"'Democrats create Project 2027'... Oh, it's 'Democrats' comma 'create Project 27.' It's advice to Democrats. By Juan Williams. Ha ha."

Say I, aloud, reading a headline at The Hill.

It's Juan Williams, "Democrats, create Project 2027 and hope your wave comes."

We sigh in disappointment.

I was just saying nobody talks about Project 2025 anymore, and Meade said he was just reading about it, so I did a search and came up with that dispiriting Hill headline.

Let's read: "After devastating defeats in 2024, Democrats are closing out 2025 with wind in their sails.... Republicans and Democrats now talk openly of a likely tsunami of wins for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. If true, Democrats better get a surfboard and make plans to ride that big wave into the 2028 presidential election...."

He got that water metaphor going but recommends surfing in a tsunami. I asked Grok to make a list of other metaphors that are as good but bad as surfing in a tsunami. I got things like: "Having barely survived the forest fire of 2024, Democrats now have a raging wildfire at their backs. Better grab some marshmallows and roast them all the way to victory!" And: "After the dam broke and drowned them in 2024, Democrats finally have the floodwaters moving their way. Grab a pool floatie and ride this deluge to glory!"

"This is all so unbelievable. It seems like a big joke. But the damage being done to America is a tragedy."

Writes Juan Williams in "Get ready to see Trump go to jail" (The Hill).

Nice use of the passive voice! Who's doing the damaging??!!

"This is my last day hosting The Five. Covid taught me a lot of lessons. As the show goes back to the New York studio, I’ll be staying in DC."

Said Juan Williams, quoted in "Juan Williams Is Suddenly Out at Fox News’ ‘The Five’—And Insiders Are Blaming Co-Host Greg Gutfeld/Multiple sources familiar with the matter said one of the major drivers behind Williams’ departure was Gutfeld’s desire for 'The Five' to return to the studio" (The Daily Beast).

I don't watch news shows on TV much at all, but this is one show I end up seeing now and then, because the TV is on in my vicinity. It's hard to picture the show without Williams, but I think the group needs to be around the table together to get a good dynamic going. 

I don't like the way the headline makes a quick reader think Gutfeld disliked Willliams, but it's also obvious that the issue was getting back together in the same place, not personal antagonism. The article does try to generate a sense that the on-air fighting over political issues had something to with Williams's departure. But that's the show! The disagreement was the idea. Why wouldn't Greg like that?

Imagine Bush endorses Biden... it isn't hard to do...

Way to use your imagination ⁦@TheJuanWilliams⁩ - but this isn’t happening. 43 doesn’t intend to be used as click-bait during a presidential election. Lots of other stuff to talk about though!

Juan Williams: Bush could strike blow for Biden | TheHill https://t.co/Emw6YxQU24

— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) June 1, 2020

ADDED: Trump could easily use this against Biden. Consider "Joe Biden’s Vote for War/In October 2002, he was one of 77 senators who gave President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. He is still trying to explain that choice" (NYT, January 2020):

Nearly two decades later, Mr. Biden, who by 2005 was calling that vote a mistake, is running for president in part on his foreign policy experience, emphasizing his commander-in-chief credentials at a moment of heightened tensions between the United States and Iran. Yet the Iraq war vote is part of the extensive record he cites, and he has struggled to accurately account for it on the campaign trail, repeatedly suggesting he opposed the war and Mr. Bush’s conduct from the beginning, claims that detailed fact checks have deemed wrong or misleading.

Trump was always against the Iraq war. A Bush endorsement for Biden would be a great way to alienate Bernie Sanders supporters.

How will Clinton and Trump and their proxies talk about the Orlando shooting/terrorism?

We saw how the different political candidates talked about the San Bernardino massacre, which happened last December. As I remember it, roughly, Clinton and Obama centered on guns and lectured us about the need for gun control, and Republicans talked about immigration policy and Islamic extremism.

Now, closer to the election, what framework will be imposed? Something was learned from the politics around San Bernardino and the primary season is over, so I suspect that Democrats will not choose to emphasize gun control (unless this turns out to have been a lone mentally ill person). The Democrats may try to use the idea of an attack on a gay club to criticize Donald Trump for creating a divisive atmosphere of hate, even though none of his alleged hate-mongering has been about gay people. As for what Trump and his proxies will say, it depends on who the murderer turns out to be.

I'm going to watch all the Sunday morning talk shows, and I will update this post as I hear various statements. The previous post is for comments about the terrible incident itself. Forgive me for being so brutal as to go immediately to the effect on presidential politics, but please keep the comments here to this topic, which I think is important because — like the San Bernardino massacre (and even more than it) — this event is a skewing point in electoral politics, and everyone speaking for the campaigns knows it. Sympathy will be expressed, along with warnings to wait to hear the facts, but the politics are underway, and I'm going to tell you about what everyone does on the TV shows this morning.

1. "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper devoted nearly the entire show to news coverage of the event. In the final 5-minute segment. Tapper displayed the tweets from Donald Trump — "Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded." — and Hillary Clinton — "Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H" Tapper noted that the "H" at the end of a tweet on Hillary Clinton's account indicates that "she herself wrote that tweet." After that the guest is the Republican Congressman Peter King, who knows the name of the shooter but won't say it and knows of indications of "Islamist leanings," but the discussion was focused on the facts of the incident.

2. "Fox News Sunday" with Bret Baier went straight to politics, with Senator Jeff Sessions as the Trump proxy and Senator Amy Klobuchar as the Clinton proxy. Sessions, asked about the Orlando incident, said it "certainly looks like... Islamic extremism" and stressed the need to "openly and directly" confront the extremist element within Islam, including restricting immigration. Baier prompted him to connect the incident to guns and to Clinton's support for gun control, and Sessions slotted in his talking point about the Supreme Court and the supposed precariousness of the Second Amendment individual right to bear arms. Klobuchar emphasized waiting for more information and the importance of not seeming to accuse all Muslims (and she credited Sessions for having said the same thing). She brought up guns only when Baier asked her, and then only to blandly reference common-sense limits that wouldn't infringe the gun rights that she assured us Clinton believes in.

3. "Meet the Press" began with news and news analysis, and that analysis went heavily into the subject of guns, how much damage one person could do in a crowded place with the kind of guns this murderer had. The name is now being said, Omar Mateen, and there are repeated references to the man's father saying that his son was recently enraged when he saw 2 men kissing. I get the sense that the show would like to forefront hatred of gay people and minimize the significance of his religion, which is Muslim. The show switches over to Chuck Todd with the this set up: "Obviously, there are many elements to the story, we don't want to play the politics too much... but obviously, this will play into the presidential elections." That's not in the official show transcript (here). I guess the show got re-edited. Todd credits Trump and Clinton with being low key, but complains about the excessively political tweets of other, unnamed, politicians and homes in on gun control.

4. The "Face the Nation" time slot was straight news, no political spinning.

5. "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos had by far the most coverage of the presidential campaign, with a pre-recorded interview from Paul Ryan (that's worth discussing, but didn't cover the incident) and interviews with Trump's man Manafort and with Bernie Sanders. But there was a panel in the end — transcript —that eventually touched on the incident in the way that the second paragraph of this post anticipated. Katrina Vanden Heuvel was attacking Donald Trump for his "fear mongering and exploiting racial anxieties and bigotry" and, bringing up the Orlando incident, she said:

Donald Trump's idea of a counterterrorism program is banning all Muslims, bombing all families in the Middle East, essentially [sic] -- ISIS families, and torturing -- I think the, you know, grief and anger today. But we can't lose sight of senseless gun violence and the gun epidemic in this country. 66 people killed in Chicago in May. Hillary Clinton has a very strong gun control program. Trump, he's tethered to the NRA. I think that has to be...

When I heard that I said out loud, "That does not help Hillary." Then Donna Brazile followed on with generic references to "mass shootings" (and not terrorism), and I was saying "This isn't what Hillary wants to hear." That set up Bill Kristol, who prefaced his remark with "Look, I am anti-Trump" and proceeded with what I consider absolutely apt political analysis:

[I]f this was an act of Islamic terrorism, whether a lone wolf, or perhaps a lot of lone wolves turn out to have connection abroad one way or the other.... But if he was motivated by Islamist jihadist ideology, these talking points are not going to work, it's going to -- Donald Trump, the best moment, I say this with regret, the moment that helped Trump win the nomination was the San Bernardino massacre and his calling for a ban of all Muslims, which is an insane -- bad public policy, undoable, and we shouldn't do it. Having said that, it helped him. And I think we shouldn't kid ourselves. And, frankly, if these are the Democratic talking points here, senseless gun violence, it's not senseless.

It's not senseless. That's right. It's the sense of some people who have a specific ideology of hate and violence. Blaming the guns was the Democrats' instinctive move last December after the San Bernardino massacre, and it was the wrong choice politically. Hillary needs to set herself up as a resolute fighter against terrorism, and I think she will. Obviously, Trump will. It would be stupid to cede that ground to him. But real left-wingers like Katrina Vanden Heuvel — not helping Hillary —  head directly to the their anti-gun safe space.

ADDED: As noted above, what showed on "Meet the Press" for me wasn't the same as the transcript. I'm reading that now. There was a panel with Tom Brokaw, Hugh Hewitt, Amy Walter, and Joy Reid. Tom Brokaw went first and said it didn't matter whether the facts end up showing that the shooting was "connected to some kind of an international group," because, for him, the problem is guns. Hewitt focused on ISIS, but Walter and Reid stuck with the gun theme. When Hewitt said, "ISIS would do this to a hundred million Americans if they could," Reid rejoined: "But so would white nationalists."

An excellent discussion of the latest Hillary Clinton email problem on "Fox News Sunday."

This is a bit long and starts slow, but the different commentators bring different perspectives that I'll try to highlight, so stick with me:

CHRIS WALLACE:   In 2011, when an aide was having trouble sending her material by a secure fax, she sent these instructions: "If they can't, turn into nonpaper with no identifying heading, and send nonsecure." Bob Woodward, why is this important? 

"Why are Democrats losing the debate over voting rights?"

Asks Juan Williams.

Even most black Americans — people who, overwhelmingly, don’t vote Republican — currently favor new requirements for voters to have photo identification. Three-quarters of all voters — people of all races and political parties — favor such laws, according to polls.

The black support for photo identification of voters can only be described as amazing. For most of the twentieth century, violence, poll taxes and literacy tests were used by segregationists to deny black people the right to vote....

Williams offers no answer to his question. He's just expressing amazement.

"Paradoxically, these bitter attacks are still more evidence that Clarence Thomas is now leading the national debate on race."

Writes Juan Williams in the Wall Street Journal.

"To me, bad teachers don’t do anybody any good. So the unions need to recognize that parents are not going to stand for it anymore."

Said Whoopi Goldberg today, Labor Day.

Sad-eyed President of the Lowlands.

I'm reading this Juan Williams column at The Hill because it's titled "Williams: Time for Obama to punch hard," mainly because I'm interested in the phrase "punch back twice as hard," which the headline invokes.

Do you remember the origin of the phrase ? Obama opponents have been quoting it for a long time. Who started it? Obama, when first running for office, said "I want you to argue with them and get in their face," which isn't the same as a punch in the face, though it does recommend aggression (of the verbal kind). Of course, "punch back twice as hard" is also only a recommendation of verbal aggression, delivered with the verbal aggression of a physical violence metaphor.

But "Punch back twice as hard" came from deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, and the whole quote was: "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard." So within the metaphor, the other side has hit you first.

And, indeed, Williams does portray the President as having been hit.

Juan Williams thinks he's defending Obamacare by observing that it has no effect on him and the other members of the Sunday talk show pundit panel.

This is the sort of thing that a Republican would be pilloried for saying. It was yesterday's "Fox News Sunday," and the moderator Chris Wallace had just read a question tweeted by some guy named Skip. The question was "other than hope, what substantive argument do the ACA, Affordable Care Act, supporters have that the law will work as intended?" Juan Williams threw out a big word storm, but one line jumped out at me, and I will boldface it:

"I may have missed something, I cannot help but wonder, Professor..."

"... given your many recent blistering critiques of Obama, if you now regret voting for him."

Asks St. George in the comments thread to yesterday's post "Juan Williams reveals that the White House is calling the Republicans' opposition to Obamacare "the original sin.'"

I expressed whatever regret I have in the form of voting against Obama's reelection, but I have never said I think it was a mistake to have voted for him the first time. For the voter, the decision-making point arrived in November 2008 and the choice was between Obama and John McCain. I stand by my contemporaneous post "How McCain lost me." How can you compare what Obama actually did to imagined scenarios about McCain? If McCain had won in 2008, we'd have heard about the amazing brilliant alternative path into history we might have taken with Barack Obama.

Juan Williams reveals that the White House is calling the Republicans' opposition to Obamacare "the original sin."

Here's Juan Williams this morning on "Fox News Sunday":

How to comment at Instapundit.

Vote in (or view) one of his polls. You can comment at the poll results page.

That link goes to today's GOP 2012 nominee poll. Yesterday, he had this poll, with fewer options. And tons of comments at the results page. 136 pages of comments! I was going to copy and paste Meade's comment... but it's too hard to find. He tells me he wrote "Jeb Bush/Rob Portman" with a link to this article by Juan Williams ("The Perfect GOP Ticket In 2012 Would Have Jeb Bush and Rob Portman's Names On It"):

Bush and Portman can’t be marginalized as Tea Party extremists but they can spout enough hot rhetoric to stir the base. They are also perfectly acceptable to the social, economic and foreign policy conservatives in the Republican camp. The Bush-Portman ticket would satisfy the William F. Buckley rule for Republican Primary voters — pick the most conservative candidate who can win.

NPR exec Ron Schiller on the Tea Party: "they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people."

Caught on video by conservative pranksters posing as potential donors from a Muslim Brotherhood front group:

Schiller goes on to describe liberals as more intelligent and informed than conservatives. “In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives"...

When [one of the pranksters] suggests to Schiller that “Jews do kind of control the media or, I mean, certainly the Zionists and the people who have the interests in swaying media coverage toward a favorable direction of Israel,” Schiller does not rebut him or stop eating. He just nods his head slightly.

When one person says something and another keeps silent, what should we think of the silent person? I recently discussed exactly that with Slate's Timonthy Noah, who was keen on using silence against a Republican Congressman who didn't immediately jump on a constituent who said "Who is going to shoot Obama"?



Somehow I predict that Noah will let Schiller off the hook for that, and I, being consistent with myself,  will too. As I said in the Bloggingheads, it depends on the context. Schiller was in a different context. Congressman Broun was at a public meeting. Schiller was having a seemingly private meal with prospective donors. You're not going to fund-raise very well if you scold people or make them feel uncomfortable. And in any kind of a private meeting, you might humor your interlocutors as a strategy to obtain more information about them.

The pranksters were trying to trap Schiller into sounding anti-Jewish or anti-Israel, and I would defend Schiller for what he said in response to that prodding. What does look really bad, though, is his virulent hostility toward social conservatives and his twisted image of the people in the Tea Party movement. What's completely predictable — we're familiar with NPR — is the preening self-love of the liberal who's so sure he and his people are the smart ones. Not smart enough not to get pranked, though.

Remember when Scott Walker got pranked the other day by a phone call purporting to be from David Koch? His opponents couldn't get enough of calling him stupid for that, and even though he said nothing inconsistent with his public talking points and seemed the same as he is in public, they fine-tooth-combed his remarks to find little things they could blow up and portray as evil. Forget empathy and fairness — use whatever you find as brutally as you can.

Now here's this choice new material from Schiller, giving conservatives the chance to punch back twice as hard (to use the old Obama WH motto).

ADDED: David Weigel notes that Schiller is no longer with NPR. And he has the text of the Schiller quote about the firing of Juan Williams:

What NPR did I'm very proud of. What NPR stood for is a non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news. Our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her personal opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist. They can no longer fairly report. And the question we asked internally was, can Juan Williams, when he makes a statement like that, can he report to the Muslim population, and be believed, for example? And the answer is no. He lost all credibility and that breaks your ethics as a journalist.

Firing a tenured law professor because he used the dean's name in hypotheticals?

It's hard to guess what the full story is here. (Via Taxprof.) The professor, Lawrence Connell, has, according to this report, authorized his lawyer, Thomas Neuberger, to talk to the press, and the school, Widener, has a confidentiality policy in personnel matters, so we're seeing Connell's version for the most part.

Lawprofs use hypotheticals all the time, and Connell put the name of the dean, Linda Ammons, in "at least 10" hypotheticals depicting her getting shot. Supposedly, "at least two students filed complaints with administrators, calling it violent, racist and sexist." Connell is white; Ammons is black. A letter from the vice dean refers to "an 'outgoing pattern' of misconduct,"* including "cursing and coarse behavior, 'racist and sexist statements' and 'violent, personal scenarios that demean and threaten your colleagues.'"

The linked article has this quote from Gregory F. Scholtz, associate secretary and director of the American Association of University Professors:

"Education is all about pushing the boundaries, and it's all about controversial ideas, but the question always is when does it cross the line... Given our modern culture and the violence that exists, you're really asking for trouble when you talk about killing people."

It looks like Scholtz is channeling some of the unscientific blather that surrounded the Tucson massacre: There's bad speech out there and then bad people do bad things and that's bad.

Look, if you're teaching criminal law, you use hypos that have people doing criminal things. Putting real names in the hypos might be funny or attention-getting or just stupid, but let's not get hysterical. Was the professor advocating that somebody shoot the dean? Obviously, not. Are the students so confused they don't get that? Impossible.

But I can understand how law school bureaucrats feel compelled to make a showing of caring deeply when students — even only 2 students — complain that a professor seems racist. I have seen that happen. It can be hard for the administration to negotiate its way through the maze of academic freedom and student opinion even when it is trying to do everything right and cares only about the appropriate values like intellectual excellence and a favorable "climate" for learning. But who knows what is really going on here? Are the students oversensitive, vindictive, or pursuing an ideological agenda? Is there some distorted notion that any criticism or making fun of the dean is a racial matter?

Neuberger said Kelly and Ammons offered to allow Connell to return to campus if he recanted statements students found offensive and underwent psychiatric evaluation.

That reminds me of the fallout over NPR's firing of Juan Williams — after he said something that made sensitive people feel he might be insufficiently tolerant. Maybe he should talk to his psychiatrist, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said. It's a distancing move, undercutting serious inquiry into the statements that are being questioned. The statements are no longer anything to engage with, but evidence of the speaker's mental disorder. There are insiders and outsiders, and suddenly the speaker is the outsider, to be talked about, not talked with.

As for "recant[ing] statements students found offensive" — how do you recant a hypothetical? I know how I would recant a hypothetical: with great sarcasm. You know, these little stories I tell in class — vignettes, if you will — they are inventions — sheer flights of fancy. I like to call them hy-po-THET-ick-uhls... 

But Connell refused to recant, "believing it would amount to admitting racism, among other things." This is what happens. It's such a big deal to be accused of racism that it forces a hard-line denial. There's also a political angle here. Connell's lawyer is saying that Dean Ammons "wanted to get rid of a conservative professor." And now the story is out in the legal blogosphere. Instapundit says:

PROFESSOR MAY LOSE TENURE FOR “A pattern of inappropriate speech and behavior.” Wait, I thought that was what tenure was supposed to protect. Of course, it’s at Widener. But with tenure already under attack from education reformers, an object case that it doesn’t actually protect controversial speech would seem to be either valuable, or a dreadful mistake, depending on your perspective.

And now, we'll all talk about it. That link on "Widener" is important, as Glenn connects some dots and puts the school's larger reputation on the line. There aren't too many conservative law professors, but they've got very well-connected power on the internet. Deal fairly with them.

*ADDED: What's an "outgoing pattern"? I've heard of ongoing patterns. Was Connell perky and sociable and racist and sexist all at the same time?

"I think it is good news for NPR if they can get someone who I think has been the keeper of a flame of liberal orthodox out of NPR."

"I think she represented a very ingrown, incestuous culture in that institution that's not open to not only different ways of thinking but angry at the fact that I would even talk or be on FOX."

Juan Williams reacts to NPR's ousting of Ellen Weiss, the woman who fired him. I'm linking to NPR's own story, and you have to click on the video that's posted there to hear the words I'm quoting. It's worth listening to the whole interview Williams does with Meghan Kelly (on FoxNews). He lashes into NPR.

"Olbermann's back."

"Yeah, I know. What a lame PR stunt. MSNBC wanted get in on some of that Juan Williams action."

(Dialogue at Meadhouse just now.)

NPR set Juan Williams on fire.

And it's all on Fox News.



Especially hot:

Nina Totenberg wished that Senator Jesse Helms and his grandchildren would get AIDS -- I said would get AIDS. She's still working there.

A so-called humorist on NPR said the world would be a better place if 4 million Christians evaporated. Hilarious.

And calling millions of members of the Tea Party movement a sexual pejorative, tea baggers won't get you in hot water either.

So it seems some opinions are more equal than others at NPR.

"... Williams can come out of the closet as a full-on wingnut cartoon character."

"No more living a lie as a one-time journalist playing a fake liberal on Fox News."

Sayeth Josh Marshall.