"I used to always hear Democrats saying, 'The election was all just Trump’s racist appeals,' but I actually went to the rallies in 2015."

"He would talk about bad trade deals. He promised to bring back Glass-Steagall, which is the bill regulating finance. He talked about health insurance. He was going to do a plan that actually would cover all Americans and wasn’t going to be like a rat’s maze. And if you compare the ads, his ads were overwhelmingly more policy-oriented than Clinton’s. She was really just attacking him as a bad guy and it didn’t work.

Said John Judis, quoted in "Where Have All the Democrats Gone? John Judis and Ruy Teixeira explain how liberals lost their way" (The Free Press)(transcript and audio)(Judis and Teixeira are political analysts). 

The "Honestly" podcast host asks: "So, you didn’t anticipate that the party that said, 'We are the party of Paul Ryan, we’re the party of tax cuts, we’re the party of Milton Friedman,' would actually start to sound more liberal on economic policy?"

"Where do they get their money? Do we know?... It's a fascinating question to me."

Says Bob Wright, stroking his beard in thought, in a discussion with John B. Judis, who just left The New Republic in what he calls "solidarity" with the old editorial leadership just ousted by new management.



In that clip, Wright and Judis are discussing what it takes for a magazine to exert forceful political influence these days. The Weekly Standard does it, Judis says, and Wright thinks The Weekly Standard gets its money from Rupert Murdoch. "No more," says Judis, who suppresses a yawn and a little smile as he says "That's not an area that I." He can't be bothered completing the sentence! Money is not something that takes up space in his big brain.

Wright jumps in with the summary of what is supposedly Judis's view: "If you want to have influence you have to be willing to lose money." And let me paraphrase the paraphrase: Judis thinks that Chris Hughes, the Facebook billionaire who bought TNR, ought to have used his money to keep it afloat. Judis feels betrayed that Hughes conceives of his acquisition of the magazine as an investment to be made profitable. It's political influence that he should want for his money, Judis seems to think, and that's what Hughes should understand himself to have bought.

Consider the vanity and entitlement in the TNR writers who bailed out when they learned that Hughes saw their magazine as a business subject to the workings of the marketplace. Do these writers think they are, essentially, a charity, deserving of the billionaire's support? Do they want to be underwritten as they expound liberal policy, their vision for America? They will tell us what's good for us, but they feel entitled to freedom from the economic reality of market forces. It makes them yawn and smirk. It's so boring! Didn't this young whippersnapper Hughes know that the TNR writers would make wonderful mouthpieces for the political influence he must surely seek? They would come up with the policies and positions that he could pay to have expressed in the prestigious old journal he bought. For example, they could write articles denouncing the nefarious influence of "dark money" in politics.

How dare rich people have such influence... unless they want to buy a magazine and pay me a salary to say how dare rich people have such influence....

"The Tea Party Movement Isn’t Racist," says John B. Judis...

... because he's found a way to say it's worse than racist.

If the Tea Party movement, with its fanatic libertarianism and selfish individualism, were to gain any measure of power, it would wreak havoc on the economy (imagine America without a Federal Reserve System), shred the social safety net, and undermine what exists of the great American community.... it’s very possible to believe that the Tea Party is not the latest manifestation of the Ku Klux Klan or White Citizens’ Councils—while still believing that it is a terrible menace, nonetheless.

"Beyond dirty campaigning... to something truly dishonorable."

Laying great emphasis on the treatment of Rashid Khalidi, John Judis condemns the McCain campaign:



(Via Josh Marshall.)

ADDED: More on Khalidi here:

Mr. Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia, was born in Manhattan in 1948....

He taught at universities in Lebanon until the mid-’80s, and some critics accuse him of having been a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Khalidi has denied working for the group, and says he was consulted as an expert by reporters seeking to understand it.

He was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation during Middle East peace talks from 1991 to 1993. From 1987 until 2003, he was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he became friends with Mr. Obama.

At Mr. Khalidi’s farewell party in 2003, according to the Los Angeles Times article, Mr. Obama fondly recalled their many conversations, saying they provided “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.”

I don't know what the whole quote was, but I see subtlety in that statement. Obama is speaking at an event honoring a colleague, so it's no time for insults. Obama gracefully uses self-deprecation as he speaks of his own flaws, which Khalidi reminded him to see. We don't know from that whether Khalidi successfully argued that Obama had blind spots and biases or whether Khalidi served as an example of blind spots and biases. I think we see a polite and circumspect man -- perhaps even a man who follows the teaching of Jesus:

Matthew 7

1 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.