Do you think Trump will be better off not having to run against a woman this time?

That's my first question, upon reading "BUCHANAN: Could be down to 3 white guys by end of month..." (at Drudge). The link goes to a column by Patrick Buchanan at WND.*

If Klobuchar runs fifth in Iowa and third, fourth or fifth in New Hampshire, in what state does she win her first primary? And as her fundraising has never matched that of the front-runners, where does she get the money to match Sanders or Bloomberg on Super Tuesday, now just three weeks off?...

As for Warren, in her battle with Sanders to emerge as the champion of the progressive wing of the party, her third-place finish in Iowa, and her expected third-place finish in New Hampshire, at best, would seem to settle that issue for this election.... I[n] what state does Elizabeth Warren beat her progressive rival?...

It's bad for the Democrats to lose their female candidates, but that does seem to be where things are going. They've already lost all their black candidates (at least the ones strong enough to have gotten on the debate stage (there's still Deval Patrick)). So it will, in all likelihood, be a white male against Trump. Is that better for him? I could argue both ways, so I give the question to you for now.
________________

* WND? Is that a disreputable website? I see it also has: "James Woods sprung from 'Twitter jail,' gets instantly political/Sarcastically asks: 'How's Jeffrey Epstein doing?'"

After being held captive in "Twitter jail" for nearly a year, essentially locked out of his own social-media account and precluded from posting any messages, actor James Woods triumphantly returned to the site Thursday night....

His first tweet:

I’ve tried so hard this past year to live without the wealth of knowledge available on Twitter, but this kind of blazing insight can be found nowhere else, so... I’m back! #AOCStillAMoron pic.twitter.com/kB0oDXmArB

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 7, 2020

If you were following Woods before his banishment, check to see if you still are. I was and am.

ADDED: From Wikipedia: "WorldNetDaily (WND) is an American news and opinion website and online news aggregator which has been described as 'fringe' and far right as well as politically conservative. The website is known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories."

I'm hearing about the "exhausted majority." Is that something different from the old "silent majority"?

A lot of people — including me, here, yesterday — are linking to the Atlantic article, "Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture" by Yascha Mounk.

I usually give the subtitle along with the title, but this article has a distractingly incomprehensible subtitle: "Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either." I mean, I can comprehend it now that I've read the article, but unlike most subtitles, it doesn't help you see what you're going to get by reading it. The use of the word "proxy" is, if not entirely wrong, entirely confusing. The idea is supposed to be that you're wrong if you assume that the older and whiter a person is there more likely they are to think "political correctness" is a problem. It turns out that all groups — except "progressive activists" — say they think "political correctness" is a problem. And the majorities are overwhelming.

The article draws from a new report, "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” which sorts Americans into various political "tribes." This depiction is a good quick summary:



Look at how many people are collected under the label "exhausted"! Obviously, we're a huge majority, and it's nice to see all the detail within the majority, but why are we all labeled "exhausted"? And why are "traditional liberals" said to be exhausted when "traditional conservatives" are not? The Atlantic article says that the views of the "traditional" and the "devoted" conservatives "are far outside the American mainstream." I guess the "traditional liberals," unlike the "traditional conservatives," don't belong in the "wings," and therefore get grouped with the "majority." But why is that entire diverse group, the majority, deemed "exhausted"?

To go to the underlying report:

In talking to everyday Americans, we have found a large segment of the population whose voices are rarely heard above the shouts of the partisan tribes. These are people who believe that Americans have more in common than that which divides them. While they differ on important issues, they feel exhausted by the division in the United States. They believe that compromise is necessary in politics, as in other parts of life, and want to see the country come together and solve its problems.

Is this group really tired or just hard to hear "above the shouts of the partisan tribes"? I suspect that the authors are using the term "exhausted majority" because they don't want to say "silent majority."

Here's the Wikipedia article for "Silent Majority":

I force myself to read one — just one — of the many racial-politics-of-Donald-Trump articles I've been reflexively avoiding.

Racial politics is a long-time subject on this blog. I've got 973 posts with the "racial politics" tag. So I want to get proactive on the subject of Donald Trump and race. I have to force myself a bit, because I see so many MSM headlines begging for attention that I have a real aversion to clicking in. It seems so cheap and pathetic and even — understanding the term broadly — racist. Or racistist. I made up that word just now, but you see what I mean? Maybe not. I might explain it later.

But right now what I want to do is force myself to read one of those articles. I've chosen something from a website I usually avoid, Salon. I avoid it because it feels like a cocoon for people who want a certain sort of cocoon-y comfort, a kind that's not to my taste. The cocoon that's to my taste is this blog. And here on this blog, today, I'm pushing myself through the exercise of reading a Salon article, by Chauncey DeVega, called "Donald Trump leads an insane white cult — and Pat Buchanan just explained how it works/GOP front-runner leads cult of personality centered around white alienation, racial resentment and authoritarianism."

What Pat Buchanan said was:

[Trump's] popularity is traceable to the fact that he rejects the moral authority of the media, breaks their commandments, and mocks their condemnations. His contempt for the norms of Political Correctness is daily on display. And that large slice of America... relishes this defiance.

Buchanan seems to be taunting MSM, but "moral authority," "commandments," "condemnation," and "norms of Political Correctness" seem to imply anti-racism. So maybe what excites the "defiance" of the "large slice" is racism.

[The media] constantly denounce him as grossly insensitive for what he has said about women, Mexicans, Muslims, McCain and a reporter with a disability. Such crimes against decency, says the press, disqualify Trump as a candidate for president.

Yes, what Trump says is framed as racist by the media, and somehow a lot of people — a large slice of America — are resisting the demand that they reject Trump. It's a fascinating phenomenon, and it could mean these Americans are drawn to whatever racism or remnants and resonances of racism Trump's various statements contain, but it could also mean these Americans are tired of these insinuations and heartened that Trump won't take the push back that has worked on virtually everyone else.

As Buchanan put it:

[W]hen [the media] demand he apologize, Trump doubles down. And when they demand that Republicans repudiate him, the GOP base replies: “Who are you to tell us whom we may nominate? You are not friends. You are not going to vote for us. And the names you call Trump — bigot, racist, xenophobe, sexist — are the names you call us, nothing but cuss words that a corrupt establishment uses on those it most detests.”

So these people, in Buchanan's view, are not racists, but people who have been on the receiving end of the accusations of racism, and Trump represents them, as he stands his ground and wins for them. He's lifted them up. Are people who feel this way an "insane white cult"? Of course, Buchanan isn't saying that explicitly, so how does DeVega set out to put these people back in the low place where he thinks they belong?

DeVega never seriously considers Buchanan's analysis. He leaps into calling Trump "the leader of a cult of personality," "a proto-fascist," and "a classic 'strong man' political figure." He finds fault in his "egomaniacal narcissism" and "charismatic leader persona." Trump is "a type of political cult leader." If Trump is a cult leader, then, I guess, the people who like him must be in a cult. And then maybe the next leap is possible. They're insane:

To understand Donald Trump’s appeal, one must seriously consider the possibility that his followers specifically, and movement conservatives and the Republican Party more generally, are exhibiting signs of political psychopathology....

Donald Trump is using his campaign to garner more money and power....

(Garner! It's taking all my power to resist digressing (again) on that ludicrous word. One must seriously consider the possibility that anyone who uses this word is exhibiting signs of psychopathology.)

Look, all of us participating in American politics have human minds, and our thinking is unavoidably infused with emotion. The people who lean in ways that are different from yours are not insane, not for the most part. Don't disparage those who suffer from genuine mental illness by saying the people you disagree with politically are crazy. Emotion is not insanity. You should try to understand the emotion that draws people to candidates you dislike, but to call them crazy is to do something that is, ironically, akin to racism. You're aiming disgust and contempt at them and trying to make other people shun them. (Ah, there! I did stumble into defining racistist.)

DeVega says:

Trump is providing a safe space and outlet for conservatives to validate their preexisting racist, xenophobic and bigoted attitudes. Their true selves are being actualized and “liberated.”

That's a hypothesis worth thinking about, but DeVega hasn't proved it. Indeed, he's operating within the safe space of Salon, providing an outlet for liberals and lefties who are happy to validate their preexisting belief that conservatives are racist, xenophobic, and bigoted. Who's got the "true self" here and who is being "actualized" and "'liberated'"? It's psychology all the way down.

Camille Paglia talks about Hillary Clinton in 1994.

I'm assuming this 1994, because she's promoting her book "Vamps and Tramps" which came out in 1994. I've excerpted this 2-minute bit about Hillary Clinton (but the whole show is excellent, and if you think you hate Bill Maher, you may change your mind):



The section of "Vamp and Tramps" she refers to is a transcript of a CNN "Crossfire" episode, where she's on with Michael Kinsley and Pat Buchanan, talking about the Whitewater scandal in 1994. I couldn't find video of it on line, but I've got the text, and Kinsley starts of the discussion by saying there's "extraordinary antagonism towards Hillary Clinton, far beyond anything that could be explained by Whitewater or health care or anything like that," and suggesting that it's really "old-fashioned resentment of a successful, powerful woman."

Paglia vehemently disagrees, saying she'd "loved Hillary during the campaign" and "is judging her not as a woman but as a person in public life."

I feel that she has no idea how to maintain herself in that high position. She just hides from accountability. I find her arrogant. I find her cold.

There's more and Paglia has to fight off the accusation of sexism (mostly for daring to judge the expression on Hillary's face). Ah, here's the transcript (minus 2 pages, Google Books style).

"With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States..."

"... and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.... In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God’s side. The West is Gomorrah."

Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel "say one of the things that really politicized the abortion issue was the efforts of those working to re-elect President Richard Nixon in 1972."

"His aides, including future Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, wanted to lure Northern Catholic voters, who had traditionally voted Democratic, over to the Republican Party."

Nixon "was strongly advised by his strategists ... to make a play for a Northern urban Catholic Democratic vote," says Greenhouse. "A kind of Northern strategy that mirrored the Southern strategy."

In fact, up until then, top Republicans tended to be more in favor of abortion rights than Democrats, including, for much of his first term, Nixon himself....

So, taking his aides' advice, Nixon switched sides on abortion, even reversing an earlier relaxation of an abortion ban in military facilities.

"[W]hite Americans do not realize how black they are."

"Even their whiteness is partly scavenged from the fear of - and attraction to - its opposite. From the beginning, in its very marrow, this country was forged out of that racial and cultural interaction."

Englishman Andrew Sullivan bestows his revelation on us, on the occasion of his disgust at something Pat Buchanan wrote. Buchanan's column is "a travesty of history" and evidence of "America's tragedy of self-forgetting." I don't really need Sullivan's help with American self-remembering, but I did need to read Buchanan's column — which I wouldn't have done otherwise — to get what the condescension is all about.

"Traditional Americans are losing their nation," says Buchanan, channeling the discontent of those people who, Obama once said, "get bitter [and] cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Buchanan not only includes the "bitter clingers" quote in the column: he enacts it.

Sullivan is mainly out to discredit the notion that "traditional Americans" are white Americans. Would that matter to Buchanan? I doubt it. He's speaking of the political issues of the day, describing the views of a demographic group, and rejecting the idea that their attitude arises from racial animosity.

ADDED: Instapundit writes:

“WHITE AMERICANS DO NOT REALIZE HOW BLACK THEY ARE.” Well, possibly. I mean, unless they’ve heard of Elvis, or Rock ‘n’ Roll, or something. Or unless “Pat Buchanan” and “White Americans” are identity sets. Which to a certain class of know-nothing they may seem.

David Brooks: "Liberal Suicide March."

Okay! I've been mocking David Brooks lately, and, frankly, I haven't even read this column yet, but I've got to get in on this "Liberal Suicide March" action. Link!

They brought in pollsters to their party conferences to persuade their members that the country was fervently behind them. They were supported by their interest groups and cheered on by their activists and the partisan press. They spent federal money in an effort to buy support but ended up disgusting the country instead.

Ah! Must begin by trashing the GOP. See, the Repubs have already done a suicide march. Now, it's time for the Dems to go:

It’s not that interesting to watch the Democrats lose touch with America.

It's all about interesting. The question is: Does the news amuse me?

That’s because the plotline is exactly the same.

Suicide is so last year.

The party is led by insular liberals from big cities and the coasts, who neither understand nor sympathize with moderates. They have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes.

(I'm distracted by mixed metaphors. Insular/coasts. Cherry-picking/cocoon.)

Brooks goes on to identify 3 stages of the liberal suicide march, and I think it's glaringly obvious that what the liberals are doing is disastrous and destructive in a way that is utterly different from the Republicans continued adherence to conservative philosophy. Conservatism was only unpopular, and it could become popular again, especially after we've seen the liberal philosophy acted out in real life:

First, there was the stimulus package. You would have thought that a stimulus package would be designed to fight unemployment and stimulate the economy during a recession. But Congressional Democrats used it as a pretext to pay for $787 billion worth of pet programs with borrowed money. Only 11 percent of the money will be spent by the end of the fiscal year — a triumph of ideology over pragmatism.

Then there is the budget. Instead of allaying moderate anxieties about the deficits, the budget is expected to increase the government debt by $11 trillion between 2009 and 2019.

Finally, there is health care. Every cliché Ann Coulter throws at the Democrats is gloriously fulfilled by the Democratic health care bills. The bills do almost nothing to control health care inflation. They are modeled on the Massachusetts health reform law that is currently coming apart at the seams precisely because it doesn’t control costs. They do little to reward efficient providers and reform inefficient ones.

The House bill adds $239 billion to the federal deficit during the first 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would pummel small businesses with an 8 percent payroll penalty. It would jack America’s top tax rate above those in Italy and France. Top earners in New York and California would be giving more than 55 percent of earnings to one government entity or another.

This is suicide. I say: Hurry up and die.

Nancy Pelosi has lower approval ratings than Dick Cheney and far lower approval ratings than Sarah Palin. And yet Democrats have allowed her policy values to carry the day — this in an era in which independents dominate the electoral landscape.

Who’s going to stop this leftward surge? Months ago, it seemed as if Obama would lead a center-left coalition. Instead, he has deferred to the Old Bulls on Capitol Hill on issue after issue.

Ugh! I flash back on a post I wrote last October, October 30th, a few days before I voted for Obama, "With the Democratic control of Congress, how much traction should McCain get out of the argument for divided government?" Here's the whole text of that post, with boldface and bracketed commentary added:

TNR presents the debate. On Monday, John B. Judis had a piece in called "Down with Divided Government," and today, we get a response from Jacob T. Levy: "In Defense of Two-Party Rule."

This is a huge question for me, and I've wavered on the subject. Usually, I prefer divided government, but that doesn't mean I need to support McCain. I've seen McCain put way too much effort into pleasing Democrats and flouting his own party, and I can picture Obama standing up to the Democratic Congress and being his own man. What, really, will he owe them? McCain, by contrast, will need them. And we've seen that he wants to be loved by them.

Sometimes, I think that letting the Democrats control everything for 2 years would work out just fine. Let one party take responsibility for everything. When they can't whine and finger-point, what will they actually step up and do? It will be interesting to know.

Aaaaggghhhhh! Interesting. Save me from interesting!

And it will do the Republicans good to retool and define themselves, with an eye toward the 2010 election. I'd like to see this clarification after so many years of obfuscation.

So, that's how my thinking about 2-party rule has supported my decision to vote for Obama.

Now, let's see what Judis and Levy say. Judis notes various examples of successful presidencies under united government and bad presidencies with divided government, and says the evidence proves that "divided government is a curse, not a blessing, and should be avoided, if at all possible." He elaborates:

[In "The Politics Presidents Make" Stephen] Skowronek, a Yale political scientist, distinguishes two kinds of circumstances that have led to crippled government. In the first, a president from an opposing party, but who nevertheless represents the wave of the political future, confronts a congress wedded to the past and determined to frustrate him. You could put Nixon (who was the harbinger of an emerging Republican majority) and Clinton (who was the harbinger of an emerging Democratic majority) in this group. Both these presidencies degenerated into chaos in their second terms.

Then, there are presidents who, in Skowronek’s words, are “affiliated with a set of established commitments that have in the course of events been called into question as failed or irrelevant responses to the problems of the day.” Skowroneck numbers among these James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. These presidents don’t necessarily have to contend with a Congressional opposition in power, but like Hoover and Carter in their last two years, with a nascent and growing opposition in Congress that constitutes a functional majority in opposition to what they want to do. These presidencies have also proved disastrous.

A John McCain presidency would clearly fall in the latter group, and McCain, unlike Hoover and Carter, would have to face clear and unequivocal majorities in Congress united against him. Rather than promising success, that kind of divided government would promise chaos and failure.

Levy says:

The simple fact is that Republicans never controlled the House during Reagan's eight years....

The last six years of Clinton's presidency, 1995 to 2001, is the other era of divided government that gets held up as exemplary. Judis dismisses it as catastrophic on the basis of the Clinton impeachment. But that misses the wonderful weirdness of the late '90s. The chaos of impeachment coexisted alongside bipartisan legislative accomplishments... Again, I think a good president was made better through divided government....

But he's still not promoting McCain:

The obvious prediction is that Obama will have at least two years of one-party government. That may be, temporarily, for the best--the Bush-era Republican Party, like the Nixon-era Republican Party, needs some time in the wilderness to unlearn some very bad habits. ... [I]n the unlikely event that a healthier, reformed Republican Party is ready by 2010 and able to grab back control of the House, so much the better for American politics--and maybe so much the better for Obama's presidency. And in the meantime, I'm certainly rooting for smart and decent Hill Republicans (admittedly a minority) to hold onto their seats to lead the rebuilding toward another era of soundly divided government.

I don't know if undivided government is always better, but I think it can have some benefits now, and it's not so obviously always bad that opposition to it works as an especially strong reason to support McCain in 2008.

We'll never know what McCain might have done. He'd have made his own mistakes, and I won't assume he would have stood up to Congress.

And I cling to the belief that Obama has the ability to save us from the destructive path Congress has chosen for itself. But will he use it?

How much of an ideologue is he anyway? We've come this far, and still we don't really know. Is he, at heart, the committed leftist his staunchest opponents say he is? I know Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying — over and over — that Obama is intentionally destroying the economy (so that nothing will be left for us but socialism).

I still think Obama is a pragmatist. I also think he's mainly interested in attaining personal glory. If that's right, the prospect of his own defeat in 2012 should shock him into standing up to the bunch of Democrats who — I hope and I hope he sees — will be crushed in 2010.

So: hope and change. Come on, Obama. We need some now.

"Obscene, but absolutely hilarious."

According to Right Wing News.

Okay, now I know what's right-wing hilarious. And I'm a little scared.

Especially the part that got me thinking about egg salad.

IN THE COMMENTS: The wonderful Bissage:

I can’t watch the video right now. I’m probably not the only one, so let’s see if something else might suffice:

Bill Bennett walks into an upscale D.C. nightspot and is surprised to see Pat Buchanan sitting at the bar eating an entire chicken. He watches in amazement as Mr. Buchanan tears into the hapless bird and doesn’t stop until all that remains is one chicken wing.

Mr. Bennett says, “You know, Pat, I can’t help but notice you ate that entire bird except for the right wing.”

Mr. Buchanan wipes the slobber and chicken bits from his face and says, “Well, there’s a reason for that but it has nothing to do with my right-wing political inclinations.”

And with that, the ghost of William F. Buckley appears out of thin air and kicks them both in the balls. They double over in agony and fall to the floor. Mr. Buckley sits down at the bar and orders an egg salad sandwich.

The End.

"Right-Of-Center Bloggers Select Their Favorite People On The Right."

And, yes, you can guess who's #1. I guessed #1 and #2, and I see plenty of good reason for these choices:

23) Michele Bachmann (4)
23) Glenn Beck (4)
23) Pat Buchanan (4)
23) Victor David Hanson (4)
23) Charles Krauthammer (4)
23) Dennis Prager (4)
23) John Roberts (4)
20) Dick Cheney (5)
20) Mark Levin (5)
20) Clarence Thomas (5)
19) Paul Ryan (6)
15) Tom Coburn (7)
15) Laura Ingraham (7)
15) Sean Hannity (7)
15) Mike Pence (7)
12) Jeff Flake (8)
12) Jonah Goldberg (8)
12) Antonin Scalia (8)
11) Jim DeMint (10)
9) Ann Coulter (11)
9) Thomas Sowell (11)
7) Michael Steele (12)
7) Michelle Malkin (12)
6) Mark Steyn (13)
5) Newt Gingrich (17)
4) Fred Thompson (18)
3) Bobby Jindal (22)
2) Rush Limbaugh (29)
1) Sarah Palin (33)

A few random questions for discussion:

1. In the Supreme Court category, why does Scalia outrank Thomas, why does Roberts come in only third, and why does Alito get no respect?

2. What explains the lingering love for Fred Thompson? That strikes me as pathetic. I can understand carrying a torch for Newt Gingrich, but why Thompson?

3. Mark Steyn ranks high. I enjoy his writing: He knows how to mix outrage and humor. I loved him as a fill-in host for Rush Limbaugh last August. (I see he got into a little trouble though.) Normally I won't even listen to the radio show podcast when there is a guest host, but I'd be happy that Rush was taking the day off if it meant we could listen to Mark. Don't you agree?

4. Are there people on that list that you know nothing about? There are for me. I won't tell you how many because it might be embarrassing. On the other hand, it might be to my credit.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade answers Question #2:

People right-of-center love Fred Thompson the Myth: Hippie Slayer and Defeater of All Things Douchey.

ADDED, APRIL 14, 2009: See why I love Meade?