So now comes the postmortem.

I see this little collection of chastened musings on the edge of the NYT front page...

... but I don't have to read this stuff. For you, though, I'll power through it super-quick and say...

1. "In this new era, in which supporting Palestinian freedom has become central to what it means to be progressive, the Palestinian exception is not just immoral. It’s politically disastrous."

2. "In the longer term, we’ll need liberal politics that are about more than just fending off the right."

3. "Instead of proposing sweeping new programs or even taking a stand, as Ms. Harris did, in defense of the status quo, [Democrats] could try to redefine themselves as responsible reformers."

4. "She spoke in the foamy blather of a corporate human resources manager. She pandered to low-information, single women voters by appearing on podcasts like 'Call Her Daddy' and goofballing along to her 'brat' label. She often came across as fake and scripted... seeming to parrot whatever her political consultants told her. The act wore thin."

"Yesterday, the Biden campaign unveiled an ad—filled with menacing images of Chinese soldiers—claiming that 'Trump rolled over for the Chinese.'"

"It follows another spot, paid for by the pro-Biden super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, depicting the incumbent as a stooge for Beijing. 'Everyone knew they lied about the virus—China,' a narrator declares, against the backdrop of a fluttering Chinese flag. 'President Trump gave China his trust.' On Friday, the Biden adviser Antony Blinken told reporters that 'the president praised China and President Xi more than 15 times.'... Trump has made China the primary scapegoat for his failures. His supporters are running ads under the hashtag #BeijingBiden. So Biden and his strategists are meeting fire with fire. They’re answering the charge that the former vice president is soft on China by saying that Trump is.... The implication of Biden’s new ad is that... Biden would boss the Chinese around. This is a jingoistic fantasy. China is a rival superpower run by an authoritarian and fiercely nationalistic regime.... In suggesting that Biden could bludgeon China into submission—in a phone call, no less—the Biden campaign is peddling a lie about how public-health cooperation with China actually works.... Were the Biden camp’s anti-China ads a surefire winner with voters, Machiavellians might justify them as a necessary evil. But for Democrats, posturing as more anti-China than the GOP is a poor long-term bet.... [I]n trying to out-jingo the GOP, Democrats will alienate their Millennial activist base.... By attacking Trump for being insufficiently nationalist rather than being insufficiently internationalist, Biden is hastening a geopolitical confrontation that threatens progressive goals..."

From "The Utter Futility of Biden’s China Rhetoric/The Democratic candidate tries to out-hawk Trump, but trying to beat Republicans at their own game is pointless—even dangerous" by Peter Beinart (in The Atlantic).

Here's the ad Beinart is talking about:



For less friendly look into Biden's vulnerability on China, there's this Trump ad from April 9th:



And here's something Trump said on April 18th: "Maybe Sleepy Joe Biden’s gonna win. And if Sleepy Joe Biden wins... China will own the United States."

"Antifa’s activists say they’re battling burgeoning authoritarianism on the American right. Are they fueling it instead?"

"The Rise of the Violent Left" by Peter Beinart in The Atlantic. Conclusion paragraph:

Revulsion, fear, and rage are understandable. But one thing is clear. The people preventing Republicans from safely assembling on the streets of Portland may consider themselves fierce opponents of the authoritarianism growing on the American right. In truth, however, they are its unlikeliest allies.

Bob Wright and I talk about Donald Trump.

Yes, I know, Hillary stumbled and collapsed today. You already know that. If I can think of something original to say about it later, I'll post about that. Right now, I wanted to show you this new Bloggingheads episode, which just went up. It was recorded on Friday morning, so that was before "basket of deplorables." We do talk quite a bit about Trump and the election. I'm going to watch it now, so I'll add some details in an update as I'm reminded of what we talked about.



ADDED: This is the best part, I think, about whether Trump deserves more credit than he's gotten:



ALSO: I think this is the Peter Beinart article that Bob refers to: "Trump's Immigration Policy Trap." I don't think it says what Bob claims it says. I said — as I'd already said on this blog — that it's very hard to find any direct statement from Trump that he would deport the 11 million people who are here illegally but living peaceful, settled lives. Bob says Beinart found them, but what Beinart says is:

At the second debate, on September 16... Trump had promised only to deport undocumented immigrants who are violent criminals. He had ducked Tapper’s question about the entire 11 million....

[I]n the third debate... Trump ignored the reference to deporting 11 million and focused his answer on the wall...

That's my point!

It’s not that Trump never discussed deportation during the primaries. Over the course of hundreds of interviews, he was occasionally forced to admit that, yes, he would send all the undocumented home. 

Where's the quote? I think Trump only said things like "They will go home," not that they'd be actively seized and thrown out.

But he discussed the topic as little as possible....

That's my point! 

"[K]ids who came to their maturity during the 'Age of Fail,' whose formative experience of American exceptionalism is that America is exceptionally crappy, are pissed..."

"... and are willing to work hard for politicians who are willing to do something about it." If we assume that — as The Nation's Rick Perlstein does in "Is Peter Beinart Right About a ‘New New Left’?" — then...

... another scenario looks like this: young citizens motivated by left-leaning passions run into a brick wall again and again and again trying to turn their convictions into power. The defining story of our next political era becomes not a New New Left but a corrosive disillusionment that drives the country into ever deeper sloughs of apathy.

What if, in other words, the harbinger election didn’t take place in New York...

Beinart had been talking about Bill de Blasio...

... but in Colorado—where a hyper-ideological, insurrectionist, corporate-money-soaked minority... recalled two progressive legislatures for daring to favor background checks for gun purchases even though Coloradans want background checks by a margin of 68 to 27 percent.

Beinart wants to think big. So let’s think big. Given a precedent like that, the result of our current trends might not be more socialism, but once more a stark showdown between socialism and barbarism. Apathy and social misery might make fertile ground for some charismatic demagogue, preaching scapegoating and a narrative of violent redemption…

You say you want a revolution... but what if the revolutionaries are on the other side?

Peter Beinart asks a question that annoys me even without the thesis I know he's working on: "Put a Mom on the Court."

The question is: "Why should we want more women on the court at all?" Grr. Shut up.

But let's see how deeply he steps in it:

[Why?] For two reasons. First, because female justices, on average, will be more sensitive to the problems women face. Since they will have likely encountered gender bias themselves, they will be more likely to support government action to remedy it. And that firsthand experience of injustice may also sensitize them to the plight of other groups that have historically experienced discrimination. These are crude generalizations, of course, but they have a basis in fact. Just look at the women in Congress, who are far more likely to be pro-choice—and to lean left more broadly—than are the men.

In other words, you want more lefties on the Court, and femaleness is a rough proxy for leftism.

Our government is actually doing a pretty good job of providing role models for the 20 percent of American women who don’t want kids. Where it’s failing is in providing role models for the 80 percent that do.

But there’s a second reason we should want more women on the court. It’s not just that they may alleviate gender injustice through their rulings; they may alleviate it through their example as well. Just as Barack Obama empowers African-American kids to believe that there are no limits to what they can achieve, female Supreme Court justices send the same message to young women. As anyone who has ever watched their daughter eye a Barbie Doll can attest, role models matter.

Oh, for the love of God! As if it's 1975! I was irked in 1985 to be told that I had the role of being a role model. I thought the male law professor who told me that was discriminating against me. The men didn't have that extra dimension to their job — that basis for being valued apart from the strength doing the real work. Frankly, I found it diminishing. So that's me being "be more sensitive to the problems women face." One of the problems is men portraying our success as some kind of Oprahesque self-esteem lesson for the backward.

And that’s why it’s important not just to have lots of women in positions of political power, but to have lots of women with kids. It’s important because otherwise, the message you’re sending young women is that they can achieve professionally, or they can have a family, but they can’t do both. 

Hey, buddy. My career is not your messaging device. My birth canal is not a beacon of light to the unenlightened.

And without quite realizing it, that is the message our government has been sending. According to the Census Bureau, 80 percent of American women over the age of 40 have children. But look at the women who have held Cabinet posts in the last three presidential administrations. Only two of the Clinton administration’s five female Cabinet secretaries had kids.... In the Bush administration, the figure was two of seven. In the Obama administration, so far, it is two of four. And if Obama chooses Elena Kagan for the High Court, the figure there will be one of three.

Let's roll back to Reason #1 for wanting a woman on the Court: to get a bigger leftist. So why are you knocking Kagan? Because she's childless, or because you prefer Diane Wood, the woman with kids who is — so they say — the bigger leftist?

Beinart, I call bullshit.

AND: Consider this NYT article from 1922 (as reacted to by me, pretending to be a blogger of the time):

The NYT contends that the 12 greatest women "are women that have never been heard of outside of their own homes, and seldom appreciated there; who have put aside their own ambitions ... to build careers for which their husbands got credit." But the [National League for Women Voters] is looking for famous women, so the Times names 12 famous women: Geraldine Farrar, Edith Wharton, Carrie Chapman Catt, Molla Mallory, Alice Paul, Ida Tarbell, Jane Addams, Amy Lowell, Minnie Maddern Fiske, M. Carey Thomas, Mary Pickford, and Agnes Repplier. Ah, but "six of the twelve have never married," and the married ones are all childless. "Let those who think it is easy to manage a first-rate career and a first-rate home simultaneously find an explanation for that."

Well, my first attempt at an explanation would be to guess that the NYT composed its list of twelve with an eye toward who was childless. But, yet, it's certainly true that it's not easy to balance career and family. Why can't we factor that in as we select the greatest women? First, you say the really greatest women are the ones who put aside all career ambitions for the sake of the family, and then you present us with a list of great women who are all childless. It's obvious what you want to say. You want to warn women away from careers. Unless we are willing to abandon the hope for a good family, we should forget about having a career. This is a terrible message. Try harder to find good examples of women who have balanced family and work and show us how they have done it — or modern women should toss this reactionary newspaper aside. We deserve better.

"Ann Althouse sure has a lot of anti-semitic commenters."

Ezra Klein tweets — without a link to any particular comment.

Well, Ezra, I do not delete comments based on viewpoint. I believe in the marketplace of ideas, and to the extent that there are some anti-Semitic comments here, there are many more comments that strike back. Is it not better to have scurrilous ideas out in the sunlight where they can die?

ADDED: In fact, Ezra Klein owes me a correction. He has published a lie about my blog. Alternatively, let him list the commenters he's writing about — I can search their old comments and see if there is anything that deserves to be called anti-Semitic — and we will see if his list constitutes "a lot." I think he cannot do it, so he really ought to put up a correction immediately.

AND: Glenn Reynolds asks: "Was the tweet pre-vetted on JournoList?" Well, I'd like to know whether they are defaming me on JournoList.

AND: Ezra partially apologizes.

AND: Jac asks Ezra: "Do you think Peter Beinart & Jonah Goldberg are anti-Semitic?"

Christopher Hitchens thinks Hillary Clinton would be "a ludicrous embarrassment" as Secretary of State.

(Via Wonkette.)

Hillary Clinton should not want to be Obama's Secretary of State.

Argues Peter Beinart, pretty convincingly.

The last former secretary of state to even seek the presidency was Alexander Haig in 1988, and his candidacy was a joke. To find a former secretary of state who actually won you have to go back 150 years, to James Buchanan... It forces you to turn your energies away from domestic issues, which is what Americans usually vote on, and towards international questions that many find exotic and obscure...

[S]ecretaries of state aren’t meant to be politically popular. They’re not supposed to burnish their approval ratings; they’re supposed to take bullets so presidents can burnish theirs....

Why should the great Hillary live in Barack Obama's shadow, subject to dismissal at his whim? How is it better than building yourself up independently as the Senator from New York, carving out your issues, readying yourself for 2016 -- or 2012 if Obama slips up?

Secretaries of state were struggling even before the vice presidency—historically a dish rag of a job—got a steroid injection. With Al Gore and Dick Cheney and now, almost certainly, Joseph Biden wielding real foreign policy muscle, decision-making is becoming even more centralized at the White House. NSC advisors pop into the Oval Office all day, often alone. Vice presidents, if they have the president’s trust, have tons of opportunities to whisper in his ear when no one else is around. Secretaries of state, by contrast, often only see the president in big, scripted meetings, where they have to compete for time with the director of CIA.

And, by the way, I notice Presidents keep putting women in that slot. What's that about? Hmmm. Steroid... muscle....

UPDATE: The Guardian claims to have learned that "Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama." Why would she let it be known that she'd accept the job if it's offered? As a ploy to lock him in?

AND: This is the Rush Limbaugh analysis:

Let's talk about Hillary and secretary of state. Very, very brilliant move. You know the old adage keep your friends close, your enemies closer? This is a textbook case of keeping your enemies closer.... It's about making it impossible for her to run for the presidency again in 2012....

If you want to run for president in 2012, you gotta start in two years. If you're the secretary of state for two years, then you resign, you're running against the incumbent and you were part of the cabinet? They're figuring not even Hillary would do that, and even if she did, it wouldn't be effective.

"Do people really want a woman President? Do they want the Clinton circus back in town?"

"Do they want to keep trading the presidency between these two weird families?"

Joe Klein has some questions (in a big, rambling Time piece):

"Who knows?" said Karl Rhomberg, a former Scott County Democratic chairman, after watching Clinton perform in Davenport, Iowa. He pointed out that four years ago, in November, Howard Dean was inevitable, and John Kerry was over. "But 40% were undecided going into the last week of the caucus. It'll be the same this time. Hillary is 20% smarter than the guys, but a woman has to be just to pull equal. And I can't stand thinking about what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are going to do to her. People are just sick of that. They love Obama. He's very inspiring. But in the end, Iowans vote on electability. I hate to say it, but my guess is they'll vote for the white guy — Edwards — this time, just like they voted for the war hero last time."

It was a chilling thought. I'm sure Edwards wouldn't want to win that way, and I'm not so sure he will. But Rhomberg's scenario wasn't at all implausible. It certainly raises the central issue of this Democratic campaign: whether Hillary Clinton's excellence as a candidate will be enough to overcome her family's garish political history, the undiluted hatred that will be directed against her and the demons that still haunt our nation.

Oh, that drooling over Clinton is a little repulsive. Excellence. 20% smarter. Ugh! But what's worse is pushing the offensive notion that if we don't like her, we're sexist. It's hatred. Demons! Haunting our nation!

Edwards wouldn't want to win that way. Please. First of all, Edwards wants to win any way he can. He'll even claim to be more womanly than Hillary if he thinks we want a woman.

But we've all been thinking about 2004 and Howard Dean in connection with Hillary's current seeming inevitability, haven't we? Can't you picture the scenario playing out the same way in '08? Scream and all.

ADDED: "Why is Hillary playing the gender card?" Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg diavlog.

"The best thing for Romney and Giuliani would be for the White House and Congress to halt the surge and agree on a phased withdrawal."

So says Peter Beinart, but wouldn't this actually be the best thing for the Democratic candidates? Here's the reasoning (which I don't get):

[W]hen asked about Iraq, [Romney and Giuliani] talk about terrorism... [T]hey emphasize their antiterrorism toughness while keeping their Iraq views fuzzy. This gives them room to embrace a significant troop withdrawal next year once they have their party's nomination in hand.

So far, the strategy has worked beautifully. But there's a problem. One way Romney and Giuliani have evaded clear answers on the surge is by delaying the question until September, when General David Petraeus will report on its progress. Now September is here. Petraeus will probably oppose any immediate troop withdrawal, deferring any drawdown until next spring. Bush and most conservative pundits will demand that the surge continue into 2008. And Romney and Giuliani will find it harder to bob and weave...

So, what will Romney and Giuliani do if forced to finally come clean? They'll back the surge. Romney is running as the conservative candidate, so he can't alienate Iraq hard-liners. Neither can Giuliani, given his tough-on-terrorism persona. But once they back the surge, they'll get a taste of what McCain has been experiencing all year. The more they're defined by support for the war, the more Bush's unpopularity will become their own, especially among independents, the people who have turned against McCain en masse. Backing the surge will instantly weaken them in the general election, because if they do eventually pivot in favor of some withdrawal, it will look like a flip-flop.

So, let's put aside the (very substantial) consideration that the surge might work and the (also very substantial) consideration that it is offensive to think of fighting the war in the way that would help one candidate or another. Let's assume that Bush decides in the near future to end the surge and begin withdrawing troops. That helps Romney and Giuliani? They are only helped if their opponents are not helped more. It seems to me that everyone who has been against the effort to win the war will claim triumph and express deep sadness that that Bush didn't listen to them sooner. Meanwhile, Romney and Giuliani -- in Beinart's scenario -- breathe a sigh of relief because they won't have to talk about Iraq anymore. But they will! They'll be called on their failure to demand an end to the war.

For those who don't like their diavlogs surrounded in acid green.

Bloggingheads has competition from TNR's "What's Your Problem?" In the linked episode, Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg talk about blog comments, which Jonah thinks tend to be "inconsequential and snarky." Fortunately, they have comments. Let's check them out. I'd say they're more inconsequential than snarky. Somebody needs to bring the snark over there.