newrepublic--2020-08-14--The Secret
History of Ronald Reagan’s Letters

Ronald Reagan began laying the groundwork for his 1980 presidential run almost immediately after his defeat in his campaign for the 1976 Republican nomination .
The work consisted primarily of hundreds of speeches in hotel ballrooms across the country .
The most important addressed high-minded fora like the Foreign Policy Association in New York and the Public Affairs Council in Washington , D.C. , from texts carefully worked over by many hands in order to present the former governor as a dignified statesman in the broad center of respectable opinion .
The vast majority , however , were stops on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circuit.
” It was there that , for a $ 5,000 fee , Reagan presented the same sort of fantastical anti-big government parables he ’ d been offering up to gatherings of trade organizations , civic clubs , conservative groups , and ( for a discount ) Republican organizations since the early 1960s—with plenty of loony Cold War panic stirred in for good measure .
For instance , the time in Palm Beach , Florida , in 1977 , when he fantastically claimed that the Soviet Union had sent 20 million young people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society in the event of nuclear war .
The Soviets had supposedly also “ dispersed their industry ” in preparation for an ultimatum the Kremlin intended to issue to the United States “ as early as next year and at least by 1981 ” : Surrender , or face Armageddon .
According to Reagan , the Soviets believed “ that if there was such a nuclear exchange , they could destroy us and we couldn ’ t destroy them.
” He sounded like Dr. Strangelove .
Which presented quite the dilemma for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like Peter Hannaford and Michael Deaver—who hoped to reassure establishment elites that , despite what you might have heard about Ronald Reagan being a dangerous extremist , he actually was one of them .
By 1978 , any number of initiatives were underway to advance that crucial political goal .
One went by the acronym PTWWT .
That stood for “ People to Whom We Talk ” : a continually updated list distributed to reporters to reassure them of Reagan ’ s association with distinguished foreign policy personages like Henry Kissinger , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rowen of the RAND Corporation .
A related effort was the “ SP Program ” : a formal process for staffers to draft letters to opinion leaders for the governor to “ sign personally .
”

You can find them filed away in the papers of Hannaford and Deaver at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. They frequently praised books and articles the recipient had written. On December 14, 1978, for example, an SP letter went out to The New York Times’s most liberal columnist Anthony Lewis, responding to his piece about famous Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist Mark Lane. “It is probably safe to say that over the years, had we compared notes, we would have found ourselves in disagreement on many issues,” the letter ran. “But when your column ‘The Mark of Zorro’ caught up with me on my return from Europe the other day, I found myself in agreement with every paragraph. Perhaps we can become co-chairmen of the Ad Hoc Committee to Tune Out Mark Lane.… Thanks for saying what needed saying.… Sincerely, Ronald Reagan.”
The rightward-tending Democratic Party intellectuals of the 1960s and ’70s—the “neoconservatives”—were a special focus. For instance, an SP letter went out to “Norman and Midge”: Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, and his wife Midge Decter, of Harper’s. It had Reagan claiming to have “finally caught up with the Sunday New York Times of June 11 and your article ‘The Cold War Again.’ I think you made an excellent point about the semantic differential in the U.S. and Soviet interpretations of agreements such as SALT I and SALT II.”
Another special focus was moderate Republican elected officials. “Dear Pete,” a letter ran to Delaware’s Governor du Pont. “I saw an item the other day about your signing into law a bill which allows Delaware motorcyclists to ride without helmets. I agree with your remark that anyone who does so is ‘damn foolish,’ but I agree wholeheartedly with your action. We went through the same thing in Sacramento, with the same conclusion—it just wasn’t any of government’s business.”


newrepublic--2020-08-14--The Real Pandemic Gap Is Between the Comfortable and the Afflicted

The stories from the front lines of this country ’ s abandonment of the poor in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic are not in short supply .
The Washington Post reports on the devastating stories of workers waiting for benefits from the cold and broken bureaucracy of D.C. ’ s unemployment bureau ; one ends the story with $ 1 left in his wallet .
The Guardian brings us stories from the Deep South , where a young Black woman named Sandy Oliver counts off the number of people she knows who have died from coronavirus— “ at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agonizing inevitability of Covid-19 spreading through a cramped household of low-income Hispanic workers and their families in Marin County , where some of the richest people in America reside .
These outrageous stories , and the millions more that remain unknown to the press , depict lives being lived in our failing nation .
This is the real world .
But another real world exists on top of this reality , smothering it : The world of the rich and powerful , where things are mostly fine .
Walk up 14th Street NW @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weeknight , and the bars and restaurants are almost as packed as they were before the pandemic .
Le Diplomate , the trendy French restaurant , has spilled onto Q Street and never appears less than bustling .
In a city where low-wage workers choose between the risk of dying of coronavirus or dying of hunger , the professional class of politicos and other workers from the Bullshit-Job Boom face an easier choice : Moules or Lobster Frites ?
The coronavirus pandemic is , at least , highly visible in the media .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ different from many other problems to which we ’ ve become more accustomed : the income gap , the opioid crisis , the rise in homelessness .
These and other ongoing disasters affected millions of people long before this virus appeared on these shores and have naturally become intensified and sharpened since then .
But the arrival of an even worse situation doesn ’ t seem to have sparked action .
It ’ s like there was already a raging fire that we were just letting burn , and now Godzilla has arrived—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too .
Sure , why not .
Go for it , dude .
We ’ re left to wonder why Washington isn ’ t doing anything .
But why aren ’ t we doing anything , either ?
How is it that Mitch McConnell leaves his house without being pelted with rotten tomatoes ?
How can our leaders , and the people who work for them , continue to show their faces in public ?
When is the fire going to reach them ?
What has to give ?
And why hasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may be that the rich , including not just billionaires but the ordinary affluent of America , are not in anywhere near as much peril .
And our politics is tuned to their frequency , whatever ’ s happening to the poor .
It was clear from the outset that the impact of the pandemic was going to be felt disproportionately among certain populations and along predictable demographic lines .
Even still , it was possible to be taken aback by the rapid and pinpoint-accurate way the disease zeroed-in on the groups most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we heard about rich people and celebrities accessing testing when others couldn ’ t , the Manhattan elite fleeing to their second homes , and the hoarded equipment sought by the super-wealthy .
Now , months into the pandemic , there is another dynamic becoming clear : The crisis , predictably , barely affects the super-rich—but it ’ s not all that bad for the regular-rich , either .

These little bonuses of a comfortable life range from basic rights that the government ought to provide—but doesn’t—to conveniences and minor luxuries, none of which are universally available. Even though you’d never mistake this life for those who live in the income stratosphere, the availability of these perks tends to warp one’s understanding of the dire needs of less fortunate Americans, as does the American tendency to blame individuals for their poverty. The American political system runs on a heady cocktail of simultaneously coddling and threatening the upper-middle classes—constantly assuring them that they won’t have to give up anything to help the poor but also warning them of the consequences of trying. Employer-sponsored insurance is a great example of this dynamic: Those who profit from its existence maintain their grip on this wealth by threatening those who depend on this health coverage with the idea that everything will be worse if this comparative privilege is lost. You might not love your private insurance, but wouldn’t want to lose it, would you?
The economic toll of the pandemic is so vast and wide-reaching that it has affected even people who are pretty well-off: Pew reports 18 percent of “upper income” (above $112,600 in annual income) people have been laid off or lost their jobs since the pandemic started (compared with 39 percent of “lower income” people, who earn less than $37,500). But those with comfortable, professional-class work—people who do jobs like marketing or social media or, indeed, writing about national politics for a magazine—are far more likely to have remained comfortable. People whose jobs were terrible, painful, and tiring in normal times are more likely to have been through hell in the last few months. And, crucially, the less money you had before the pandemic, the harder it is to weather the loss of a job. As Pew reported, 75 percent of those in the upper-income strata said they had emergency funds to survive three months of an emergency; just 23 percent of lower-income people said the same.
For a variety of completely unacceptable reasons, federal and state governments have proven unwilling to provide adequate relief that would have allowed more Americans to avoid the more severe impacts of the pandemic. Lawmakers could have paid workers to stay home, provided ongoing support to industries that cannot safely open, or offered financial assistance to parents for child care instead of rushing them back to school. These sensible options weren’t on the table. After the first round of paltry relief expired at the end of July, nothing has happened. Like someone breaking their diet with one extra cookie and deciding they might as well go HAM on a whole sleeve of Milanos, the nation’s leaders have blown past their deadline and have thrown up their hands. They’ve tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas, man.


newrepublic--2020-08-14--“Fiasco” Stars the Real Heroes of Boston’s School Desegregation

The effect of Louise Day Hicks ’ s voice lay as much in its texture as her words .
She was careful to keep her racism from spilling into the explicit , so when the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1965 that “ delays in desegregating school systems are no longer tolerable , ” she used soft , grandmotherly tones to make her acid remarks .
“ If the suburbs are so interested in solving the problems of the Negro , ’ ’ she cooed in 1966 , “ why don ’ t they build subsidized housing for them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elected chairperson of the Boston School Committee in 1961 and became famous for opposing desegregation , was implying that America ’ s legislators all lived out in the suburbs ; their kids weren ’ t the city whites who ’ d be forced to share classrooms with bussed-in Black children , so how could they possibly understand ?
It ’ s precisely the kind of bad-faith twisting of civil rights rhetoric that Leon Neyfakh investigates in the new season of “ Fiasco ” in “ The Battle for Boston ” about the so-called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a misnomer , we learn in the very first episode .
Neyfakh tells us that sources hung up on him when he mentioned the word “ busing.
” That was Hicks ’ s dog whistle term , former Boston National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President Tom Atkins explains , not theirs : “ Busing was a nationwide codeword ... .
They didn ’ t have to tell us what it meant .
We knew what it meant.
” History is made of language , and language is slippery , these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bigots ’ vocabulary without even knowing it .
Ostensibly well-known but actually little understood episodes in American twentieth-century history are Neyfakh ’ s specialty .
After leaving Slate and his popular podcast “ Slow Burn , ” which had delighted listeners with its ground-up retelling of the Nixon and Clinton impeachments , he took the historical format over to Luminary , a subscription app , in the form of “ Fiasco.
” The previous two seasons have covered the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida and Iran-Contra .
The famous backlash to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fits right into the theme : Many people learned about it in grade school and have the level of understanding to match .
Over the first half of the series ( four of a total eight episodes were released to reviewers ) , Neyfakh introduces us to the real lead characters in this story while laying out the deeper context necessary to understand their significance .
After the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decisions in 1954 and 1955 , school boards responded by commissioning investigations into racial inequality in the classroom .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lead Boston ’ s effort .
A local mother herself , she found that schools with all-white student bodies had gleaming new facilities , but the all-Black schools in Roxbury made do with broken crayons and what teacher Jean McGuire called “ boxes of old , beat-up pencils.
” When Batson met with their invariably white principals , they said wildly racist things to her face .

It was the labor of people like Batson and Atkins that set the real political action in motion by connecting the land’s highest court’s decisions to the daily reality of the classroom in a way that would, in theory, refrain from directly accusing the school board of racism. They did so by underscoring the legal difference between de jure segregation, which was legislated by the authorities, and de facto segregation, which arose as a result of racist policies in housing and other town planning matters.
After being shut down by Louise Day Hicks and the rest of the Boston school board, which was at the time little more than a rigged labor agency for white Irish Bostonians, the desegregation campaign only gained momentum. Its climax was a federal court’s ruling which ordered that Boston’s most segregated neighborhoods be integrated. It’s that line in the history textbooks that “Fiasco” pauses over to note the names and meetings and events that “common knowledge” skims over.
We hear a detailed account of the relationship between community leaders, the children of a city, and the hydra-headed monster that is the American judicial system in the words of the people who were there. We don’t just learn about the court cases that punctuate this story but about the personality of the relevant judges from their law clerks.


Suspect Policy

It ’ s difficult to see Faten Abu Ali ’ s expression , since her white veil leaves only her eyes uncovered .
But those eyes are red , and her voice quivers with fear .
With good reason : Last week , the government unsealed an indictment charging her 23-year-old son , Ahmed , with aiding Al Qaeda terrorists and plotting to assassinate President Bush—charges that could carry an 80-year prison sentence .
Yet , while frightened , she also feels vindicated .
“ We consider it a victory just having our son here , ” she says .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ past 20 months , Ahmed Abu Ali , an American citizen , wasn ’ t here .
He was detained at Al Hair Prison in Saudi Arabia as a suspected terrorist , and , though he may indeed be one , he was never charged with any crime .
Not only did the Bush administration never seek Abu Ali ’ s extradition , but officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation also took part in his Saudi-led interrogation—which , when the FBI was not there , may have included torture .
In response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a civil action against the U.S. government last summer , petitioning Judge John Bates of the D.C .
Circuit to issue a writ of habeas corpus , which would have forced the government to return Abu Ali to the United States .
As the case proceeded—over the objections of the Justice Department—the government did just that : Abu Ali was suddenly whisked back , appearing on U.S. soil for the first time in nearly two years at federal district court last Tuesday , to face criminal charges .
But the civil case doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s return .
It seeks a determination that his detention and interrogation in Saudi Arabia were unlawful , a determination that could challenge perhaps the most controversial aspect of the war on terrorism : the policy of “ extraordinary rendition , ” whereby suspected terrorists are sent to foreign allies , where their questioning need not be inhibited by U.S. laws barring torture .
Bates ruled in December that the U.S. government had to disclose in court any information about its role in Abu Ali ’ s foreign detention , putting rendition on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Abu Ali ’ s criminal indictment threatens that disclosure .
Now that he will stand trial , the original purpose of his civil suit—returning him to the United States—has been satisfied , and the Justice Department will seek to dismiss it .
If Justice succeeds , it will have preempted one of the most significant attempts yet to cast light on extraordinary rendition .
In other words , an initial victory for Abu Ali might represent a setback for keeping the war on terrorism in line with U.S. human rights obligations .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Qaeda bomb in Riyadh killed more than 30 people , Saudi authorities arrested Abu Ali at the Islamic University of Medina , where he was studying on a scholarship .
Three other American citizens were also detained , extradited to the United States , and charged with involvement in a Northern Virginia jihadist cell .
Initially , American officials suspected Abu Ali of being part of the same cell .
Five days after Abu Ali ’ s arrest , FBI agents searched his family ’ s house in Virginia and discovered jihadist books @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a document on how to avoid surveillance .

According to a Justice Department spokesman, Bates’s ruling “had nothing to do” with the decision to finally indict Abu Ali, whom the government says confessed the Bush plot to the Saudis in July 2003—a confession the defense will undoubtedly argue was coerced. Not surprisingly, Abu Ali’s lawyers see things differently. “The timing speaks for itself,” says David Cole, a Georgetown law professor representing Abu Ali. “Only when the government was threatened with having to disclose its arrangements with Saudi Arabia regarding Mr. Abu Ali’s detention did it take action, bring him back, and indict him.” And that’s hardly the only matter under dispute. In court last week, Abu Ali’s lawyers attempted to show evidence of torture. The next day, the government alleged that a doctor who examined Abu Ali in the U.S. “found no evidence of any physical mistreatment.” And, in court Tuesday, the defense claimed that, in between interrogation sessions with the FBI in September 2003, Abu Ali was “handcuffed to something overhead” by his Saudi jailers.
In a hearing last Thursday, Bates gave Abu Ali’s lawyers until next week to file papers arguing against the dismissal of the civil case. If Bates rules against them, however, efforts to publicly examine the U.S. role in Abu Ali’s detention and possible abuse could founder, since a criminal case might not shed as much light. “There are many things that could happen in a criminal proceeding. The government could decide to treat him as an unlawful enemy combatant,” says Morton Sklar, another of Abu Ali’s lawyers—a decision that could seriously limit the information that would come out of any proceeding. “You have no guarantee the facts are going to come out.” Similarly, legal experts say, the government could seek to leverage the gravity of the charges against Abu Ali to get him to drop the civil case as part of a plea agreement.
If the civil case goes away, the public could be denied a trove of information about unspeakable acts. On March 13, 2002, administration officials—allegedly including then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales—prepared a memo authorizing rendition. Its contents have never been revealed, but its consequences have. Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib, arrested in Pakistan in October 2001, alleges that the United States turned him over to Egypt, where he was “suspended from hooks on the wall.” Canadian citizen Maher Arar, arrested by American officials at Kennedy Airport in September 2002, was rendered to the Syrians, who allegedly beat him for over a year. The White House’s official posture was expressed by Gonzales in January. “It is my understanding that the United States does not render individuals to countries where we believe it is more likely than not they will be tortured,” he wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee. But, in the war on terrorism, the United States believes what it wants to about torture: Syria, after all, has a long history of human rights abuses. This see-no-evil posture is exactly what makes the civil case so significant, whether or not Abu Ali is guilty. The civil case’s disclosure order could jeopardize the position that the administration is unaware of what happens to detainees it sends to foreign countries. “The filings suggest the case has the potential to expose the fallacy of the clean-hands theory—that, if we just send [suspected terrorists] to foreign countries, we’re fine,” says Juliette Kayyem, director of the national security program at Harvard University. That is, unless the administration shuts the case down first.


newrepublic--2020-08-17--“Being Vegan Doesn’t Save My Ass When Fires Come”

In late October 2019 , the Kincade Fire spread from the area near a power plant in northern Sonoma County , California , to the towns of Windsor and Healdsburg and to the northeast part of Santa Rosa .
It burned 77,758 acres of land and destroyed 374 buildings .
The fire prompted the largest mass evacuation—200,000 people—in county history .
KerryAnn Laufer , a textile and pottery artist , got the alert to evacuate around 10:30 a.m. “ I remember thinking , ‘ Oh , I ’ ve got five-and-a-half hours , ’ ” she said .
She made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some documents ; her two 40-year-old Amazon parrots ; and her 14-year-old cat .
“ I wish now that I took some pictures , too.
” As she left her house in Healdsburg to drive 15 miles to a friend ’ s house in Santa Rosa , the fires were still about 20 miles away , and the winds hadn ’ t picked up yet .
The sky was bright blue and clear , and there was no fire or smoke in sight .
Laufer dropped her parrots and her cat at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ felt relatively calm on her drive .
After all , this was her third wildfire evacuation .
“ It looked like a beautiful day , and everybody was leaving in such a calm and orderly way , “ Laufer said .
“ The emergency personnel were so ahead of everything .
Everybody was prepared to follow the fire precautions .
Our community experienced the Tubbs Fire only two years ago .
”

“I’m 62-years-old and I reconcile my own participation in this consumer culture that we all are in,” she said. “In the past, I was also a victim of burglaries, so over the years I’ve worked on spiritually not being so attached to my things. I seem to have a better reaction to losing my things than a lot of other fire survivors. What I am really grieving is being able to go home and be in my space. I’m not really grieving my stuff. I also suffer from too much information. It is a lot to deal with emotionally: insurance, taxes, replacing documents.”
Laufer doesn’t know whether she will stay in the area and rebuild or move away. “I am in this in-between situation,” she said. “Something has definitely shifted in me, the way I look at things. I became vegan five years ago, especially to make a personal impact on the planet by changing my consumer habits. I’ve marched and become an advocate, but being vegan doesn’t save my ass when fires come through. I need to really look at where I am in my life and look at the situation California is in and the world is in. And I cannot look at it just as my problem. I am one of the people affected by it, but it is not just my problem. We need more immediate action and to stop kidding ourselves that everything is good. Because it isn’t.
“We all are on the leading edge of becoming climate refugees. I wish I knew what to do, but I don’t because I am still traumatized by all the changes in my life.”


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Joe Kennedy’s Utterly Pointless, Utterly Consequential Campaign

On November 4 , 1979 , CBS aired an hour-long primetime special on the career and anticipated presidential campaign of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy .
Incidentally , this was the very same night Americans learned that hostages had been taken in Tehran—altogether , a busy and politically consequential evening .
After an introductory montage on Kennedy ’ s life , the broadcast opens on a bright summer day in Hyannis Port , where Kennedy and his mother are seen strolling through the family compound .
In a dry voiceover , CBS ’ s Roger Mudd concedes the imagery ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is probably the way a mother whose son is running for the presidency would like a documentary about him to begin , ” he says .
“ A nice walking shot of the two of them as he sets off with her grandchildren on a summer camping trip.
” But it ’ s quickly established that the trip itself is actually one of the family ’ s meandering publicity tours—taken with journalists and handlers in tow .
“ This is the raw material for a magazine cover story , ” Mudd says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an amusement park near Springfield gives the press plenty of time to watch and compare notes.
” The program then cuts to another event : the annual Robert F. Kennedy memorial tennis tournament .
“ It is a command performance for all the Kennedys , ” Mudd remarks atop footage of Ted and his wife .
“ Even for Joan Kennedy , whose appearances with her husband are now so rare , the marriage seems to exist only on select occasions.
” In less than ten minutes , a special that could have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself as a debacle .
And the worst was yet to come .
Mudd would go on not only to a detailed reexamination of Mary Jo Kopechne ’ s death at Chappaquiddick—including a visit to the site of the accident and a long , tense exchange with Kennedy—but an interview in which Kennedy would be infamously stumped by the softest of all softball questions : “ Why do you want to be president ?
” Nearly ten seconds pass before Kennedy begins a dry , elliptical answer about measuring up to the rest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inflation , and unemployment .
The remainder of the interview hasn ’ t been remembered as well , but Kennedy ’ s response to Mudd ’ s next inquiry was just as awful .
“ What would you do different from Carter ?
”

In fairness, Kennedy has gone through the motions of offering a case against Markey.
In fairness, Kennedy has gone through the motions of offering a case against Markey. Last month, for instance, Kennedy’s campaign put out a memo criticizing Markey for leaving several towns off a map on his website listing services he’d provided to various communities in the state—evidence, they said, that Markey had lost touch with his constituents and failed to meet their needs. It was then reported that three of those towns needed far more help than the Kennedy campaign had imagined: They had been razed and submerged under a reservoir in the 1930s.
Kennedy also contends that Markey—best known as the Senate’s chief advocate for the Green New Deal, the most ambitious environmental policy agenda in American history—hasn’t made good use of his public profile as a senator. “With due respect to Senator Markey, who is a good man, there’s more to this job than the way you vote and the bills that you file,” he told a voter in February. “It comes with an ability to leverage that platform to address the issues we’re talking about and, with due respect to the senator, if you’re not going to leverage that now, given what is at stake for the Democratic Party, for the values that we hold dear in our commonwealth, that have been targeted by this administration literally from day one, if you’re not doing it now, then when?” It’s never been clear what Kennedy meant by all that. He intends to keep it that way.
Another major argument Kennedy has made for himself was capsulized in a remarkable email campaign manager Nick Clemons sent to supporters after The Boston Globe endorsed Markey a few weeks ago. “The Globe editorial board had their mind made up about Joe since before he even got in this race,” he wrote. “We heard the final decision was a close call, but in the end, the establishment voices won out. Add it to the long list of forces in this state that circle the wagons when the status quo gets challenged.”


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Joe Biden’s Great Reclamation Project

Joe Biden’s Great Reclamation Project

Provided that the polling of late summer holds ( a big “ if ” in presidential politics ) , on January 20 Joe Biden will—as a late bloomer on par with Grandma Moses—have finally achieved his life ’ s great ambition at age 78 .
As he moves into the Oval Office after his inaugural address and the congressional luncheon , Biden will face the worst set of crises buffeting America since the nineteenth century .
Only Franklin Roosevelt , taking the oath on a cloudy and gloomy March day in 1933 , inherited comparable challenges .
But the Depression @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Herbert Hoover , paralyzed though he may have been as president , was an honorable man .
Barring a dramatic turnabout in the country ’ s fortunes , Biden will confront joblessness , disease , and the hateful legacy of the most lawless president in history .
Much as in 1933 , when establishment figures such as Walter Lippmann suggested that America required a dictator for the duration of the economic emergency , the country will greet Biden ’ s first year in office as a crucial test of whether our battered democracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean that the pundit ’ s traditional late-campaign thought experiment of envisioning a Biden presidency requires an imaginative leap far beyond position papers and policy speeches .
So many issues that were points of conflict during the Democratic primaries now seem—in the midst of a pandemic—as peripheral as John Kennedy and Richard Nixon squabbling over Quemoy and Matsu , two insignificant islands off the Chinese coast , during their 1960 debates .
With Trump in apparent free fall after his disastrous Tulsa rally and his race-baiting embrace of Confederate statues , Biden , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy specifics for periodic reminders that he is neither a hate-monger nor a low-rent huckster peddling miracle virus cures from the White House .
Specifics are also in short supply for the simple reason that these days everyone in the Democratic Party , with the possible exception of John Edwards , can claim to be a Biden policy adviser .
Like any traditional presidential candidate running a big-tent campaign , Biden distributes titles with the lavishness of a shady trace-your-British-ancestry firm .
In addition to the campaign ’ s policy staffers and longtime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Biden and Bernie Sanders with great fanfare in May announced unity task forces to supposedly meld the centrist and progressive wings of the party .
In mid-July , the task forces unveiled an ambitious $ 2 trillion climate change plan ( without explaining how it would get through a closely divided Senate ) that prompted Trump to risibly claim that Biden wanted to “ abolish the suburbs.
” ( The president did not explain where he thought Biden planned to put the existing land around cities . )
After nearly four years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remember what a normal presidency feels like .
And predictions of the shape of a Biden presidency are hampered further by the inability to predict five months before the inauguration how ravaged the nation will be by both Covid-19 and the deep recession that ’ s accompanied the pandemic .
Trump ’ s own behavior in defeat will add another wild card to the deck .
Will Trump then spend November and December denouncing the legitimacy of the election ?
Or will the rejected president sulk in the Oval Office watching cable TV @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the White House after hurling the remote at a deviationist episode of Fox & Friends ?

Even if Trump balks (and it is amusing to imagine what piece of advice the forty-fifth president will leave behind in the traditional letter to his successor), the beaten-down senior career officials in each Cabinet department will undoubtedly welcome their liberators from the Biden team. The mountain of memos produced by transition officials in various offices will undoubtedly paint a bleak picture of a federal government hollowed out by Trump’s scorched-earth battle against competence. Biden policy director Stef Feldman said in an interview, “You can’t overstate the decimation of the federal workforce under Donald Trump. The task for our transition teams will be immense.”
And during the transition, every Democrat with policy or campaign experience will spend long hours staring at his or her phone, praying for a text message or a call with a summons to interview for a top Biden post. Newspaper op-eds will be written and cable TV appearances will be arranged with the single-minded goal of appealing to the Biden transition team. Already, speculation is rampant about the makeup of the Biden Cabinet and the likeliest appointees to other key administration posts. But the lists tend to recycle the same names—mostly 2020 presidential candidates and prominent members of Congress. So if you’re looking for a Democrat with military experience, it’s usually Pete Buttigieg. Amy Klobuchar gets mentioned for attorney general. In May, there was even a flurry of rumors that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Don’t bet on it. Instead, the pattern has traditionally been that the best way to earn a top job in a Democratic administration is to have served in a mid-level post the last time around. Still, there are hints from within Biden Land that this will not simply be an administration of former officials climbing a rung or two higher on the career ladder. The expectations for increased diversity in the year of Black Lives Matter represent part of the rationale. But Biden’s transition team will also reckon that the multiple devastating crises they will inherit require more than a résumé entry as an assistant secretary in the Obama or Clinton administrations.


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Can Democracy Handle Charisma?

Can Democracy Handle Charisma?

Sometimes charismatic people don ’ t know their own strength .
And sometimes they do .
In private , charismatic people light up a room and make each person feel beloved .
In public life , they ’ re the ones who convince us of unlikely futures , the big personalities who feel like friends , the politicians who inspire joyful screams and hopeful votes and angry hollers .
How charisma relates to democracy is harder to describe .
This is partly because charismatic people appear so toweringly unequal , for democracy isn ’ t supposed to have a class @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s also because charismatic leaders set our hearts racing , calling our emotions forth in public when we should–or so we imagine–be thinking and acting rationally .
Political charisma seemed less dangerous , frankly , at the end of the twentieth century when all citizens really wanted was to be inspired and Western democracies swooned regularly over boyish heartthrob leaders .
It was the age of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair , after all , a time when democratic leadership was synonymous with the ability to feel voters ’ pain , to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
By the 2000s , it was easy to think that democratic feelings were hollow but harmless : a consumerist thrill or a splash of celebrity .
Since then , the gentle portrait-studio glow has dimmed .
Populist authoritarians like Donald Trump , vulgar and hateful , possess their own charismatic power .
Trump ’ s most die-hard supporters regard him as a superhuman business genius endowed by God with athleticism and brilliance and compassion .
To some , he is the nation ’ s unlikely savior .
Yoking hopes and desires to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ twisted appeal is the sort of psychic threat to democracy that many had forgotten about or perhaps thought no longer existed .
Political emotions have come to seem unsafe at any speed .
But could democracy exist without them ?
And must our public feelings always express themselves in relation to powerful men , or do we have alternatives ?
Princeton historian David Bell ’ s book Men on Horseback : The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution helps us wrestle with these questions by unearthing the forgotten history of political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he argues that political charisma was born with modern democracy just over 200 years ago amid the Atlantic revolutions that put an end to the rule of kings and produced our world .
In many cases , political power in newly democratic states came to rest on the shoulders of men like George Washington : heroic geniuses with military expertise and virtuous reputations who seemed nevertheless familiar and approachable .
They ruled in the name of the people because they were adored , not feared .
The age of revolutions was fueled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Bell suggests provocatively , as much as it was shaped by ideas about reason , liberty , and equality .
Charismatic celebrities built modern democracies .
They also broke them .
Roving across the stormy Atlantic world from the 1760s to the 1820s , from the early United States and Napoleonic France to Haiti and Latin America , Men on Horseback contends that political charisma emerged as an appealing style for democratic rulers and dictators alike .
In other words , charismatic authoritarianism has been wrapped around democracy from the start , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politics .
Disentangling the two could be harder than we think .

As one revolution followed another and European monarchs fell like overripe fruit, the public tried to understand the nature of their new leaders. Classical references helped to heroes like Pericles or Julius Caesar. But these modern democratic titans also resembled one another. One of Napoleon’s earliest biographers called him France’s Washington; a French journalist eulogized Washington by praising Bonaparte. Toussaint Louverture, who was born into slavery and led the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) to freedom from French rule, was described to European audiences as “the Washington of the colonies” and “the Bonaparte of St. Domingo.” The French writer Chateaubriand called him “the black Napoleon.” Bolívar cast himself as the heir to Washington, Napoleon, and Louverture all at once. Each of these men, in turn, was compared with Pasquale Paoli, a magnetic Corsican liberal made famous in the English-speaking world by Scottish biographer James Boswell in the 1760s.
Leading revolutions and building new states in the name of the people, these men seemed larger than life, “world-souls” enriched by God with a range of skills and entrusted with grand destinies. But they were loved and respected on the basis of their personal qualities and achievements, not their titles or inheritances. They earned the adoration of the people in four principal ways. First, they all possessed wartime victories and impressive tactical abilities—intoxicating qualities in an age in which war was seen as a glorious alembic, testing the strong and rewarding the courageous. Second, they were saviors, appearing at times of national crisis to rescue a country from violent chaos, emancipate a people from slavery, or fend off tyrannical monarchies. Third, they were usually founding fathers who, after ushering in new states or remaking societies, stood above the daily maelstrom of factional conflict. Finally, they were men: Structured by late eighteenth-century social norms, charisma was understood as an essentially masculine virtue.
Print made all of this possible: cheap print, gutter print, highbrow print, an explosion of images and writing that circulated among increasingly literate publics in Europe and the Americas. It was in the eighteenth century that readers began consuming novels and biographies, two genres that banked on revelatory personal details to create the illusion of closeness, thus evoking strong emotional responses. By the century’s end, apocryphal stories about these heroic leaders spread like wildfire: Washington was said to have been so honest that he reported his own arboreal crimes; Napoleon, it was whispered, had restored a child to life during his military campaign in Egypt. As “creatures of print,” charismatic rulers also used pamphlets and newspapers to speak directly to the soldiers under their command and the citizens in their thrall. Images of these men on horseback or in classical profile began appearing on posters and handkerchiefs and even crockery, the pinup boys of the revolutionary age–virile and virtuous and handsome.


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Why the Media Is Uniquely Terrible at Covering the U.S. Postal Service

Four months ago , the United States Postal Service warned Congress that it could run out of money by September , requesting a $ 75 billion bailout amid an unprecedented decrease in revenue due to Covid-19 .
But it wasn ’ t until last week that the media fully woke up to the crisis at the USPS .
All it took was the president admitting , on live television , that he planned on tampering with the upcoming election .
Speaking to Fox Business ’ s Maria Bartiromo about why he opposes a Democratic stimulus bill , Donald Trump gave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they need that money in order to make the Post Office work , so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots , ” he said .
“ If they don ’ t get those two items , that means you can ’ t have universal mail-in voting , because they ’ re not equipped.
” Slowing the mail service could lead to thousands of votes being thrown out in key swing states and lengthen the time it would take to count ballots , allowing Trump to claim victory or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It was revealing that it took the president admitting to a vast ballot-tampering scheme to get cable news outlets and major newspapers to put a spotlight on the crisis at the USPS .
The roots of that crisis go back years , but the press has failed to adequately convey what ’ s happening to one of this country ’ s genuinely great institutions .
The USPS ’ s reputation as the federal government ’ s version of the DMV—a derelict organ of big government that is chronically in need of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s absorption of Republican talking points .
The president and Louis DeJoy , the almost comically corrupt Trump donor who was appointed postmaster general last month despite having no relevant experience , have made this crisis significantly worse .
Trump has always seen the Postal Service as leverage in his battle against The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos , whose main gig , Amazon , benefits from a sweetheart deal with the USPS .
DeJoy has rapidly ushered in a host of reforms aimed at cutting costs ( such as reducing overtime hours @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which should be familiar to anyone who has covered the vampiric influence of private equity in recent years .
The result has been a dramatic deterioration of service .
The USPS recently delivered more than 97 percent of its packages on time ; that number is now close to 80 percent and continues to fall .
DeJoy has also drastically cut back on letter-sorting machines .
Initially , USPS leadership insisted that these reductions were also being made in the name of efficiency , but as Vice ’ s Aaron Gordon reported on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reallocated .
Instead , DeJoy is eviscerating postal workers ’ ability to deliver the mail on time .
These machines would have been used to sort mail-in ballots in November , and there is no sensible reason for getting rid of them .
( One postal worker , who was told by higher-ups to expect to lose machines in his district , explained to me that these machines can ’ t be used for anything else and have no resale value . )
The most straightforward explanation is that DeJoy is undermining the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason that Trump is resisting funding the organization : because it helps the president ’ s prospects for reelection .

But the decimation of the USPS is not just a Trump story. The Postal Service was on the brink of collapse long before DeJoy was appointed and long before Donald Trump was elected. The corrupt tinkering of the past two months has compounded years of neglect. The privatization of the Postal Service has been a long-standing conservative project—one that has quietly been successful. Passed in 2006, The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act required USPS to fully fund its pension program 75 years in the future, blowing a $72 billion hole in the institution’s budget and instantly making it unprofitable. Without the PAEA, the USPS would have posted a profit in the years leading up to the current economic crisis. No other federal institution is forced to comply with such an absurd mandate, but the USPS does because it has been painted as a bloated bureaucracy that exists to hand money out to lazy postal workers.
The press tends to cover government agencies through a political lens that has been shaped by Republicans. When journalists see inefficiency–when they walk into the drab, life-sucking interior of the average big-city post office–they don’t see neglect or sabotage; they see “broken government.” Of course, USPS is struggling to keep up in the internet age, particularly with competitors like UPS and FedEx. (Never mind that the Postal Service deals with 100 times more volume than either company.) But Republicans dislike the post office for ideological reasons more than practical ones. That the USPS is America’s most beloved public institution, that it is actually a symbol of good government, puts a target on its back.
The press excels at covering the efficiency of private institutions but struggles to capture the values of public ones. “We’re going to kill one of the last good public institutions so that private enterprise can deliver a few more packages for less money,” Casey Taylor wrote in The New Republic last week. Furthermore, the specific reasons the USPS is struggling—an arcane financing mechanism that was demanded by Republican lawmakers and agreed to by cowardly Democrats—is never front and center. There’s only the vague impression that the Postal Service is broken, just like everything else, as if that is just the way things are.


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Lessons From the Frontlines of Global Warming

Ronnie Scott lost his wife when she tried to to rescue their dog and cat from floodwaters in West Virginia in 2016 .
Carole Duncan almost lost her 83-year-old father during Australia ’ s massive 2019 bushfires , the firefighters finding him just in time .
KerryAnn Laufer returned home days after the 2019 Kincade Fire in California to find only her fireplace still standing , while Dave Mackey saw nearly every house in his neighborhood on Grand Bahama island washed away , pummeled by raging waters and 200-mile-per-hour winds from Hurricane Dorian .
Storms , wildfires , and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intense as climate change accelerates .
Scott , Duncan , Laufer , and Mackey , who survived these extreme weather events , are among the lucky ones .
But each of them found themselves changed by the experience .
What would you do if your house burned down or your neighborhood washed away in a flood ?
How would you respond if a cataclysmic weather event killed someone you love or forced you to abandon , perhaps forever , the place you call home ?
And how would it change the way you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are at the heart of a new “ Voices from the Future ” interview series a small group of journalist , researchers , and I have developed at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University .
We have collected the stories and insights of nearly three dozen survivors on five continents , eight of which will be published in these pages over the next few weeks .
We were interested in what these survivors could tell us about the new era we are all about to face .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many people will soon be confronting similar choices and realities .
While data-driven evidence gathering and analysis are critical to understanding the policy and scientific challenges ahead , personal stories offer different and often emotionally resonant insights , particularly when it comes to the lived experience of climate change .

Floridians Tom and Linda Cianos, newly terrified of storms after being trapped in their house for 10 hours as Hurricane Irma pounded their walls, are also thinking about moving away. They increasingly feel, though, that the scale and impact of climate change mean “there’s nowhere to run to.” They used to think climate change was decades away. “I’m very, very, very scared and concerned,” Tom told the project. “I’m almost glad that we’re near the end of our lives. I really don’t think we’re going to fix this one ... I think maybe what we need to talk about is how we’re going to live with it.”
“You start believing in the human race again.”
Moving to a better place isn’t an option if you’re struggling to survive day to day. Wedding photographer Anjali Ponni Rajkumar saw that when record monsoons and devastating floods hit slum dwellers in Chennai, India. When the more fortunate arrived with pizzas, those living in huts got angry and threw them back, resentful of the inequality that leaves them so exposed. While Rakjumar’s family can store a truckload of water at home, poor residents stand in lines each day to buy a single bucket of clean water. Rakjumar blames government corruption and mismanagement.
Instability, dislocation, and disproportionate devastation for poorer populations are growing. But these climate-induced jolts are also spurring survivors to rethink their priorities and assumptions. After the 2018 Woolsey Fire near Los Angeles burned down his family’s house, architect Greg Kochanowski was stunned by the level of community support, both from neighbors and strangers. “Everywhere we turned, people were offering something—money, clothing, food, a place to rent,” he said, acknowledging that his family is still grieving over the loss. “You start believing in the human race again.”


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie

Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie

One of the strengths of the Republican Party is its message discipline .
When it finds an issue that works , it beats that issue to death , flogging it long after it stops working .
Thus after the Civil War , the party waved the “ bloody shirt ” by attacking Democrats for opposing the war , which created a continuous run of Republican presidents between 1868 and 1912 , punctuated only by a single Democrat , Grover Cleveland .
Another bloody shirt that Republicans have waved forever and plan to wave again this election cycle is “ socialism.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ marks because to hear Republicans tell it , virtually everything government does is socialism ; it is utterly foreign to the United States , and it can not be implemented without imposing tyranny on the American people , along with poverty and deprivation such as we see today in Venezuela , where socialism allegedly destroyed the country .
On July 17 , Vice President Mike Pence gave a preview of the coming socialism-addled Republican strategy rather than the actual policies of Joe Biden .
Said Pence ( emphasis added ) : Before us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dignity of every individual , and the other on the growing control of the state .
Our road leads to greater freedom and opportunity .
Their road leads to socialism and decline .
President Trump set our nation on a path to freedom and opportunity from the very first day of this administration .
But Joe Biden would set America on a path of socialism and decline… .
The Biden-Sanders agenda would set America on the path of socialism and decline… .
My fellow Americans , that ’ s the choice we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us : one of freedom and opportunity , the other of socialism and decline… .
So that ’ s the choice we face , my fellow Americans : between freedom and opportunity or socialism and decline .
The plan to run against some mythical threat of socialism has been underway for some time .
As early as October 2018 , the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report attacking it , with a follow-up chapter in the 2019 Economic Report of the President .
More recently , well-known right-wing crackpot Dinesh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the subject , the gist of which is that all liberals , progressives , and Democrats are socialists , as were the Nazis .
Senator Rand Paul , Republican of Kentucky , has also published The Case Against Socialism , which one reviewer said “ does not make a case against socialism , but it does make a convincing case against nepotism.
” ( Senator Paul is the son of former Congressman Ron Paul of Texas , for whom I worked in the 1970s . )
The essence of the Republican attack is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , grossly exaggerating its negative excesses while completely ignoring its positive effects .
When they are forced to concede that some socialistic government programs–such as disease prevention or temporarily higher unemployment benefits–may be valuable , they will nevertheless insist that it must be resisted because it ’ s the first step on the slippery slope to totalitarianism .
As Senator Tom Cotton , a Republican who represents the Confederate state of Arkansas , put it in a tweet : “ Socialism may begin with the best of intentions , but it always ends @ @ @ @ @

Republicans assert, endlessly, that the Austrian economist F.A. Hayek proved that the welfare state leads inevitably to socialism and tyranny in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. While Hayek’s theory may have been plausible in the midst of World War II, all the evidence since then thoroughly contradicts it. There is no evidence whatsoever that welfare states morph into total state control of the economy and produce a concomitant loss of freedom and prosperity. There is not a single case of this happening anywhere. Nor is there anything in Hayek’s theory to explain why socialism collapsed in the Soviet Union or why privatization rolled it back in places like Britain. (Ironically, Hayek’s relatively expansive view of government’s legitimate functions make him a virtual socialist to some of today’s right-wingers.)
Republicans never call their many tax giveaways to favored industrialists like Elon Musk “socialism.”
One myth that permeates the right-wing attack on socialism is that America was founded as a sort of libertarian paradise based on the free market ideas of Adam Smith. However, this perspective is very much at odds with the actual views of Smith and the Founding Fathers.
For example, in 1763, Smith observed that the cheapest, most miserly government with the lowest taxes and spending was not by any means the best; on the contrary, Smith argued that it was usually a sign of barbarism. Expensive states, he believed, were civilized, more advanced than those with puny governments unable or unwilling to protect their citizens from the ravages of hunger, disease, and poverty. (This is still true.) Said Smith:


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Democrats Are So Worried About the Postal Service That They Might Do Something

There is a growing sense of panic about what is happening to the United States Postal Service , or USPS , as well as the president ’ s admission that its collapse would aid his election prospects—at least among those praying for President Donald Trump to lose the election .
Liberals are understandably frantic about it all ; Instagram feeds are replete with posts about buying stamps and calling your member of Congress about saving the post office .
The fear has fully penetrated the consciousness of resistance normies all over the nation .
Over the weekend , and with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Nancy Pelosi addressed the rising alarm by dramatically calling her members back from recess with the intention of passing a bill to prevent any changes to the USPS from its operations .
The urgency and boldness with which Pelosi is approaching this crisis are interesting , especially in comparison to the fading away of any prospect of unemployed Americans keeping the extra $ 600 in unemployment benefits they received during the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic , which had kept millions away from the brink of despair and destitution .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , with Republican legislative leaders , who don ’ t care if poor people live or die .
But in politics , if your opponent does something bad and evil , it is generally good and important to make a fuss about that ; and it ’ s hard to raise this sort of fuss if you abandon your posts for a month .
As Politico reported on Monday , House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had advocated “ for the consideration of an economic package , ” but Democrats are nevertheless resolved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ USPS ” for the time being .
If you ’ ve only been casually following the news in recent days , you might be of the mind that the unemployment relief problem was fixed by President Trump ’ s executive order last week .
You might subsequently surmise that the lack of news about additional talks to extend the benefit in Congress is evidence that everything got sorted out .
The executive order supposedly provided for $ 400 in extra unemployment money for those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added benefit will actually be only $ 300 for the vast majority of workers , there is no timeframe as to when they ’ ll receive this largesse , and there ’ s only enough money for five weeks ’ worth of benefits , which means that the program “ could end almost as soon as it begins , ” according to The New York Times .
Trump ’ s perfunctory order was a cheap red herring , but it did the job of giving Republicans some amount of cover to stop trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pass any new coronavirus relief .
Obviously , the Republican president and the Republican Senate are to blame for this situation .
It is because of their cruel ideology and complete indifference to the poor and their total intransigence , even in the face of a clearly exceptional circumstance , that people won ’ t get their money .
But the world of things that Democrats could have done to make a bigger deal out of this situation and make it harder for Republicans to inflict this damage on the American people is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House Democrats passed their own bill three months ago .
It would have been easy , for example , to run advertisements on television or social media , blaming Trump and McConnell for taking $ 600 a week from hardworking Americans in the middle of a pandemic .
( According to Facebook ’ s ad archive , Joe Biden has not run any ads on the site that make mention of the $ 600 benefit . )
Certainly there ’ s no guarantee that these tactics might have caused Republicans to change their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a politically awkward position , we ’ ve learned an uncomfortable lesson about the Democrats ’ priorities and which emergencies can be left unaddressed for the sake of a recess and which will bring them racing back to Washington .
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the issue they ’ re urgently returning to involves election integrity and their own employment .

There is a growing sense of panic about what is happening to the United States Postal Service, or USPS, as well as the president’s admission that its collapse would aid his election prospects—at least among those praying for President Donald Trump to lose the election. Liberals are understandably frantic about it all; Instagram feeds are replete with posts about buying stamps and calling your member of Congress about saving the post office. The fear has fully penetrated the consciousness of resistance normies all over the nation. Over the weekend, and with her party’s nominating convention looming, Nancy Pelosi addressed the rising alarm by dramatically calling her members back from recess with the intention of passing a bill to prevent any changes to the USPS from its operations.
The urgency and boldness with which Pelosi is approaching this crisis are interesting, especially in comparison to the fading away of any prospect of unemployed Americans keeping the extra $600 in unemployment benefits they received during the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, which had kept millions away from the brink of despair and destitution. The fault for that lies, of course, with Republican legislative leaders, who don’t care if poor people live or die. But in politics, if your opponent does something bad and evil, it is generally good and important to make a fuss about that; and it’s hard to raise this sort of fuss if you abandon your posts for a month. As Politico reported on Monday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had advocated “for the consideration of an economic package,” but Democrats are nevertheless resolved to “keep the focus on the USPS” for the time being.


newrepublic--2020-08-18--William Faulkner’s Southern Guilt

William Faulkner’s Southern Guilt

In February 1956 , William Faulkner , blind drunk , gave an infamous interview .
After toiling for decades in relative obscurity , Faulkner had become a literary celebrity—he had won the Nobel Prize seven years earlier—and as the civil rights movement gathered steam , he was increasingly sought after by journalists to provide a Southern perspective on race relations .
Faulkner was already on record as a liberal opponent of white supremacy .
A year earlier , he had reacted to the lynching of Emmett Till by writing , “ If we in America have reached that point in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children , no matter for what reason or what color , we don ’ t deserve to survive , and probably won ’ t. ” But Faulkner was worried about the pace of change in the South , and the vehemence and violence of white resistance to integration following the Supreme Court ’ s Brown v. Board of Education decision .
In March 1956 , he published an article in Life magazine cautioning advocates of desegregation to “ go slow now.
” In the drunken interview the month before , he had gone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were to proceed , he insisted , the Southern states would revolt .
“ The government will send its troops and we ’ ll be back at 1860.
” More disturbingly , he signaled where his own ultimate allegiances would lie : As long as there ’ s a middle road , all right , I ’ ll be on it .
But if it came to fighting I ’ d fight for Mississippi against the United States even if it meant going out into the street and shooting Negroes … I will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrong and that their position is untenable , but if I have to make the same choice Robert E. Lee made then I ’ ll make it .
These statements , which Faulkner quickly disavowed , are more than a stain on a great writer ’ s reputation—though they are certainly that .
They are also , according to the scholar Michael Gorra ’ s provocative and engrossing new book , The Saddest Words , an entry point into one of the secret themes of Faulkner ’ s oeuvre : the Civil War @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Southern resistance to abolition .
Gorra ’ s book comes at a moment when Confederate monuments are being pulled down across the country , and the legacy of the Civil War is being revisited again .
But he presses a case—that Faulkner should be read , in spite of everything , as an anti-racist writer , or at least one who has something valuable to contribute to conversations on race today—that may be difficult to sustain in an environment where people are not only confronting the specter of the racist past but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Toward the end of The Saddest Words , Gorra quotes W.E.B .
Du Bois ’ s famous declaration that “ the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line ” and contends that “ no white writer in our literature thought longer and harder about that problem ” than Faulkner .
Yet in his zeal to show us that he thought about it , Gorra sometimes overrates what he thought about it .
The Civil War is everywhere and nowhere in Faulkner ’ s fiction .
While the conflict @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his characters ’ speech and lives , ” Gorra observes , Faulkner only “ rarely makes it an explicit subject.
” Of his 20-odd books , only one—1938 ’ s The Unvanquished—is entirely set in the 1860s , though many others refer or allude to that turbulent period .
“ The past is never dead .
It ’ s not even past , ” a character in 1951 ’ s Requiem for a Nun famously declares .
This haunted worldview , in Gorra ’ s telling , emerged from the lived experience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ generally , where a variety of social and economic forces kept Southerners in a kind of anguished suspension .

After Emancipation, freedmen often worked for their old masters under conditions not far removed from slavery; white-supremacist terrorism kept them oppressed and disenfranchised even before the institution of Jim Crow laws in the 1870s ratified their subjugation. (The Unvanquished chillingly depicts such an act of terror, in which Colonel Sartoris, a Confederate soldier modeled on Faulkner’s great-grandfather, murders two white political organizers who are trying to mobilize the black vote.) For poor whites, like the rural Bundren family who are the protagonists of Faulkner’s short masterpiece As I Lay Dying, the “world remains stuck in time” because “there has never been the money to make anything new.… The future seems arrested, as if the war has fixed it in place.” And for scions of the fallen plantation aristocracy, like the Compson family who feature in both The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, postwar history evidences a steady, helpless decline. The Compsons’ fatalistic obsession with this past is reflected in these novels’ forbiddingly involuted structures, which Gorra describes as “marked by an endless recursion to what has already been done and said.”
The war for Faulkner is a sort of eternal recurrence. In his 1948 novel, Intruder in the Dust, a character named Gavin Stevens evokes Pickett’s Charge, the failed final assault by Confederate forces at the Battle of Gettysburg, often taken to be the moment at which the South’s overall defeat became assured. “It’s all now you see,” Stevens says. “Yesterday wont be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago”:
For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two oclock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out … and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin … yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen year old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain …
This speech is often read as a glorification of Southern military valor. It skates close to the rhetoric of “the Lost Cause,” which sprung up in the wake of the Confederacy’s defeat—and which, Gorra notes, was written into the history textbooks the young Faulkner is likely to have read growing up in Mississippi. Yet it’s not clear that Faulkner really is embracing that narrative: What makes the passage distinctive is its ambivalence. Does the cautious counterfactual “Maybe this time” imply the possibility of victory, a scenario in which the South triumphs at Gettysburg and thus wins the war? Or is the key phrase “There is still time for it not to begin”? Is the fantasy indulged by this hypothetical 14-year-old boy that the South stood down, that it surrendered, and never suffered the severe damages still to come? Faulkner toggles between a wish that the events of Southern history had turned out differently and a wish that they had never happened at all: between defiance and denial, pride and guilt. Just as in his 1956 interview, he is ready at a moment’s notice to be back at 1860, to return to a historical era that is also a source of shame, and to relive an event that he purported to wish had never occurred.


newrepublic--2020-08-18--The Democrats’ Eternal Wall Street Ticket

This summer , Wall Street made its peace with Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee .
If Donald Trump had spoiled the financial sector rotten for four years with tax cuts and regulation rollbacks , it didn ’ t take executives long to warm to Biden , who , after all , has his own record of voting to deregulate banks and slash bankruptcy protections .
Now , according to the financial press , the investor class has been toasting last week ’ s addition of Kamala Harris to the Democratic ticket .
Since Biden ’ s announcement of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commentators have celebrated her as the first Black woman and first Indian American on a major party ’ s presidential ticket .
But her political record , including when it comes to Wall Street , is somewhat more familiar when it comes to the top of the ticket .
Like Biden , Harris openly courted Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors before and during the Democratic primaries and has enjoyed friendly relationships with various oligarchs since then .
Whatever other qualities the Biden-Harris ticket holds then , on economics , it represents the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of free-market fealty .
Runaway economic inequality and Bernie Sanders ’ s two back-to-back insurgent campaigns rattled the Democratic Party elite enough to generate some feints toward ideas like Medicare for All and higher taxes on the wealthy during the most recent primary season .
( In 2017 , Harris herself signed on as a co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders ’ s Medicare for All bill in the Senate but reversed her stance last summer on the campaign trail . )
However , though they no doubt view the choice as strategic , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on its entanglement with Wall Street , which stretches back decades , will only compound the economic pain these ties have already created for millions of people in the United States , particularly as the majority of Americans struggle to exit a catastrophic recession that barely touched Wall Street .
As The Washington Post ’ s Heather Long wrote last week , the downturn has essentially already ended for the rich but is certain to drag on for the bottom half of the income distribution , especially without sustained government intervention .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump , a Biden-Harris administration is probably our best chance for a workable recovery from the pandemic and the related recession .
But whether or not a Biden-led recovery would do as much for the working class as it does for the rich is less certain .
Biden , of course , oversaw the 2008 bank bailout as vice president and , while a Delaware senator , coddled the credit card industry .
This election season , the campaign contributions he ’ s received from Wall Street surpass Trump ’ s , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future crackdowns on corporate greed .
In fact , he ’ s explicitly promised to avoid heavy-handed measures : “ Corporate America has to change its ways , ” Biden said at a July fundraiser hosted by financial executives but immediately added , “ It ’ s not going to require legislation .
I ’ m not proposing any.
” Harris , too , has her own murky record when it comes to the financial sector .
As The American Prospect ’ s David Dayen has pointed out , though she ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the big banks as California attorney general in the wake of the 2008 crash , her efforts in that regard largely amounted to a multimillion-dollar national mortgage settlement that served as yet another partial bailout for the banks with only minimal assistance for thousands of families whose homes had been foreclosed .
During her tenure , her office also declined to file charges against OneWest—the bank run by Steven Mnuchin , now Treasury Secretary—for repeated violations of California ’ s foreclosure laws that resulted in the seizure of over a thousand homes @

In recent years, as an early co-sponsor of legislation like the Green New Deal and the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, her record in the Senate has pointed to a willingness to back ambitious progressive policy. During the pandemic, she, Sanders, and Ed Markey introduced a bill for $2,000 monthly payments to individuals for the duration of the crisis. All of those are welcome counterbalances to Biden’s own time in the Senate. Yet, as Harris’s wavering on Medicare for All suggests, it’s still not entirely clear how committed she’ll remain to those ideals if she becomes vice president, particularly with Silicon Valley and the financial sector increasingly invested in her success.
Ultimately, the Biden-Harris ticket’s friendliness with Wall Street, even alongside their more progressive inclinations, represents a continuation of the Democratic Party’s long-running turn away from working-class voters, which culminated, at least partially, in the 2016 election of Trump. Despite interminable populist bluffing on the campaign trail, Trump was never remotely any kind of champion for the working class. At the same time, in 2016, enough voters in swing states felt moved to roll the dice on his middle-finger candidacy (or simply stay home) rather than throw in their lot with the Wall Street-anointed Hillary Clinton. With Biden-Harris, the Democratic Party once again seems intent on returning to the same unstable triangulation between cultivating corporate benefactors and appealing to ordinary workers.
Thanks mostly to Trump’s disastrous pandemic response, Biden now holds a considerable lead in the polls, but the Democratic Party’s ongoing abandonment of its working-class wing will likely have repercussions for future elections and for the fate of the U.S. at large. “The Democratic Party was never truly a workers’ party, but its major achievements of the twentieth century were possible only because it was a party of workers,” the historian Matt Karp wrote last year. “This alignment has been under stress since the 1960s. Today, it is officially dead.” That remains even more true now with the consolidation of the current ticket. While some things about Biden-Harris might be historic, the Democrats’ loyalty to the top, at least for now, is just more of the same.


newrepublic--2020-08-18--Bernie Offers Biden His Last Hurrah

Bernie Offers Biden His Last Hurrah

The first night of the Democratic National PowerPoint Presentation went off without a major technical hitch .
But partly owing to the uncanny nature of this virtual non-event , much of it had a very strange energy .
It was highly reminiscent of the “ Welcome to America ” videos that play at customs when you return to the United States from abroad and steel yourself for interrogation by a border patrol agent : Overly saccharine , riven with a hollow and superficial sort of patriotism , simultaneously overproduced and deeply unimpressive .
But it was an optimistic tone that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s rhetoric during the primary campaign , which have persisted even into the terror of the pandemic .
For the showrunners behind this Zoom Convention , it is a tricky line to walk : Address the pandemic , the 170,000 dead and the chaos unfolding , without undercutting Biden ’ s Good Vibes Only approach .
It felt as if the party wanted the viewer to be mad , but not too mad .
This led to some occasions of tonal whiplash .
An hour in , there was a segment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid-19 .
Such remembrances have been conspicuously absent from our civic life ; it was the first moment of the proceedings that truly nailed the gravity of what has happened .
But this only made the strained optimism of the rest of the evening all the more jarring .
Where was the anger for these dead an hour before ?
Why wasn ’ t anyone shouting ?
Even the man we ’ ve come to rely on to yell about the state of things was somewhat subdued .
After an array of Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ address—there ’ s that whiplash again—from his home in Vermont .
Earlier in the day , The New York Times previewed Sanders ’ moment in the spotlight as a kind of “ victory speech , ” since “ so many within the party have embraced at least the spirit of his ideas.
” The speech certainly could have been read as a kind of victory lap , a reminder of the policy areas in which his campaign and movement has pushed the Democratic party to the left ; it ’ s doubtful that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minimum wage if Sanders hadn ’ t run on it in 2016 , for example .
Sanders was also the first speaker of the night to mention the $ 600 in extra unemployment benefits that Democrats fought to win in the CARES Act , and which expired at the end of July .
You could see what the Times meant about the moment being a “ victory speech ” in the methodical way Sanders outlined some of the bolder ideas that Biden has promised to embrace .
This was the responsibility that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the other speakers who offered their testimonials in the hundred or so minutes that preceded his appearance offered platitudes and attitude , Sanders wove a dense discussion of policy into his critique of the Trump presidency .
It was the necessary bridge between the last two contenders standing at the end of the primary .
Voters who picked Biden didn ’ t do so because they liked his policies better than everyone else ’ s ; they did so because they believed him to be the safe choice .
Sanders supporters , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up for a movement with an intuitive , broad message ; it was a diagnosis of a deep rot in American society and , at last , the promise of an adequate cure .
This was a moment that made sense , politically : To reconcile the two camps , Sanders needed to offer a convincing case that Biden understood the stakes and the scope of what needs to be done to bring America back from this horrific crisis .
But even in Sanders ’ short speech , you could also see the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Biden would lower the Medicare age from 65 to 60 , but omitted mention of Biden ’ s ramshackle public option plan .
He talked about Biden ’ s promise to tackle climate change—but not to pass a Green New Deal .
More to the point , however , the promise of a just recovery is meaningless without an understanding that the backslapping , across-the-aisle dealmaking these two Senators are so familiar with will not be sufficient to the task of extricating the country from this dreadful situation , a fact that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to grasp .
The fact that the restoration of the $ 600 unemployment benefit that ’ s such an urgent need in this crisis was only mentioned in passing by Sanders , on a night in which Democrats very consciously attempted to put ordinary Americans at the center of the convention , speaks to the lack of urgency the rest of the party feels about preserving one of the biggest policy wins the party has had in years .

You could see what the Times meant about the moment being a “victory speech” in the methodical way Sanders outlined some of the bolder ideas that Biden has promised to embrace. This was the responsibility that was entrusted to Sanders alone. Where most of the other speakers who offered their testimonials in the hundred or so minutes that preceded his appearance offered platitudes and attitude, Sanders wove a dense discussion of policy into his critique of the Trump presidency. It was the necessary bridge between the last two contenders standing at the end of the primary. Voters who picked Biden didn’t do so because they liked his policies better than everyone else’s; they did so because they believed him to be the safe choice. Sanders supporters, on the other hand, were signed up for a movement with an intuitive, broad message; it was a diagnosis of a deep rot in American society and, at last, the promise of an adequate cure. This was a moment that made sense, politically: To reconcile the two camps, Sanders needed to offer a convincing case that Biden understood the stakes and the scope of what needs to be done to bring America back from this horrific crisis.
But even in Sanders’s short speech, you could also see the limits of this strategy. Sanders mentioned that Biden would lower the Medicare age from 65 to 60, but omitted mention of Biden’s ramshackle public option plan. He talked about Biden’s promise to tackle climate change—but not to pass a Green New Deal. More to the point, however, the promise of a just recovery is meaningless without an understanding that the backslapping, across-the-aisle dealmaking these two senators are so familiar with will not be sufficient to the task of extricating the country from this dreadful situation, a fact that Biden and his advisers often seem not to grasp. The fact that the restoration of the $600 unemployment benefit that’s such an urgent need in this crisis was only mentioned in passing by Sanders, on a night in which Democrats very consciously attempted to put ordinary Americans at the center of the convention, speaks to the lack of urgency the rest of the party feels about preserving one of the biggest policy wins the party has had in years.


newrepublic--2020-08-17--Democrats Are So Worried About the Postal Service That They Might Finally Do Something


newrepublic--2020-08-18--Is Trump Killing His Favorite Industry?

Is Trump Killing His Favorite Industry?

The Trump administration is officially opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge , or ANWR , for business .
That ’ s self-evidently bad for the climate ; developed oilfields there stand to release some 4.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere .
It ’ s also the latest in a long line of ham-fisted ways Republicans have sought to boost fossil fuel development .
In the past few months , Trump officials have seemed more eager than usual to score points against the climate and environmental movement before the uncertainty of the November election .
Yet while “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be the GOP ’ s twenty-first-century rallying cry , the oil industry itself has good reason to be more cautious .
It ’ s the latest sign that we may be at a tipping point in energy politics : Rather than calculated advocacy on behalf of polluters , U.S. fossil fuel policy is starting to look more like a front in a culture war threatening the very interests it claims to serve .
Starting as soon as the end of this year , the Department of Interior will auction off two leases totaling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Northern Alaska , the development of which will entail massive infrastructure projects including well pads , pipelines , 175 miles of roads , and four airstrips .
Drilling is estimated to start in eight years .
The announcement , Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told The Wall Street Journal , follows a provision snuck into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 , instructing the federal government to lease land in the ANWR to fossil fuel companies .
Drilling there , he said , could continue on for the next half-century .
Arctic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by environmentalists and indigenous peoples including the Gwich ’ in , who hunt the caribou that migrate through the reserve .
But as the fossil fuel market has changed , oil companies themselves—and their financiers on Wall Street—have turned on Arctic drilling , too .
“ ANWR leasing will test industry willingness to commit capital in size when investors are asking for spending discipline and a fast cash turn .
Arctic development is neither of those things , ” Clearview Energy Partners analyst Kevin Book told the Financial Times following Bernhardt ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the Arctic years ago .
Shell sold off its assets in Alaska after the last oil price crash in 2015 , and BP followed suit last summer , selling its $ 5.6 billion in upstream and midstream Alaskan assets to Hilcorp Energy .
Together , Hilcorp and ConocoPhilips now control 72 percent of increasingly concentrated Alaskan production , according to the consultancy Wood Mackenzie .
Adding to this trend , several major banks have also refused to finance drilling in the Arctic in the last several years , including JPMorgan Chase , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For Wall Street , it was low-hanging fruit to appease critics raising climate , environmental , and indigenous sovereignty concerns : It ’ s a bad investment anyway .
As The New Republic has repeatedly pointed out , fossil fuels have become a markedly worse bet over the past decade .
With traditional and cheaper-to-access reserves running low , high-cost unconventional drilling—including shale and Arctic production—was made possible largely by the low interest rates put in place after the last recession , which made it possible for companies to take on debt to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the shale boom .
Investors were already losing patience after those firms ’ years of unprofitability when pandemic shut-downs kneecapped gas demand , wreaking havoc in the notoriously over-leveraged U.S. shale sector .
Break-even costs are even higher in the Arctic than they are in the shale patch , which has seen a historic wave of bankruptcies that are on pace to continue if prices continue to float around $ 40 per barrel .

The Trump administration is officially opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, for business. That’s self-evidently bad for the climate; developed oilfields there stand to release some 4.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s also the latest in a long line of ham-fisted ways Republicans have sought to boost fossil fuel development. In the past few months, Trump officials have seemed more eager than usual to score points against the climate and environmental movement before the uncertainty of the November election. Yet while “drill, baby, drill” may be the GOP’s twenty-first-century rallying cry, the oil industry itself has good reason to be more cautious. It’s the latest sign that we may be at a tipping point in energy politics: Rather than calculated advocacy on behalf of polluters, U.S. fossil fuel policy is starting to look more like a front in a culture war threatening the very interests it claims to serve.
Starting as soon as the end of this year, the Department of Interior will auction off two leases totaling 800,000 acres along the Coastal Plane in Northern Alaska, the development of which will entail massive infrastructure projects including well pads, pipelines, 175 miles of roads, and four airstrips. Drilling is estimated to start in eight years. The announcement, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told The Wall Street Journal, follows a provision snuck into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, instructing the federal government to lease land in the ANWR to fossil fuel companies. Drilling there, he said, could continue on for the next half-century.


newrepublic--2020-08-18--The Democrats Choose Politics Over Ideological Purity

The Danes have a word , popular these days as a design concept , called “ hygge.
” Loosely translated as “ cozy , ” it conjures up sweaters , slippers , a roaring fireplace , woolen lap rugs draped on furniture , and a general feeling of unaffected well-being .
Monday night , in the midst of a pandemic , the Democrats pulled off the first hygge political convention in history .
There were a few try-too-hard visual missteps : Former Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich stood at a crossroads to illustrate that America is at a , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sanders may have taken hygge to Nordic extremes by speaking in front of cords of fireplace-ready wood as he gave a full-throated endorsement of Joe Biden .
But for the most part , there was an ease , a comfort , and a rare sense of authenticity to this convention of shut-ins .
By not even trying to deliver thundering convention oratory to a silent audience of bookcases and living room plants , the Democrats achieved an easy twenty-first-century conversational tone .
More than anything , the successful opening night of the convention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump ’ s campaign has hopscotched from Charlotte to Jacksonville to the White House lawn in search of a friendly venue in which the president could deliver a super-spreader acceptance speech , the Democrats listened to science from the beginning .
And those extra months of preparation made all the difference .

Beyond showcasing Michelle Obama—and her rare ability to make a powerful political argument without appearing political—Monday night was designed to make the case for a big-tent Democratic Party. At a time when Trump’s ego-mad theory of politics demands that Republican politicians show obsequious devotion or be banished forever from his gold-plated realm, the Democrats smartly adhered to the politics of inclusion, believing that victory in a year of Republican voter suppression requires the broadest possible Biden coalition. Monday night’s political message was designed to appeal to three groups of voters who underperformed for Hillary Clinton in 2016: Black voters who felt uninspired by that year’s all-white ticket; wavering Republicans who couldn’t shake their allegiance to the GOP even with Trump on the ballot; and left-wingers who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a centrist, flawed Democrat like Hillary.
Opening the convention with an homage to Black Lives Matter and the victims of police shootings made obvious sense for the party of diversity during this summer of protest. Philonise Floyd, conjuring up his lost brother George, provided a moving moment as he called for “a moment of silence to honor George and the many other souls we lost to hate and injustice.”
As genuine as these tributes were and as heartrending as the continuing grief remains, a convention (whether real or virtual) is designed with one overriding goal—to win votes on Election Day. And Democratic convention planners were keenly aware that a major reason why Hillary Clinton lost was flagging Black turnout in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.


newrepublic--2020-08-18--The World’s Dumbest Authoritarian

The World’s Dumbest Authoritarian

What would the U.S. media say if the president of another country was threatening to hobble his nation ’ s postal service in hopes of suppressing ballots ahead of an election ?
Every once in a while , an American journalist gets this notion : to imagine how the national press would cover a particular domestic story , whether it be white nationalist violence or protests against racist policing , as if it were happening in another country .
It ’ s a venerable and sometimes illuminating frame—a way for Americans , given to believing in their own exceptionalism , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s troubles from a different vantage .
But in the postal case , and increasingly in the age of Trump , the “ if it happened there ” test proves of little use .
It is 2020 , after all , and there is no global shortage of demagogues and authoritarians making a joke of democratic processes .
They stuff ballot boxes , jail opposition leaders , harass journalists , and threaten voters .
They exploit all the tools at their disposal to rig an election in their favor .
They increasingly welcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scholarship showing “ that elections can actually prolong dictatorships in the longer term , ” as three European political scientists put it .
What they don ’ t do is adopt the bizarre tactic President Trump has .
Neither I nor any of the political scientists and journalistic colleagues I consulted could come up with an example of a national leader trying to preemptively invalidate the upcoming election that he ’ s forecast to possibly lose .
Generally , it ’ s opposition parties—some of whom may , of course , be aspiring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ referendum , not the guy in power .
Yet that is precisely what Trump is doing with his ceaseless warbling about nonexistent voter fraud and the need , amid an unprecedented killer viral pandemic , to kill mail-in voting .
“ If we don ’ t make a deal [ to fund the U.S .
Postal Service ] , that means they don ’ t get the money .
That means they can ’ t have universal mail-in voting , they just can ’ t have it , ” he told Fox Business @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is as anti-democratic as it is fantastical , akin to Arrested Development patriarch and white-collar felon George Bluth erroneously insisting that he and his wife can ’ t be arrested for the same crime .
Even Fox News had trouble spinning Trump ’ s statement as anything other than an explicit desire to wreck American institutions : “ Trump seeks to starve post office to limit mail-in voting , ” one headline read .
Before giving up the goods live and on air , he ’ d warned extensively all summer that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where his party controlled the federal government , the Senate , the Supreme Court , and nearly 60 percent of statehouses—would “ be the greatest rigged election in history , it ’ ll be the greatest fraud ever perpetrated , other perhaps than what they did to my campaign [ in 2016 ] .
”

“Democracy requires that parties know how to lose,” the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of 2019’s How Democracies Die, wrote last September in The New York Times. In the United States, this fairly describes the Democrats, the Libertarians, the Greens, and even the rightist Constitution Party. But among nations that are still largely described as liberal democracies, no political party is as hellbent on winning cynically and in perpetuity, liberal democracy be damned, as the Republican Party. There are no shortage of examples of this, from gerrymandering to financial graft to census rigging to voter suppression. “The greatest threat to our democracy today,” Zevitsky and Ziblatt wrote last September, “is a Republican Party that plays dirty to win.”
But even with the power and lawbreaking gusto of the Trump family behind it, the GOP finds it exceedingly difficult to game this system entirely, in part because their recent rule has been so dishonest, so onerous, and so frankly homicidal that it’s historically unpopular—and this is maximally visible with the voting public. “To deter an autocratic ruling party from committing electoral fraud, the opposition must be endowed with a high enough number of ‘radical voters’” who “should possess an unwavering commitment to defeat the autocrat above the disagreements they might have on other issues,” Stanford political scientist Beatriz Magaloni wrote in a 2007 paper. Give Donald Trump credit: Few things might have alerted and concerned the American electorate the way he has by topping off three-and-a-half years of rump autocracy with a vocal desire to strangle the U.S. Postal Service in order to prevent the counting of mail-in ballots.
As Levitsky and Ziblatt wrote, “Politicians who fail to win elections must be willing to accept defeat, go home, and get ready to play again the next day. This norm of gracious losing is essential to a healthy democracy.” Trump may be a simpering moron, but like the Republican Party, he has a genius for sore losing. The difference is that Republicans have rarely run around calling an election rigged before it took place while they tried to rig it. There was the orchestrated 2000 Brooks Brothers riot to influence Florida’s presidential vote tally, a ruthless but fruitful strategy whose vague memory animates both parties’ now familiar preparations to litigate election results. But that plot, again, was built around the traditional work of trying to rig a favorable election result, not trying to invalidate the act of voting in advance of an election.