"The uproar over Michael Tomasky’s hiring at TNR underscores the extent to which any institution that isn’t explicitly right wing now faces enormous pressure to go 'woke.'"

"Tomasky is a through and through liberal but is being cast as a villain simply for not being further left." 

That's a tweet by Thomas Chatterton Williams, quoted in a Substack piece John Ganz titled "The Dumbest Tweet I Have Ever Seen/Not Really, but C'mon."

Ganz writes: 

"'Freedom' belongs almost wholly to the right. They talk about it incessantly and insist on a link between economic freedom and political freedom..."

"... positing that the latter is impossible without the former.... [T]he broad left in America has let all this go unchallenged for decades, to the point that today’s right wing — and it is important to call it that and not conservative, which it is not — can defend spreading disease, potentially killing other people, as freedom. It is madness. One thing Democrats in general aren’t very good at is defending their positions on the level of philosophical principle. This has happened because they’ve been on the philosophical defensive since Ronald Reagan came along. Well, it’s high time they played some philosophical offense, especially on an issue, wearing masks, on which every poll shows broad majorities supporting their view. Say this: Freedom means the freedom not to get infected by the idiot who refuses to mask up."  

From "There’s a Word for Why We Wear Masks, and Liberals Should Say It/It’s high time Democrats played some philosophical offense on the concept of 'freedom'" by Michael Tomasky (NYT).

Does the "broad left in America" — to use Tomasky's interesting term — really value freedom? Or is he suggesting that they use it only because it may make an impact on right wingers — don't call them conservatives! — who value freedom and don't wear masks as much as it seems they should? Notice Tomasky says left-wingers ought to use the concept of freedom offensively. He seems to mean that they ought to make noise about the limits on freedom, defining "freedom" to exclude whatever hurts someone else's interests. That is showing enthusiasm for the limits on freedom, not for freedom itself. Alternatively, Tomasky might mean that left-liberals ought to use the word "freedom" when saying what they want for themselves — things like safety and peace of mind — as they limit the freedom of others. 

But I don't think left-wingers these days like to say "freedom." That's why Tomasky has to go out of his way to prod them into saying it.

By the way, I like that he's writing about masks when "mask" is part of his name — Tomasky.

And do wear your mask when you go to an indoor public places or you're in an outdoor area where you can't be sure to keep more than 6 feet from everyone else. Do it to minimize harm to others! 

"There appears to be an emerging consensus that the impeachment of Donald Trump won’t matter very much in November, 2020."

John Cassidy writes in "Impeaching Donald Trump Is Already a Win for Democrats" (The New Yorker), and I note the weasel words "appears" and "emerging" and the lack of specificity about the set of persons who are coagulating into this consensus.

Is he looking entirely at those who are hoping to steel the Democrats to get through this next phase?

“Impeachment will eclipse all for the next seven weeks. And then it will recede, and other events will supersede it as the election year moves on,” David Axelrod, the CNN commentator and former adviser to Barack Obama, commented in a Twitter thread on Thursday. 

That's already clearly untrue. Impeaching isn't eclipsing all. Just yesterday, the impeachment was eclipsed by good economic news, an act of violence, and Trump talking about toilets. If you can't even get the next day right, your assurances about the next year sound like made-up happy talk.

In a Times Op-Ed, Michael Tomasky, the editor of Democracy, wrote, “I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that when we pore over the exit polls next Nov. 4, impeachment itself will have been a minor factor in people’s voting, let alone the question of how many articles the House passed.”

Dollars to doughnuts? Is that anything like malarkey? I'm going to guess that Michael Tomasky is over 70, because I'm almost 70 and I've only ever heard "dollars to doughnuts" from people who seemed really old to me. I looked. He's 59. I'm going to assume he's adopting a cornball, folksy style because he's knows it's a con.

Axelrod and Tomasky are shrewd and experienced observers....

No, they're not shrewd and experienced observers. They're shrewd and experienced participants in political discourse, manipulators of opinion. They're not prognosticating because they're trying to get it right. They're trying to affect what happens and what people think.

"I’ve been fretting lately about the state of mind of America’s capitalists."

"All these socialists coming out of the woodwork must have them in quite a lather. So I write today with some friendly advice for the capitalist class about said socialists. You want fewer socialists? Easy. Stop creating them. Every once in a while in history, cause and effect smack us in the face. The conditions under which the czars forced Russians to live gave rise to Bolshevism. The terms imposed at Versailles fueled Hitler’s ascent. The failures of Keynesianism in the 1970s smoothed the path for supply-side economics. And so it is here. As I noted recently in The Daily Beast, the kind of capitalism that has been practiced in this country over the last few decades has made socialism look far more appealing, especially to young people. Ask yourself: If you’re 28 like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congressional candidate who describes herself as a democratic socialist, what have you seen during your sentient life?"

Michael Tomasky — Daily Beast columnist — writes in the NYT.

1. "The terms imposed at Versailles fueled Hitler’s ascent." I've never seen such a short, blunt explanation for Hitler that didn't blame Hitler and his supporters. I'm not saying the terms imposed at Versailles did not fuel Hitler's ascent, just that it's conventional to avoid giving Hitler a neat, unelaborated excuse.

2. The other day we were talking about something Andrew Sullivan wrote: "One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals." Tomasky violates that rule with: "All these socialists coming out of the woodwork must have them in quite a lather." I didn't agree with Sullivan's rule, because we are animals and because (as we've seen with Tahlequah the orca) some nonhuman animals seem humane. But I do crack down on mixed metaphors, and it's cockroaches and rats that "come out of the woodwork" and horses that get in a "lather." That's a mixed metaphor, because the woodwork is in a house and a horse is not in the house. (But now I'm thinking about that David Sedaris story that has him and his sister looking at magazine photos of a horse in a house: "Amy leaned closer and pointed to the bottom of the picture. 'Look at the mud on that carpet,' she said, but I was way ahead of her. 'Number one reason not to blow a horse in your bedroom,' I told her, though it was actually much farther down the list. Number four, maybe, the top slots being reserved for the loss of dignity, the invitation to disease, and the off chance that your parents might drop by.")

3. Even though I don't accept Sullivan's broad rule, I do think one ought to be careful about characterizing your antagonists as vermin.



4. Tomasky has room to deny: He didn't say socialists were cockroaches/rats. He imagined "America's capitalists" seeing them as vermin. They're the wrong-thinkers. Those horses.

5. Is it capitalists who are upset about all the socialism talk happening inside the Democratic Party? I think it is (and should be) the Democrats themselves. I think what Tomasky wants is for nonleftists to support policies that moderate Democrats would prefer to enact without calling any of it "socialism." But if they can't, because they're too bland to win support in the present-day media environment, then there's an opening for more exciting characters like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and they will say "socialism," and that complicates the Democratic Party's effort to regain power.

6. I seriously doubt that Tomasky is trying to help out capitalists. It's more: He would like their help. It's kind of a protection racket: Support my people before worse people come along.

3 Daily Beast headlines.

1. "Michelle Wolf Compares Ivanka Trump to Herpes: ‘You Always Show Up When We’re About to Get F*cked.'"

2. "Anthony Kennedy, You Are a Total Disgrace to America." "And now we learn that on top of everything else, Kennedy may just be corrupt. So his son Justin, if last week’s New York Times account is correct, in essence kept Donald Trump in business for the better part of a decade, overseeing $1 billion worth of loans to the Trump Organization via Deutsche Bank, where he worked. Justin and the Trump kids are buddies, it seems. Justin and Trump himself are palsy-walsy."

3. "John Oliver Is Devastated Over SCOTUS: ‘Everything Is Terrible Now.'" (Oliver was a lot better than the Beast's headline makes him seem. He was mocking the Donald Trump Jr. tweet that said, "OMG! Just when you thought this week couldn't get more lit... I give you Anthony Kennedy's retirement from #SCOTUS," which clearly deserves the mockery Oliver deftly delivered: "I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with Mister Junior on this, because I don’t think this is ‘lit’ at all. I mean, it’s obvs crayAF, no one is denying that fam, but I would argue that this week’s news was neither lit nor on fleek nor was it three fire emojis. Now, granted, I’m still a little shook jsyk, but I personally believe Kennedy’s retirement is super werpt. And I’m happy to announce that in saying that, all of the slang words I just used are now officially dead forever—and that includes ‘werpt,’ a term that doesn’t even exist for which I preemptively ruined just in case.")

Is anyone praising Obama's Oval Office speech?

I'm hearing a lot of negative spin — Obama squandered the opportunity, etc. So I went looking to see if places that would be expected to support him are saying nice things.

I tried Talking Points Memo and the front page is cluttered with all sorts of things but the only Obama-speech-related items are: "Fox Guest On Obama: 'Such A Total Pussy, It's Stunning'" (top left) and (lower down) "Fox News Host: Obama ‘Could Give A Shit’ About The Threat Of Terrorism." That's nothing complimentary about Obama, just the direction to look elsewhere, at how nasty his critics are. 

The Daily Beast front page has that "pussy" guy...



There's also a column by Michael Tomasky, "President Obama’s Challenge to Muslim Americans":

This is the first time Obama has issued this challenge to Muslim Americans.... [I]f other Americans had some sense that Muslim Americans as a group were really working to ferret out the radicalism, then this stalemate might be broken. If anything Obama should have been more emphatic about this. He should now go around to Muslim communities in Detroit and Chicago and the Bay Area and upstate New York and give a speech that tells them: If you want to be treated with less suspicion, then you have to make that happen. That would be real leadership, and a real service....

Sounds like there's a big, daring, additional step Obama would need to take to earn Tomasky's praise.

Vox tried to keep it neutral: "Obama's rare Oval Office address to the nation: what he said and what he meant."

The NYT did put up "President Obama’s Tough, Calming Talk on Terrorism," as I noted last night.

Salon has: "Obama calls for reason: The president’s nuanced take on terror post-San Bernardino." The classic liberal buzzword. I've said it before:

Michael Tomasky thinks the idea of impeaching Obama is "industrial-strength insane," which is why the GOP will try to do it.

Because they are industrial-strength insane.

I love the way it's his idea that he's calling insane, and he's so sure other people are insane. Isn't that kind of... insane?

But this is my point: utter madness is what today’s Republicans do. You can present to me every logical argument you desire. Benghazi at the end of the day was a terrible tragedy in which mistakes, bad mistakes, were certainly made, and in which confusion and the CYA reflex led to some bad information going out to the public initially, but none of this remotely rises to the level of high crime. The IRS cock-up was just that, a mistake by a regional office. I get all this, and I agree with you.

Why do people say "logic" when they are obviously not talking about logic? He's talking about what the facts are, how to characterize the facts, and what the standard for impeachment is. None of that is pinned down. We always only have evidence of what the facts are, and currently we don't even have all the evidence of the facts. Whether the facts say "tragedy" and "confusion" and "mistakes" or something more nefarious hasn't been resolved. And the standard for impeachment has never been resolved.