Listened to this on the drive home and it is was kind of surprising to hear the difference in Trump's voice in that debate and how he sounds now. For a man who avoided responsibility in the presidency as much as he possibly could it sure seems his term drained him.
Great writing. You’re correct, I don’t know what DeSantis sound like. But I do have an image of him, and he’s wearing white, waterproof, food industry boots. That image alone could stop a campaign.
Coming back to your political writing skills, are you sure you are not the secret love child of Hunter S. Thompson and Cokie Roberts?
I think you’re right - DeSantis is repellent on a human level in a way that transcends politics and Trump seems to have genuinely lost his juice. But I also recall that in my lifetime the Republican Party ran Bob Dole, who no one really wanted as President (the Democratic Party of course has oodles of these candidates with inverse charisma in their recent history). Granted we live in a more populist time and that was roughly ten billion years ago in political time, but the unseemly truth is that sometimes really awful candidates no one likes end up as president.
DeSantis’s performative cruelty and the zeal with which he carries it out is more than enough to overcome his lack of charisma among a voting base that seems to only care about gun rights and inflicting suffering upon “undesirable” demographics and any white American remotely to the left of far-right.
The only person I see potentially knocking him off is Brian Kemp. The fact that he won reelection comfortably indicates that he is very much capable of keeping onside the people for whom Trump and his acolytes were a bridge too far in 2020 and 2022. And, unlike DeSantis, he didn’t travel around last year stumping for dumpster fire candidates like Kari Lake and Blake Masters.
Democrats, in the meantime, have nothing. They don’t seem to get that Biden’s victory in 2020 was mainly a factor of people voting against Trump (as evidenced by their underperformance in House, Senate and other down ticket races), and that the failure of the “red wave” to materialize last year was primarily a result of Republicans choosing awful candidates in the primaries. The reaction to the Roeverturning doesn’t appear to have been a game changer, and the aggressive multi-state push for gun bans and restrictions on concealed carry is effectively writing the GOP’a 2024 campaign ads (I can’t see how this doesn’t hurt Democrats in states like WV, MT, AZ and NV, where they need to win Senate races next year if they want to have any hope of retaining their majority). And their establishment seems intent upon punching left, even though “I’m not a socialist” convinces no one on the other side, and turns off younger voters who want the party to move further left.
I am growing increasingly worried that we are in for another unified Republican government after the 2024 election, only with a competent tyrant at the helm this time around.
It's telling that DeSantis became a contender by embracing culture war and engaging in performative cruelty and retribution. But the howling id that is the Republican base is not ready to move on from Trump, no matter what the party operatives say. DeSantis merely acts the part that Trump embodies for them. Trump's electoral endorsement failures are concerning to the donors and the strategists, but a critical mass of primary voters hate those guys and will vote to spite them. The primary system really empowers the 30% motivated extreme kernel.
Trump is sounding more and more like Captain Queeg, brilliantly played by Bogart in "The Caine Mutiny". When Queeg got stressed and began to unravel he'd start to roll some steel balls around and around in the palm of his hand. Maybe just a matter of time before Trump does the same thing? At one time you could actually buy a set of steel balls, sold as "Queegies", so you could emulate Queeg. Anyone want to send a set to Trump?
I'm really worried that DeSantis will knock it out of the park and take the nomination and the presidency. Politics are often irrational but we live in extremely irrational times. The right have moved into insanity land with anti-vax conspiracies and anti-trans/drag queen insanity. Trump is playing to that with his anti-trans rant on video but you may be right Laura, that he can't really do culture war like Desantis. Also, Trump has the vaccine to tie him down. He can't (and shouldn't) dump on one of his key achievements -- "Operation Warp Speed". How cruel a turn of history that one of his administration's greatest accomplishments is detested and treated like a weapon in the hands of "globalists" by his most ardent fans. I don't see Trump winning the nomination because of that and well, he's got so much baggage. Nikki Haley is much better but she's not insane. The GOP is off the deep end these days and I don't see it coming back. The Dems have to produce a person who can stand up to them and more. I don't feel good about this coming election at all. Though, there's still a lot of time between now and then.
However Laura, I hope you're right. You may be. I mean these years have been so strange and unpredictable. Also, as you note, the crazy culture wars are not that popular outside a certain lunatic base. People are worried about inflation and gas prices etc. Trans people are a distant third or fourth.... also some get that there is a cruelty in the trans debate that turns them off. We can only hope. The Dems have to get it together or a better, more sane GOP must emerge somehow.
Might the "secret third thing" emerging out of the Dems' entrails and the "rough beast" slouching towards the White House be none other than "Cudley the Cowlick"? (Archie Comics' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures.) The parallels are too much to bear.
"No sooner than Mary had vanished Cudley (on Stump's orders) abducted the Turtles and transported them to Stump Asteroid. In mid transit Cudley had somehow stripped the Turtles of their weapons, which was the only reason they reluctantly agreed to accept Stump's invitation to participate in an Intergalactic Wrestling match between Cryin' Houn' for the amusement of the galaxy. Cudley remained hovering near the arena throughout the entirely of the Turtles' unwelcome tenure as wrestlers, speaking only in grunts.
Leatherhead had also been abducted shortly before the Turtles when he fell off the bridge, with Stump describing the incident as "Saved from the jaws of sad death by the jaws of bad breath."
No sooner than The Turtles and Leatherhead won their matches, Cudley tried to speak and accidentally coughed up all of the Turtles' weapons. The Turtles seized the opportunity and threatened Stump and Sling, who quickly capitulated and ordered Cudley to return the Turtles to Earth while Leatherhead remained on Stump Asteroid to continue wrestling. "
Makes about as much sense and is about as interesting as the current political scene.
P.S. Tried do do that thing you suggested about you being a substack 'feature' (you already are, baby!) but I don't know what a fucking URL is, and whether I have one or not. Is it an appendage or an addendum or something? So sorry. Thanks for being here, though, Jedeed!
Basically everything Ornithomancer said except also I wasn't a big fan of her role in mass incarceration as a prosecutor
She's also got multiple reports of being bad to staff and difficult to work with, which is not a great bullet point on the resume of someone who would like a job that's like 50% networking at least
I'll give you mine. As a Californian I liked Kamala as a senator. She was good at her job and she had a bright future ahead of her. Her presidential primary happened seriously like 1-2 years into her senate term and she was... bad. She ran her campaign into the ground and didn't even make it to the primary. From what I've heard, Biden was planning on giving the VP to Klobuchar, but then that stapler throwing story came out and torpedoed that. For the record, I think Klobuchar would have been a better VP and a better set-up for the presidency in 24 or 28.
Kamala Harris is not ready to be president. She wasn't in 2020 and I've seen nothing to show that she's been doing the work necessary to gear up for a 2024 or even a 2028 run. The stories about her staff complaining that Biden isn't like actively grooming her to be next is a big red flag because the Presidency is not something you're gifted, it's something you have to take. If she lacks the ambition and the drive to do what is necessary to win the presidency, she's a non-starter and dangerous for us to hang our hopes on.
She lacks both the direct executive experience that would be useful to her that a Governor would bring, and she lacks the national political connections and relationships that seasoned senators develop over their careers that can bring in talent to shore up those gaps. I haven't seen anything change in the last 2-3 years in either case. Nobody is talking about her like she's coming into her prime. Nobody is talking about her that I can see. She's not leading the legislative efforts to do anything. She's leading no political efforts at all that I can see. She's not building up connections and showing that she can work within the party or within the legislature. Maybe she is, but if she is, she's doing it awful quietly, and the people she's working with are awful quiet.
In short, she suffers the same capability issues that Obama had (unseasoned in the political party, the Democrats often came away with the feeling he was cold and aloof, and not from an executive background) without his unbelievable charm and oratory skills. There are times she comes out and it looks like the klonopin hasn't worn off yet she is so uncharismatic.
I might have backed her if she spent a term as my senator, build relationships, learned, and assembled her team. But she thought she could cut straight to the top like Obama did. But she's not Obama. And her attempts to build that base and experience in the public have been swings & misses. If she stayed in the Senate, she'd be looking at being the senior senator in California in 24 assuming that Feinstein doesn't run, and that comes with it a measure of power on it's own. Instead she's parked in the classic backwater of American politics: the VP role.
Thank you Ornithomancer for your analysis. Your perspective as a California resident is especially helpful. And you're right, it's rare the backwater of American politics is not where many good presidents come from.
Listened to this on the drive home and it is was kind of surprising to hear the difference in Trump's voice in that debate and how he sounds now. For a man who avoided responsibility in the presidency as much as he possibly could it sure seems his term drained him.
Yeah, he was always weird but he actually made cogent (usually horrible) points in real sentences. It's like he's become a meme of himself
It's like those before and after presidential pictures happened exclusively inside his brain
In retrospect, his dismantling of the 2016 GOP primary field and subsequent takedown of Hillary was a political masterclass.
I still don’t think that the Democrats have figured out how to effectively fight it.
He really has lost his fastball.
Great writing. You’re correct, I don’t know what DeSantis sound like. But I do have an image of him, and he’s wearing white, waterproof, food industry boots. That image alone could stop a campaign.
Coming back to your political writing skills, are you sure you are not the secret love child of Hunter S. Thompson and Cokie Roberts?
An unbelievable moment, makes the Dukakis tank picture look like a glamor shot. I genuinely cannot wait for more photo ops from the soup dumpling
(and you're going to make my ego explode, god damn)
You're gonna' blow big, baby. Outa' sight. I am watching the sky.
I think you’re right - DeSantis is repellent on a human level in a way that transcends politics and Trump seems to have genuinely lost his juice. But I also recall that in my lifetime the Republican Party ran Bob Dole, who no one really wanted as President (the Democratic Party of course has oodles of these candidates with inverse charisma in their recent history). Granted we live in a more populist time and that was roughly ten billion years ago in political time, but the unseemly truth is that sometimes really awful candidates no one likes end up as president.
God. Dole. You're not wrong, parties have chosen uncharismatic wet paper towels before
DeSantis’s performative cruelty and the zeal with which he carries it out is more than enough to overcome his lack of charisma among a voting base that seems to only care about gun rights and inflicting suffering upon “undesirable” demographics and any white American remotely to the left of far-right.
The only person I see potentially knocking him off is Brian Kemp. The fact that he won reelection comfortably indicates that he is very much capable of keeping onside the people for whom Trump and his acolytes were a bridge too far in 2020 and 2022. And, unlike DeSantis, he didn’t travel around last year stumping for dumpster fire candidates like Kari Lake and Blake Masters.
Democrats, in the meantime, have nothing. They don’t seem to get that Biden’s victory in 2020 was mainly a factor of people voting against Trump (as evidenced by their underperformance in House, Senate and other down ticket races), and that the failure of the “red wave” to materialize last year was primarily a result of Republicans choosing awful candidates in the primaries. The reaction to the Roeverturning doesn’t appear to have been a game changer, and the aggressive multi-state push for gun bans and restrictions on concealed carry is effectively writing the GOP’a 2024 campaign ads (I can’t see how this doesn’t hurt Democrats in states like WV, MT, AZ and NV, where they need to win Senate races next year if they want to have any hope of retaining their majority). And their establishment seems intent upon punching left, even though “I’m not a socialist” convinces no one on the other side, and turns off younger voters who want the party to move further left.
I am growing increasingly worried that we are in for another unified Republican government after the 2024 election, only with a competent tyrant at the helm this time around.
It's telling that DeSantis became a contender by embracing culture war and engaging in performative cruelty and retribution. But the howling id that is the Republican base is not ready to move on from Trump, no matter what the party operatives say. DeSantis merely acts the part that Trump embodies for them. Trump's electoral endorsement failures are concerning to the donors and the strategists, but a critical mass of primary voters hate those guys and will vote to spite them. The primary system really empowers the 30% motivated extreme kernel.
Trump is sounding more and more like Captain Queeg, brilliantly played by Bogart in "The Caine Mutiny". When Queeg got stressed and began to unravel he'd start to roll some steel balls around and around in the palm of his hand. Maybe just a matter of time before Trump does the same thing? At one time you could actually buy a set of steel balls, sold as "Queegies", so you could emulate Queeg. Anyone want to send a set to Trump?
I'm really worried that DeSantis will knock it out of the park and take the nomination and the presidency. Politics are often irrational but we live in extremely irrational times. The right have moved into insanity land with anti-vax conspiracies and anti-trans/drag queen insanity. Trump is playing to that with his anti-trans rant on video but you may be right Laura, that he can't really do culture war like Desantis. Also, Trump has the vaccine to tie him down. He can't (and shouldn't) dump on one of his key achievements -- "Operation Warp Speed". How cruel a turn of history that one of his administration's greatest accomplishments is detested and treated like a weapon in the hands of "globalists" by his most ardent fans. I don't see Trump winning the nomination because of that and well, he's got so much baggage. Nikki Haley is much better but she's not insane. The GOP is off the deep end these days and I don't see it coming back. The Dems have to produce a person who can stand up to them and more. I don't feel good about this coming election at all. Though, there's still a lot of time between now and then.
However Laura, I hope you're right. You may be. I mean these years have been so strange and unpredictable. Also, as you note, the crazy culture wars are not that popular outside a certain lunatic base. People are worried about inflation and gas prices etc. Trans people are a distant third or fourth.... also some get that there is a cruelty in the trans debate that turns them off. We can only hope. The Dems have to get it together or a better, more sane GOP must emerge somehow.
Might the "secret third thing" emerging out of the Dems' entrails and the "rough beast" slouching towards the White House be none other than "Cudley the Cowlick"? (Archie Comics' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures.) The parallels are too much to bear.
"No sooner than Mary had vanished Cudley (on Stump's orders) abducted the Turtles and transported them to Stump Asteroid. In mid transit Cudley had somehow stripped the Turtles of their weapons, which was the only reason they reluctantly agreed to accept Stump's invitation to participate in an Intergalactic Wrestling match between Cryin' Houn' for the amusement of the galaxy. Cudley remained hovering near the arena throughout the entirely of the Turtles' unwelcome tenure as wrestlers, speaking only in grunts.
Leatherhead had also been abducted shortly before the Turtles when he fell off the bridge, with Stump describing the incident as "Saved from the jaws of sad death by the jaws of bad breath."
No sooner than The Turtles and Leatherhead won their matches, Cudley tried to speak and accidentally coughed up all of the Turtles' weapons. The Turtles seized the opportunity and threatened Stump and Sling, who quickly capitulated and ordered Cudley to return the Turtles to Earth while Leatherhead remained on Stump Asteroid to continue wrestling. "
Makes about as much sense and is about as interesting as the current political scene.
P.S. Tried do do that thing you suggested about you being a substack 'feature' (you already are, baby!) but I don't know what a fucking URL is, and whether I have one or not. Is it an appendage or an addendum or something? So sorry. Thanks for being here, though, Jedeed!
Hey Laura, would you please tell me your reasons for not supporting Harris? Thanks
Basically everything Ornithomancer said except also I wasn't a big fan of her role in mass incarceration as a prosecutor
She's also got multiple reports of being bad to staff and difficult to work with, which is not a great bullet point on the resume of someone who would like a job that's like 50% networking at least
Thanks Laura. I really appreciate your passion for the mission you're on. Please keep up your good work.
I'll give you mine. As a Californian I liked Kamala as a senator. She was good at her job and she had a bright future ahead of her. Her presidential primary happened seriously like 1-2 years into her senate term and she was... bad. She ran her campaign into the ground and didn't even make it to the primary. From what I've heard, Biden was planning on giving the VP to Klobuchar, but then that stapler throwing story came out and torpedoed that. For the record, I think Klobuchar would have been a better VP and a better set-up for the presidency in 24 or 28.
Kamala Harris is not ready to be president. She wasn't in 2020 and I've seen nothing to show that she's been doing the work necessary to gear up for a 2024 or even a 2028 run. The stories about her staff complaining that Biden isn't like actively grooming her to be next is a big red flag because the Presidency is not something you're gifted, it's something you have to take. If she lacks the ambition and the drive to do what is necessary to win the presidency, she's a non-starter and dangerous for us to hang our hopes on.
She lacks both the direct executive experience that would be useful to her that a Governor would bring, and she lacks the national political connections and relationships that seasoned senators develop over their careers that can bring in talent to shore up those gaps. I haven't seen anything change in the last 2-3 years in either case. Nobody is talking about her like she's coming into her prime. Nobody is talking about her that I can see. She's not leading the legislative efforts to do anything. She's leading no political efforts at all that I can see. She's not building up connections and showing that she can work within the party or within the legislature. Maybe she is, but if she is, she's doing it awful quietly, and the people she's working with are awful quiet.
In short, she suffers the same capability issues that Obama had (unseasoned in the political party, the Democrats often came away with the feeling he was cold and aloof, and not from an executive background) without his unbelievable charm and oratory skills. There are times she comes out and it looks like the klonopin hasn't worn off yet she is so uncharismatic.
I might have backed her if she spent a term as my senator, build relationships, learned, and assembled her team. But she thought she could cut straight to the top like Obama did. But she's not Obama. And her attempts to build that base and experience in the public have been swings & misses. If she stayed in the Senate, she'd be looking at being the senior senator in California in 24 assuming that Feinstein doesn't run, and that comes with it a measure of power on it's own. Instead she's parked in the classic backwater of American politics: the VP role.
Thank you Ornithomancer for your analysis. Your perspective as a California resident is especially helpful. And you're right, it's rare the backwater of American politics is not where many good presidents come from.