Writer (Netherland, The Dog, Good Trouble etc) Politics @nybooks Ex-barrister. Fading cricketer. @BardCollege teacher
Jan 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There's something fatally anachronistic about Hochul. Machine politics have so deeply insulated her from ordinary Ds (moderates & progs) that she has no conception of the extraordinary personal investments of time, emotion, money they've made since 2017 to defeat the GOP.
In Hochul world, the Albany carousel still whirls as if it's 2012. Wall Street donors, machine hacks, and 'deal-making' Republicans are her chief collaborators. ActBlue doesn't exist. Indivisible never happened. Trump is guy you can do deals with.
Oct 17, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
This isn't good--it's always better to be ahead in the polls--but a number of things to bear in mind. nytimes.com/2022/10/17/us/…
The big one: respondents responsible for fluctuations in polling (i.e. low-info nonpartisans) sit out the midterms at a disproportionately high rate. So this poll (of selfdescribed 'likely voters') is largely recording a superfluous change of sentiment.
Sep 21, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Reminder that SDNY is teeming with GOP hacks and Trump fanatics and utterly dysfunctional.
The J6C is actively erasing the line between the failed coup and ongoing actions--not by Trump but by ordinary Republican officials all over the country, from SCOTUS to state legislatures to sheriffs' offices--to undermine the democracy and enable one-party rule *by the GOP.*
Jul 22, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I'll say it again: there's something deeply wrong with these proceedings, in which all roads lead to Trump and away from the GOP, and in which R officials and uniformed men and women are relentlessly lionized and Dems--the victims this political aggression--are erased.
It's always the same: when it comes to the crunch, Republicans are the protagonists, Republicans have the final say, Republicans decide.
Jul 8, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If Dems adopted a classic storytelling structure, with conflicts and high stakes--good v bad, prosperity v ruin, Ds v Rs--they would find it easier to communicate their economic superiority. Currently they're just spewing out data and leaving a vacuum where a narrative should be.
A narratological insight: the best stories are authoritative. Narrative authority is mysterious, but it involves self-belief and a (tacit/explicit) aura of command. This applies to standup comedians as much as to novelists. Catastrophically, Ds have ceded authority to the GOP.
Jul 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This collapse in Biden's approval coincides with uniquely favorable political opportunities (J6C, Roe v Wade, rogue SCOTUS). IOW, his is the *least effective political strategy ever.*
It's not like the economy suddenly collapsed. It's not as if we just lost a war. It's not as if gas prices and inflation have spiked to unseen levels. It's that Biden has contrived to alienate a chunk of his base in a disastrous attempt to woo imaginary pocketbook voters.
Jul 6, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
There is scope for a highly winnable cultural war on MAGA parenting.
It would involve those pictures of MAGA families with infants armed to the teeth. It would overlap with the MAGA assault on public education. "Are we raising a generation of monsters?" etc
Jul 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Most people don't know that there isn't a Dem strategy unit. Because none of the powers-that-be want any kind of strategic power that potentially threatens the gerontocrats, cliques, careerists, jobsworths, hacks, consultants, lobbyists, rich donors, etc.
If the D Party elders were actually in the business of defeating the GOP and not in the business of advancing a bunch of careers, DNC would have drafted the folks from @IndivisibleTeam and @swingleft other grassroots winners and entrusted them with strategic power. But no.
Jun 29, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Disagree. Giving Cheney and Republicans the central role as white knights is misleading and politically destructive. Inter alia it cements--as if further cement were needed--the notion that, when it comes to the crunch, conservative whites get to thrash out the big questions.
J6 was an attempt by the Republican Party, through its highest officials, to overthrow the election of a Democrat. It is disastrous to erase this central reality from the popular understanding of what happened.
Jun 28, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The spanner in the works, here, is that the polling shows that Dobbs has turned the November election upside in favor of the Dems, contra the theory of the case of Biden and his idiotic entourage that voters are moved by pocketbook issues.
A normal political party, handed a superpowerful election-winning hammer, would immediately bash away. But these are the guys who decided in the wake of J6 that voters would want Dems to restore the fortunes of the party that didn't believe in voters.
Jun 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I keep coming back to this: does even Biden understand how democracy works? Does he understand that a mandate doesn't give him the *option* to align himself with the will of the majority but rather it imposes a *duty* to do so? Hence the term... mandatory.
Biden did not inherit the Oval Office. He isn't there to rule in accordance with his private judgment, to wing it as he pleases. He's there pursuant to a political election and as the clear winner of the popular vote his political duty is clear: respect the will of the majority.
Jun 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The intellectual dishonesty of the right, in legal circles particularly, is quite something.
The sheer brazen lying, the relentless bad faith, the corrupt whataboutism, the bottomless hatred... How is dialogue with these intellectual barbarians supposed to work?
Jun 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
No no no, what really motivates Dems to vote is the prospect of bipartisan infrastructure and the amelioration of supply chains
I still maintain that those millions of women who marched in pink hats on Washington & organized & ran for something & gave Biden the Blue Wave were driven by a terrible and beautiful lust for better nonpartisan economic micromanagement
Jun 26, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The right is arguing, in effect, that apartheid would be OK if a state legislature ordained it to be so, and federal authorities--judicial or legislative--could do nothing except stand back and wait for a mysterious process of 'political contestation' to take place.
If Alabama prohibits black people from voting in Alabama elections, this would be fine, unless the rule were changed by a process of 'political contestation' that of course would not involve black people voting.
Jun 26, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The misconception here is that people go to the polling booth with a left-right spectrum (whatever that means) in their heads, and vote to reward the candidate closest to their position. That is not how human beings behave.
Only the most primitive (& illogical) theory of political science would hold that polling people about their ideological self-perceptions reveals their voting motivation. Voting is above all a social-cultural act, not an activity that elicits the secret policy wonk in voters.
Jun 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This thread outlines the basic, doable, noncontroversial, healthily partisan, moderate, confidence-inspiring political action plan that we need.
The problem we have is that D leaders will read this and instead of evaluating (and accepting) its analysis, their only thought will be: What about my position in the party? Who does AOC think she is? It's not her turn to exert influence in the party until 2040.
Jun 24, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Serious question: has anyone spotted any sign of any of the D powers-that-be admitting to, or even wondering about, the failure of the party's centrist political strategy?
Is there any sign of a strategic post mortem? Any at all? Any ruefulness? Any self-doubt?
Jun 23, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
There is a horrible connection between Biden's 'nonpartisan' posture--which involves rejecting the will of the American majority that put him in office--and the GOP's posture that the popular will should not prevail in US elections.
Biden and the GOP agree on one thing: that the will of the large majority of Americans who voted Biden into office to implement a Democratic agenda and a Democratic government, should not be respected.
Oct 29, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Congrats to all the Democratic consultants, pollsters, & politicians who keep telling us that political sentiment is rooted not in culture & partisanship but in static, technical pocketbook issues, and that there's nothing a political party can do to change that.
Don't mention 1/6. Don't mention Trump. Don't mention that the GOP is a radical movement that terrorizes teachers, cops, poll workers, doctors, politicians, flight attendants. Cover up the fact that the GOP has killed countless thousands with its anti-vax lies.
Oct 28, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The big point here is that Biden had historic political capital after 1/6 and took office enjoying unimaginable goodwill and power over a historically vulnerable GOP. He could have made GOP support for BBB the condition precedent for its rehabilitation. But oh no.
Instead of using a catastrophic Republican political overreach to advance the D cause, Biden, Pelosi & Garland made it a priority to rescue the GOP *unconditionally.* It was the worst, most immoral political capitulation since Chamberlain's.
