"So the first thing is there’s this kind of consultant language that just needs to go away. That was always annoying to people. But when your opponent, Donald Trump, is clearly not on any consultant-speak, it just makes it more glaring that you seem like the typical politicians."
And then there’s a second piece of this, which is, Democrats have these public debates that astound me where it’s like, “Maybe we need to go on TikTok” or “We need to go on that manosphere podcast.” If you can do that, if you can make a cool TikTok video and whatever your thing is that allows you to do that, that’s great. If you can’t, then please don’t. Please don’t go there. If you can go on “Joe Rogan” because you are up to speed on the conspiracy theories or you have a background in standup comedy or you know something about ultimate fighting, that’s great. But don’t go on “Joe Rogan” to talk about building an economy from the bottom up to the middle out. That will make his audience hate Democrats more.
And so I think what Democrats miss about authenticity — it’s not like what platform I’m on. The point is that authenticity is about being yourself. It’s not about being what you think this demographic wants a politician to be.... [M]y point is essentially, Democrats love to, for instance, sit around and be like, “What’s the policy agenda that will win back America?” I — nobody cares. There’s great ideas out there — the abundance agenda and all the rest of it — but nobody is going to read that right now. That’s a great idea for Democrats if they actually win back power or maybe if they’re in power now.
Rhodes has his "a" word for saving Democrats — "authenticity" — and I see him glancing over at Ezra Klein's "a" word for saving Democrats — "abundance." What are some other longish "a" words that could be used by an elite commentator bullshitting about reinvigorating the Democratic Party?
Well, you know what to do with a question like that, and that's just what I did. Do not read any further if you don't want to read something written by Grok:
Adaptability - Emphasizing the party’s need to evolve with changing times and voter priorities.
Aspiration - Focusing on inspiring voters with bold, forward-looking goals.
Accountability - Highlighting a commitment to transparency and responsibility to rebuild trust.
Altruism - Advocating for a selfless dedication to the public good over partisan gain.
Ambition - Calling for grand, unapologetic plans to energize the base and attract new supporters.
Articulation - Stressing the need for clearer, more compelling communication of values and policies.
Audacity - Urging the party to embrace fearless, unconventional strategies.
Atonement - Suggesting a reckoning with past missteps to reconnect with disillusioned voters.
Assimilation - Proposing a broader, more inclusive coalition that absorbs diverse perspectives.
Ascendancy - Framing the party’s path as one of rising dominance through moral and strategic clarity.
Obama already used #7, but now I feel like dabbling in crappy book titles, like "The Audacity of Altruism." Let's see... "The Articulation of Adaptablity," "The Assimilation of Atonement," "The Ambition of Accountability," "The Ascendancy of Aspiration."
I would love to read an essay on the ever-morphing definition of misinformation/disinformation. Seems that it has gone from being a description of Holocaust denial/anti-vax to a word to tag any content that seems to help the political right? https://t.co/jdwLu2Uxdv
You're seeing the immense, unchallengeable, unaccountable power of Silicon Valley giants over the flow of information. Imagine if Google joins in.
What's so amazing is that they never wanted this role. It was foisted on them by people, led by journalists, demanding they censor: https://t.co/cFBfV97Ylt
"No cheeks were kissed, no friendly rubs were given, none of the bonhomie of their earlier meetings was on display. So much for the bromance. After a promising start, the relationship between President Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France has soured. By the time they met in Paris on Saturday, the trans-Atlantic alliance that was to be showcased by this weekend’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I appeared to be fraying instead.... It did not help on Saturday that Mr. Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited the rain; the Marines who pilot presidential helicopters often recommend against flying in bad weather. But that did not convince many in Europe who saw it as an excuse and another sign of disrespect. Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, dismissed the explanation. 'I helped plan all of President Obama’s trips for 8 years,' he tweeted. 'There is always a rain option. Always.' Mr. Trump will have another chance to pay respects to the war dead on Sunday with a scheduled visit to the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris following the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe marking the anniversary of the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. But he will not stay for a Paris peace forum that Mr. Macron is sponsoring to bring together world leaders to discuss ways to avoid conflict."
ADDED: Presumably, "There is always a rain option" because the President could be in a dangerous situation — an attack or a health crisis — and flying under dangerous conditions would be the least bad option. You need the option worked out, but then there's a balance of risks. I don't know how the risks looked on the ground yesterday and how the pros and cons were balanced. How much weight is put on the optics of a public ceremony? How much weight was put on the discomfort and health risk of standing in the (cold?) rain for X hours? It did make me think of the President who died from standing in the cold rain.
I think the Democrats believed the Kavanaugh accusation would play out differently, that Republicans would resist and obstruct, but Trump saw how they were playing and chose not "to play into their hands."
Here's the quote in context:
"I feel so badly for him that he's going through this, to be honest with you. I feel so badly for him. This is not a man that deserves this... this should have been brought up long ago and that's what you have hearings for, you don't wait until the hearing is over and then all of a sudden bring it up. When Senator Feinstein sat with Judge Kavanaugh for a long period of time a long, long meeting. She had this letter, why didn't she bring it up? Why didn't she bring it up then? Why didn't the Democrats bring it up then? Because they obstruct and because they resist. That's the name of their campaign against me. Resist. And they just obstruct. And, frankly, I think they're lousy on policy and in many ways they're lousy politicians, but they're very good on obstruction. And it's a shame. Because this is a great gentleman. With all of that, I feel that the Republicans, and I can speak for myself, we should go through a process, because there shouldn't even be a little doubt. There shouldn't be a doubt. Again, they knew what they were doing. They should have done this a long time ago, three months ago, not now. But they did it now. So I don't want to play into their hands."
You can think about how the hand would have played out if the Republicans had been the ones to "obstruct and... resist." I think that's what the Democrats pictured, when they waited until after the hearings: "They did it now." Trump sees that as a deliberate play, and he's not going to let it work the way they planned. After what they did... "we should go through a process." That's surprising. Now, what are they to do?
The mysterious silence from Dr. Blasey and her lawyers was another turn in a drama that has gripped the Capitol since Thursday....
Dr. Blasey, thrust suddenly into a spotlight that she never sought, has been inundated with vulgar email and social media messages, and even death threats.... Dr. Blasey, who has two teenagers, has moved out of her house, is arranging for private security for herself and her family, and is effectively in hiding, [an unnamed person close to her told the NYT]....
Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, are clashing over the scope and shape of the hearings. Mr. Grassley said Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey would be the only witnesses, prompting pushback from top Democrats, who are demanding an F.B.I. investigation to search for additional witnesses or evidence, and to avoid the specter of a “he said, she said” debate that will not get at the truth.
One possible witness is a friend of Judge Kavanaugh’s, Mark Judge, who Dr. Blasey said was in the room with Judge Kavanaugh when the assault occurred. Mr. Judge had told the Judiciary Committee that he does not remember the episode and has nothing more to say, seemingly foreclosing the possibility of an additional witness interview, at least for now.
He could be asked about his problems with alcohol-induced amnesia, his observation of Kavanaugh's drinking, and any alcohol-induced amnesia he saw in Kavanaugh, and he could be pressured to admit that he's unreliable as a witness to the nonoccurrence of any event from his heavy-drinking years.
“We have two diametrically opposed stories,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor. “My view: Professor Ford is telling the truth. But if you don’t want the hearing to be just a ‘he said, she said’ affair, an independent investigation, a background check by the F.B.I., is essential.... We must not repeat the mistakes of the Anita Hill hearings,” he said. “They were rushed, and they were a debacle.”
That is, once the hearing was scheduled, Democrats switched to saying they didn't want it. And Blasey (Ford) seems to have become unavailable. Going public with the accusation now looks a bit like a bluff. But — not wanting to play into their hands — the bluff was called. And now they want a new deal: an independent investigation. Trump rejected that (in the clip above).
Anita Hill has been brought in, with an op-ed in the NYT, saying the Clarence Thomas hearings were not done right and the Senate needs to handle the woman's allegations about sexual misconduct properly this time. She says "The job of the Senate Judiciary Committee is to serve as fact-finders, to better serve the American public, and the weight of the government should not be used to destroy the lives of witnesses who are called to testify." But her idea of fact-finding is not for the Senators to question Blasey directly, according to Hill, who says:
Select a neutral investigative body with experience in sexual misconduct cases that will investigate the incident in question and present its findings to the committee. Outcomes in such investigations are more reliable and less likely to be perceived as tainted by partisanship. Senators must then rely on the investigators’ conclusions, along with advice from experts, to frame the questions they ask Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey. Again, the senators’ fact-finding roles must guide their behavior. The investigators’ report should frame the hearing, not politics or myths about sexual assault.
So the new hand has been dealt. How do you not play into that? I'm using Trump's idiom. If it seems wrong, let's talk about that.
ADDED: This post caused me to do a fair amount of research into the phrase "play into their hands." I'm not sure what the original metaphor is, but you can see from the post that I assumed it was poker. Anyway, the phrase means to do something that unwittingly advantages your opponent.
With three hours to go until the president’s address to Congress, Rhodes grabs a big Gatorade and starts combing through the text of the State of the Union address. I peek over his shoulder, to get a sense of the meta-narrative that will shape dozens of thumb-suckers in the days and weeks to follow. One sentence reads: "But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands." He retypes a word, then changes it back, before continuing with his edit. "Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages — they pose an enormous danger to civilians; they have to be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence."
Later, she said, “Look I believe she is credible... But based on what I know at this stage she is credible,” which doesn't explicitly walk back the idea that maybe not everything Blasey said is true.
But then Feinstein came back with a sledgehammer: "During every step of this process, I’ve found every single piece of information from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford eminently credible, sincere and believable. She knew this would have a huge effect on her life and she was incredibly brave to come forward."
Trump is making us the story by making us the in-house villain of his rallies.... My colleagues’ instinct has been to fight back. During a live stand-up from Trump’s Tampa rally this week, CNN’s Jim Acosta was taunted by the crowd, which had been chanting “fake news,” “go home” and “CNN sucks.” Said Acosta: “We’re staying right here. We’re going to do our job and report on this rally to all of our viewers here tonight.”
A noble sentiment, but better to “go home” — so Trump can’t use the scenes to his benefit. Eric Trump retweeted video of Trump supporters chanting “CNN sucks” at Acosta during his stand-up, adding the hashtag #Truth. The president retweeted his son....
Stop letting him make us the story.
UPDATE: I just heard on the Tucker Carlson show that Blasey has announced that she will not testify until after an independent investigation is done.
That's Barack Obama, Facebooking platitudes. It's kind of refreshingly mellow and relaxing, isn't it?
Over the years since, I've often drawn inspiration from Africa's extraordinary literary tradition. As I prepare for this trip, I wanted to share a list of books that I’d recommend for summer reading, including some from a number of Africa’s best writers and thinkers – each of whom illuminate our world in powerful and unique ways.
I'm pleased to have the opportunity to use my old "Obama is bland" tag. So... should we read some books Obama recommends, something that illuminates our world?
There are 6 books on the list, and the first 5 are by African writers, with African subject matter. But the 6th book is "The World As It Is" by Ben Rhodes:
It’s true, Ben does not have African blood running through his veins. But few others so closely see the world through my eyes like he can. Ben’s one of the few who’ve been with me since that first presidential campaign. His memoir is one of the smartest reflections I’ve seen as to how we approached foreign policy, and one of the most compelling stories I’ve seen about what it’s actually like to serve the American people for eight years in the White House.
Few others so closely see the world through my eyes like he can. Does it take nerve or just obliviousness to write that when the freshest image we've got of Ben Rhodes seeing the world is...
Ben Rhodes reacting to Hillary Clinton's hilarious defeat in 2016 is the funniest part of the new Obama Documentary on HBO.
What makes it even better is throughout the documentary he brags how she is going to win. pic.twitter.com/MGBQNE5ATY
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) May 30, 2018
"This was no mere election. It was a fight between good and evil. And they were in no doubt that they were the good guys. 'Cuba, climate, Iran,' Rhodes says, what will happen to those things now that Donald Trump is in charge? Note that he puts forward those items as if they were triumphs for the Obama administration and not disastrous missteps. 'The irony of the Obama years,' Rhodes mused, 'is going to be that he was advocating an inclusive global view rooted in common humanity and international order amidst this roiling ocean of growing nationalism and authoritarianism.' Got that? 'Inclusive' and 'common humanity' on one side versus 'nationalism' and 'authoritarianism' on the other.... The fascinating thing of 'The Final Year' is the glimpse it affords into the engine room of a certain species of elite bureaucratic presumption. It is earnest, articulate, educated, well-meaning, and utterly, dangerously naïve. When you review the series of foreign policy disasters over which Obama presided—the names Libya, Syria, and Iran offer a good start—and then contrast it with his warmhearted rhetoric, you begin to understand why Graham Greene could warn that 'innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.'"
... but the opportunities are big. There is however a long way to go to match the "Downfall" parodies, of which there are thousands:
One scene in the film, in which Hitler launches into a furious tirade upon finally realizing that the war is lost, has become a staple of internet videos.....
The film's director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, spoke positively about these parodies in a 2010 interview with New York magazine, saying that many of them were funny and they were a fitting extension of the film's purpose: "The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality. I think it's only fair if now it's taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like."...
In October 2010, YouTube stopped blocking Downfall-derived parodies. Corynne McSherry, an attorney specializing in intellectual property and free speech issues for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: "All the Downfall parody videos that I've seen are very strong fair use cases and so they're not infringing, and they shouldn't be taken down." ....
Ben Rhodes reacting to Hillary Clinton's hilarious defeat in 2016 is the funniest part of the new Obama Documentary on HBO.
What makes it even better is throughout the documentary he brags how she is going to win. pic.twitter.com/MGBQNE5ATY
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) May 30, 2018
... and it made me check out a bit of "The Final Year," but I thought it was such a bad documentary. They didn't seem to have any good footage of anything. Mostly shots of various people, e.g., Samantha Power, musing flatly in dull language. I amused myself briefly by testing out the theory that people were paraphrasing the stock line "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
In reality, it's less a documentary than a wet goodbye kiss to Obama, as well as a personal PR document for a few key members of his foreign-policy brain trust, employing that term loosely....
The Obama team repeatedly boasts that its three signature achievements are the Paris climate accord, the rapprochement with Cuba, and the Iran nuclear deal. But of how these agreements were reached, or who opposed them and why, there's not a word.
And even less is there an explanation of why, if they were so important, the Obama administration let them stand on a foundation of executive orders, rather than seeking congressional approval to make them law.
The consequence of that decision is that barely a year after he left office, practically nothing is left of what Obama policy-makers regarded as their most important works. ...
1. Simon Heffer in the U.K. Telegraph writes under a headline that seems internally contradictory: "France is resigned — Marine Le Pen may win." So there's this collective entity, "France," and it's having an election, which is a means of choosing what it wants. What's to be "resigned" about, if it's getting what it wants? I can't read the whole column because I don't have "premium" access, so I'm forced to guess. It could mean that the "France" that matters — the elite, the good people — don't want Le Pen, but this other France that doesn't deserve to be called "France" is choosing her. But it might mean that the run-off style of choosing ensures that Le Pen will get through to Round 2 and her opponent will not present an adequate not-Pen choice, so she might win even though she's opposed by a solid majority. It could be kind of like the way Trump won, jazzing up about a third of the electorate, then only having to beat an opponent who was, at best, uninspiring.
"I'm not ready to make a call yet on a Le Pen victory," says Vladimir Signorelli, founder of Brettonwoods Research in Long Valley, NJ. Brettonwoods correctly called the Trump win. "I've been telling my clients that if she gets over 30% of the vote on Sunday, she has a good chance to win it all. She will make it to the second round and when she does, all she needs is roughly a third of the remaining votes from the other candidates who didn't make it," says Signorelli.
Scandal-plagued Republican candidate, Francois Fillon, is rising in the ranks at the last minute with around 19% today. Melenchon has about the same percentage. There are more similarities with Fillon and Melenchon to Le Pen than there [are] to Macron. This does not bode well for Macron....
Brettonwoods Research also suspects a 3% to 4% under-representation of support for Le Pen in the polls, based on past polls that just missed Brexit and Trump....
3. Andrew O'Hehir at Salon, "Democracy’s dyin’, who’s got the will? What France’s election tells us about the state of modern discontent/With the left facing disarray and defeat amid a new age of revolution, it's time to ask: Is democracy over?" This is a phenomenon I've been following since the Wisconsin protests. (The side that had just lost the election laid siege to the state capitol building and chanted "This is what democracy looks like.") What makes left-wingers think that when they lose, there's no democracy? There seems to be a delusion that they embody the people, so the actual voting by people is a failure of democracy if the stupid people bumble into voting for the right. I'm just riffing on the headline. Is that what O'Hehir says? He writes: "I see a bunch of people on both sides of the Atlantic desperately trying to pretend that democracy isn’t broken and may yet yield an acceptable and/or 'progressive' outcome." Ha! I think I'm right!
4. Unnamed writer at Fox News, "France election: Marine Le Pen sees Trump-like boost in support, but victory far from assured." What's the "boost" and why is it like Trump? Trump didn't get a terrorist attack on the eve of the election. What's Fox News blabbering about? This is the kind of incoherence you get when you want to use multiple ideas and don't have a way or don't take the trouble to weave it together. I suspect Fox News of being committed to throwing Trump into the story because they think it's too hard for American readers to care about France unless it's about us, and they say one thing and then another and don't think the readers will notice if the statements don't make sense together. Maybe they think it will be good because it's "Trump-like." Isn't that the way Trump does those speeches some people like so much?
6. JTA in Forward, "Should France’s Jews Leave If Le Pen Wins Elections?" The question is apropos of Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar's statement: "If Marine Le Pen is elected president of France, the Jews must leave." Lazar also said: "Putin was the first president to publicly speak out against anti-Semitism and did the most for the Jews in Russia. There is no institutional anti-Semitism in Russia."
Said Robert Gates when Barack Obama asked him for his opinion on intervention in Libya.
From an interview on "Face the Nation" today. John Dickerson had asked Gates about what he thought of Ben Rhodes referring to the American foreign policy establishment as "the blob":
"According to Rhodes" — Ben Rhodes, "The Aspiring Novelist Who BecameObama’s Foreign-Policy Guru" — "the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.... Barack Obama is not a standard-issue liberal Democrat. He openly shares Rhodes’s contempt for the groupthink of the American foreign-policy establishment and its hangers-on in the press. Yet one problem with the new script that Obama and Rhodes have written is that the Blob may have finally caught on...."
Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve.
[David] Samuels's profile is an amazing piece of writing about the Holden Caulfield of American foreign policy. He's a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother's connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony. Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg's picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president's willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes's boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies—what Rhodes and others call a "narrative"—that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.
Rhodes deserves his castigation. You don’t claim that the “average reporter” you talk to is 27 years old and they “literally know nothing” without suffering some blow-back. You don’t dismiss the American foreign policy establishment—including Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and editors and reporters at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker—as “the Blob,” and expect polite applause in response. And you especially don’t brag about leading a “war room” effort to turn arms-control experts and reporters into sock puppets, or admit to creating a false narrative about the Iranian nuclear deal to sell it to the public, as Rhodes does, without expecting return fire.
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Encourage Althouse by making a donation:
Make a 1-time donation or set up a monthly donation of any amount you choose:
Posts
