"NYT reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro sits in silence as JD Vance educates her on the labor force participation rate relating to illegal immigration."

"Garcia-Navarro tried arguing that illegal immigrants can't be deported because America needs them for jobs," writes Collin Rugg, with this clip:

NYT reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro sits in silence as JD Vance educates her on the labor force participation rate relating to illegal immigration.

Garcia-Navarro tried arguing that illegal immigrants can't be deported because America needs them for jobs.

She pointed to the… pic.twitter.com/SiNwyldSwR

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 12, 2024

ADDED: I don't agree that Garcia-Navarro is silenced by Vance. She lets him have his say, but she also breaks in. She's challenging him with a practical point that I don't think Harris supporters like to be explicit about. From the NYT transcript (with Garcia-Navarro in boldface, interrupting Vance 5 times):

"In July, Joe Biden released a seven-hundred-and-seventy-five-billion-dollar plan with the tongue-twisting title 'Mobilizing American Talent and Heart to Create a 21st Century Caregiving and Education Workforce.'"

"Biden’s plan aims to expand child care and services for the elderly and the disabled, and elevate the status and pay of caregivers as well. But those goals will remain aspirational without a Democratic majority in the Senate, which is why [Schanchline] Nanje and a dozen other Family Friendly Action canvassers have been knocking on a hundred doors a day in the suburbs north of Atlanta. Their work is financed by the Women Effect Action Fund, a group that promotes economic gender equality and women’s rights. Lisa Guide, the fund’s co-founder, told me that the organization was targeting the Georgia races to show both voters and elected officials the enormous impact that access to child care, as well as services for the elderly and disabled, have on women’s personal and professional lives. 'We’re in Georgia to make sure Georgia voters know which Senate candidates are going to help them through our national care crisis—and who aren’t,' Guide said. 'And we want elected officials and policymakers to understand that voters really care about these issues so they end up rising up the ladder for both Democrats and Republicans.'" 

From "Can Boosting Child and Elder Care Help Democrats Win Control of the Senate?" (The New Yorker).

That made me think about Obama's resistance to concentrating on healthcare jobs, which I blogged (in September 2011) under the heading "Obama's Infrastructure Stimulus — designed to build masculine pride": 

Here's a fascinating passage from Ron Suskind's new book "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" (pp. 18-19)(boldface added). Obama and his advisers are plotting campaign strategy in August 2007 and the subject turned to the problem of jobs for 10 million low- to moderately skilled male workers. What "sunrise" could the government subsize and stimulate. The advisers hit on health care:

That was where the jobs would be: nurse’s aides, companions to infirm seniors, hospital orderlies. The group bandied about ideas for how to channel job-seeking men into this growth industry. A need in one area filling a need in another. Interlocking problems, interlocking solutions. The Holy Grail of systemic change.

But Obama shook his head.

“Look, these are guys,” he said. “A lot of them see health care, being nurse’s aides, as women’s work. They need to do something that fits with how they define themselves as men.” ...

Obama's female trouble.

ADDED: Here, I extract a 2-minute clip in which I question what makes a man a man's man and refer to "Dreams From My Father" as "personal journaling."

Obama's Infrastructure Stimulus — designed to build masculine pride.

Here's a fascinating passage from Ron Suskind's new book "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" (pp. 18-19)(boldface added). Obama and his advisers are plotting campaign strategy in August 2007 and the subject turned to the problem of jobs for 10 million low- to moderately skilled male workers. What "sunrise" could the government subsize and stimulate. The advisers hit on health care:

That was where the jobs would be: nurse’s aides, companions to infirm seniors, hospital orderlies. The group bandied about ideas for how to channel job-seeking men into this growth industry. A need in one area filling a need in another. Interlocking problems, interlocking solutions. The Holy Grail of systemic change.

But Obama shook his head.

“Look, these are guys,” he said. “A lot of them see health care, being nurse’s aides, as women’s work. They need to do something that fits with how they define themselves as men.” ...

As the room chewed over the non-PC phrase “women’s work,” trying to square the senator’s point with their analytical models, [Alan] Krueger—who was chief economist at the Department of Labor in the mid-1990s at the tender age of thirty-four—sat there silently, thinking that in all his years of studying men and muscle, he had never used that term. But Obama was right. Krueger wondered how his latest research on happiness and well-being might take into account what Obama had put his finger on: that work is identity, that men like to build, to have something to show for their sweat and toil.

“Infrastructure,” he blurted out. “Rebuilding infrastructure.”

Obama nodded and smiled, seeing it instantly. “Now we’re talking. . . . Okay, let’s think about how that would work as a real centerpiece.... Don’t even get me started about potholed highways and collapsing bridges,” Obama said....

Isn't it strange that collapsing bridges are exactly what Obama is back to talking about in September 2011?

And just like that, a policy to repair the nation’s infrastructure was born. The federal government, in partnership with the private sector, would call upon the underemployed men of America to rebuild the country, and in doing so restore their pride. 

Obama wanted to rebuild masculine pride!

But what happened? Why didn't the original stimulus, in early 2009, rebuild America and America's men? I seem to remember some pushback. There was this NYT op-ed in December 2008, by Linda Hirshman:

Mr. Obama compared his infrastructure plan to the Eisenhower-era construction of the Interstate System of highways. It brings back the Eisenhower era in a less appealing way as well: there are almost no women on this road to recovery....

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force....

Fortunately, jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital. In 2007, women were 83 percent of social workers, 94 percent of child care workers, 74 percent of education, training and library workers (including 98 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers and 92 percent of teachers’ assistants)....

And then what happened? Did Obama ever openly express his enthusiasm for masculine jobs? The terminology became "shovel-ready jobs." He couldn't say "manly jobs" or "men's work." Not only did Obama abandon his dream of lifting up men, we didn't even get the construction work done.

And now here he is, last week, posing by a bridge that's — what? — falling down and getting accused of using the bridge as a "prop."

Oh! The masculinity!

"You need to ask yourself why you want to do this... What are you hoping to uniquely accomplish, Barack?”

Michelle Obama asked her husband back in 2006, according to Ron Suskind's new book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President."

And he said: "This I know... When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across the country will look at themselves differently."

Christina Romer, the woman who was taken aback when the man (Obama) said "It’s clear monetary policy has shot its wad."

It was Romer's first meeting with the President-elect in November 2008. According to Ron Suskind's book "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President," Obama had "a woman problem: too few of them in key jobs" and he was trying to bring in Christina Romer. And "It’s clear monetary policy has shot its wad" is what Obama said to her before even "hello." Is that how you talk to a woman?

Remember the old movie line "You had me at hello"? According to Suskind, "For Christina Romer it was love at first sight." What woman in love wants to say "You had me at shot its wad"?

It was a strange break from decorum for a man who had done so outstandingly well with women voters. The two had never met before, and this made the salty, sexual language hard to read. Later it would seem a foreshadowing of something that came to irk many of the West Wing’s women: the president didn’t have particularly strong “women skills.” The guy’s-guy persona, which the message team would use to show Obama’s down-to-earth side, failed to account for at least one thing: What if you didn’t play basketball or golf? Still, for the moment, the comment didn’t faze Romer. She was curious to hear what he thought.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Obama extended his hand, now ready to greet her. “I guess we need to focus on fiscal policy,” he said.

“No, you’re wrong,” Romer corrected him. “There’s quite a bit we can still do monetarily, even with the historically low interest rates.”

Isn't that just like a woman... not understanding that the need for a refractory period?

IN THE COMMENTS:jakebadlands said:

Not only does this phrase have other, non-sexual meanings, is the sexual meaning even the primary one?

Though being in the presence of Mr Obama, I imagine Ms. Romer's thoughts could not help but turn to the sexual.

X said:

says more about Romer and her dirty mind that lacks knowledge of guns.

EDH said:

Musket Love?

"The two had never met before, and this made the salty, sexual language hard to read."

I wonder if that "salty" part was a Freudian slip in Suskind's part?

The actual origin of "shooting your wad" is from musketry.


In some current American slang it is a reference to male ejaculation; however the phrase has a very long history covering most of the time that muskets have been in use up to the present. The wad is a piece of paper put in the muzzle along with the projectile and gun powder. If the shooter is too hasty -- say in a tense battle -- they may not include the projectile. The result is a fire without the intended bullet; only the wad will fly out...a wasted shot. Hence, "shooting your wad" can mean expending your energy fruitlessly. The OED also references the wad as in a roll of paper money; in this case "shooting your wad" means blowing all your cash at once. [Link.]

"Why have so many people in the Obama administration vented to Mr. Suskind in the first place, when the president was only partway through his first term?"

Asks Michiko Kakutani:

Like many of Bob Woodward’s sources a lot of them are motivated by spin, score settling and second-guessing. Given the stalled economy and the president’s sliding poll numbers, some former staff members are playing the blame game early, while others seem to be hoping to goad the president into a reboot and a more aggressive stance before the 2012 election....

The president’s own assessment of his first two years in office?... “Going forward as president,” he said in the February 2011 interview, “the symbols and gestures — what people are seeing coming out of this office — are at least as important as the policies we put forward.”

Yikes.

(Buy the book — "Confidence Men" — here.)

Is President Obama, traveling about pushing his jobs bill, on "the campaign trail"?

I had to laugh watching "Meet the Press" today. David Gregory was doing the "roundtable" section of the show, talking to Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Helene Cooper of The New York Times, and Mark Halperin of Time magazine.

Castellanos said:

[T]he president is running, I think, a very strange campaign for re-election.  He is running around the country, in fact declaring his own impotence, saying that, "I'm weak.  I can't get anything done in Washington. Mommy, mommy, please make these Republicans play fair."

Gregory turned to Cooper and said:

I talked to some Republicans and Democrats on the Hill this week who said, "This seems like more of a political exercise, this jobs bill, than anything else." They haven't dropped the bill, by the way.  They haven't introduced the legislation yet; and yet, former President Clinton is saying, "Well, no.  This is really the key.  He's got a good plan." The chances of it passing are not very high.

And Cooper — who, we're told, is reporting on the White House every day — said:

[O]ne of the reasons they haven't dropped the jobs bill yet in Congress is because President Obama decided that he needed to go out and try to sell it first to the American public.

So... presumably, it's about drumming up public support for the jobs bill, which really is a jobs bill and not — as Gregory just put it — "more of a political exercise... than anything else."

Then Gregory dragged in Granholm — the super-polished Granholm, and she says:

[Obama has] got to put stuff out there that work--that works. ... So he's doing--he's adopting a plan that will create American jobs, both in the public and the private sector.  And that's exactly what he needs to trumpet.  And I just say, if the Republicans continue to say no to this reasonable plan, game on.

Game on? So... it is a political exercise?

Castellanos breaks in to say:

There's a little bit of a problem.  The American people have televisions and the Internet, and they can see what's going on....

Then there's an interlude about the new Ron Suskind book — which I just pre-ordered here — and Gregory lifts out a quote...

 "Over the past few months, [National Economic Council Chair Larry] Summers had said this, in a stage whisper, to [OMB Director Peter] Orszag and others as they left the morning economic briefings ...  `I mean it,' Summers stressed.  `We're home alone.  There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes.'"

Wow! That's hot. But Halperin lamely obfuscates, and Gregory goes back to Helene Cooper and asks her if "there [is] a broader vision for the economy that the president goes out and, and runs on?" And here's the part that made us laugh here at Meadhouse. Remember Cooper is the one who was careful to say: "President Obama decided that he needed to go out and try to sell [the jobs bill] first to the American public." And remember Granholm had bolstered that with her rejection of the notion that the jobs bill is "more of a political exercise... than anything else." And Cooper says:

I think there is, and he's, he's, he's, he's put that [broader vision] out there with his, his jobs proposal. And he said, "These are the things I think we need to do." But he's, he's very much hampered by the political reality of where we are right now. That said, I wouldn't--I, I was out on the--not the campaign trail, that's a very--but I was out with him this week as he went to try to pass his jobs bill in Columbus, Ohio, and in Raleigh, North Carolina....

Ha ha. It's all about Obama's reelection! As  Castellanos said: The American people have televisions and the Internet, and they can see what's going on. 

"[N]ot the campaign trail, that's a very..."... Cooper couldn't come up with the right euphemism for "campaign trail" or even the right words to follow "that's a very" that would express, with appropriate euphony, the reason why she's sorry she said "campaign trail."

Game on!

The Obama White House "actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women."

Said former White House communications director Anita Dunn, as quoted a new book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" — written by a man, Ron Suskind — the Washington Post reports.

Dunn now rejects the term "hostile workplace,” and adds the typical PR bullshit evidence: “The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to house full of very strong women... He values having strong women around him.”

In my experience, women who are vigilant about workplaces that are hostile to women hate that argument: A man has a strong wife at home, so he must not be opposed to the success of women in the workplace.

And, by the way, specifically, I'd say that Barack Obama has kept his wife in a distinctly subordinate role. Michelle Obama went to Princeton and Harvard Law School, and now she works on encouraging children to eat vegetables and get some exercise.

But... whatever... Anita Dunn... I always thought she was a bit of an idiot. She shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place. If she was initially overpromoted, it was a good thing that she got excluded. She shouldn't have been included.

But Suskind talked to other disincluded women. According to the Washington Post account of the book:

[W]omen occupied many of the West Wing’s senior positions, but felt outgunned and outmaneuvered by male colleagues such as former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Summers.

Obama, according to the book... failed to call on Romer after asking her male colleagues for their opinions. The snub prompted Romer to pass a note to Summers where she threatened to walk out of the dinner, according to the book....

The Obama White House has long been dogged by similar claims of exclusivity — his golf outings have been typically all-male affairs...

So... is there something sexist about the Obama administration? Seems like Suskind came up with a great angle for his book, but I'm skeptical. I think Obama may have been overenthusiastic about giving a lot of  positions to women, and perhaps those women really weren't as good as the men he surrounded himself with and really does need to rely on. In that case, he deserves credit for good judgment. But it is funny that he's not more concerned about the optics. Perhaps he assumes that he is especially appealing to women constituents and he doesn't need to do much to maintain that favor. It's the men he's in danger of losing. Time for another round of all-male, manly golf.