newrepublic--2020-10-21--Can the Supreme Court Be Fixed?

Can the Supreme Court Be Fixed?

With the likely confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett this week to the Supreme Court , conservatives will secure a majority @ @ @ @ @ down liberal legislation for years to come .
Why do nine people who are not @ @ @ @ @ over laws in this country ?
And what do you do when the justices favor @ @ @ @ @ another ?
On Episode 18 of The Politics of Everything , hosts Laura Marsh and @ @ @ @ @ Moyn , a professor of history and law at Yale , about the dangers of @ @ @ @ @ and the best strategies for reform .
Later in the episode , TNR staff writer @ @ @ @ @ , a frequent contributor to the magazine , look back at the Melania tapes and @ @ @ @ @ in the news cycle .

With the likely confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett this week to the Supreme Court, conservatives will secure a majority they can use to strike down liberal legislation for years to come. Why do nine people who are not elected hold so much power over laws in this country? And what do you do when the justices favor one party so strongly over another? On Episode 18 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Samuel Moyn, a professor of history and law at Yale, about the dangers of maintaining such a powerful court and the best strategies for reform.
Later in the episode, TNR staff writer J.C. Pan and David Roth, a frequent contributor to the magazine, look back at the Melania tapes and how a story gets lost in the news cycle.


newrepublic--2020-10-21--Confronting the Deep Roots of Violence in El Salvador

In 1982 , Joan Didion famously wrote of El Salvador that “ terror is the given of the place.
” At the time , the country was in the midst of a civil war , which pitted the leftist guerrillas of the Faribundo Martí National Liberation Front , or FMLN , against the country ’ s military , supported and armed by the United States .
During the war , which lasted from 1980 to 1992 , some 50,000 civilians were killed , with the lion ’ s share of atrocities committed by the military .
The conflict compelled more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s 4.5 million people to seek safety in nearby countries as well as the U.S. , where most were denied asylum despite the bloody conditions they were fleeing .
Roberto Lovato has no illusions about the violence that has permeated the history of El Salvador .
However , his debut book , Unforgetting : A Memoir of Family , Migration , Gangs , and Revolution , is determined to unravel the many stereotypes that outsiders like Didion have perpetuated about the country , to make room for new insights about the trauma that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who is Salvadoran-American , claims early on that his book seeks to explore the roots of gang violence in El Salvador , but it is about much more than that .
Unforgetting covers a lot of ground , jumping between time periods , characters , countries , and even genres .
It is part memoir , part reported narrative , and even part crónica , or chronicle , a genre first made famous by Gabriel García Márquez that straddles the line between fiction and journalism .
Sections of the book narrate Lovato @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of San Francisco in the 1970s , where he was raised by two immigrant parents .
Another , set in the 1920s , reconstructs the childhood of his father , with whom Lovato has a tense and occasionally violent relationship .
Significant portions take place during the Salvadoran civil war , when Lovato was deeply involved in solidarity efforts with the FMLN .
Another part of the book takes place in 2015 , when an interview with a Salvadoran child held in immigrant detention in Karnes , Texas , motivates Lovato to report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seek refuge outside of El Salvador .
The book illuminates the depths of violence that have shaped El Salvador : from the wiping out of large swaths of Indigenous people during the colonial period to the 1932 matanza , or massacre , carried out by the army , which the historian Anders Sandberg , quoted by Lovato , calls one of the “ most violent episodes of the modern era.
” Then there are the atrocities of the civil war , like the 1981 El Mozote massacre , during which military officers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wiped out an entire town in the course of one day .

The violence didn’t end with the war, and U.S. policy was a large reason why. El Salvador’s most notorious gangs, or maras, were established in Los Angeles, and thousands of their members were deported after the war ended. In the U.S., Salvadoran youth had established the maras to protect themselves from larger street gangs, and dealt mostly in petty crime. But once they returned to postwar El Salvador, with few educational or job opportunities, they built ranks. Since then, they’ve grown more lethal and violent. The government has promoted various mano dura, or hard-fisted, militarized strategies against them, executed by an underpaid police force well-known for abuses. As Lovato writes, many of these strategies have been underwritten by the U.S., and some even developed out of the broken windows policing that emerged in our inner cities in the 1990s.
This messy soup of violence and terror persists, Lovato concludes, because of the country’s inability to reckon with its past, on both the personal and political level. During the course of the book, he experiences firsthand “the Salvadoran state’s need to silence the slaughter that has made it one of the most consistently violent patrias since the nineteenth century.” During a 2015 reporting trip, authorities force him to delete recordings of his interview with a researcher who works on uncovering and identifying the remains of mass graves, where gang members—and, it’s suggested, police and military-affiliated death squads—bury their victims.
Covering up this trauma has rendered Salvadorans “half-dead,” in the words of the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton. El Salvador is an “amnesiac country,” as a researcher explains to Lovato. Hence the title of Lovato’s book: “Unforgetting” is both a salve and a way of exposing the truth.


newrepublic--2020-10-21--A Covid-19 Vaccine Doesn’t Need to Be Perfect

This year has brought an unprecedented race to develop , test , and manufacture vaccines and treatments for SARS-CoV-2 , the virus that causes Covid-19 .
Experts say they ’ ve never seen anything like it : the international collaboration , the round-the-clock work , the scope and scale of more than 150 different vaccines already in the pipeline mere months after the novel virus emerged .
And several of those vaccines seem promising .
“ I feel cautiously optimistic , as a scientist , that we will have a safe and effective vaccine , ” Dr. Anthony Fauci , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Allergy and Infectious Diseases , said last month .
“ I believe it will happen , and it will happen likely by this end of the calendar year.
” But as vaccines start emerging in the coming months , we may be confronted with a new issue : What if the vaccines are only mediocre ?
Will we be able to control the virus—and , perhaps more importantly , convince people they should get vaccinated , now and in the future—if the first Covid-19 vaccines are not actually that effective ?
The U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minimum efficacy of vaccines in these trials at 50 percent , which means the people who receive the vaccines in the trial are half as likely ( or less ) to get sick as those who receive a placebo .
But there ’ s a chance the efficacy could be lower in reality .
After all , what happens in a clinical trial might not mirror what happens in the real world .
Some have taken this as evidence that we ’ re in for a very rough ride , even once vaccines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mediocre vaccines could disrupt the clinical trials for better vaccines , as people become less willing to participate in studies if they can get vaccinated at the doctor ’ s office , a New York Times piece suggested last week .
“ It has not yet dawned on hardly anybody the amount of complexity and chaos and confusion that will happen in a few short months , ” Dr. Gregory Poland , the director of vaccine research at the Mayo Clinic , told the Times .
But even vaccines that only protect a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them could make a big difference , experts told me .
It just means the vaccines won ’ t be the only solution .
To prepare for what ’ s ahead , both the public and policymakers should discard the mindset that anything short of a silver bullet is a letdown .
“ Vaccines don ’ t have to be perfect to be potent , ” said Dr. Gregg Gonsalves , an assistant professor in epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine .
“ An imperfect vaccine may be able to stem infections considerably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of better vaccines to come.
” The flu vaccine , for instance , is about 40 to 60 percent effective every year .
Even so , it helps keep many people safe from serious illness—and it considerably cuts down on community spread .
“ We need a vaccine to be able to beat the virus , ” he said .

Even if a vaccine offers disappointing coverage, he said, it’s better than nothing. Vaccines will be added to a public health arsenal that includes masks, distancing, ventilation, testing, and other measures. “You can take multiple imperfect interventions, put them together, and collectively create a pretty effective shield against transmission,” Venkayya said, referencing the “Swiss cheese model” of several imperfect layers combining to provide protection. “There’s not a moment in time where you say, OK, we can now stop doing everything that we’ve been doing to prevent transmission. It’ll be a gradual process, as there’s more and more uptake of the vaccine in the population,” he said. “It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.”
“Things will be better. But I’m not sure things will be normal.”
And how well the vaccine works is only one part of the equation, Dr. Ruth Faden, founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, told me when I asked about President Trump’s efforts to speed up the process before Election Day. “We basically have two challenges toward being able to employ Covid-19 vaccines to help contain this pandemic. One challenge is getting safe and effective vaccines and how quickly we can get them. And the other is getting people to take the vaccine,” she said. Trump’s overt and controversial focus on an October surprise undermines confidence in safe and effective vaccines.
“I don’t want to reinforce the message that we’ll have a perfect vaccine, and that perfect vaccine is going to come in like a knight in shining armor and get us out of this pandemic all on its own. That’s not likely how it’s going to work. But vaccines, good vaccines, safe and effective vaccines, will play a very critical role if we can have them, in helping us to get out of the worst of the pandemic,” Faden said. In order for that to happen, politics need to stay out of the regulatory process—and the public needs total transparency on how the vaccines are being developed and vetted.


newrepublic--2020-10-21--There Are No Good Republicans for a Biden White House

There is a battle brewing over the shape of a potential Biden administration between the center and the left .
Broadly speaking , the left , defeated in the primaries , is pushing from the sidelines for Biden to aim for a bigger presidency , to follow through on all his “ FDR-sized presidency ” talk .
On the other side , Washington ’ s professional centrists are eager to involve Republicans in the process of government and have already begun to raise alarms about the deficit , a clear indication that they don ’ t actually want to fix @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The latest battle concerns the potential makeup of Biden ’ s Cabinet , and recent reporting from Politico makes clear where the lines are being drawn .
On the left , members of the House and outside groups are pushing Biden to promise he won ’ t appoint C-suite executives or corporate lobbyists to his administration .
And , to please the center , we have the news that Biden is “ vetting a handful of Republicans for potential Cabinet positions.
” That this is happening mostly under the radar makes sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of defeating Trump has temporarily sidelined the conflict between these two wings of the Democratic Party .
But their conflict is not even remotely resolved and will inevitably flare up should Biden prevail .
At stake are the answers to questions that will shape the Biden presidency .
Should Congress pursue a broad , ambitious health care plan , including a public option , or stick to tinkering with the Affordable Care Act ?
What about all the people who committed major , obvious crimes against humanity—should he pursue investigations into or even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Obama-style “ look forward ” stance ?
Whether or not Biden sticks a token Republican in his Cabinet doesn ’ t necessarily mean that all his plans on these fronts will be failures ; similarly , having every member of the Cabinet with a “ D ” next to their name doesn ’ t mean his presidency is on the glide path to perfection .
( There are plenty of bad Democrats . )
But Biden going out of his way to find a Republican to appoint would indicate a lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fixing the country ’ s problems and the people who ’ ve had the strongest hand in creating them .
As David Segal of Demand Progress told Politico , “ there are no prominent Republicans ” who could be trusted to enact what we are constantly told is Biden ’ s Most Progressive Platform Ever .
Indeed , it sort of feels like if you were really interested in enacting the most progressive platform in party history , you would probably not seek the services of anyone from the party that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , turning workers into bugs , and sitting back while the capitalist economy heats our planet and turns Phoenix into an unlivable convection oven .
A good way to measure the foolishness of this endeavor is the list of potential nominees reported by Politico .
The names include John Kasich , whose appearance at the Democratic National Convention enraged the left and who signed a restrictive , punitive abortion bill as governor of Ohio ; and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker , who has overseen the second-highest rate of Covid-19 deaths in nursing home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ residents in the state have died from the disease .
Others on the list include Jeff Flake , a spectacularly failed Never Trump guy who is probably now most remembered for being yelled at by a sexual assault victim over his decision to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh but who should also be remembered for casting horrible , anti-immigrant , anti-equality votes , all of which are unsurprising since he is a Republican .
Charlie Dent , a former Republican congressman and current lobbyist , also made the list .
Dent has registered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pennsylvania health insurer Independence Blue Cross , and Amerihealth Caritas , a managed care organization that runs Medicaid plans in several states .
His involvement in a Biden White House would neatly tick two boxes on the pissing-off-the-left list : Republican and a corporate lobbyist , literally for Raytheon .

Which brings us to the most impressively inexplicable name on the list: Meg Whitman.
Which brings us to the most impressively inexplicable name on the list: Meg Whitman. Whitman is the billionaire former CEO of eBay and a political crash-and-burn artist who spent $140 million of her own money on a failed run for governor of California—a familiar résumé in the Republican Party, reminiscent of Trump’s first administrator of the Small Business Administration, reclamation project Linda McMahon, who spent almost $100 million on two failed Senate races. (Perhaps the SBA would be a good home for Whitman, should she make the cut.) But there is no better example of Whitman’s loserdom than her current gig as CEO of Quibi, the streaming service that exclusively serves up “quick bites” of content that cost as much as $100,000 per minute to produce.
You might be thinking, “I’m not a businessman, but that sounds like a bad strategy.” Well, that’s not the kind of thinking that gets you into the billionaire club. You have to take big risks. Sometimes, the big risks don’t pay off, and you raise $1.8 billion in investment for a company that ends up on the market within five months and that sucks so much that no one will even buy it: The Information reported last night that Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg has tried to sell Quibi to NBC and Facebook and gotten no interest, meaning the company may just shut down entirely after all the hullabaloo that preceded its launch. Quibi employees “have informally been scheduling goodbye drinks,” according to the site.
It would be too perfect for Whitman to smash the ejector button out of the Quibi jet, its engines on fire and nose pointed straight at the earth, and land safely in the next president’s Cabinet. Any role in the Cabinet would come with immense prestige, power, and a very nice, six-figure salary—not that she needs it. One can just imagine the scene at Quibi headquarters where Whitman announces her exciting next venture while employees are packing their desks, like David Brent delivering the good news of his promotion to his soon-to-be-laid-off employees. (“You’re still thinking about the bad news, aren’t you,” is the appropriate Brentism to apply in this instance.)


newrepublic--2020-10-21--Trump Is Giving America a Grisly Preview of a Second Term

I ’ m not very good at math , which is probably how I ended up writing for a living .
Fortunately , the statisticians over at FiveThirtyEight do not share this shortcoming .
Nate Silver ’ s famed poll-processing models currently predict that there ’ s a roughly 80 percent chance that Joe Biden will defeat Donald Trump in November .
In other words , Earth-1 through Earth-4 will watch a Democratic president wrestle with a pandemic and a recession for the next four years .
Earth-5 will watch a Republican president try to tweet through it .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ odds of a Biden win are basically 50-50 .
Trump will either win reelection next month or he won ’ t .
While Democrats enjoy a number of strengths at the moment—in fundraising , in early voting , in general voter support , and in the seeming desire to not actually serve the interests of a deadly virus—some of the GOP ’ s potential advantages can ’ t be so easily modeled .
How can polling averages factor in extraordinarily long lines to cast a ballot in person in Texas and Georgia ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ their ballots adjust for strict signature-matching requirements , or confusing ballot designs , or a dozen other potential sticking points ?
So whether you think it extremely unlikely or somewhat unlikely , the question remains : What would a second Trump term look like ?
This is where I note that how Trump obtains that second term will play a major role in those determinations .
If the polls are wrong again and he wins in a quick , 2016-like upset , the next four years would look very different than if he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ courtroom struggle over flawed absentee ballots or claims of voter fraud .
One outcome could demoralize and de-energize American liberals for a generation ; the other could only intensify the majority ’ s backlash to his administration .
In either event , some recent developments give perhaps the best window into what his presidency would look like if it lasted until 2024 .
On Tuesday , Politico reported that the White House is planning to cut a wide range of federal funds that go to what it deems to be “ anarchist jurisdictions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the administration for major Democratic-led cities , including New York City , Portland , Seattle , and Washington , D.C. Those cities received the oxymoronic label for allegedly taking steps to “ disempower ” their police departments and for not cracking down hard enough on rioters and protesters earlier this year , at least from the Trump administration ’ s perspective .
The move , which will almost certainly draw legal challenges , would cut funding for efforts ranging from coronavirus relief to combating HIV/AIDS and the opioid crisis , according to Politico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the White House toward parts of the country that are aligned with Trump ’ s political opponents and don ’ t share his approach to policy .
On the campaign trail , Trump himself has vividly denounced “ Democrat-run cities ” to his suburban and rural supporters , often in racist or racialized terms and with little regard for the truth .
An Associated Press review of federal defendants arrested on riot-related charges this year , for instance , found that few are affiliated with movements like antifa and many come from suburban @ @ @ @ @ @

All of this presents a quandary. For most presidential candidates, “how will you govern?” can be answered by their policy proposals, by their staffing choices, and by their track record. Trump defies this analysis. His legislative agenda, as it were, is practically nonexistent. And even when the White House musters up a set of proposals, Trump’s plain disinterest in the hard work of passing legislation foils them. He refuses to negotiate himself with Speaker Nancy Pelosi because she led the effort to impeach him last year. He can’t even bring himself to properly cajole GOP lawmakers into passing a massive stimulus bill and boosting him a few weeks before Election Day, perhaps the easiest political lay-up of all time.
Trump compensates for this shortcoming through the many levers of executive power bequeathed to him by past generations of lawmakers. But even then, he doesn’t seem to have any genuine passion for policymaking beyond what he thinks will please his base. Trump’s interests are far more personal. At rallies, he complains about the slights heaped upon him by Democrats, by news organizations, by social media companies, by the Chinese government, by blue states and major cities, and by whatever other perceived enemy crosses his mind. To Cabinet officials, he demands the arrests of Barack Obama and Joe Biden on, well, trumped-up charges. Trump won in 2016 by making it seem like he shared his voters’ grievances and alienations; now he just wants voters to share his.
So when we think forward to what four more years of a Trump presidency might look like, one can’t help but consider the rampant clientelism, the sectional and partisan favoritism, and the unabashed grift that characterized his first term in office. Reelection would only strengthen these forces. A victory of any kind for him in November will be taken by Trumpworld as validation of their corruption, as an affirmation of or indifference to their worldview. Once freed from the political considerations to which he had to adhere to win a second term, Trump will likely grow bolder and more ostentatious as he hurtles toward the Constitution’s two-term limit and the end of his wild ride. Voters who oppose Trump already have many reasons to fear this outcome. But even those who support him can only wonder what he’ll do when, after reelection, he doesn’t actually need them anymore either.


newrepublic--2020-10-21--Liberals Are Losing the Journalism Wars

Liberals Are Losing the Journalism Wars

“ Paying for news ” has always been an odd concept .
Radio and television in the United States were historically free , once you bought the hardware .
Local businesses and classified ad buyers heavily subsidized the big city newspaper at its peak .
If access to disinterested reporting on local affairs is socially important—and I do think it is—we will have to find some way to produce and ( perhaps more importantly ) distribute it that does not rely on people who actively wish to pay for it .
There are plenty of people who are both engaged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out and support particular publications directly ( including The New Republic ) .
If you ’ re reading this , you are probably one of them .
These people have been able to sustain numerous national institutions that do incredibly important work , but this has so far proven to be a solution only for the large , established , and nationally focused press .
There is simply no evidence yet that that model can work on the local level across this enormous country .
( There isn ’ t even evidence to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ newspapers in the country ’ s largest state and second-largest city . )
News , as is commonly noted , is expensive to produce , and the people who produce it deserve to be fairly remunerated for doing so .
But at some point , we ( collectively , not individually ) have to decide if the point of journalism is to employ journalists or to publicize useful information .
If you think of news as a commodity and citizens as consumers , it makes perfect sense to believe that people unwilling to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crappy product they get from local TV , talk radio , and some conservative hack ’ s network of phony local news sites .
But should it be acceptable to have a luxury tier of actually accurate and useful journalism ?
True information about your community is not the same as , say , furniture ( except in how the cheap and crappy versions of both are contributing to societal collapse ) .
If you accept that the responsibility of journalists is not just to produce important work but also to figure out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ widest possible audience—and to recognize that it is in a competition for attention with actual propaganda—the paywall goes from an unfortunate necessity to an active hindrance to the mission of the job .

The scheme takes advantage of how profit-chasing has blown up the entire concept of “media literacy.” When your local paper’s website is as larded up with spammy-looking ad crud as an illegal Monday Night Football stream, these spare sites cannot possibly look any less “real.” And as newspapers die and people get more and more of their news from social media, fewer people recognize which news “brands” are supposed to be “trustworthy.”
It is easy to overstate the ominousness of Timpone’s pay-for-play enterprise. His propaganda network, like most conservative movement activity, looks to be as much a grift for its operators as it is a savvy and effective political operation. The right’s seemingly inexhaustible stock of crankish private business owners means there is always money to be made fleecing them. When a Republican hotel magnate pays for something called “DC Business Daily” to produce an article saying he is “fed up with the way the United States is dealing with China,” he is probably not getting much for his dollar besides a brief dopamine hit while reading the published product.
But conservative propaganda tends to make up in volume and reach for what it lacks in efficiency and persuasiveness. As the Times reports, one of the stories from this network of sites, a smear job on a man killed by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, “was shared 22,000 times on Facebook, reaching up to 2.6 million people.” The effect of such content is probably felt less in any particular viral story than in the aggregate: People across the country are exposed constantly to news that may seem objective but that has, baked into it, right-wing values and assumptions. They get it in everything from this scammy network to Sinclair television stations to Fox News.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--Yes, You Have
a Duty to Vote

Yes, You Have
a Duty to Vote

There are two dominant political traditions in the West and the United States : that of liberalism , which dates back to seventeenth-century England , and that of republicanism , with its roots in ancient Athens and Rome .
Adherents of the former tradition , which stresses individual liberty , strongly support the right to vote but vehemently oppose any claim that citizens have an obligation to participate in the electoral process .
Supporters of the latter tradition , with its focus on the public interest ( the res publica ) , argue that voting is an ineluctable duty of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In her recent book , The Duty to Vote , political scientist Julia Maskivker seeks to delineate a middle way between these two conflicting points of view .
Maskivker contends that citizens have a moral duty to vote , unenforceable in an administrative context but compelling on an ethical level .
This duty , moreover , is a duty to vote with care—with at least a minimal knowledge of the issues at stake and the ideological dispositions of the candidates—and some impartiality .
It is also quintessentially a Samaritan duty , meaning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ benefit to others with little or no cost to herself .
Where exactly does this moral duty to vote come from ?
It derives , Maskivker argues , from a more general duty to seek justice , defined as a society ’ s equitable provision to all its members of at least the minimum primary social goods ( such as an adequate standard of living ) necessary for a decent life .
Maskivker ’ s invocation of this concept of justice alerts us to the strong influence on her of the work of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Michael Sandel has been perhaps Rawls ’ s foremost academic critic , strongly objecting to his liberal , neo-Kantian philosophy of putting the “ right ” ( a system of justice independent of any other moral principles ) over the “ good ” ( the moral vision through which a community seeks to secure the good life ) , as opposed to deriving the former from the latter .
It is little surprise , then , that Maskivker begins her section on republicanism with an attack on Sandel , accusing him of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advancing an “ incomplete notion of human flourishing ” that prizes political involvement above all else .
Maskivker shows more sympathy for what she calls neo-republicanism .
This tradition , she explains , derives from the writings of Machiavelli and is instrumental in character , viewing political participation as a means to the end of thwarting tyranny , or achieving a state of “ non-domination.
” Maskivker indicates , though , that many Americans , especially those at the lower end of the economic and educational scales—who register far lower rates of electoral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of society do—aren ’ t necessarily living in a condition of non-domination , since politicians tend to ignore the needs of groups whose members don ’ t come out in significant numbers at election time .
These nonvoters , she says , subsist in a state of “ representational inequality.
” This was the situation that German political scientist Armin Schäfer addressed when he wrote a 2011 article called “ Republican Liberty and Compulsory Voting.
” Schäfer noticed that rates of electoral participation across the Western world were in decline , with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the scale of voting in national elections was holding steady .
Schäfer explained that when the overall percentage of citizens voting drops significantly , the relative proportion as well as the absolute number of the disadvantaged participating in elections plummet .
Both Maskivker and Schäfer cite studies demonstrating that the smaller the percentage of the poor who vote , the less generous their government benefits become , a vicious circle that Schäfer proposes to short-circuit by making voting mandatory for everyone .

There are two dominant political traditions in the West and the United States: that of liberalism, which dates back to seventeenth-century England, and that of republicanism, with its roots in ancient Athens and Rome. Adherents of the former tradition, which stresses individual liberty, strongly support the right to vote but vehemently oppose any claim that citizens have an obligation to participate in the electoral process. Supporters of the latter tradition, with its focus on the public interest (the res publica), argue that voting is an ineluctable duty of citizenship as well as an absolute right.
In her recent book, The Duty to Vote, political scientist Julia Maskivker seeks to delineate a middle way between these two conflicting points of view. Maskivker contends that citizens have a moral duty to vote, unenforceable in an administrative context but compelling on an ethical level. This duty, moreover, is a duty to vote with care—with at least a minimal knowledge of the issues at stake and the ideological dispositions of the candidates—and some impartiality. It is also quintessentially a Samaritan duty, meaning that the voter performs an act of benefit to others with little or no cost to herself. Where exactly does this moral duty to vote come from? It derives, Maskivker argues, from a more general duty to seek justice, defined as a society’s equitable provision to all its members of at least the minimum primary social goods (such as an adequate standard of living) necessary for a decent life.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--The Small, Midwestern Town Taken Over by Fake Communists

The Marathon County Historical Society sits in an old church building in Wausau , just up the Wisconsin River from the town of Mosinee .
The lobby is large , a gift shop with books and paraphernalia in one area and temporary exhibitions in another .
“ Milking Time : The Evolution of the Dairy Industry in Marathon County ” was on display on the day of my visit , in June 2019 .
I had called ahead , and a librarian was waiting for me .
He settled me into the reading room and brought out a wide and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ usually got one or two visitors a year who were interested in the backstory of the coup .
This was a pilgrimage , of sorts .
I had come to Mosinee in search of evidence of events that took place here nearly 70 years prior .
In 1950 , just three months after Joseph McCarthy , the U.S. senator from Wisconsin , warned of “ enemies from within ” in his infamous speech in Wheeling , West Virginia , the residents of Mosinee decided to show the world the true horror of communism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their town .
The event—featuring costumed citizens , fake concentration camps , and an all-too real death toll of two—was envisioned as a representative “ pageant , ” a fear-driven demonstration of an all-too-possible future .
Just last month , Donald Trump himself traveled to Mosinee as well .
He was there to hold a “ Great American Comeback ” rally at the town ’ s Central Wisconsin Airport , seeking to turn around the fortunes of his flailing campaign with a receptive audience in a key swing state .
This was his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rally drew crowds that waited for 29 hours in the October chill to glimpse him .
I had gone to Mosinee as a student of history .
Trump went as its tragicomic reenactor , treating his audience to a performance that rhymed with many of the country ’ s darkest moments .
As he thundered about left-wing mobs overrunning our cities , I could not help but think of the faux coup in 1950 , a pure yet largely forgotten example of the paranoid style in American politics .
The event presaged our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could not have known how spectacularly their descendants would surpass them .
My fascination with Mosinee began in the halcyon days before a Trump presidency , when I was a graduate student studying the politics of fear .
Think of the onset of the War on Terror after 9/11 , or the often-xenophobic reactions to the Pearl Harbor attack .
I focused largely on the Cold War , examining how fears of communism ran rampant , stoked by politicians of both parties , birthing domestic and foreign policies that would shape the decades @ @

The Marathon County Historical Society sits in an old church building in Wausau, just up the Wisconsin River from the town of Mosinee. The lobby is large, a gift shop with books and paraphernalia in one area and temporary exhibitions in another. “Milking Time: The Evolution of the Dairy Industry in Marathon County” was on display on the day of my visit, in June 2019. I had called ahead, and a librarian was waiting for me. He settled me into the reading room and brought out a wide and shallow box, informing me that they usually got one or two visitors a year who were interested in the backstory of the coup.
This was a pilgrimage, of sorts. I had come to Mosinee in search of evidence of events that took place here nearly 70 years earlier. In 1950, just three months after Joseph McCarthy, the U.S. senator from Wisconsin, warned of “enemies from within” in his infamous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, the residents of Mosinee decided to show the world the true horror of communism by staging a fake Communist takeover of their town. The event—featuring costumed citizens, fake concentration camps, and an all-too-real death toll of two—was envisioned as a representative “pageant,” a fear-driven demonstration of a possible future.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--Martin Amis, the Accidental Memoirist

Martin Amis, the Accidental Memoirist

How do you solve a problem like Martin Amis ?
Like Maria from The Sound of Music , he ’ s a clown to his detractors and a musician to his fans—the music of the well-tuned sentence , that is , and the clownery of the literary egomaniac .
I ’ ve already checked to see whether any other reviewers have made this comparison before , because if there ’ s one thing Martin Amis hates , it ’ s a cliché .
He titled his 2001 essay collection The War Against Cliché ( “ all writing is a campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart ” ) , and in his new book , Inside Story : How to Write , he defines a cliché as anything repeated— “ any phrase that bears the taint of the second-hand.
” The problem with this kind of didacticism , from Amis , is that he ’ s become a byword for literary cliché himself .
If a cliché is a formal expression whose original charm has been deadened through repetition , then nothing could better describe Amis ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ philanderer .
But let ’ s leave Amis as a public figure out of it , for now , even though he ’ s behaved like such a plonker for so long—forever posing with cigarettes and soft expression like some nervous teenager ; building a tabloid version of himself as a Don Juan among posh literary women ; nurturing feuds with one celeb while leeching off the fame of another—that it ’ s difficult to approach his novels soberly .
The party-boy persona is so stale that these antics now elicit more pity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ horrid little man ” of his ex ’ s recollection—Julie Kavanaugh recalls him “ chuckling away as he re-reads his own prose ” while she cooked—does that matter to the books ?
Being horrid doesn ’ t mean your writing is de facto bad .
Kingsley Amis ’ s bullying ways didn ’ t make a dent in the quality of Lucky Jim .
In Martin ’ s case , however , it does seem to matter , because his writing has been led astray by Martin ’ s ego ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be .
In his haste to escape the taint of the second-hand , Amis has reached for egregious figures of speech , but then repeated them , as if forgetting they ’ ve already been used .
Twice he has made jokes about trial separations being “ almost always a complete success.
” He uses the word “ deliquescent ” frequently : “ deliquescent macadam ” ; “ The Deliquescent Virgin ” ; “ Dodo , whose corpulence , in tendency , was not deliquescent but all stretched and taut.
” After reading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I found Amis twice describing a stew as “ farting , ” and one of those instances referred to a vulva half-glimpsed beyond a hot girl ’ s nightie—a “ farting cassoulet of pussy ” to be precise , although in fairness he claims his brother said it .
Women ’ s bodies are “ like tits on a wand ” to such an extent that Inside Story includes an anecdote about a young woman making fun of Amis about it : “ ‘ What was it you once said ?
About the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or rather self-quotes , with an abundance that leads to what I can only call intra-oeuvre clichédness .
That might just be a stingy way to label what might also be termed “ style , ” but there ’ s no room for any of that in Amis ’ s own theory of cliché .
This contradiction matters , not because it condemns Amis but because it expresses something at the heart of his practice : specifically , a poorly concealed self-consciousness about writing well , paired with an equivalent lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lie .

Amis did well with fiction early in his career, and for a long time proclaimed that life-writing was the less interesting genre. His novels about the scuzzy bits of London life are nastily readable. London Fields (1989) is a neo-noir plot set amid vague nuclear anxiety, told with extremely fascinated condescension through the exploits of a hot, suicidal woman named Nicola Six and a working-class hustler called Keith Talent. Amis has a lot of Keiths in his fiction; they’re avatars for himself and his hatreds, cadavers for his sociologist’s scalpel to slice into, the “fool” his father called him in letters to friends.
Like his old friends Christopher Hitchens, who supported the invasion of Iraq to the very end, and Salman Rushdie, who told a Maxim model via Facebook message that she “looked so gorgeous and hottt” (a sobriquet instantly unforgettable once read), Martin Amis had a bad turn of the century. Critics looking to sum up his downward slide usually cite Tibor Fischer’s excoriation of Yellow Dog (2003) in The Telegraph, which lamented Amis’s “ache for gravitas.” The postmodern, hardboiled style of London Fields had given way to fiction in which Amis tried to get by on his reputation as a “style supremacist.” Worse still, in the place of lurid plot he packed these novels with ideas, his great weakness, which also mar his nonfiction writing, with Amis tending toward both overstatement and banality on topics including nuclear armament, the Holocaust, 9/11, the sexual revolution, and how to write a sentence.
Martin Amis’s talents, however, are genuine, and they include an ear for conversation and a facility for autobiography so natural that it has persisted almost in spite of his attempts to write otherwise. Inside Story is technically his fifteenth novel, though its subjects (Saul Bellow, Christopher Hitchens, Kingsley) are very real. Like his 2010 novel The Pregnant Widow, the new book is done in novel style, but the events come quite strictly from his own life.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--The Native Vote Is Crucial This Election—and Under Threat

Speaking with The Washington Post for a cringe-inducing piece about the influx of people moving to Montana , Candace Carr Strauss , the CEO of the Big Sky Chamber of Commerce , offered a potential selling point : “ We are 98 percent Caucasian , ” she told the paper .
“ We haven ’ t , thankfully , seen a lot of the unrest other places have seen.
” Carr Strauss ’ s claim is wrong—as the Post notes , the last census marked the state as 89 percent white—but the idea of certain places being havens for whiteness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actual numbers .
Seven percent of the state population identifies as Native American , which also isn ’ t some well-kept secret .
The flags of the eight sovereign Indigenous nations whose lands fall within Montana ’ s boundaries fly directly in front of the state capitol .
Contrary to popular belief and the stuff of white fantasy , Native people have not disappeared from the planet—or electoral politics .
As in Nevada and Arizona , among other states , Indigenous voters in Montana have the potential to decide major statewide races for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may have erased Indigenous people from her imagined state , but Republicans in power know they ’ re there .
They ’ ve legislated accordingly : hamstringing the census , adding voter ID requirements , restricting ballot collection efforts , and reducing mail-in voting and early voting locations .
As the final weeks of the election cycle wind down , tribal communities across the country—including in places where their votes will help determine the outcome of Senate seats and the presidency—will try to overcome these barriers and remind Americans of their political weight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ published a piece by E. Tammy Kim that examined Montana ’ s two crucial swing voter blocs ahead of the 2020 election : union members and tribal citizens .
After all , it was Native voters who helped Democratic Senator Jon Tester win a tight reelection bid in 2018 , with Tester claiming majorities in numerous reservation districts .
The same proved true in his first run for Senate in 2006 , when Native voters pulled the lever for him at a near 2-to-1 margin .
It ’ s in part why Tester @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as one of the few supporting voices for Native issues on the Senate floor and in committee .
Montana ’ s Native population is once again being called upon in 2020 , this time to help elect a second Democrat for Senate in current Governor Steve Bullock .
And like Tester , Bullock has recognized that the Native vote is indispensable , making numerous trips to the reservations in the state to try and turn out the vote .
The same is true in Nevada , where Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state where Native people constitute just under 2 percent of the population .
Just as the Montana tribes pushed Tester into office , Nevada ’ s Indigenous population was one of the factions that helped elect Senator Harry Reid in his razor-thin 1998 reelection campaign .
Similarly , in Arizona , where Joe Biden is polling nearly four points ahead of Trump as of this writing , Native voters , at 5.3 percent of the state ’ s population , are being leaned on by Democrats to secure the state for the former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told Vox earlier this year , “ The difference when you have high turnout in the Native community and you convince them to vote for you—that ’ s the difference between winning and losing .
”

This is not to ignore conservative Native voters, who do exist in sizable numbers: North Carolina’s 9th district, home of the Lumbee Tribe, is dependably red; Oklahoma Representatives Tom Cole and Markwayne Mullin, who make up half of the congressional Native delegation, are both Republican legislators; and the tribal chairman of the Crow Tribe, located in Montana, recently endorsed both Trump and Bullock’s opponent, Republican Steve Daines. But the Republican Party on the whole has not been welcoming when it comes to the surge of registered Native voters. In fact, it has consistently gone out of its way to limit their ability to cast their ballot.
In Montana, as well as Arizona and a host of other states, Republican state legislators, operating under the guise of election security, have introduced and passed bills with the express aim of voter suppression. One such effort that’s been widely replicated has been a ban on the collection of completed ballots for submission at the nearest board of elections. Native voters, many of whom live in rural communities without regular access to mail services or a nearby county board of elections office, are uniquely harmed by these laws—a Montana court even found in September that the state’s ballot collection act was unconstitutional due to its effect on tribal communities. But similar laws in Arizona and North Carolina still stand, with the Supreme Court set to take up the Arizona case after the election.
Early voting access, crucial given the social distancing requirements caused by the pandemic, has also required legal pressure from tribes. In 2014, Jason Gant, South Dakota’s Republican secretary of state, along with the Jackson County auditor, opposed a request for an early voting site for the town of Wanblee, located on the Pine Ridge Reservation, while approving one in the majority-white town of Kadoka. It required a lawsuit by four citizens of the Oglala Sioux Tribe to get the polling site reopened. Likewise, in 2016, two tribes located in Nevada, the Walker River Paiute Tribe and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, won a lawsuit against the state that established early voting and Election Day polling sites in towns located within their respective reservations. But still, as Ethan Doig, working with the Nevada Native Vote Project, told Capital Public Radio, only a third of the tribal communities in the state have access to both an in-person polling location and a ballot drop-off box, leaving the remaining voters facing the prospect of driving up to 100 miles to cast their vote.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--Cultural Resentment Is Conservatives’ New Religion

Even if he ’ s handed a defeat in November , there probably won ’ t really be anything like a truly “ post-Trump ” politics for a long while : Donald Trump himself is likely to stick around one way or another and so too , obviously , will the Republican voters who ’ ve already come to see him as their Reagan .
Those who believe him to be the silent avenger of trafficked children will be with us for some time as well .
With fully half of the Republican Party subscribing to the belief that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sex-trafficking rings ” according to YouGov , the QAnon phenomenon—in its inanity , reach , and roots in cultural animus—seems like a direct successor to the birtherism that sent Trump to the top of conservative politics in the first place .
Last week , Business Insider reported that Republican strategists have come to “ view QAnon believers and the movement not as a liability or as a scourge to be extinguished , but as a useful band of fired-up supporters.
” The grand lesson they ’ ve taken from the Trump era , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harness the madness for as long as they can .
But the growth of QAnon is just one indication of how unruly things are getting on the right—in general , the conservative movement is getting more ideologically crowded .
There are “ Never—But Wait Actually , Maybe—Trump ” conservatives of the GOP ’ s former establishment slinking back into the fold .
There are tweedy conservative intellectuals hoping that there might be a life for a post-laissez faire right-wing populism beyond Trump , a tendency that some have called “ national conservatism.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 6-3 court will get the opportunity to rule their way on abortion and perhaps gay rights .
There are integralists who believe the religious right will only prevail once originalism and the conservative movement ’ s traditional legal nostrums are abandoned .
And then there are the voters who ’ ve made all of this ideological ferment possible—the white working class defectors from the Democratic Party who helped Trump to victory in 2016 and who are actually less religiously committed as a group than the more affluent whites Trump has pushed away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ religiously ambivalent voters who believe or pretend to believe that Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of molested children , through Ben Shapiro , and all the way to wayward administrative law scholars set on undoing the separation between church and state in order to reestablish the United States as a Catholic dominion .
It ’ s all a bit of a mess ; probably moreso than those angling to lead or direct the conservative movement have ever had to contend with .
But , as Ross Douthat wrote in a Saturday piece for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ era has also produced some of the potentially unifying conditions set to animate the next stage of the culture wars , including a shared horror of social media censorship and , more broadly , a deepened hatred of liberal elites whose cultural power , conservatives believe , fully justifies their defense of the right ’ s structural political advantages .
“ Just as liberals see political authoritarianism in a Republican Party clinging to power via the Senate ’ s rural bias , conservatives increasingly see that same GOP as the only bulwark against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media consolidation , ” he wrote .
“ As long as the Republicans retain some power in Washington , Twitter will face subpoena threats when it blocks right-leaning sites and Facebook will remain a safe space to share Ben Shapiro posts ... but once you hand full political power to liberalism as well , the right fears that what starts with bans on QAnon and Alex Jones will end with social-media censorship of everything from pro-life content to critiques of critical race theory to coverage of the not-so-peaceful style in left-wing protest .
@

They might be able to pull it off. Last week, Republicans on the Hill were up in arms over Facebook and Twitter blocking shares of the New York Post’s dubious exposé of Hunter Biden. The leader of the pack was, unsurprisingly, anti-tech crusader Josh Hawley—perhaps the most prominent of the right’s so-called populists in Washington next to Trump. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday, Hawley argued that users with blocked posts should be able to sue Facebook and Twitter and painted the stakes of the issue for the right. “If Republicans don’t stand up and do something about this, these companies are going to run this country,” he said. “That’s their desire, these woke capitalists, they want to run America. Big government, big tech—they want to run America. We have got to stop them, we have got to do something.”
The “something” that Hawley’s angling for specifically is the amendment or repeal of Section 230, a law that renders websites immune from lawsuits their users might bring over user-provided content, and that functionally gives social media companies broad latitude to moderate themselves. Trump signed an immediately challenged executive order to curb Section 230 protections earlier this year, surely without much of an idea of what the full implications of the move might be. But Hawley knows—the fight over pro-Trump posts is the initial skirmish in a new campaign against what he called the “cosmopolitan elite” in a speech at the National Conservatism conference last year. “It’s about more than economics,” he said. “According to the cosmopolitan consensus, globalization is a moral imperative. That’s because our elites distrust patriotism and dislike the common culture left to us by our forebears.” The movement is about “more than economics,” in other words, because it’s belatedly realized that much of the corporate power it spent the last several decades building has gone to cultural liberals and those more radical than them who’ve made effective use of their new platforms—an error that now needs to be addressed.
They don’t seem particularly likely to succeed, policy-wise, but the project does give them something to do and, almost as importantly, offers the conservative movement a way to maintain credibility in the eyes of the mainstream press and the Democratic Party. The handwringing about the right’s cultural alienation and progressive overreach we’ve seen throughout the Trump era suggests a nontrivial portion of liberals really will be guilted into understanding their cultural cachet as an oppressive force—an understanding that might encourage them to oppose structural reforms that would disempower the right. And wonky legal projects spearheaded by superficially intelligent men like Hawley and conservative lawyers will seem to many like a substantive step forward from Trumpism—efforts liberals can convince themselves to respect even if they disagree with them. The question, of course, is whether Hawley and figures like him can pull a shroud over the movement’s more visibly alarming elements—or, more accurately, whether those elements will let them.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--Can Podcasts Save Local News?

Can Podcasts Save Local News?

No one knows what to do about the crisis in local news .
Recent research from Pew Research Center includes a host of depressing statistics : More than 50 percent of all newsroom jobs have been lost since 2009 .
One in five media workers lives in New York or Los Angeles .
One in four large newspapers has laid off employees since 2017 .
This year has , once again , been a nightmare for the media industry , with job losses in the thousands amidst a raging pandemic .
The causes of the decline in local news are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media , private equity , ongoing fallout from the 2008 economic collapse—and the consequences are severe .
A quarter of all newspapers have died in the last 15 years , leaving news deserts scattered throughout the country .
Many of those that have survived are shells of their former selves .
Important stories about corruption , crime , and everyday life go unreported .
The local news crisis is also a democratic crisis , leaving citizens uninformed about vital issues .
The biggest problem facing new local news ventures is that the economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a century—advertising—is no longer viable .
Google and Facebook have swallowed the ad industry over the last decade , driving down revenue and making it difficult to support the large newsrooms of journalism ’ s heyday .
City Cast , a new venture , is trying to buck that trend with a model based on two of the industry ’ s rare bright spots : podcasting and newsletters .
The project is being led by former Slate editor-in-chief and current Atlas Obscura CEO David Plotz , in conjunction with Graham Holdings , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owns Slate , the podcasting company Megaphone , and several local TV stations .
Set to launch this winter , City Cast aims to fill the void being left by traditional media—and to restore some of the spunk and personality of an older era .
Recent efforts to rebuild the tattered local news industry have largely focused on replicating older models .
Report for America places young journalists in newsrooms .
Facebook and Google have pledged to highlight existing local news sources and provide millions in grants—penance , perhaps , for decimating the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ announced that it would be launching newsletters in four cities—Denver , Des Moines , Minneapolis , and Tampa—focusing on business , technology , and education .

One issue that has already cropped up is representation, especially given that each city will have only one “host.” As Plotz told me, “It’s hard to attempt to speak broadly for a city if you’re talking out of just a single perspective, which is why we need people who are incredibly curious and also see that and know that about themselves. I’m not saying that in every city that every staff is going to perfectly mirror the demographics of that city. But we do need for this organization broadly to have a real variety of voices and backgrounds. One of the things you note as you go back and look at the history of the ‘voices’ of these cities is that a lot of them were white guys, often pretty conservative white guys. That’s not going to fly.”
Podcasting is appealing economically because it is, with subscriptions, the only healthy revenue stream in media—at least for now. It resembles, in some ways, the internet before Facebook and Google took over. There are a number of creators and advertisers, and rates are generally pretty high. The Ringer was recently sold to Spotify for $300 million on the strength of its dozens of podcasts. With high ad rates, podcasting revenue can fund a decent-sized media organization. One could easily see a small newsroom growing out of a successful podcast and newsletter launch—a sustainable, if smaller, way to fix the local news problem.
That, of course, is dependent on the podcasting advertising market staying healthy, something that is far from guaranteed, especially given Spotify’s recent acquisition of several audio companies. Concentration has been a disaster for media, and the success of City Cast, as with many other audio companies, is predicated on a healthy marketplace.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--The Emerging, Tenuous “Essential Worker” Vote

Over the past few weeks , when Diego Isaacs hasn ’ t been at his job in the produce department at the grocery store Harris Teeter in Charlotte , North Carolina , he ’ s been busy contacting as many people as he can about the upcoming election .
Isaacs , an immigrant from Colombia who ’ s lived in the U.S. for 20 years , said he ’ s lost count of how many people he ’ s encouraged to vote this year , but has spoken to relatives and friends in Wisconsin , Florida , Georgia , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retail and service workers .
“ The issues that really matter to me are the economy and health care , ” he said .
Last spring , when the pandemic hit and states locked down one by one , a significant portion of the low-wage workforce was quickly—and conveniently—reclassified as “ essential ” and sent back to work while much of the rest of the country took shelter at home .
In New York , handmade signs thanking frontline workers started appearing in windows , and residents applauded daily for the people putting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep food on the shelves and hospitals staffed .
These newly minted essential workers quickly became irresistible fodder for politicians ; both the Democratic and Republican Party paid homage to them at their respective national conventions in August .
( “ You represent an incredible group of people and we love you all , ” Trump said to a group of essential workers he had convened in the White House to kick off the Republican National Convention . )
But recognition isn ’ t the same thing as power .
Despite effusive praise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers , across a number of industries , continue to face PPE shortages and unsafe conditions on the job , and hazard pay bonuses have all but vanished even though the threat of the coronavirus hasn ’ t .
To date , there is no centralized system for monitoring the toll of the pandemic on essential workers , but according to a tracker created by the Guardian , more than 1,200 health care workers in the U.S. have died of Covid so far .
Another recent study found that up to a quarter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have contracted the virus , and among those , 131 have died ; as of last month , the USPS reported that over 9,600 employees had tested positive and 83 people had died since the pandemic began .
And more than 200 workers at meat packing plants—which were early , overcrowded sites of Covid outbreaks—have died , with little recourse for their families or penalties for their employers .
We ’ ve now seen firsthand that despite the ongoing risks to their own safety , this workforce , which currently comprises over 55 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep the economy running—or conversely , make it grind to halt—which means that in an election year , it also has the potential to shape the outcome of national and state-level races .
But whether this diffuse group of workers will cohere as a voting bloc in a country with low union density—not to mention relatively low voter turnout—is far from guaranteed , particularly within a political system that has tended to take them for granted .
In early September , in an effort to alter this balance of power , the retail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vote for Respect , an initiative designed to galvanize and turn out what one could call the essential worker vote .
According to the group , more than 3,350 workers , including Isaacs , have been working through the initiative to mobilize their coworkers , friends , and family members to the polls .
Rather than officially campaigning for specific candidates , the group is hoping to turn out 150,000 low-wage workers across several critical swing states , and 150,000 more throughout the rest of the country , as the first step in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frontline workers that has the leverage to demand better workplaces and a fairer economy even beyond the 2020 election .
Mario Crippen , a former Amazon employee who co-organized a walkout at a Michigan warehouse in March over unsafe working conditions and is now an organizer with Vote for Respect , sees the election as an opportunity to build electoral power alongside the kinds of campaigns workers are waging inside their own workplaces during the pandemic .
“ We ’ re the driving force in this country—we make America turn , ” he @ @

Low-wage workers have historically voted at lower rates than those with higher incomes, due to a combination of various voter suppression tactics and widespread disillusionment with a political system that rarely works in their favor, the latter of which is compounded by minimal or only sporadic political outreach from either major party. But a survey of 1,200 low-wage workers in swing states conducted by United for Respect and the polling firm Lake Research last month found that an overwhelming 87 percent of respondents said they were motivated to vote this election. Significant majorities of the workers polled also said they were in favor of measures like requiring companies to offer paid leave (79 percent) and instituting predictable work schedules (75 percent), and an overwhelming 80 percent agreed that companies going bankrupt should be required first to pay severances to workers and protect their 401(k)s before paying off investors or CEOs. A majority of respondents also said they favored policies like Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, and breaking up corporate monopolies.
That said, if the individuals surveyed were broadly supportive of pro-worker policies, partisanship was another matter entirely. According to the poll, respondents were only somewhat more likely to say they supported Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans; similarly, while 49 percent of respondents said they were going to vote for Biden in November, 41 percent said that they were planning to back Trump. Though the Democratic Party may have been a political home of sorts for the working class throughout the twentieth century, in 2020, no presidential contender has an automatic claim to workers’ votes. That’s largely the result of both parties’ increasing neglect of the interests of workers for those of the elite, a trend that will no doubt take more than one election cycle to reverse.
This year, though, Trump’s miserable handling of the pandemic and his inability to shepherd a second stimulus through the ranks of his own party present a new (if also immensely tragic) opportunity for the Democrats to reinvigorate their former working-class base. But Crippen told me that when he speaks with other workers about voting, it’s clear that the first thing on everyone’s mind is safety on the job, rather than allegiance to a specific candidate or political party. Politicians who genuinely prioritize workers’ well-being, Crippen said, will be the ones who resonate with essential workers this election season. “They’re going to go for the person that puts their safety first and actually makes them feel essential,” he said. Biden’s campaign, for its part, has sought to amplify his bid for workers’ votes in the home stretch before the election; Biden has met with essential workers in battleground states and has promised to boost pay for those on the front lines. “We have been working really hard to try and get coronavirus under control, and I just see them as the people to help get that set into motion,” one public health worker in Minnesota told a local news station after attending an event held by Jill Biden a few weeks ago.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--Lesley Stahl Blew Her Chance to Eviscerate Trump

For days we ’ ve been hearing President Donald Trump fulminate about his “ FAKE and BIASED interview ” with Lesley Stahl of CBS News ’ s 60 Minutes .
It was a “ vicious attempted ‘ takeout ” full of “ bias , hatred , and rudeness ” that made Trump so mad he cut the interview short .
Holy smoke !
When the president posted the raw video this morning , three days before the 60 Minutes segment was set to air , I could scarcely contain my excitement .
But the interview did not live up to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stahl announced at the outset , “ I ’ m not gon na fact-check you , ” and she kept her word .
She showed little evidence of adequate preparation .
Though she occasionally challenged certain things Trump said , she demonstrated insufficient command of the facts , and of Trump ’ s past statements , to hold Trump properly accountable .
I take no pleasure in writing this .
We all have bad days .
And Stahl has always been a hero of mine , going back to her beginnings , during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a bulldog reporter on the Watergate scandal .
It ’ s doubtful she got taken by surprise .
We all know Trump is a firehose of misinformation , and Stahl in particular has always been savvy about the ways presidents manipulate the press .

In 1984, when Stahl aired a story on the CBS Evening News contrasting the deceptive TV images Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign deployed with the cruel realities they disguised, she worried her White House sources would freeze her out. Instead, she related in her 1999 book, Reporting Live, White House aide Richard Darman phoned her immediately to praise the story. “You guys in Televisionland haven’t figured it out, have you?” Darman said. “When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. Lesley, I mean it, nobody heard you.”
In a 2017 meeting with Trump prior to an earlier 60 Minutes interview, Stahl asked the new president why he attacked the press all the time. As she related in a public appearance the following year, Trump answered: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”
A reporter who could tell such stories on herself ought to know that the only way to handle a mendacious president—and we’ve never seen one as mendacious as Trump—is to arrive prepared to confront him coolly with facts that contradict his false statements. It’s very hard to do, but lately we’ve seen a few journalists—Chris Wallace, Jonathan Swan, and Savannah Guthrie—perform this task pretty well.


newrepublic--2020-10-22--Trump’s Scorched-Earth War Against Federal Employees

One advantage of a vague slogan like “ drain the swamp ” is that it can mean different things to different people .
Does it mean ousting elected officials from their comfy seats in Washington , D.C. , which is often said ( and wrongly at that ) to be built on a swamp ?
Perhaps it means cleaning up the murky influence of donors and campaign contributions in the nation ’ s capital .
Maybe it even means washing away the toxic effects of lobbyists and well-funded interests groups in legislation and policymaking .
For President Donald Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean undermining the nation ’ s professional civil service .
The White House released an unusual executive order on Wednesday night that could give the president the power to hire and fire a broad range of federal civil servants for any reason , or none at all .
If fully implemented , the order would circumvent long-standing legal protections for government workers that were designed to insulate them from politicization .
This is a familiar theme over the last four years for Trump , who has complained all along that his presidency has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” of federal employees who oppose him .
His search for scapegoats for his own poor governance meshed well with the conservative movement ’ s disdain for civil servants in general , as well as its desire to demolish what it calls the “ administrative state ” of federal agencies and regulators .
At risk is the hard-fought dream of a nonpartisan civil service without cronies or sycophants , and the confidence of Americans in their own government .
This latest executive order would create a new category of civil servants known as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to shift a wide range of positions out of existing categories and into this new one .
The White House made clear that it sought to seize greater flexibility in removing and adding federal employees who might otherwise be protected from dismissal by law .
“ Under the order , Federal agencies will have more flexibility to hire ‘ Schedule F ’ employees and will also be able to remove them without going through a lengthy appeals process , ” the White House said when announcing the move .
The order itself framed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sorts , claiming that the problem was shoddy work on federal employees ’ part .
“ High performance by such employees can meaningfully enhance agency operations , while poor performance can significantly hinder them , ” it stated .
“ Senior agency officials report that poor performance by career employees in policy-relevant positions has resulted in long delays and substandard-quality work for important agency projects , such as drafting and issuing regulations .
”

But the move takes place against a backdrop of Trumpian ire toward the civil service. As I noted in August, Trump and his allies see no difference between his personal political interests and the policy goals that drive the federal government. That worldview has led the president to dismiss officials like former FBI Director James Comey, who resisted pressure to drop a criminal case against one of Trump’s top allies in 2017, and purge nearly a dozen inspectors general earlier this year from their watchdog posts after the Senate acquitted him of abuse of power. More recently, Trump has hinted that he would fire current FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Bill Barr after the election if they don’t make politically charged arrests before November 3 to help him win.
Trump’s move against civil service protections is a dramatic escalation of this well-established trend. The order drew immediate criticism from union leaders who represent federal workers. “This is the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes,” Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement on Thursday. “The president has doubled down on his effort to politicize and corrupt the professional service. This executive order strips due process rights and protections from perhaps hundreds of thousands of federal employees and will enable political appointees and other officials to hire and fire these workers at will.”
Lawmakers, however, took relatively little notice of the White House maneuver. The imminent presidential debate on Thursday may have drawn attention on Capitol Hill away from what could be a sea change in the executive branch. An exception was Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who connected the move to Trump’s history of corrupt behavior. “In his obsession to twist our govt to benefit him personally, Pres. Trump is now attacking the idea of a professional Civil Service, which dates back 100 years to the time of Vermonter Pres. Chester Arthur,” Leahy wrote on Twitter. “We must stand up for Federal Employees serving America, not Trump.”


newrepublic--2020-10-22--Will Joe Manchin Ruin Democrats’ Best Chance to Fight Climate Change?

The state , some people emphasize , isn ’ t right-wing so much as jaded .
“ It ’ s not surprising that people got disenchanted with the Democratic Party over that time , ” said Cathy Kunkel , an energy analyst and the Democratic candidate running to unseat Republican Alex Mooney in West Virginia ’ s 2nd congressional district .
“ The Republican Party has not done anything to help people ’ s economic situation either .
West Virginia is more of an anti-establishment state than a deeply red state.
” Much of that stems from the state ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 to the Mine Wars in the 1970s , West Virginia ’ s coal mines were home to some of the country ’ s most militant , multiracial labor struggles in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries : Black miners who had migrated from the deep South , white Appalachians , and Southern and Eastern European immigrants stood together on United Mineworkers of America picket lines .
UMWA President John L. Lewis was for a time among the country ’ s most influential labor leaders and pushed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was considerably to the right of many of the socialist and Communist organizers who organized in the mines ; for years , pockets of West Virginia were red in a socialist rather than a Republican sense .
Mechanization and strip mining—using explosives to exploit coal seams closer to the surface—proved a lucrative way to shed workers , as it required fewer of them , and an aid to coal barons trying to break unions .
Black miners were hit hardest by changes in the production process , having traditionally been given the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As jobs disappeared , many Black miners moved further north to find work in industrial cities like Pittsburgh or Cleveland .
“ The decline of union jobs is the number one reason for West Virginia ’ s drop in terms of going from a blue to a red state , ” said Ted Boettner , senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute .
“ If rural areas don ’ t have unionization , people of color , or highly educated people , they tend to be very red.
” Despite Donald Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , coal jobs have continued to decline sharply throughout his administration : There are at least 6,400 fewer coal miners nationwide than when he took office .
Job losses and mine closures in coal are happening faster than at any point since the Eisenhower administration .
Demand for coal power is expected to fall an additional 20 percent by the end of the year , with more energy now generated from renewables than coal for the first time ever .
West Virginians have little to show for all the wealth that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ century and a half , outside of toxic water and a tax base under increasing strain .
On strike in 2018 , teachers chanted about raising taxes on fossil fuels to fund public education and public employee health insurance .
Some candidates see an opening for creative approaches .
“ A lot of people across the political spectrum recognize that West Virginia has been taken advantage of for decades , ” Kunkel said .
That ’ s even more true now that companies are using bankruptcy to walk away from pension and health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to remediate the land they ’ ve mined .
“ Increasingly there ’ s a resignation that the coal industry is not coming back to what it was and we need to be doing something different here , and diversify our economy.
” Kunkel is running on a New Deal for West Virginia focused on bringing in federal money to create jobs and repair crumbling infrastructure to help diversify an economy where many people still lack access to clean water and broadband .
She ’ s one of several candidates up and down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t Wait , its vision born out of nearly 200 town halls and volunteer conversations with some 11,000 West Virginians .

The state, some people emphasize, isn’t right-wing so much as jaded. “It’s not surprising that people got disenchanted with the Democratic Party over that time,” said Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst and the Democratic candidate running to unseat Republican Alex Mooney in West Virginia’s 2nd congressional district. “The Republican Party has not done anything to help people’s economic situation either. West Virginia is more of an anti-establishment state than a deeply red state.”
Much of that stems from the state’s history of coal mining. From the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 to the Mine Wars in the 1970s, West Virginia’s coal mines were home to some of the country’s most militant, multiracial labor struggles in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Black miners who had migrated from the deep South, white Appalachians, and Southern and Eastern European immigrants stood together on United Mineworkers of America picket lines. UMWA President John L. Lewis was for a time among the country’s most influential labor leaders and pushed the New Deal to the left, though he was considerably to the right of many of the socialist and Communist organizers who organized in the mines; for years, pockets of West Virginia were red in a socialist rather than a Republican sense. Mechanization and strip mining—using explosives to exploit coal seams closer to the surface—proved a lucrative way to shed workers, as it required fewer of them, and an aid to coal barons trying to break unions. Black miners were hit hardest by changes in the production process, having traditionally been given the most dangerous and least skilled jobs. As jobs disappeared, many Black miners moved further north to find work in industrial cities like Pittsburgh or Cleveland. “The decline of union jobs is the number one reason for West Virginia’s drop in terms of going from a blue to a red state,” said Ted Boettner, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute. “If rural areas don’t have unionization, people of color, or highly educated people, they tend to be very red.”
Despite Donald Trump’s promises to bring them back, coal jobs have continued to decline sharply throughout his administration: There are at least 6,400 fewer coal miners nationwide than when he took office. Job losses and mine closures in coal are happening faster than at any point since the Eisenhower administration. Demand for coal power is expected to fall an additional 20 percent by the end of the year, with more energy now generated from renewables than coal for the first time ever. West Virginians have little to show for all the wealth that’s flowed out of their state the last century and a half, outside of toxic water and a tax base under increasing strain. On strike in 2018, teachers chanted about raising taxes on fossil fuels to fund public education and public employee health insurance.


newrepublic--2020-10-23--Don’t Reboot the 2016 Horror Show

Don’t Reboot the 2016 Horror Show

More than 200,000 lives lost in the United States , and counting .
The worst economic downturn of the century .
Armed gunmen invading state legislative sessions .
Journalists beaten by police officers .
Domestic terrorists coddled by cops .
Protesters swooped up by unidentified police forces .
A president whose campaign openly stokes chaos and violence while refusing to assure the American people that he would relinquish power should he lose the election .
This is the stuff of disaster movies : the apocalyptic unraveling of a nation nearing the brink , thrown into crisis after crisis while the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oval Office .
As drama , it ’ s a story that should be concluding with a lopsided victory for the not-Trump candidate , yet the fact that there is even a remote possibility Donald Trump may win reelection is what turns this spectacle into horror .
True to the genre , as the bodies pile up , the specter of mistakes , oversights , and outright denial constitutes the cautionary tale of what not to do .
The horror is not that its victims are without agency , but that they fail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this 2020 sequel didn ’ t heed the clear lessons of its cataclysmic defeat in 2016 .
One would think that strategies to survive this do-over would disarm the racism and misogyny that launched the franchise , but this sequel ’ s band of would-be survivors seems to have learned little from the shocking origin story .
Much of our avoidance of the severe constraints that white supremacy and patriarchy impose on our “ democratic ” process comes from a fear that to engage injustice is to reinforce it—that to talk about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that to talk about sexism is to be sexist .
But to concede that view is to lay down our analytic weapons , and provide an easy route for the horror to prevail again .
The perfect storm of denial has gotten us to a point where this election is not the surefire refusal of neo-fascism that it should be .
And this gradual unfolding of the story is what has me openly talking back to the unfolding drama on the national stage , as we still do in scary movies at my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re not quarantined , I guess ) .
Here ’ s my list of five features of the 2016 debacle that we should have prepared for , but didn ’ t .

1. The crisis in voter suppression is a mortal threat to American democracy; it should have been a cornerstone of Democratic mobilization.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over two million votes, and without 80,000 votes split between Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Trump would not be sitting in the White House. With such thin margins, it’s not surprising that vote suppression, discouragement, and denial—timeworn ploys lifted from the American history of totalitarian rule—became a go-to tactic wielded by Republicans after Obama’s 2008 election and deployed in red and battleground states. Marshaled by the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council in numerous state legislatures, trumped-up allegations of voter fraud were weaponized to gut the electorate, creating rules that disproportionately excluded Democratic-leaning voters. (For a detailed review of the American right’s voter-suppression putsch, see David Daley’s “A Cancer on the Ballot.”) And as Republicans dug up this undying relic of Jim Crow, activists who sought to ring the alarm reported the Democratic-leaning establishment as unresponsive, ignoring its all-consuming stench. It was, they say, a discordant note in the praisesong of post-racialism.
In the 2013 decision Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court jumped on the post-racial bandwagon, contending that voter turnout and activism measured during Obama’s presidential runs were strong enough to justify overlooking volumes of evidence of voter suppression in the states under the jurisdiction of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Pivoting on a core conception of color blindness that blithely ignores the histories and continuing inequalities of ballot access in many states, the complaints of unfair treatment that state election officials mounted in Shelby reflected the kinds of resentments for being held accountable for past sins that circulate among the purveyors of white racial grievance today. This fusion of racial grievance and post-racialism created a toxic brew, poisonous to the ongoing efforts to contest white supremacy and protective of the invidious status quo that the Voting Rights Act had tried to interrupt.
The deterioration of the right to vote should have prompted a massive media, judicial, and legislative campaign grounded in the celebratory narrative of American democracy. It’s a moral and political issue that might have been won. Instead, it has been an afterthought until now—a missed opportunity that favors Trump.


newrepublic--2020-10-23--The Bernie Organizers Who Want to Elect Biden—Then Defeat Him

“ I get it , ” Mondaire Jones says into the camera , shaking his head .
He is speaking on a Thursday night four weeks out from the election , to the virtual audience of a virtual rally hosted by Our Revolution , the PAC created by Bernie Sanders after his first presidential run in 2016 ; someone has just asked him about Joe Biden .
Fresh off a primary victory in the wealthy , largely white suburbs of New York , Jones , who grew up in Section 8 housing in his district , is poised to become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congress .
He got there on a platform of policies that Sanders championed and that Biden has largely rejected—measures like a Green New Deal and Medicare for All .
So he opens with a proviso : “ None of us … had Joe Biden as our first choice.
” Still , he goes on , “ I can ’ t do any of the things that I ran on without electing him president.
” In a post–Bernie Sanders electoral field , candidates like Jones and groups like Our Revolution face the awkward double-step @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organizational capacity behind a presidential candidate who has repudiated many of the broad social-democratic programs and working-class politics that they stand for .
They are under no illusions about the odds of a Biden presidency suddenly pivoting to enact a bold progressive agenda .
Instead , grassroots organizers on the left who found an ideological home in the Sanders campaign , as well as a sizable number of former Sanders operatives themselves , are all now in the position of fighting like hell to elect their own opponent .
The move may feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ straightforward from a strategic perspective .
“ Voting is a tactic , period , ” said Winnie Wong , a veteran of the Occupy movement and a former political adviser to Sanders .
Wong is now a part of Vote Trump Out , one of a handful of campaigns devised by yet more Sanders staffers in the wake of his primary defeat .
For those behind Vote Trump Out and its sister project , Not Him , Us ( a play on Sanders ’ s own slogan , “ Not Me , Us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that defeating Donald Trump is necessary to realize any one of the majoritarian policies that Sanders ran on .
As Jonathon Smucker , an organizer with Not Him , Us , put it , “ For us to get anywhere , to put demands on the system , we need to have someone who is at the very least vulnerable to our pressure .
Donald Trump is not vulnerable to our pressure.
” On November 4 , organizers will wake up and see whether their ground game paid off ; whether , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ required to count every vote , they won or lost .
But the campaign is also bigger than one election : No matter what , the outreach , deep organizing , and local conversations about stakes and power they will have engaged in are precisely the kind of turnout strategy that Sanders tried to build but that organizers rightly observed will take longer than the course of one campaign cycle .
That work has to penetrate deeper , pull more people in , and construct a coalition that strategizes and fights in all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end , for many on the left , this moment , which has been billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event and a singular showdown between good and evil , is really about the essentially timeless work of building power .
Even if the electoral strategy is clear , the marketing campaign is more subtle .
Many of those on the left who are waging collective struggles suddenly find that their short-term goal—evicting a fascist from the White House—aligns with the goals of the Democratic establishment .
This presents something of a rhetorical challenge as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the party as lacking credibility and who were attracted to the Sanders campaign for this very reason .
The crucial difference , these organizers insist , is that while party elites would have us vote Biden into office and then spend four years placidly receiving whatever milquetoast program he sees fit to roll out—you ’ ll see this articulated most explicitly by pundits fantasizing about a post-Biden return to a previous state of passive bliss—those agitating for climate justice or student debt cancellation see Biden as a brief detour on the long path @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unto himself .
“ This is necessarily a two-step campaign , ” Dan Sherrell of Vote Trump Out told me .
As the name of his organization would suggest , ending the current regime is the first step .
The second step is to take position so that the moment Joe Biden steps into office , he finds a well-organized coalition breathing down his neck .

That’s a difficult strategy to realize, which is why the movement has to grow—so the demands can carry the weight necessary to win real concessions. Organizers today are wary of repeating the mistakes of the Obama campaign in 2008, when voters motivated by transformational politics helped push the candidate over the finish line and then took a step back, putting their trust in an administration that ultimately failed to deliver on many of their priorities. Still, “Blue No Matter Who” is much catchier than Vote for Joe Biden in order to avoid four more years of a proto-fascist and then immediately pressure him to enact a working-class agenda through sustained grassroots movements. These groups have had to be thoughtful about their messaging.
The first move is to be clear-eyed with voters about the limits of a Biden administration. “We’re not trying to sell Biden to the left,” Wong explained. Casting Biden as a kind of covert progressive is not just in bad faith, it’s bad strategy. It will ring hollow to the people Wong and her colleagues are trying to reach. Instead, the idea is to meet people where they’re at, including and especially if that means feeling disaffected about the state of electoral politics. There is no need to pretend that Biden and the Democratic Party will hand over anything willingly—they will need to be beaten. The approach, as Sherrell puts it, goes something like: “We don’t like this guy either, but he’s the target we’d far rather have in the White House.”
Then there is the issue of what Sherrell calls the “theater of individual actors” or what Jesse Myerson identified last month as the “voter-consumer” problem—the idea that voting in the presidential election is the stuff of our political identities, an act of self-expression that we exercise once every few years before leaving the rest of the work to the adults in elected office. As Vote Trump Out sees it, this tendency to reduce politics to a few national races only serves the interests of a liberal establishment that would no doubt prefer that working-class people grit their teeth, vote for the Democrat, and then stay out of the streets of cities run by Democrats, refrain from challenging incumbents in primary races, and rely on the necrotic incrementalism that the party has leaned on for decades. (This has more or less been made explicit by Democratic leadership.) But the outsize role of voting in shaping our own political subjectivity stretches across the political spectrum. And within the logic of the voter-as-consumer, trying to turn out skeptical voters who don’t feel that their vote has been earned can appear indistinguishable from a kind of vote-shaming.


newrepublic--2020-10-23--Joe Biden and the Return of the Dreaded Bipartisan Commission

Joe Biden finally has a court-packing answer—sort of .
After dodging the question of what he would do about the Supreme Court , he told CBS ’ s Norah O ’ Donnell he would create a “ bipartisan commission ” to study and recommend possible reforms and report back to him in six months , should he be elected .
“ There are a number of things that our constitutional scholars have debated , and I ’ ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make , ” Biden said .
“ There are a number of alternatives that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in substance , not that different from Biden ’ s previous nonanswers on the very same question .
Pressed on whether he would push to expand the court , Biden has consistently responded with variations of “ it depends.
” First , Biden said it was dependent on what Senate Republicans did about the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett , which progressed from committee amid Democratic protests on Thursday .
Now Biden is saying it depends on what his bipartisan commission recommends—even though its suggestions may not come until next summer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may well have begun a Reign of Terror .
The timing of Biden ’ s new answer is certainly not coincidental .
In the first debate , Trump hounded Biden on the issue of court-packing , and for the president ’ s backers , it was the silver lining of an otherwise atrocious performance .
Biden ’ s blue ribbon commission was a way to take an arrow—possibly the only arrow—out of Trump ’ s quiver before the debate on Thursday night .
It is , first and foremost , a short-term political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ blue ribbon ” bipartisan commission ( it ’ s unclear why such commissions are always given prizes as if they were farm animals ) , a depressing hallmark of the Obama era , is also telling .
The constant pining for bipartisanship was perhaps the most damaging strategic error of Obama ’ s first term , exemplified by the long , lonely search for a Republican vote on the Affordable Care Act and an austerity-embracing bipartisan commission on “ fiscal responsibility.
” In a polarized , partisan age , the bipartisan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of overcoming a gridlocked Congress .
Elected Republicans may not be willing to break ranks , but , in theory , GOP-aligned “ experts ” might—providing the pressure needed to actually get something done .
In practice , however , they either achieved not much at all or led to nightmarish results .
Simpson-Bowles , the commission on fiscal responsibility , was a disaster .
Looking at the post-2008 economic wreckage , the commission proceeded from the incorrect presumption that the economic downturn was the result of the federal deficit and not the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It recommended deep cuts to entitlements and spending .
“ Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems , Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old , same old tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net , ” wrote The New York Times ’ Paul Krugman in 2010 .

Joe Biden finally has a court-packing answer—sort of. After dodging the question of what he would do about the Supreme Court, he told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell he would create a “bipartisan commission” to study and recommend possible reforms and report back to him in six months, should he be elected. “There are a number of things that our constitutional scholars have debated, and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make,” Biden said. “There are a number of alternatives that go well beyond court-packing.”
It is, in substance, not that different from Biden’s previous nonanswers on the very same question. Pressed on whether he would push to expand the court, Biden has consistently responded with variations of “it depends.” First, Biden said it was dependent on what Senate Republicans did about the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, which progressed from committee amid Democratic protests on Thursday. Now Biden is saying it depends on what his bipartisan commission recommends—even though its suggestions may not come until next summer, by which time conservatives on the court may well have begun a Reign of Terror.