Tomorrow is election day. Voting isn't the only obligation of a democratic citizenry, but it is the most basic one. Voting isn't the guarantor of positive change, but it is an essential component of it.
If you haven't voted already, please make sure you get to the polls. And when you do, I encourage you to vote joy.
Over at the bad place, Batya Ungar-Sargon is mainlining copium to explain Donald Trump's debate performance.
My take on the debate is that Harris did well because she's a factory settings Democratic apparatchik, and the main skill for doing that well is one she's good at: acting, pretending the neoliberal (or now neoconservative!) agenda of the Democratic elite is your own,…
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) September 11, 2024
Batya's descent into utter madness brain worms territory (which has been ongoing for years, including being a key player making Newsweek the house journal for the alt-right and antisemitic White supremacists and parroting the crudest Putinist propaganda about how funding of "Zelensky's War" is why Americans don't have manufacturing jobs) legitimately frightens me, because I don't know what zombie bit her and so I don't know how to ensure it doesn't bite me too. My main inference right now is "don't become opinion editor for a Jewish media outlet", because it was her experience at the Forward that seemed to drive her into the arms of madness, but I'm terrified that if exposed to the wrong trauma I too might go from being a reasonably intelligent and thoughtful commentator to a true believer in every fever swamp inanity imaginable.
I'm not really exposed to Batya these days, since she's not on BlueSky. There's a line on BlueSky that it's an echo chamber, and that's something I worry about too -- isn't it important that I be exposed to more views like Batya's, to ensure that I'm not cocooning myself in an epistemic bubble? The problem, though, is that while when I expose myself to the Batyas of the world I may pat myself on the back for being a good, virtuous epistemic citizen willing to challenge myself with views-not-my-own, in reality exposing myself to the likes of Batya feels less challenging than it is confirmatory. Reading her takes only makes me feel incredibly relieved that I don't have her takes. She is anti-persuasive.
If the point of reading diverse views is to have that "huh, I never thought of it that way" moment, reading these people makes me go "huh, turns out that the caricatured mental model I have of brain-rotted right-wingers isn't a caricature at all." They're saying exactly what I expect them to say; there are no surprises. I'm unconvinced that confirming that instinct is actually healthier, even along the axis of remaining open-minded to divergent opinions.
* Of course, this circle also struggles mightily to understand what an "Occam's Razor" explanation is.
UPDATE: Matt Taibbi got bit as well.
UPDATE 2x: The Taibbi piece, in particular, reminded me of an exchange I had with an old high school buddy of mine who sadly has also gone off the deep end. He posted a collage of various media outlets all reporting on the travails of Twitter/X under Elon Musk -- that it had cratered in value and become a haven for bigots and extremists. He decided that the fact that similar reporting was appearing across many different media outlets could only mean one thing: a conspiracy by the legacy media to collude in order to slander Elon Musk's reputation. I sarcastically wondered if he saw a similar conspiracy in the fact that every atlas will tell you the capital of Norway is Oslo, or every science textbook will inform you that the Earth rotates around the Sun.
He said "I bet you think you're so smart." I assured him that I never dreamed that my observation required any intelligence whatsoever.
One of the things I'm enjoying most about the Harris/Walz campaign, and the current Democratic mood more broadly, is how joyful it is. A common critique of progressives has always been that we're joyless, and while that attack has never been entirely fair, it doesn't come wholly from nowhere either. There's a generalized version of the old Futurama joke ("I'm sorry, but if it's fun in any way, it's not environmentalism!") -- if you're not trudging along in grimdark misery, then you don't understand the stakes/don't care about the oppressed/aren't a true believer in the revolution. It's exhausting to live out, and it isn't a lifestyle anyone really wants to join.
But that isn't us right now! It's the right that is wallowing in its own self-induced machine of rage and fear and misery. The Olympics were a great example -- conservatives spent their time searching for their calipers and reliving their frustration that Simone Biles didn't snap her neck in 2021; meanwhile liberals just enjoyed watching some of the greatest athletes on Earth do incredible things under the American banner. Who would you rather be?
And this divide is present all over the 2024 race. The complete inability of conservatives to make anything stick on Tim Walz stems from their complete bafflement that a basic cishet white guy can just be happy in 2024. Doesn't he know that trans-CRT-illegal-abortionists are coming for his daughter?!? The RNC was a miserable slog of one apparatchik after another warning us that we're all going to die unless the God-king Trump is restored; the DNC was a dance party featuring your favorite tunes from middle school. Hell, one of the primary attack lines Republicans have been trying against Kamala Harris is her laugh! Democrats now are literally the party of laughing (and football, and Bud Light)!
It's really nice. And for what it's worth, I do understand the stakes, and I do understand that many people are hurting, and I do understand there's a lot of work to be done. But joy counts for something. And it feels really good to be part of a joyful Democratic coalition.
I thought all of the major names floating for VP would have been fine picks. But now that Walz has gotten the official nod, I can say that I'm really enthusiastic about him joining the ticket.
What do I like about him? To begin, he's got the support of the base while not doesn't seeming to have any particular clique or bloc of voters with a beef against him. In terms of immediate reaction and instinctual enthusiasm, he's all upside. He's already proven himself an effective messenger against Trump and Vance, which is really a VP candidate's number one job. His presentation is a best-of-all-worlds: moderate affect, but progressive results. What's not to like?
As a member of congress representing a swing district, he had a relatively moderate voting record. But his moderation never took the form of hippie-punching for its own sake. In contrast to a Sinema or Manchin type, he wasn't randomly looking to sabotage progressive priorities just so he could grandstand about how he's constraining the left. He just wasn't interested in putting on a show of being a bold maverick bucking the party.
That approach really has come through in his tenure as Minnesota Governor, where he's delivered a long list of progressive priorities that have made Minnesota a model for other states to follow. Some people were surprised at Walz's leadership, again taking cues from his moderate reputation. But Walz's progressivism is really a lot like his moderation -- it wasn't part of some big performance about taking on The Democratic Establishment or being leftier-than-thou, it was just the honest, grinding work of making progress when you can. And it turns out that when you have that orientation, you really can accomplish a lot that makes a lot of people's lives better.
In short, Walz is a pragmatist in the best possible sense: someone who concentrates on getting things done. And I've realized that I lot of what I like about Walz is what I like about Joe Biden. Sure, there's the folksy demeanor and the "moderate" reputation, and the underlying warmth and human decency. But fundamentally, Walz seems like someone who is in politics to actually make things happen -- not to talk about them, not to ride the talk show circuit and get a big book contract, and not to impotently fulminate about how the system makes any real change impossible. And when he's put in a position to make positive change, he's taken it. Just as Joe Biden surprised a lot of people with the muscularity of his domestic agenda (coming from a "moderate"), so too did Tim Walz as Governor of Minnesota. In both cases, the surprise was a product of mistaking an affect and a pragmatic orientation for antipathy to progressivism. And in both cases, the results speak for themselves. I have absolutely zero qualms about carrying that tradition forward.
So I'm delighted to have this Walz on the Democratic ticket. To victory in November!
As far as I'm concerned, all of these are fine choices. None of them are blue dog quasi-GOPers. None of them are DSA-adjacent fire breathers. They're all solid, mainline Democrats with a lot to offer. Anecdotally, the name that seems to get the most enthusiasm in my circles is Senator Kelly; a poll of DNC delegates gave a plurality to Shapiro (albeit lagging significantly behind "undecided").
With respect to Shapiro, the case in favor is pretty obvious. He stomped to victory in the keystone key swing state of Pennsylvania in 2022, and remains quite popular in what is still a battleground state. He's generally done a good job a governor, and his out-and-proud Jewishness not only helps dissipates bad faith GOP grandstanding about protecting the Jews, it has also provoked plenty of "show us how you really feel" antisemitism on the part of Republicans whose love for "Jews" is matched only by their hatred for (actual, real-life) Jews. Plus, he provides a model of liberal religiosity which helps challenge the monopoly right-wing conservative Christians have sought to claim over the mantle of faith. It will not surprise you that I like Shapiro a lot, and his was the first name that came to mind for me when I thought of my preferred VP choice.
Unfortunately, Shapiro also seems to be getting the most amount of pushback of any VP contender from the single-issue (anti-)Israel voter crowd, who have tagged Shapiro has having an especially problematic pro-Israel outlook.
The entire dynamic surrounding the Biden-to-Harris switch and how it relates to the burbling pro-Palestinian sentiment amongst many younger Democrats is interesting. Over the past few months we saw quite a few people loudly aver they could never bring themselves to vote for "genocide Joe" because of the way in which he and his administration have enabled Israel's assault in Gaza. The closer we got to election day, the higher stakes this game of chicken became -- will they blink or will they actually usher in Trump 2.0 -- but now that Biden is off the ballot many of these persons seem to be happy to return to the Democratic column. Now, objectively speaking, Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration and, minor rhetorical gestures aside, has not meaningfully separated herself from Biden's Israel policy -- if you genuinely believe that the Biden administration's policy regarding Israel is monstrous and unforgivable, Harris, as the second-highest ranking official in that administration, should be tainted too. Practically speaking, though, not having Biden be the name on the ballot has offered people who had perhaps overindulged in self-righteous chest thumping and consequently talked themselves into a corner a face-saving offramp. If they were fully genuine in what they say they believe about the Biden administration's choices being "unforgivable",* they'd be equally indignant about voting for Harris. That they're not suggests there was no small measure of performance going on, but for my part, I'm happy not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome back.
But while this cadre may be willing to let bygones be bygones with Harris, many of them have seemingly decided that Shapiro is going to be the stand-in for the type of pro-Israel Democrat they cannot stand. Part of me recoils at this. Shapiro's positions actually don't seem that far off-line from those of his peers (he enforced an anti-BDS law that also exists in 37 other states?!?), and the effort to try and draw distinctions from how he has spoken of, e.g., antisemitism at pro-Palestine protests compared to how other analogous Democrats have spoken about it feels very thin. To be honest, the congealing anti-Shapiro backlash smacks of a very predictable and unlovely hyperpolicing of Jews-qua-Jews on Israel, whose every jot and tittle on the matter will be pored over with exacting and unforgiving scrutiny in a manner that just isn't imposed upon non-Jews. Non-Jews can have unacceptable positions on Israel, but only Jews become unacceptable for things like "her book has an Israeli in it." Shapiro is getting heightened scrutiny here not because his positions on Israel are significantly different from those of Kelly or Beshear or Cooper, but because he's a very visibly Jewish politician and so is presumed to need greater scrutiny.
That's not good. But even though it's not good, I think that for better or for worse it does give a good reason not to pick Shapiro as Harris' VP. Under circumstances where there are many good choices for the VP candidate, the fact that one in particular runs the risk of cheesing off a substantial contingent of wavering Democratic voters is reason enough not to choose him, regardless of whether the reason he runs that risk is "fair" or not. It'd be different if we were in a situation where there was a dearth of good options, or Shapiro was somehow the obvious best choice, or if the "anti-Shapiro" cadre was declaring itself ready to fight to the death over every remotely plausible mainstream Democratic choice or trying to sabotage any potential VP who wasn't all in on BDS. But we're not in that situation. The other Democratic alternatives to Shapiro are also good. Their positions on Israel are probably not that meaningfully distinct from Shapiro's. If I'm happy with a lot of people, and some people whose votes matter are particularly unhappy with one person, there's little reason not to pick someone that makes us all happy.
Throughout this electoral cycle, people in my position have insisted to fellow progressives that the importance of winning in 2024 is too important to take one's ball and go home the instant things don't go your way. That applies here too, but what it means right now -- when no VP has been picked -- is that it'd be unreasonable for me to die on the hill of picking Josh Shapiro for VP, even if I think he'd be a good pick, and even if I think the rationale upon which people are anti-Shapiro is wrongheaded or even pernicious. I may well be right. But winning in 2024 is more important than vindicating my correctness is. If Shapiro gets picked, I'll happily rally behind him and I hope everyone else does too. But there's no shame in Kamala Harris picking someone else if she thinks they will do a better job uniting the progressive community towards the goal of winning this November.
* On that note, I'll give, if not credit, then at least points for consistency to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is one of the few Democrats who self-consciously declined to endorse Harris following Biden's withdrawal. Agree with it or not, her position was not a performance.
One of the more dangerous players in contemporary discourse -- or at least one of the types that makes me the most nervous, anyway -- are people who are trained as journalists, who know the forms of the genre, but now are working consciously and intentionally as advocates.
Adam Kredo -- he of Kamala Harris' pot-gate -- is one example. Before joining the Washington Free Beacon, he was a relatively well-respected "neutral" journalist working for the Washington Jewish Week. Now, nobody confuses what he does for the Beacon as dispassionate journalism (except maybe Kredo, who claimed -- apparently with a straight face -- that at the Beacon he remains a straight news reporter who is "not in the opinion biz"). Nonetheless, there's little question that Kredo is more effective as a purveyor of partisan hit pieces precisely because he knows how to write an article in a way that follows journalistic conventions. Get quotes from alternative sources, ask subjects for comments (that they're damned if they do and damned if they don't is a bonus), do much of the heavy narrative lifting not by direct accusation but in terms of presuppositions and framing -- it works in a way that more direct propaganda doesn't. I suspect the "news-ier" side of Fox News (not Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity, but the parts that present themselves as straight coverage) fits this mold too.
On the other side of the street, one can see similar characteristics at Jewish Currents. Again, many of the people writing for Currents have clear talent as journalists, and their stories track journalistic conventions. They aren't obvious agitprop. But they're great examples of how, if you know what you're doing as a journalist, you know how to push every convention to the limits of its tolerance band in a way that gets you to something pretty close to agitprop while still looking on face like a regular investigation. If every choice of framing is meant to accentuate one side's story, if every presupposition of the relevant political climate or social atmosphere reaffirms a particular point of view, if every inference or interpretation is just a little credulous to the right people and cynical to the wrong ones, the result is an article in which all the constituent elements are defensible as fair but the net result is intentionally one-sided (their piece on Ritchie Torres I think works as a decent example of what I mean).
I've sometimes said that the "evil" version of me would make a good press secretary, because I think I'd be very good at spinning effectively. This is a version of that -- if you're a journalist, you know how the narrative machine works, and knowing how it works you also know how to break the machine. And as parts of a political toolkit this is very effective; arguably even necessary, even as it is also intentionally manipulative and kind of hackish. The reason "evil" me is a Press Secretary rather than actual me is that in real life I don't have the stomach for that sort of work. Which is not the same thing as saying that either I or the people I admire are perfectly virtuous or fair-minded in how we relate to our own interlocutors. We have times our biases shine through too. But there is, I submit, a difference between unknowingly being swayed by one's personal biases, or even a temporary lapse acknowledged as a wrong, and knowingly and self-consciously trying to align one's work product with one's biases to the maximum extent possible.
In any event, I suspect the people who do this are in fact decently self-conscious about what they're doing -- they don't (contra Kredo) actually think they're not engaged in opinion; they're relatively open about their agenda. Press them, and they might say something like "all news coverage has a political agenda behind it; the difference is that we are self-conscious about it, whereas the people who think they're doing straight news are more likely to be unconsciously parroting orthodox Pablum without recognizing that's a view too." And I have some sympathy for that critique, actually. We all could stand to be more reflective on what our biases and presuppositions are. But I also think there is a difference between actually trying to understand issues on their own terms and be fair to subjects one is covering, versus just going through the motions of it because "hey, everyone has an agenda right?" Such is the curse of many liberal values (objectivity, neutrality, even-handedness, etc.): they're simultaneously impossible to achieve, and yet things are so much worse when people stop even trying to achieve them.
Demystifying the very much non-neutral "mainstream" coverage norms need not necessarily take the form of "replicating those norms, but intentionally and in service of a different political program." But in practice, it often does, and the result is I think work product that is very slick, very effective for its chosen audience, and very dangerous for the project of fair-minded discourse.
