What amazes me even more are the number of once sensible and moderate Democrats who now stand against everything they believed 20 years ago. And they also claim that neither they nor the party have changed views at all.
Honestly, it really weakens my faith in humanity as I know so many people like that, including family and friends. I think that they are just following the crowd and do not have the moral courage to think for themselves.
Their new beliefs are in many ways the logical conclusion of their old ones:
e.g., they always believed that the poor are victims of "systemic oppression", they've just decided that the Global South is poorer, hence more oppressed, than the American working class,
also the left has supported 'sexual liberation' since the 1960s, they've simply moved to ever more perverted sex acts.
As I suspected, I got quite a few unsubscribes due to this article. Most of them came almost immediately after I published the article, so I am confident that none of those readers actually read the article.
If you are that intellectually fragile that you cannot read a differing opinion, then I don't want your subscription anyway. My views are very heterodox and I dislike most ideologies on the Left and Right, but a large portion of social media readers insist on putting me in an ideological box.
I voted for Donald Trump, far more enthusiastic than in the past. Here are my reasons:
1) I hope that this results in "the left" finally rejecting Woke (etc). I reject arguments that "Trump causes wokeness on the left." This was tried in 2020 and failed.
The left lost HUGE in the 1980s and the result was a moderation in the 90s.
Electing Harris, probably the EMBODIMENT of this Vibe, would prevent this from happening.
2) To the extent the left doesn't moderate, I think significant improvements against the radical left can be accomplished via executive order and judicial appointments.
3) I think there is a chance of significantly larger middle class family tax breaks under a Trump admin versus Harris.
I also expect that certain harmful tax breaks like SALT will be on the chopping block in Trump vs Harris.
4) I think the prospects for school choice and school vouchers are much better under Trump vs Harris.
5) I think the prospect of modest tariffs being used for middle class income tax relief are fine. If we called it a VAT instead of a tariff people would fall over themselves to endorse it.
6) I think foreign policy under Trump will be better than Harris.
7) I think that the re-alingment of Silicon Valley leaders to the right would be validated by a Trump win.
8) I think a Trump win would be the end of the trans insanity. I suspect that if he wins we will decide that Elon Musk's kid getting transed my be one of the most consequential outcomes of that movement.
9) I think a Trump administration would allow the Red State and Blue States to do their own thing without interference, and this would allow the marketplace of ideas to allow people to vote with their feet.
10) I think the supreme court will be much better protected under a Trump admin.
11) I have more confidence of Trump allowing the abortion issue to resolve then anyone else on the right.
I would also hope Scott Alexander read this stuff and see what he or his followers find objective,since there are few nonpartisan people with high information,anyway I would still maintain an optimistic future of US either way,other countries have bigger problems
Frankly Scott's election article reads like it was written backwards, i.e., he started with needing to endorse Harris, probably because that's a requirement in this friend circle, and then proceeded to provide the mental gymnastics needed to justify the endorsement.
# 26 the prospect of Trump fleeing the country to avoid prison or bankruptcy never crossed my mind, but a nice catch that you at least mention that possibility.
#28 I suspect with his other issues [baggage?] and disavowal by his other family members, RFK Jr. would not have ended up the Dem primary winner, but it was wrong to deny him a fair contest. And if he lost that contest, he still had the option of going Independent.
#29 I live in FL and did not realize that had happened, but I was not watching any Dem party activity and tend to focus on national level rather than state or local news.
And I gather you agree that the bias of the news media and their implicit [if not explicit] coordination on news stories and the Party Narrative is perhaps even more damaging to "our democracy" than the Dem Party leaders' failures and acknowledged or visible actions. Basically part of our "political immune system" is compromised and allows the disease to spread more easily and completely.
The fact that both parties have cowardly avoided any serious discussion of the debt and reforming of entitlements is a major failure all around, and THE major issue [long and short term] from my perspective [border security and immigration reversal being the 2nd]. I need to look it up, but what was the relative contribution to the debt from Trump and Congress [in response to Covid] in 2020 vs. Biden and Congress in 21 to 24? I want to say $1T vs. $5T or $6T off the top of my head. If you have a reference handy, I would appreciate that short cut. :-)
On your section of "The evidence", a great set of "indictments". A few merit further comment or question:
#3 I had not realized so many states had moved to keep Trump off of their ballots, rather than just the 3 or 4 more prominent ones in the news.
#17 the language here is a little confusing to me (sort of a double negative aspect?), but I gather you mean that quarantining and minimizing contact by selective cohorts were quickly recognized as a better policy than wearing masks (where the mask efficacy was always in considerable doubt).
#'s 22, 23, 24 on the 51 intelligence "experts" questioning the Hunter Biden laptop: I see from the comments 12 hours ago that you have read Dan Williams' substack post on the Industrial Censorship Complex, where he takes a more forgiving "benefit of the doubt" view towards those experts' letter/signing; and he seems to ignore your reference to the potential impact for 16% of Dem voters. If you have more to say about the veracity of Williams' posting, I would welcome seeing that (either here or there). He is causing me to question some of my acceptance fo the Shellenbeger et al. story, but he does not seem to strike quite the same level of neutrality that you have.
> I am here to say that “Trump is a threat to Democracy” line is simply a campaign tactic. It is not based on anything more than a visceral dislike of Donald Trump.
No, it's based on the fact that he LITERALLY tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a coup d'etat. I was all "Trump is just funny moron" until learning about the extremes to which Trump went to end the centuries-old American tradition of democratic rule. I retroactively consider "Trump being a rude dipshit means he's a would-be putschist" to be much more plausible than I did at the time, since it accurately predicted the future.
I'm sure consultants say that it wins votes. It also wins votes to mention his shit positions on abortion, the ACA, taxes, social security, and more. That doesn't mean those things aren't true.
If Trump wins, I expect him to use the powers of the Presidency to put his thumb on the scale in 2028, even if the Republican candidate loses. He claimed 2012 was stolen. (He also made similar nonsense claims about the 2016 primaries, the 2016 popular vote, the 2020 election, and will no doubt make them about 2024 no matter the result.) The only election he had Presidential powers during, he used them to attempt to overturn the results of the election, by refusing to send in the National Guard. I expect that specific method to not happen again, but the immunity decision gives him such latitude I'd rather not figure out what his cronies come up with.
Given that you have had four days to respond and you don’t even acknowledge a single one of my 34 examples of where the Democrats “put their thumb on the scale,” it does not sound like you even believe your own rhetoric.
I believe my own rhetoric, I just got like 6 notifications simultaneously, and when that happens I often just click and unclick without reading. I don't know what he'll do, specifically. It's not like I would have predicted the Jan 6 plot, specifically, but it did in fact involve the abuse of Presidential power, and the attempted abuse of the VP's powers - which JD Vance has said he would have done, were he in Mike Pence's position. It's very possible that, come 2028, Vance is one more in "Mike Pence's position," so that would be the most obvious way, but again, there's no reason Trump has to do the same thing twice.
The problem with listing 34 examples is that they become lower quality (because you can't thoroughly fact check them) and they greatly increase the risk of lowering the reader's confidence by them knowing enough to know at least one is just factually wrong. Many of the listed ones, I know enough to be reasonably confident they're bullshit, but, for the most trivial, I know and can easily prove that the reason NH was stripped of its delegates is because South Carolina was decided to be the first primary going forward, and NH ignored that decision and ran its primary before SC. If you just say, "oh, sure, NH, your delegates still count" then obviously they'll have 0 incentive to correct it going forward. I don't think either NH or SC have any particular right given by the logic of democracy to be "the first" primary (the most logical first primary would be the tipping point state in the last election, if indeed we must have a single first primary). I could list a half-dozen I have moderate-to-strong confidence are wild misrepresentations of a similar sort but I don't want to get that far into the weeds on it.
If you want to use such arguments to actually persuade, choose one, which you know in detail, and can cite, rather than 34. I agree that the "supporting MAGA candidates in the hopes they'll lose the general" is, in fact, an atrocious strategy, for example. I have myself compared it to Khrushchev starting the Cuban missile crisis, where, even if you win, it was still a stupid gamble. But the number of ones that I knew well enough to know were of atrocious quality, makes me dubious on the ones I only half-know/remember/don't know at all, particularly given the frequent lack of any ability to click on a source to corroborate.
I am glad that we agree that supporting MAGA candidates was terrible, but you miss that it is just one part of a much wider pattern.
Your example of NH and SC just bolsters my point. The DNC was just trying to rejigger the primary schedule to get the desired outcome of an easy Biden win with no competition. NH first primary had been the tradition for generations. I agree that Democratic theory does not make that inevitable, but you ignore the anti-democratic reason for making the change: no competition.
Transparent competition is the heart of democratic governance.
Please do mention “the half-dozen I have moderate-to-strong confidence are wild misrepresentations of a similar sort.” I am willing to discuss them, and that just whittles down the list from 34 to 28…
My listed items are not of “atrocious quality” and I did add links for many of them, particularly if they were lesser known.
If you actually cared about which party is a bigger threat to democracy, you could easily check out the stories of all these items listed yourself.
My guess is that you did not even click the links that I did include in the article, right?
You chose not to do so, likely because you do not want to risk disrupting the narrative within your head.
As for your prediction of the future, we will know for sure in 2028.
> If you actually cared about which party is a bigger threat to democracy, you could easily check out the stories of all these items listed yourself.
No, I couldn't, since most of them don't have any references. You wrote a list of 34 things, many of which are obviously stupid, and expected me to research them and be persuaded. This isn't persuasive to anyone.
I learned about Jan 6 because I just read (parts of, not even the whole thing!) a single report and went through the sources, on a single, key, uniquely bad event. If I was expected to be convinced that Trump was anti-democratic via a list of 34 half-cited weak pieces of evidence, then I would still not believe that.
> You chose not to do so, likely because you do not want to risk disrupting the narrative within your head.
No, it's because giant, low-quality lists are not persuasive, period, ever. Expecting your reader to do your research for you is stupid. I posted why I believe Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy and you complained that it was not permitted to list things that happened in the past.
I never said that you could not list things that happened in the past. I just said that I do not want to rehash what actually happened on Jan 6.
You are welcome to list out which of the 34 points you agree with and which you do not, including evidence for your beliefs.
And this article was not targeted at people like you. As I said in the article:
"This article is to persuade you not to cast your vote based on “I really do not agree with the policy preferences of Kamala Harris or the Democratic party, but Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy, so I will do so anyway.”
This article is not really about Trump. It is about the behavior of the Democratic party and why they should not be trusted as the guardians of democracy.
You are welcome to oppose both Trump and the Democrats as threats to democracy..
Any person who was actually concerned about democracy would be concerned about both parties and would not fall for the Democratic rhetoric. You can be anti-Democrat and anti-Trump.
If your argument is that both parties are endangering democracy, then I could respect your opinion. You are not doing that. And the fact that you think only 28 items on my list is true and fair instead of 34 does not change the overall argument. You should still be anti-Democrat if you are concerned about the future of democracy.
You likely started anti-Trump long before Jan 6 and just used it as more ammunition to support your prior beliefs. Most likely, your primary concern is not "saving democracy."
Focusing on one only issue instead of 34 would have been pointless. People like you would say "That is only one example. Who cares?"
If I went into depth on all 34 articles, the article would have been very lengthy and no one would read it, including you.
Listing them all out is far more effective. Most people already know something about most of the list, but no one (to the best of my knowledge) has presented them altogether in one list.
As I said in the article:
"I realize that each of these individual actions has additional context that might make that one particular action less objectionable. But taken as a whole, these actions are not those of a party that is “defending democracy.”
In fact, it is exactly the opposite."
Notice that I also added that "The true smoking gun is that no one within the party criticizes these obviously anti-democratic and unethical actions. This is proof that the Democratic party cannot control itself. It can only move in one direction. That direction inevitably ends up in Totalitarianism"
> You likely started anti-Trump long before Jan 6 and just used it as more ammunition to support your prior beliefs. Most likely, your primary concern is not "saving democracy."
I was anti-Trump in the sense that I am left-leaning; I was not anti-Trump in the sense that I found it funny when it looked like Biden was going to lose in 2020, and did not vote for Biden in that election (or Clinton in the previous one). As stated, I did not buy the "threat to democracy" stuff (even after Jan 6!), until I learned about the false electors plot &c. But I am an image you are shadow-boxing in your head, an enemy you can attribute any position to, any history to, any backstory, so that you can dismiss me. I am muting you. Farewell.
EDIT: Oh, sorry, one last thing:
> And the fact that you think only 24 items on my list is true and fair instead of 34 does not change the overall argument.
Sorry, but you cannot mute me from my column. You are merely ending your ability to explain to other readers why you think I am wrong.
I have no idea what the linked article has to do with my claim that the Democratic party has worked in very anti-democratic ways for the last two decades.
No, you are not an image in my head. You made clear that you do not believe that the Democratic party has taken actions that make them a serious threat to democracy. You called Trump “a unique threat to democracy.”
As someone who is "left-leaning,” (which I was correct in assuming, so you are not image in my head), you were obviously already anti-Trump for ideological reasons. You are welcome to remain that way.
As I said in the article:
"This article is to persuade you not to cast your vote based on “I really do not agree with the policy preferences of Kamala Harris or the Democratic party, but Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy, so I will do so anyway.”
Your comments are really just trying to change the subject away from how anti-democratic the Democratic party has become to focus on January 6th and fake electors. You are welcome to your interpretation of that event, but it does not deal with the heart of my claim.
Again, you can be both anti-Trump and anti-Democrat. You can believe that both are a threat to democracy, but yet you seem to discount that possibility.
If you stay on topic, you are welcome to comment, but stay on the topic.
If I deleted that one sentence from the article that you mentioned at the top of this comment, would you then agree with the general conclusion of the article that the Democratic Party has taken dozens of anti-democratic actions over the last 20 years?
If not, then you are really just dodging my point.
Thanks for the reply. I was looking for a more specific and falsifiable prediction.
The closest that I see is "I expect him to use the powers of the Presidency to put his thumb on the scale in 2028, even if the Republican candidate loses."
I really do not see how that would be possible. The President has no real powers in conducting elections. Elections are run at the local level by state governments.
The 1/6/2021 incident was not successful, or a literal coupe d’etat, which is an organized armed takeover by military or insider elites to overthrow an existing government. The president was still Trump at the time, the participants were not organized or armed, and did not succeed at anything other than chaos. Trump instructed the Pentagon to keep the day safe, including by using the national guard but the orders were not followed through. I don’t like Trump, and never voted for him (including today), and the Capitol incident was embarrassing and badly handled, but there is no need to exaggerate.
There is every reason to explain that on January 6, Donald Trump attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He had previously engaged in a criminal conspiracy (some of his other co-conspirators, such as Lorraine Pellegrino, have already plead) to create seven false slates of electors, with the intent of getting Mike Pence to throw out the results of all seven swing states. When Mike Pence refused, Trump proceeded to send thousands to the Capitol with the intent of pressuring him into giving in. He watched as they beat up cops for three hours, as they chanted "Hang Mike Pence," because he hoped that Mike Pence would yield to the pressure and do what he wanted: throw out the results of the 2020 election.
The whole, "it's not a coup, you need the military for a coup" is so tedious I don't even know why people say it. If I get a bunch of my boys and kidnap key leadership and overthrow a country's government, it's not a coup because I didn't have the military on my side as I do it? Stupid.
This article is not about Jan 6, so it is off-topic (a violation of the commenting rules listed at the bottom of the article). This article is about the clear pattern of anti-Democratic actions taken by a party who is claiming to be saving democracy.
If you want an argument about what happened on Jan 6, take it somewhere else.
I asked for specific, time-bound, and falsifiable predictions within the next 5 years.
Let me try a few predictions concerning a future Trump administration, more to help clarify my own thinking (and reduce my own expectations) than to argue with your post.
1) He will bring staffers on board who are more knowledgeable than those in 2016ff, but with greater loyalty and thus less inclination to question him, even in a devils's adovcate role. He will still have to listen to congressional leaders to achive his agenda, as I don't perceive he has has been truly instrumental in bringing that many other Republican candidates along on his coattails [a few, yes, but not too many?]
2) He/they will move to implement some form of the Schedule F concept that surfaced at the end of 2019, although I read it was in the works legally from 2017, and then shelved due to Covid. But nothing significant will result to restrain the "admin state" and support the "unitary presidency" unless we have a suitably compliant and agreeable House and Senate to truly reform the abuses in the Civil Service Laws [plural? there are more than just one big one, I believe].
3) the border wall with Mexico will be funded and built within 4 to 8 years [presuming a cooperative Congress] but it is uncertain just how much real procedural and law enforcement reform of the immigration laws will result [especially if enough Dems can hang tough].
4) Deporting the 8 to 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants (especially beyond the criminal subset mentioned by Vance) will be very difficult unless a valid and forceful e-Verify program is implemented quickly and thoroughly, to deny work opportunities to most of them. Incentives for self deportation, coupled with "bounty" awards for ID'g suspect individuals and families, might help. Would legal immigrants, naturalized Hispanics, and native born Hispanics "rat out" their fellow ethnic citizens? Hispanics are not a uniform group and do not necessarily favor folks from a different region or country than where they came from.
5) addressing the non-Hispanic illegal immigrants (Chinese, Middle Easterners and potential terrorist Muslims, and others will remain a challenage if they came here explicitly to hide and then formet terror or other mayhem.
Yes, a great post where you ID your preferences up front but still manage to tip toe throught the bipartisan minefield in an objective and neutral way. Of course I have a bias towards the conservative and Republican side, and you are being critical of the Dem Party here. Given the discord between the MAGA and populist group and Never Trumpers and GOPe group in the Republican party, perhaps there is an opportunity for you to explore the foibles and flaws on that side as well.
Your section "This all started long before Trump" brought out an aspect of Democrat Party activity I had not fully appreciated, even as it was happening, given the bias in my news bubble. And long before Trump there were Hitler references to GW Bush and earlier Republican candidates, apparently all the way back to Eisenhower.
I would also add Reagan and Nixon as former Republican presidents who were called "Fascists" by a significant portion of the Left. In past generations, this behavior was largely restricted to the fringe Left, but now it has become standard practice by the entire American Left and the Democratic party.
The same way Republicans would accept the border bill if they thought there was a unique crisis instead of letting the issue so Trump has sth to fight for,the Dems wouldn't aggressively fight DeSantis,calling him worse than Trump-because they thought Trump was a more beatable opponent-if they really thought Trump was a unique threat. I am gonna take a detox from reading 'about the current thing' and focus on more timeless information after election. It is rather addictive and unproductive. I really appreciate your substack your blog and your ability to resist the temptation to speak about popular political stuff.
Trying to follow the "current thing" is exhausting and unproductive, so I do not even try. I know that I could get more subscribers if I did so, but I have not interest.
Thanks for this excellent article.
It's amazing how many people I know who were ardent Democrats and now do not recognise (and are also horrified by) the current party.
It is a truly awful thing, and as awful as Trump is... the dispassionate analysis of the situation makes it clear what you need to do.
The Democrats need to go back to being liberals, and stop being authoritarians.
What amazes me even more are the number of once sensible and moderate Democrats who now stand against everything they believed 20 years ago. And they also claim that neither they nor the party have changed views at all.
Honestly, it really weakens my faith in humanity as I know so many people like that, including family and friends. I think that they are just following the crowd and do not have the moral courage to think for themselves.
Hive Mind is the only way to describe it.
Frankly the Democrats haven't changed that much in 20 years. You're just now seeing them for what they always were.
No, I am talking about people that I know personally. I know for a fact what they believed 20 years ago, and how much their stated views have changed.
It also clearly shows up in opinion polls. White, college-educated Democrats have really changed their beliefs to the Left over the last 20 years.
Their new beliefs are in many ways the logical conclusion of their old ones:
e.g., they always believed that the poor are victims of "systemic oppression", they've just decided that the Global South is poorer, hence more oppressed, than the American working class,
also the left has supported 'sexual liberation' since the 1960s, they've simply moved to ever more perverted sex acts.
You are starting to get way off the topic of the article.
The Democrats haven't been liberal in the classic sense in a century.
As I suspected, I got quite a few unsubscribes due to this article. Most of them came almost immediately after I published the article, so I am confident that none of those readers actually read the article.
If you are that intellectually fragile that you cannot read a differing opinion, then I don't want your subscription anyway. My views are very heterodox and I dislike most ideologies on the Left and Right, but a large portion of social media readers insist on putting me in an ideological box.
Your unorthodox views are why I like to read you. It is a perspective I don’t read much.
I voted for Donald Trump, far more enthusiastic than in the past. Here are my reasons:
1) I hope that this results in "the left" finally rejecting Woke (etc). I reject arguments that "Trump causes wokeness on the left." This was tried in 2020 and failed.
The left lost HUGE in the 1980s and the result was a moderation in the 90s.
Electing Harris, probably the EMBODIMENT of this Vibe, would prevent this from happening.
2) To the extent the left doesn't moderate, I think significant improvements against the radical left can be accomplished via executive order and judicial appointments.
3) I think there is a chance of significantly larger middle class family tax breaks under a Trump admin versus Harris.
I also expect that certain harmful tax breaks like SALT will be on the chopping block in Trump vs Harris.
4) I think the prospects for school choice and school vouchers are much better under Trump vs Harris.
5) I think the prospect of modest tariffs being used for middle class income tax relief are fine. If we called it a VAT instead of a tariff people would fall over themselves to endorse it.
6) I think foreign policy under Trump will be better than Harris.
7) I think that the re-alingment of Silicon Valley leaders to the right would be validated by a Trump win.
8) I think a Trump win would be the end of the trans insanity. I suspect that if he wins we will decide that Elon Musk's kid getting transed my be one of the most consequential outcomes of that movement.
9) I think a Trump administration would allow the Red State and Blue States to do their own thing without interference, and this would allow the marketplace of ideas to allow people to vote with their feet.
10) I think the supreme court will be much better protected under a Trump admin.
11) I have more confidence of Trump allowing the abortion issue to resolve then anyone else on the right.
I would also hope Scott Alexander read this stuff and see what he or his followers find objective,since there are few nonpartisan people with high information,anyway I would still maintain an optimistic future of US either way,other countries have bigger problems
Feel free to give him a suggestion!
I am happy to discuss with anyone who does so in a respectful way and stays on topic.
Frankly Scott's election article reads like it was written backwards, i.e., he started with needing to endorse Harris, probably because that's a requirement in this friend circle, and then proceeded to provide the mental gymnastics needed to justify the endorsement.
Yep. There is a lot of that going round, but I guess that it did not work too well.
# 26 the prospect of Trump fleeing the country to avoid prison or bankruptcy never crossed my mind, but a nice catch that you at least mention that possibility.
#28 I suspect with his other issues [baggage?] and disavowal by his other family members, RFK Jr. would not have ended up the Dem primary winner, but it was wrong to deny him a fair contest. And if he lost that contest, he still had the option of going Independent.
#29 I live in FL and did not realize that had happened, but I was not watching any Dem party activity and tend to focus on national level rather than state or local news.
And I gather you agree that the bias of the news media and their implicit [if not explicit] coordination on news stories and the Party Narrative is perhaps even more damaging to "our democracy" than the Dem Party leaders' failures and acknowledged or visible actions. Basically part of our "political immune system" is compromised and allows the disease to spread more easily and completely.
The fact that both parties have cowardly avoided any serious discussion of the debt and reforming of entitlements is a major failure all around, and THE major issue [long and short term] from my perspective [border security and immigration reversal being the 2nd]. I need to look it up, but what was the relative contribution to the debt from Trump and Congress [in response to Covid] in 2020 vs. Biden and Congress in 21 to 24? I want to say $1T vs. $5T or $6T off the top of my head. If you have a reference handy, I would appreciate that short cut. :-)
I definitely believe that both parties are cowardly for ignoring the federal debt and entitlements. I will write an article on that in the future.
Well the reaction to Romney's infamous 47% comment convinced politicians that the public does not want to hear about the entitlement problem.
On your section of "The evidence", a great set of "indictments". A few merit further comment or question:
#3 I had not realized so many states had moved to keep Trump off of their ballots, rather than just the 3 or 4 more prominent ones in the news.
#17 the language here is a little confusing to me (sort of a double negative aspect?), but I gather you mean that quarantining and minimizing contact by selective cohorts were quickly recognized as a better policy than wearing masks (where the mask efficacy was always in considerable doubt).
#'s 22, 23, 24 on the 51 intelligence "experts" questioning the Hunter Biden laptop: I see from the comments 12 hours ago that you have read Dan Williams' substack post on the Industrial Censorship Complex, where he takes a more forgiving "benefit of the doubt" view towards those experts' letter/signing; and he seems to ignore your reference to the potential impact for 16% of Dem voters. If you have more to say about the veracity of Williams' posting, I would welcome seeing that (either here or there). He is causing me to question some of my acceptance fo the Shellenbeger et al. story, but he does not seem to strike quite the same level of neutrality that you have.
> I am here to say that “Trump is a threat to Democracy” line is simply a campaign tactic. It is not based on anything more than a visceral dislike of Donald Trump.
No, it's based on the fact that he LITERALLY tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a coup d'etat. I was all "Trump is just funny moron" until learning about the extremes to which Trump went to end the centuries-old American tradition of democratic rule. I retroactively consider "Trump being a rude dipshit means he's a would-be putschist" to be much more plausible than I did at the time, since it accurately predicted the future.
I'm sure consultants say that it wins votes. It also wins votes to mention his shit positions on abortion, the ACA, taxes, social security, and more. That doesn't mean those things aren't true.
If Trump wins, I expect him to use the powers of the Presidency to put his thumb on the scale in 2028, even if the Republican candidate loses. He claimed 2012 was stolen. (He also made similar nonsense claims about the 2016 primaries, the 2016 popular vote, the 2020 election, and will no doubt make them about 2024 no matter the result.) The only election he had Presidential powers during, he used them to attempt to overturn the results of the election, by refusing to send in the National Guard. I expect that specific method to not happen again, but the immunity decision gives him such latitude I'd rather not figure out what his cronies come up with.
Given that you have had four days to respond and you don’t even acknowledge a single one of my 34 examples of where the Democrats “put their thumb on the scale,” it does not sound like you even believe your own rhetoric.
I guess that we will know for sure in 2028.
I believe my own rhetoric, I just got like 6 notifications simultaneously, and when that happens I often just click and unclick without reading. I don't know what he'll do, specifically. It's not like I would have predicted the Jan 6 plot, specifically, but it did in fact involve the abuse of Presidential power, and the attempted abuse of the VP's powers - which JD Vance has said he would have done, were he in Mike Pence's position. It's very possible that, come 2028, Vance is one more in "Mike Pence's position," so that would be the most obvious way, but again, there's no reason Trump has to do the same thing twice.
The problem with listing 34 examples is that they become lower quality (because you can't thoroughly fact check them) and they greatly increase the risk of lowering the reader's confidence by them knowing enough to know at least one is just factually wrong. Many of the listed ones, I know enough to be reasonably confident they're bullshit, but, for the most trivial, I know and can easily prove that the reason NH was stripped of its delegates is because South Carolina was decided to be the first primary going forward, and NH ignored that decision and ran its primary before SC. If you just say, "oh, sure, NH, your delegates still count" then obviously they'll have 0 incentive to correct it going forward. I don't think either NH or SC have any particular right given by the logic of democracy to be "the first" primary (the most logical first primary would be the tipping point state in the last election, if indeed we must have a single first primary). I could list a half-dozen I have moderate-to-strong confidence are wild misrepresentations of a similar sort but I don't want to get that far into the weeds on it.
If you want to use such arguments to actually persuade, choose one, which you know in detail, and can cite, rather than 34. I agree that the "supporting MAGA candidates in the hopes they'll lose the general" is, in fact, an atrocious strategy, for example. I have myself compared it to Khrushchev starting the Cuban missile crisis, where, even if you win, it was still a stupid gamble. But the number of ones that I knew well enough to know were of atrocious quality, makes me dubious on the ones I only half-know/remember/don't know at all, particularly given the frequent lack of any ability to click on a source to corroborate.
I am glad that we agree that supporting MAGA candidates was terrible, but you miss that it is just one part of a much wider pattern.
Your example of NH and SC just bolsters my point. The DNC was just trying to rejigger the primary schedule to get the desired outcome of an easy Biden win with no competition. NH first primary had been the tradition for generations. I agree that Democratic theory does not make that inevitable, but you ignore the anti-democratic reason for making the change: no competition.
Transparent competition is the heart of democratic governance.
Please do mention “the half-dozen I have moderate-to-strong confidence are wild misrepresentations of a similar sort.” I am willing to discuss them, and that just whittles down the list from 34 to 28…
My listed items are not of “atrocious quality” and I did add links for many of them, particularly if they were lesser known.
If you actually cared about which party is a bigger threat to democracy, you could easily check out the stories of all these items listed yourself.
My guess is that you did not even click the links that I did include in the article, right?
You chose not to do so, likely because you do not want to risk disrupting the narrative within your head.
As for your prediction of the future, we will know for sure in 2028.
> If you actually cared about which party is a bigger threat to democracy, you could easily check out the stories of all these items listed yourself.
No, I couldn't, since most of them don't have any references. You wrote a list of 34 things, many of which are obviously stupid, and expected me to research them and be persuaded. This isn't persuasive to anyone.
I learned about Jan 6 because I just read (parts of, not even the whole thing!) a single report and went through the sources, on a single, key, uniquely bad event. If I was expected to be convinced that Trump was anti-democratic via a list of 34 half-cited weak pieces of evidence, then I would still not believe that.
> You chose not to do so, likely because you do not want to risk disrupting the narrative within your head.
No, it's because giant, low-quality lists are not persuasive, period, ever. Expecting your reader to do your research for you is stupid. I posted why I believe Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy and you complained that it was not permitted to list things that happened in the past.
I never said that you could not list things that happened in the past. I just said that I do not want to rehash what actually happened on Jan 6.
You are welcome to list out which of the 34 points you agree with and which you do not, including evidence for your beliefs.
And this article was not targeted at people like you. As I said in the article:
"This article is to persuade you not to cast your vote based on “I really do not agree with the policy preferences of Kamala Harris or the Democratic party, but Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy, so I will do so anyway.”
This article is not really about Trump. It is about the behavior of the Democratic party and why they should not be trusted as the guardians of democracy.
You are welcome to oppose both Trump and the Democrats as threats to democracy..
Do you?
I disagree.
Any person who was actually concerned about democracy would be concerned about both parties and would not fall for the Democratic rhetoric. You can be anti-Democrat and anti-Trump.
If your argument is that both parties are endangering democracy, then I could respect your opinion. You are not doing that. And the fact that you think only 28 items on my list is true and fair instead of 34 does not change the overall argument. You should still be anti-Democrat if you are concerned about the future of democracy.
You likely started anti-Trump long before Jan 6 and just used it as more ammunition to support your prior beliefs. Most likely, your primary concern is not "saving democracy."
Focusing on one only issue instead of 34 would have been pointless. People like you would say "That is only one example. Who cares?"
If I went into depth on all 34 articles, the article would have been very lengthy and no one would read it, including you.
Listing them all out is far more effective. Most people already know something about most of the list, but no one (to the best of my knowledge) has presented them altogether in one list.
As I said in the article:
"I realize that each of these individual actions has additional context that might make that one particular action less objectionable. But taken as a whole, these actions are not those of a party that is “defending democracy.”
In fact, it is exactly the opposite."
Notice that I also added that "The true smoking gun is that no one within the party criticizes these obviously anti-democratic and unethical actions. This is proof that the Democratic party cannot control itself. It can only move in one direction. That direction inevitably ends up in Totalitarianism"
> You likely started anti-Trump long before Jan 6 and just used it as more ammunition to support your prior beliefs. Most likely, your primary concern is not "saving democracy."
I was anti-Trump in the sense that I am left-leaning; I was not anti-Trump in the sense that I found it funny when it looked like Biden was going to lose in 2020, and did not vote for Biden in that election (or Clinton in the previous one). As stated, I did not buy the "threat to democracy" stuff (even after Jan 6!), until I learned about the false electors plot &c. But I am an image you are shadow-boxing in your head, an enemy you can attribute any position to, any history to, any backstory, so that you can dismiss me. I am muting you. Farewell.
EDIT: Oh, sorry, one last thing:
> And the fact that you think only 24 items on my list is true and fair instead of 34 does not change the overall argument.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/
Sorry, but you cannot mute me from my column. You are merely ending your ability to explain to other readers why you think I am wrong.
I have no idea what the linked article has to do with my claim that the Democratic party has worked in very anti-democratic ways for the last two decades.
No, you are not an image in my head. You made clear that you do not believe that the Democratic party has taken actions that make them a serious threat to democracy. You called Trump “a unique threat to democracy.”
As someone who is "left-leaning,” (which I was correct in assuming, so you are not image in my head), you were obviously already anti-Trump for ideological reasons. You are welcome to remain that way.
As I said in the article:
"This article is to persuade you not to cast your vote based on “I really do not agree with the policy preferences of Kamala Harris or the Democratic party, but Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy, so I will do so anyway.”
Your comments are really just trying to change the subject away from how anti-democratic the Democratic party has become to focus on January 6th and fake electors. You are welcome to your interpretation of that event, but it does not deal with the heart of my claim.
Again, you can be both anti-Trump and anti-Democrat. You can believe that both are a threat to democracy, but yet you seem to discount that possibility.
If you stay on topic, you are welcome to comment, but stay on the topic.
If I deleted that one sentence from the article that you mentioned at the top of this comment, would you then agree with the general conclusion of the article that the Democratic Party has taken dozens of anti-democratic actions over the last 20 years?
If not, then you are really just dodging my point.
Thanks for the reply. I was looking for a more specific and falsifiable prediction.
The closest that I see is "I expect him to use the powers of the Presidency to put his thumb on the scale in 2028, even if the Republican candidate loses."
I really do not see how that would be possible. The President has no real powers in conducting elections. Elections are run at the local level by state governments.
Could you be more specific?
The 1/6/2021 incident was not successful, or a literal coupe d’etat, which is an organized armed takeover by military or insider elites to overthrow an existing government. The president was still Trump at the time, the participants were not organized or armed, and did not succeed at anything other than chaos. Trump instructed the Pentagon to keep the day safe, including by using the national guard but the orders were not followed through. I don’t like Trump, and never voted for him (including today), and the Capitol incident was embarrassing and badly handled, but there is no need to exaggerate.
There is every reason to explain that on January 6, Donald Trump attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He had previously engaged in a criminal conspiracy (some of his other co-conspirators, such as Lorraine Pellegrino, have already plead) to create seven false slates of electors, with the intent of getting Mike Pence to throw out the results of all seven swing states. When Mike Pence refused, Trump proceeded to send thousands to the Capitol with the intent of pressuring him into giving in. He watched as they beat up cops for three hours, as they chanted "Hang Mike Pence," because he hoped that Mike Pence would yield to the pressure and do what he wanted: throw out the results of the 2020 election.
The whole, "it's not a coup, you need the military for a coup" is so tedious I don't even know why people say it. If I get a bunch of my boys and kidnap key leadership and overthrow a country's government, it's not a coup because I didn't have the military on my side as I do it? Stupid.
This article is not about Jan 6, so it is off-topic (a violation of the commenting rules listed at the bottom of the article). This article is about the clear pattern of anti-Democratic actions taken by a party who is claiming to be saving democracy.
If you want an argument about what happened on Jan 6, take it somewhere else.
I asked for specific, time-bound, and falsifiable predictions within the next 5 years.
Very good list. Lead off with it-- the first part of the post is not nearly as good.
Thanks for the comment. I think if I were to lead off with the list, the target audience would stop reading immediately.
Let me try a few predictions concerning a future Trump administration, more to help clarify my own thinking (and reduce my own expectations) than to argue with your post.
1) He will bring staffers on board who are more knowledgeable than those in 2016ff, but with greater loyalty and thus less inclination to question him, even in a devils's adovcate role. He will still have to listen to congressional leaders to achive his agenda, as I don't perceive he has has been truly instrumental in bringing that many other Republican candidates along on his coattails [a few, yes, but not too many?]
2) He/they will move to implement some form of the Schedule F concept that surfaced at the end of 2019, although I read it was in the works legally from 2017, and then shelved due to Covid. But nothing significant will result to restrain the "admin state" and support the "unitary presidency" unless we have a suitably compliant and agreeable House and Senate to truly reform the abuses in the Civil Service Laws [plural? there are more than just one big one, I believe].
3) the border wall with Mexico will be funded and built within 4 to 8 years [presuming a cooperative Congress] but it is uncertain just how much real procedural and law enforcement reform of the immigration laws will result [especially if enough Dems can hang tough].
4) Deporting the 8 to 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants (especially beyond the criminal subset mentioned by Vance) will be very difficult unless a valid and forceful e-Verify program is implemented quickly and thoroughly, to deny work opportunities to most of them. Incentives for self deportation, coupled with "bounty" awards for ID'g suspect individuals and families, might help. Would legal immigrants, naturalized Hispanics, and native born Hispanics "rat out" their fellow ethnic citizens? Hispanics are not a uniform group and do not necessarily favor folks from a different region or country than where they came from.
5) addressing the non-Hispanic illegal immigrants (Chinese, Middle Easterners and potential terrorist Muslims, and others will remain a challenage if they came here explicitly to hide and then formet terror or other mayhem.
That's enough for me -- time for lunch :-)
Yes, a great post where you ID your preferences up front but still manage to tip toe throught the bipartisan minefield in an objective and neutral way. Of course I have a bias towards the conservative and Republican side, and you are being critical of the Dem Party here. Given the discord between the MAGA and populist group and Never Trumpers and GOPe group in the Republican party, perhaps there is an opportunity for you to explore the foibles and flaws on that side as well.
Your section "This all started long before Trump" brought out an aspect of Democrat Party activity I had not fully appreciated, even as it was happening, given the bias in my news bubble. And long before Trump there were Hitler references to GW Bush and earlier Republican candidates, apparently all the way back to Eisenhower.
I appreciate all your comments.
I would also add Reagan and Nixon as former Republican presidents who were called "Fascists" by a significant portion of the Left. In past generations, this behavior was largely restricted to the fringe Left, but now it has become standard practice by the entire American Left and the Democratic party.
The same way Republicans would accept the border bill if they thought there was a unique crisis instead of letting the issue so Trump has sth to fight for,the Dems wouldn't aggressively fight DeSantis,calling him worse than Trump-because they thought Trump was a more beatable opponent-if they really thought Trump was a unique threat. I am gonna take a detox from reading 'about the current thing' and focus on more timeless information after election. It is rather addictive and unproductive. I really appreciate your substack your blog and your ability to resist the temptation to speak about popular political stuff.
Trying to follow the "current thing" is exhausting and unproductive, so I do not even try. I know that I could get more subscribers if I did so, but I have not interest.
I am glad that you appreciate that approach.