Strong agreement with the global anti-establishment winds, blowing leftward rather than rightward in some countries (Australia, for example). But the right-populists (with exceptions in Orban and Bukele) don't have Trump's unique, well, everything. Also even in other FPTP countries the major party duopoly is not anywhere nearly as entrenched as in the US, AFAIK.
Missing in this discussion (unless I missed it) is any mention of Harris' baggage from her 2019 run. Do you think a hypothetical Harris who had not run for POTUS (assuming Biden still picked her) would have done meaningfully better?
I know it's water far under the bridge, but back in 2020 I thought Biden's best choice for VP (given that he really meant it about only running for one term, and also given that he had to choose a Black Woman) was probably Lance Bottoms. Granted the arguments against Lance Bottoms at the time (whose limited tenure in the Biden admin was not particularly impressive), assuming:
1) For whatever reason Biden *had* chosen Lance Bottoms, overall would she have done any better, lacking as she would the Harris baggage?
2) Given what you/we think we know now, was Harris the best choice for VP in terms of maximizing the chance of the Ds retaining the White House in 2024. I have to say* that overall she did somewhat better on the campaign trail than I had expected.
If not, given that Biden's VP certainly had to be female and I think had to be at least sort of Black, who would you retroactively have him choose (assuming that he was not going to choose someone who was not going to run for POTUS in 2024)?
2a) Assume Biden announced, for example after the 2022 runoffs (GA-Sen) that he was not going to run for a second term. Do you think there is any real chance that a hypothetically open D primary would *not* have returned Harris (possibly weakened by having to swing left in the primary, but possibly strengthened by having a full primary campaign to debug her campaign team)? I'm fully on Team Polis (or for that matter Team Shapiro), but I just don't see it.
* I have known _of_ her for a long time; my brother went to law school with her and much of my family lives in San Francisco (and I'm all too familiar with Willie Brown)- I moved out of the Bay Area for SoCal while she was at Vanier College in Montreal.
I don't suppose there's any way for you to automatically generate subtitles, YouTube-style, is there? This blog was recommended to me, and I'm quite interested, but I'm hard of hearing. Without a little help, for me, there's no point in listening. I just miss too much of what's being said.
(1) We also publish our podcasts on YouTube. So if you like YouTube's system a little better, you can always listen there. Here's a link to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theunpopulist
(2) Another option is for you to follow along using the transcript that we publish along with the audio. So, in this post, we include both the audio and the text-based transcript. Someone could press play and then just follow along textually via the transcript.
Expanding on what Andy said about liberals being seen as pro-status quo, do you think the liberal coalition arguably undermined its message and/or hurt its chances of winning by aligning itself with the Cheneys (who popularized the unitary theory of the executive that Trump seeks to exploit)?
I am not surprised to hear this blame game with little introspection. Let’s see what went wrong: It was Bari Weiss blaming woke, Biden not leave soon enough, structural disadvantage(?), being an incumbent, the right’s dominance of social media, not enough time for messaging, the low information voters (nothing condescending or bias about this), the main stream media not tough enough on Trump (he’s a trickster, that’s all), throw the bums out attitude, MAGA influencers, liberals aren’t able to be populist (too virtuous), Republicans need to be more introspective, excise Trump, get back to good governance (brilliant observation), lies that Harris ran on defund the police (fact check: CNN — Vice President Kamala Harris voiced support for “defund the police” in a radio interview in June 2020), the idea of woke lived in the Trump space, dismissing Latinx as a slur, the internal inconsistency of messaging (mischief) has always exist in politics (nothing to see here), the wide propagation of only one drag queen reading a book in a library, the pressure and expectation put on the left to respond to fringe elements, etc. It is all these externalities, not the avoidance of accountability, not the arrogance of the anointed, never mind the cancellation of people (even your own), not recognizing that your own supporters left you, certainly not the hypocrisy as there is none, not even entertaining the audacious notion to reconsider one’s ideology, the attribution of a failure to win to the “uneducated” people, etc. Until the liberals shed themselves of these narcissistic elites and slogan swallowing sycophants, who talk down, not to, people, who won’t admit there own hypocrisy, these learned luminaries will have a hard time regaining trust and winning back the people whom they used to campion. This discordant discourse, denialism and intransigence will continue to fail to give the people an alternative choice. Thank you for reminding me why I left.
A brusque ad hominem attack is the way you choose to respond to KO’s well articulated but critical comment? Meaningfully respond to his challenge. By asking you and your colleagues to consider reconsidering your ideology, KO is challenging you to raise your assumptions to awareness and challenge them for yourself….unfortunately something seldom undertaken by those who feel they have captured a universal truth. It can manifest in the kind of righteousness inferred by KO that I, and many others, have experienced that shuts down meaningful dialogue and any hope to engage in shared critical thinking.
This is silly tone policing. I responded to the comment, which was not "well-articulated" but sophistical, appropriately. Kevin is a Chris Rufo fan who telegraphed his reading incomprehension literally in the opening part of his reply. He wrote: "Let’s see what went wrong: It was Bari Weiss blaming woke, Biden not leave soon enough..." but this is a misreading (or mislistening). In the intro we explained we would be discussing *causes* and also *reactions*. We never claimed "Bari Weiss blaming woke" was a cause or was part of the "what went wrong" analysis. Weiss' comments came out after the election, so unless Kevin is ready to share truly groundbreaking insights in the metaphysics of retrocausation, they couldn't have been part of our analysis about "what went wrong." We never claimed "Bari Weiss blaming woke" was a cause of Harris's loss; we did claim Biden not leaving soon enough was.
Here's Kevin again getting something pretty basic wrong: "Here's what went wrong: ... lies that Harris ran on defund the police (fact check: CNN — Vice President Kamala Harris voiced support for “defund the police” in a radio interview in June 2020)"
Kevin's "fact check" parenthetical is not a fact check at all. When we claim that Harris "didn't run" on defunding the police, that means she didn't campaign on it. It doesn't mean she hadn't voiced support for something like that in the past. The fact that Kevin had to go back to 2020 to find something Harris said that was positive about defunding the police confirms the very point we were making. She didn't run on that. This goes to a pretty significant inability on Kevin's part to process the meanings of words and sentences.
Tone policing? Perhaps you need to seriously consider the policing of alternative perspectives in the comments section of this blog. It is certainly not the first time that you have discouraged the discussion of diverse viewpoints...and it's not the first time that you've been called on it. You can take the feedback and act on it...or dismiss it; as you have basically done here. Unfortunately, it's what turns comment forums such as these into echo chambers. Is that what you want? Consider the observations I shared with you that have gone unaddressed in your reply. You appear to be ignoring them intentionally, you're much too smart a person. I'm sure you're aware of the gorilla in the room but for whatever reason can't bring yourself to acknowledge its existence.
Craig's comment was extremely insightful: "One of the geographic trends that I find most stark and I think provides a big, important insight going forward is that the places Democrats lost the most were deep blue cities and safe blue states. This was not polarization as we’re used to thinking about it where red gets redder and blue gets bluer. People who live in the areas Democrats govern were fleeing them in big numbers. New York was the biggest, but it was a pretty consistent trend everywhere. That is related to inflation and particularly the housing part of it, the housing shortage. I think there is a big correlation there and it’s not because people are consciously voting on land-use policy or because they’re YIMBYs who are thinking about the housing shortage. But they feel it—that housing has gotten insanely expensive and the shortage is real and it’s hurting people, even if incomes and productivity and all these other measures are going up. The sharp increase in housing costs over the last few years has been hitting a lot of people hard. There’s a lot of resentment."
But I think this commentary is largely elitist and out of touch.
Yet when we talk about housing prices - there is no mention of the open border policies that brought in millions of new housing customers.
When we talk about crime - no mention of illegal immigration, when some huge percentage of our prison population is illegal aliens.
When we talk about inflation, no mention of Social Security recipients getting $1,800/mo after working their whole lives, but illegals get $5,000+/mo in benefits.
I saw a stat that said every demographic that said they were living paycheck-to-paycheck voted Trump. Every race, religion, college-educated, whatever.
The Unpopulist appears quite disconnected from the real world.
I don't support a lot of Biden's policies but imagine if Trump had presided over the lowest ever unemployment rate, record high stock market, and dropping inflation how much he would have been shouting from the roof tops rather than running away from that record.
"So, these low information voters, voting based on what their media ecosystem is telling them rather than what the truth is...." Elitism might be the problem, not populism, if you favor freedom over Statism.
The irony is it was Rush Limbaugh who came up with the "low information voter" slur. That entire sentence could've come from one of Rush's broadcasts in the '90s, which I guiltily admit to listening to.
Some good comments here. Quoting Berny in a piece I'm finishing right now. Thanks for that.
Here's the link, if you like, Berny: https://andyjabbour.substack.com/p/the-weekend-rundown-celebrating-the
Strong agreement with the global anti-establishment winds, blowing leftward rather than rightward in some countries (Australia, for example). But the right-populists (with exceptions in Orban and Bukele) don't have Trump's unique, well, everything. Also even in other FPTP countries the major party duopoly is not anywhere nearly as entrenched as in the US, AFAIK.
Missing in this discussion (unless I missed it) is any mention of Harris' baggage from her 2019 run. Do you think a hypothetical Harris who had not run for POTUS (assuming Biden still picked her) would have done meaningfully better?
I know it's water far under the bridge, but back in 2020 I thought Biden's best choice for VP (given that he really meant it about only running for one term, and also given that he had to choose a Black Woman) was probably Lance Bottoms. Granted the arguments against Lance Bottoms at the time (whose limited tenure in the Biden admin was not particularly impressive), assuming:
1) For whatever reason Biden *had* chosen Lance Bottoms, overall would she have done any better, lacking as she would the Harris baggage?
2) Given what you/we think we know now, was Harris the best choice for VP in terms of maximizing the chance of the Ds retaining the White House in 2024. I have to say* that overall she did somewhat better on the campaign trail than I had expected.
If not, given that Biden's VP certainly had to be female and I think had to be at least sort of Black, who would you retroactively have him choose (assuming that he was not going to choose someone who was not going to run for POTUS in 2024)?
2a) Assume Biden announced, for example after the 2022 runoffs (GA-Sen) that he was not going to run for a second term. Do you think there is any real chance that a hypothetically open D primary would *not* have returned Harris (possibly weakened by having to swing left in the primary, but possibly strengthened by having a full primary campaign to debug her campaign team)? I'm fully on Team Polis (or for that matter Team Shapiro), but I just don't see it.
* I have known _of_ her for a long time; my brother went to law school with her and much of my family lives in San Francisco (and I'm all too familiar with Willie Brown)- I moved out of the Bay Area for SoCal while she was at Vanier College in Montreal.
I don't suppose there's any way for you to automatically generate subtitles, YouTube-style, is there? This blog was recommended to me, and I'm quite interested, but I'm hard of hearing. Without a little help, for me, there's no point in listening. I just miss too much of what's being said.
Thanks for listening, John.
Here are a couple of options for you:
(1) We also publish our podcasts on YouTube. So if you like YouTube's system a little better, you can always listen there. Here's a link to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theunpopulist
And here's this particular episode:
https://youtu.be/Wb71qYtvRZE?si=by6Rj_4vNCJ3BUMW
(2) Another option is for you to follow along using the transcript that we publish along with the audio. So, in this post, we include both the audio and the text-based transcript. Someone could press play and then just follow along textually via the transcript.
Thanks again for your interest.
Expanding on what Andy said about liberals being seen as pro-status quo, do you think the liberal coalition arguably undermined its message and/or hurt its chances of winning by aligning itself with the Cheneys (who popularized the unitary theory of the executive that Trump seeks to exploit)?
I am not surprised to hear this blame game with little introspection. Let’s see what went wrong: It was Bari Weiss blaming woke, Biden not leave soon enough, structural disadvantage(?), being an incumbent, the right’s dominance of social media, not enough time for messaging, the low information voters (nothing condescending or bias about this), the main stream media not tough enough on Trump (he’s a trickster, that’s all), throw the bums out attitude, MAGA influencers, liberals aren’t able to be populist (too virtuous), Republicans need to be more introspective, excise Trump, get back to good governance (brilliant observation), lies that Harris ran on defund the police (fact check: CNN — Vice President Kamala Harris voiced support for “defund the police” in a radio interview in June 2020), the idea of woke lived in the Trump space, dismissing Latinx as a slur, the internal inconsistency of messaging (mischief) has always exist in politics (nothing to see here), the wide propagation of only one drag queen reading a book in a library, the pressure and expectation put on the left to respond to fringe elements, etc. It is all these externalities, not the avoidance of accountability, not the arrogance of the anointed, never mind the cancellation of people (even your own), not recognizing that your own supporters left you, certainly not the hypocrisy as there is none, not even entertaining the audacious notion to reconsider one’s ideology, the attribution of a failure to win to the “uneducated” people, etc. Until the liberals shed themselves of these narcissistic elites and slogan swallowing sycophants, who talk down, not to, people, who won’t admit there own hypocrisy, these learned luminaries will have a hard time regaining trust and winning back the people whom they used to campion. This discordant discourse, denialism and intransigence will continue to fail to give the people an alternative choice. Thank you for reminding me why I left.
After this clinic of reading incomprehension, I’m glad you did.
A brusque ad hominem attack is the way you choose to respond to KO’s well articulated but critical comment? Meaningfully respond to his challenge. By asking you and your colleagues to consider reconsidering your ideology, KO is challenging you to raise your assumptions to awareness and challenge them for yourself….unfortunately something seldom undertaken by those who feel they have captured a universal truth. It can manifest in the kind of righteousness inferred by KO that I, and many others, have experienced that shuts down meaningful dialogue and any hope to engage in shared critical thinking.
This is silly tone policing. I responded to the comment, which was not "well-articulated" but sophistical, appropriately. Kevin is a Chris Rufo fan who telegraphed his reading incomprehension literally in the opening part of his reply. He wrote: "Let’s see what went wrong: It was Bari Weiss blaming woke, Biden not leave soon enough..." but this is a misreading (or mislistening). In the intro we explained we would be discussing *causes* and also *reactions*. We never claimed "Bari Weiss blaming woke" was a cause or was part of the "what went wrong" analysis. Weiss' comments came out after the election, so unless Kevin is ready to share truly groundbreaking insights in the metaphysics of retrocausation, they couldn't have been part of our analysis about "what went wrong." We never claimed "Bari Weiss blaming woke" was a cause of Harris's loss; we did claim Biden not leaving soon enough was.
Here's Kevin again getting something pretty basic wrong: "Here's what went wrong: ... lies that Harris ran on defund the police (fact check: CNN — Vice President Kamala Harris voiced support for “defund the police” in a radio interview in June 2020)"
Kevin's "fact check" parenthetical is not a fact check at all. When we claim that Harris "didn't run" on defunding the police, that means she didn't campaign on it. It doesn't mean she hadn't voiced support for something like that in the past. The fact that Kevin had to go back to 2020 to find something Harris said that was positive about defunding the police confirms the very point we were making. She didn't run on that. This goes to a pretty significant inability on Kevin's part to process the meanings of words and sentences.
Tone policing? Perhaps you need to seriously consider the policing of alternative perspectives in the comments section of this blog. It is certainly not the first time that you have discouraged the discussion of diverse viewpoints...and it's not the first time that you've been called on it. You can take the feedback and act on it...or dismiss it; as you have basically done here. Unfortunately, it's what turns comment forums such as these into echo chambers. Is that what you want? Consider the observations I shared with you that have gone unaddressed in your reply. You appear to be ignoring them intentionally, you're much too smart a person. I'm sure you're aware of the gorilla in the room but for whatever reason can't bring yourself to acknowledge its existence.
Craig's comment was extremely insightful: "One of the geographic trends that I find most stark and I think provides a big, important insight going forward is that the places Democrats lost the most were deep blue cities and safe blue states. This was not polarization as we’re used to thinking about it where red gets redder and blue gets bluer. People who live in the areas Democrats govern were fleeing them in big numbers. New York was the biggest, but it was a pretty consistent trend everywhere. That is related to inflation and particularly the housing part of it, the housing shortage. I think there is a big correlation there and it’s not because people are consciously voting on land-use policy or because they’re YIMBYs who are thinking about the housing shortage. But they feel it—that housing has gotten insanely expensive and the shortage is real and it’s hurting people, even if incomes and productivity and all these other measures are going up. The sharp increase in housing costs over the last few years has been hitting a lot of people hard. There’s a lot of resentment."
But I think this commentary is largely elitist and out of touch.
Yet when we talk about housing prices - there is no mention of the open border policies that brought in millions of new housing customers.
When we talk about crime - no mention of illegal immigration, when some huge percentage of our prison population is illegal aliens.
When we talk about inflation, no mention of Social Security recipients getting $1,800/mo after working their whole lives, but illegals get $5,000+/mo in benefits.
I saw a stat that said every demographic that said they were living paycheck-to-paycheck voted Trump. Every race, religion, college-educated, whatever.
The Unpopulist appears quite disconnected from the real world.
For the life of me, I can't see any cause for any repudiration of Joe Biden. He accomplished a great deal, and never allowed any credit for it.
I don't support a lot of Biden's policies but imagine if Trump had presided over the lowest ever unemployment rate, record high stock market, and dropping inflation how much he would have been shouting from the roof tops rather than running away from that record.
"So, these low information voters, voting based on what their media ecosystem is telling them rather than what the truth is...." Elitism might be the problem, not populism, if you favor freedom over Statism.
The irony is it was Rush Limbaugh who came up with the "low information voter" slur. That entire sentence could've come from one of Rush's broadcasts in the '90s, which I guiltily admit to listening to.
You all sound miserable in writing this. But I just remind you. It is your turn to suffer.