that God doesn't exist" schtick by decades, and at least he threw in some catchy tunes
His attacks on Kissinger were no more original than his attacks on religion, and also completely cancelled out by his becoming a professional apologist for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld
Similarly, his (purely personal) dislike of the Clintons was justified with some correct-if-banal critiques of neoliberaliam, but his support for the candidate who wanted to end Social Security in 2004 should make it clear that he never actually gave a shit about the policy

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More from @LemieuxLGM

Scott Lemieux Profile picture
29 Dec 21
John Roberts's remarkable ability to cultivate liberal respect while writing some of the worst and most reactionary opinions in the largely ignominious history of the Supreme Court: lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/12/john-r…
Two important related points in this excellent @EricLevitz piece. First, Roberts (with one crucial exception) understood that holding his fire in a few high-profile cases would buy a lot of liberal approval even as the Court moved inexorably to the right: nymag.com/intelligencer/… Image
[The exception here is Obergefell -- that case coming out the other way would have instantly eliminated the Strange Liberal Respect for the Court, although who knows how Roberts would have voted if he had been the median]
Read 6 tweets
Scott Lemieux Profile picture
20 Dec 21
The “I am negotiating in good faith” banner on my yacht has many people asking questions already answered by my banner lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/12/the-i-…
If you haven't seen it, this is the anodyne statement from Biden Manchin is using as a pretext for his sudden trip to trash the bill on Fox News. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Do Manchin's actions seem like those of someone sincerely interested in making a deal, or someone who was stringing people along Olympia Snowe-style? I think the question answers itself. 🤷‍♂️
Read 4 tweets
Scott Lemieux Profile picture
20 Dec 21
Manchin blew up negotiations out of the blue on the opposition's toxic propaganda network!
Joe Biden, who has been around the Senate since Methuselah had his baby teeth, clearly thinks that Manchin is no longer negotiating in good faith. Perhaps he's wrong, but it's certainly not a judgment inconsistent with the publicly known facts
I agree as far as it goes with the "prioritize and do fewer programs better" approach, but it only works if you *try to work within the consensus of the party.* Simultaneously demanding prioritization and insisting on priority for your own idiosyncratic preferences won't work
Read 4 tweets
Scott Lemieux Profile picture
20 Dec 21
Also, a LOT of red-state Dems -- some of whom, unlike Biden, were actually up in the next cycle! -- voted for the Affordable Care Act. His opposition to the BBBA isn't determined by geography. Doug Jones would not be doing this.
It is simultaneously true that Manchin has the highest electoral WAR among Dem senators and that he should be criticized for both opposing BBBA and being twerpish throughout the negotiations. (Also note that the second-highest WAR is Sherrod Brown.)
It would be one thing if progressives in the caucus presented him with a take-it-or-leave-it $5T package. The left of the party has negotiated responsibly, only to be met with endless goalpost-moving and incoherent explanations, along with attacks on the party in GOP outlets
Read 6 tweets
Scott Lemieux Profile picture
19 Dec 21
LBJ couldn't get a Supreme Court nominee confirmed with a 64-36 majority. He exploited a historic opportunity in 1965 well but he wasn't some magician who could have gotten the Great Society out of a 50/50 Senate lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/12/nostal…
A lot of the nostalgia for LBJ’s hardball tactics specifically is "hiring Urban Meyer to coach in the NFL" logic. Senators in 2021 would respond about as well to The Treatment as Jags players did to being assaulted and called dipshits
Manchin and Sinema are not in fact going to suddenly embrace Biden’s entire agenda because Biden makes them watch him take a shit or invades their private space or wears them down over 8 Cutty-and-sodas
Read 5 tweets
Scott Lemieux Profile picture
18 Dec 21
Trump was one vote way from repealing the ACA, and kicked trans people out of the military. Plus claiming GOP has "moved left" requires you to ignore stuff like Republican judges nullifying the Voting Rights Act and being about to rule much of the modern regulatory state illegal
One reason government-by-judiciary will be scarily effective is the tendency of pundits/reporters not to cite policy changes announced by the judiciary as belonging to the party that has engaged in a decades-long quest to install a judiciary that would achieve these policy goals
Seems like Trump's judges being about to vote to overrule a very popular 50-year-old precedent so states can create abortion criminalization regimes more barbaric than the ones that existed pre-Roe is pretty relevant here
Read 4 tweets

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