"I loved early Democratic Socialists of America leader Cornel West. I loved author of the 1993 book Race Matters West."

"I loved everything about West until he supported spoiler Ralph Nader against then–Vice President Al Gore in 2000. A lot of my political friends supported Ralph Nader back then. And a lot of them have since apologized. Even Michael Moore.... West never apologized. He didn’t see a third party playing a spoiler role to Democrats as bad—obviously, since he’s about to do it again. He did support Barack Obama in 2008, but he turned on him fairly quickly, making criticisms that went way beyond Obama’s political decisions. Then he supported Jill Stein in 2016. More recently, West has gone off the deep end. He promoted his 2024 candidacy, on the fringe People’s Party line, with an appearance on former comedian Russell Brand’s Web show, now frequented by right-wingers.... This is a downhill spiral even for West, who also spiraled downward after Obama’s victory.... [C]alling the president 'a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats' was awful. West went on to claim that Obama was afraid of 'free black men' thanks to his white ancestry and Ivy League education.... What does West bring to the [2024] race?"

Writes Joan Walsh in "Cornel West Should Not Be Running for President/He doesn’t see a third party playing a spoiler role to Democrats as bad—and that’s inevitable" (The Nation). 

West was on Russell Brand's show? Let's take a look:

Liberal websites absorb/process the Al Franken news, part 5: The Nation.

The front page of The Nation is ready to impeach Donald Trump but eager to help Al Franken:



The Franken article, by Joan Walsh, is, "What Should Democrats Do About Al Franken?/With work, Franken can and should survive this story of his past bad behavior. But if there are more tales like this, he’s probably history." Walsh obviously loves Franken, and she's open about it. She "loved" his "hilarious" book and says it made her want him to run for President. She admits to having a "huge double standard":

I believed Moore’s accusers right away—especially given all the detail in their accounts, and all the corroborating witnesses. I confess: I spent at least 30 minutes looking for proof that Franken didn’t do what he’s accused of. 

That's how the human mind works. Good to admit it!

I reached out to women who are close to Franken, and at least two say they don’t know enough to confirm or deny it, but they’re devastated. I don’t know him well enough to be devastated, but I’m enormously sad.... This... really hurts....

She does not want Franken to resign: 

Franken has been an excellent senator; you can’t just trade him for a player to be named later. It’s one allegation, albeit an ugly one, and he’s apologized for it. If more come out, we can reexamine this question. But Republicans have persevered through much worse than this....

Franken has been an excellent senator, a committed feminist, a brilliant Trump foil, and the rare Democrat with a sense for the dramatic and the entertaining. We shouldn’t disown him just because Republicans want a scapegoat. We will have to, though, if these stories multiply, as they have with Trump and Moore. My fingers are crossed that they will not.

She's just rooting for her side, openly and nicely.

Meanwhile, 8 minutes after the Walsh piece went up, The Nation gave us "It Is Time to Impeach the President" by John Nichols. That's the balance at The Nation. Unlike Walsh, Nichols doesn't explain the urge to oust Trump in terms of his own personal emotional journey. He takes the lofty rational tone and says things like "The grounds for impeachment are sufficient, and they are well established" and who knows what a roiling cauldron of emotion Nichols is on the inside?

"What Would Women Be Doing if We Weren’t Constantly Dealing With Male Abuse?"

"The torrent of #MeToo stories reveals just how much time we spend dealing with this shit," writes Joan Walsh in The Nation.

The last 2 paragraphs confused me:

Then I think about a couple of consensual experiences with men hugely my superiors. The come-ons took me by surprise, and flattered me, and seemed real. Like, of course I deserve this attention! I’m great! Or at least pretty great, right? In none of these instances was I chasing a job, or an affair either. I was flattered by the unexpected attention of a powerful man I respected. I knew I could learn from them; I enjoyed spending time with them. Also, by the way, they were married, so it was safe, right? I confidently spent time alone with them, believing they were interested in my mind and my work. Who wouldn’t be?

They weren’t. I would eventually learn that there was no actual relationship offer on the table, and no professional benefit either. And again I felt like: I am a fucking fool.

That sounds like she accepted a date and wanted a relationship (and even liked that the guy was an adulterer). Let's not mush everything together! This #MeToo stuff could get really stupid. At least she announces I am a fucking fool. I know, she means back then. But she's using the present tense.

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:

Yeah, a married guy who chases after young women is safe--who thinks this way?

Absolutely no one. Joan Walsh, who is 59 years old, is still selling herself as a naive, innocent girl. She was going out with some other woman's husband, as far as I can tell. Look, we're in an important moment, when women can come together and support other women. Don't mess it up with bullshit like this.

"Too Many of Trump’s Liberal Critics Are Praising His Strike on Syria."

According to Joan Walsh at The Nation.

She's fareeking out.

On CNN’s New Day Thursday, global analyst Fareed Zakaria declared, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” last night. To his credit, Zakaria has previously called Trump a “bullshit artist” and said, “He has gotten the presidency by bullshitting.” But Zakaria apparently thinks firing missiles make one presidential. On MSNBC, Nicholas Kristof, an aggressive Trump critic, said he “did the right thing” by bombing Syria. Anchor Brian Williams, whose 11th Hour has regularly been critical of Trump, repeatedly called the missiles “beautiful,” to a noisy backlash on Twitter....

Any liberal who praises these missile strikes has to account for what comes next....

It was disappointing to see Hillary Clinton say Wednesday afternoon that she thought air strikes on Syrian airfields were an appropriate response to the chemical-weapon attack. She was always more hawkish than I wished, and that shows it. But it’s wrong to insist she’d have done the “same thing” as Trump. Clinton’s secretary of state wouldn’t likely have told Assad we were no longer concerned about removing him; if she did fire missiles at Syrian airfields, she would have done so with a clearer notion of what comes next. Trump appears to be clueless....

Yes, in the imaginary world where Hillary is President, she does the same thing as Trump, but differently. She's so disappointing, and yet so superior to Trump.

It's so difficult for Joan. She doesn't know which way to tsk.

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jonathan Chait — occupants of "a similar niche of thoughtful progressive journalism" — are having an intra-niche spat about race.

I've been avoiding getting up to speed on this, because Chait's article is really long, and it has to do with something Paul Ryan said a while back, which occupants of that "thoughtful progressive" niche purveyed as racist and which I did not blog. I noticed Joan Walsh at Salon opining on the Chait-Coates spat, but it was obvious that she was talking to readers who'd been hanging out in the niche, being thoughtfully progressive and progressively thoughtful together, and that made it short but inscrutable to a non-nicher.

But now here's Clare Sestanovicha, at The Atlantic, with "Black Culture and Progressivism/What started as a discussion of Paul Ryan's comments by has [sic] turned into a revealing debate on the nature of liberal politics in the United States." It might be readable, assuming you're looking for an entry point. Excerpt:

"And when Ryan riffed on the handful of jobs he briefly held, his Ayn Randian roots were clear."

Writes Joan Walsh at Salon. Here's what Paul Ryan said that Walsh thinks is "straight out of Rand, and ’50s anti-Communist paranoia":

“When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life... I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream. That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”

If you believe the individual can think and decide for himself and pursue happiness as he defines it... you're delusional — in Walsh's view. You see what she's saying? She's saying you didn't build that — the very phrase Obama is straining to disown. You didn't build that, you can't build that, and you're psychotic if you imagine that you can. She's deeply into the collectivism the Democrats don't want to openly embrace.

But she doesn't think she's openly embracing it. She thinks Ryan is paranoid to imply that the Democrats favor "the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners." Pressed, she might — I assume — assert that it's fine for individuals to try to come up with their own ideas about what they want to do with their lives and to set out to achieve their goals, but that it's inaccurate to portray this enterprise as solitary and in defiance of the larger efforts of government and society (which they depend on no matter what they do).

But that's not what Walsh says. She's stirring up partisan discord and not inclined to concede that our differences, in the United States, are only a matter of leaning toward individualism or collectivism as we mostly keep to the middle of the road.