thenation--2020-11-11--The Affordable Care Act May Live to Die Another Day

Yesterday , the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in California v. Texas , the case that threatens to strike down the Affordable Care Act .
Those arguments went surprisingly well for defenders of the ACA—as well as anyone could reasonably have hoped , in the face of a court stacked with six conservative jurists .
The future of the ACA is still uncertain , and we won ’ t know the court ’ s decision until at least January and most likely June .
But based on what I heard , I think the ACA has a chance to survive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
To understand yesterday ’ s hearing , we have to wind the clock back to the 2012 Supreme Court case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius .
That ’ s the case in which the majority , led by Chief Justice John Roberts , upheld the ACA , ruling that the individual mandate is a constitutional use of the government ’ s power to tax .
That should have ended the GOP ’ s will to kill the law , but of course it didn ’ t , and after failing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 2017 , the Republican-controlled Congress amended it that fall .
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act dropped the tax penalty from the individual mandate to zero .
Since the tax had been canceled , Republicans hoped the Supreme Court would then rule the entire ACA unconstitutional .
Their argument , currently being advanced by a collection of 18 attorneys general from Republican-controlled states , is that if the individual mandate is not a tax ( because there is no tax ) , there is no constitutional basis for the law .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ required an incredible level of bad faith .
That ’ s because courts are supposed to presume that Congress does not make laws ( or amendments to laws ) that are intentionally unconstitutional .
Congress had the opportunity to repeal the ACA in 2017 and , famously , did not .
The courts are not supposed to be a backdoor way for Congress to nullify laws it does not have the votes to repeal .
If the Supreme Court upholds this basic tenet , the ACA should survive Congress ’ s bad-faith attempts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side , to strike down the ACA , the Supreme Court has to accept three intellectually dishonest Republican arguments , in succession : The court has to rule that Republican plaintiffs ( the aforementioned collection of 18 attorneys general ) have standing to object to the ACA ; they have to rule that the individual mandate has become unconstitutional ; and then they have to rule that the unconstitutional poison pill inserted into the ACA renders the whole law unconstitutional .
At oral arguments , it did not appear that lawyers for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go on all three rides .
Most of the questions from Roberts and Elena Kagan focused on standing .
In order to dispute the legal merits of the ACA , Republican plaintiffs first have to argue that the ACA causes them some harm , and that ’ s actually pretty hard for them to do .
What harm is there in buying health insurance when Republicans have already eliminated the penalty if you do not ?
What harm is there to the state of Texas ( or the 17 other states ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buy health insurance at reasonable rates ?
Roberts loves to dismiss cases on technical legal grounds like standing .
It allows him to keep the court out of decisions that might look “ political ” without ever getting to the legal merits of the various arguments .
And in the bargain , it allows him to further his long-term goal of squeezing off access to the courts for many plaintiffs .
I don ’ t like arguments based on standing , but if you are a conservative who claims to believe in “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be your jam .
Unfortunately , most Republicans don ’ t believe in judicial restraint ; they believe in activist conservative judges who do through the courts what Republicans can not do at the ballot box .
While Roberts and the three surviving liberal justices seemed amenable to kicking the whole case on standing , the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg probably means there ’ s no longer a fifth vote to defeat this ACA challenge on standing .
This will probably be the first time we see the “ Amy Coney Barrett @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that moves us to the second argument : the question of the constitutionality of the newly zeroed-out individual mandate .
On this point , all six conservative justices sounded ready to strike it down .
They gave Republican lawyers little pushback on those arguments .
Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor were having none of it , however .
Breyer was downright feisty when pushing back on the notion that the ACA has suddenly become unconstitutionally coercive now that it ’ s not generating money .
The liberals further pointed out that a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might decide to restore the individual mandate ’ s tax penalty—returning the law to its original form , which , of course , the court has already ruled constitutional .
Still , I think we have to assume that the individual mandate is dead as a constitutional proposition .
I did not see two votes from the conservative wing to save it .
Which means the fate of the ACA comes down to the question of severability .
This shouldn ’ t be a difficult question for the court to answer .
Think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the individual mandate , Republican lawmakers , in their infinite wisdom , decided to give the ACA gangrene .
The judicial solution should be to cut off a leg , not decapitate the patient .
The technical legal term for this kind of Supreme Court surgery is called “ severability.
” Courts do it all the time .
Legally , the ACA should survive the loss of the individual mandate , and many are confident that Roberts agrees .
But without Ginsburg , there needs to be at least one other conservative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And so the biggest moment of the hearing came when alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh said the obvious part aloud .
Kavanaugh told former Obama solicitor general Don Verrilli , arguing on behalf of the Democratic-led House of Representatives : “ I agree with you that this is a straightforward case for severability under our precedents , meaning that we would excise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place.
” That one line may well save the whole law .
Kavanaugh will probably give the red states standing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s going to join the ruling that the individual mandate is unconstitutional .
But if he applies the “ straightforward ” precedent on severability , as his comments suggest he will , then the rest of the ACA should survive .
Trump Is Trying to Overturn the Election , but I ’ m Not Panicking—Yet Black People Repudiated Trump Like He Was a Piece of Used Gum A lot needs to happen between today and an actual majority opinion upholding the ACA .
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will likely try @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their view , and Kavanaugh always seems like the kind of guy who can be peer-pressured into stealing the change bucket from a homeless man if his frat brothers put the screws to him .
Moreover , the argument that the Supreme Court should rule the mandate unconstitutional and kick the severability question back down to the conservative US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit , setting up another Supreme Court showdown on the ACA next year , could still be in play .
It was hard to get a clear read @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the job .
There are still a lot of pitfalls .
But given the universe of possible oral arguments , this one was as good as it was likely to get .
The ACA might barely survive this frivolous and baseless attack on its constitutionality .
Republicans who want Democrats to be placated just enough to accept permanent conservative control of the Supreme Court will be thrilled .
This could be the kind of big-ticket ruling they use to argue their side is “ reasonable , ” especially if another seat opens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President Biden fill for four to eight years .
Meanwhile , Donald Trump has about 70 days left to unveil his health care plan .

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Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in California v. Texas, the case that threatens to strike down the Affordable Care Act. Those arguments went surprisingly well for defenders of the ACA—as well as anyone could reasonably have hoped, in the face of a court stacked with six conservative jurists. The future of the ACA is still uncertain, and we won’t know the court’s decision until at least January and most likely June. But based on what I heard, I think the ACA has a chance to survive this latest frivolous and intellectually dishonest attack.
To understand yesterday’s hearing, we have to wind the clock back to the 2012 Supreme Court case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. That’s the case in which the majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld the ACA, ruling that the individual mandate is a constitutional use of the government’s power to tax. That should have ended the GOP’s will to kill the law, but of course it didn’t, and after failing to repeal the law in the summer of 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress amended it that fall. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act dropped the tax penalty from the individual mandate to zero. Since the tax had been canceled, Republicans hoped the Supreme Court would then rule the entire ACA unconstitutional. Their argument, currently being advanced by a collection of 18 attorneys general from Republican-controlled states, is that if the individual mandate is not a tax (because there is no tax), there is no constitutional basis for the law.
But accepting this core Republican argument has always required an incredible level of bad faith. That’s because courts are supposed to presume that Congress does not make laws (or amendments to laws) that are intentionally unconstitutional. Congress had the opportunity to repeal the ACA in 2017 and, famously, did not. The courts are not supposed to be a backdoor way for Congress to nullify laws it does not have the votes to repeal.
If the Supreme Court upholds this basic tenet, the ACA should survive Congress’s bad-faith attempts to kill it. On the flip side, to strike down the ACA, the Supreme Court has to accept three intellectually dishonest Republican arguments, in succession: The court has to rule that Republican plaintiffs (the aforementioned collection of 18 attorneys general) have standing to object to the ACA; they have to rule that the individual mandate has become unconstitutional; and then they have to rule that the unconstitutional poison pill inserted into the ACA renders the whole law unconstitutional.
At oral arguments, it did not appear that lawyers for the Republican AGs convinced five of the justices to go on all three rides.
Most of the questions from Roberts and Elena Kagan focused on standing. In order to dispute the legal merits of the ACA, Republican plaintiffs first have to argue that the ACA causes them some harm, and that’s actually pretty hard for them to do. What harm is there in buying health insurance when Republicans have already eliminated the penalty if you do not? What harm is there to the state of Texas (or the 17 other states) in allowing people with preexisting conditions to buy health insurance at reasonable rates? Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Roberts loves to dismiss cases on technical legal grounds like standing. It allows him to keep the court out of decisions that might look “political” without ever getting to the legal merits of the various arguments. And in the bargain, it allows him to further his long-term goal of squeezing off access to the courts for many plaintiffs. I don’t like arguments based on standing, but if you are a conservative who claims to believe in “judicial restraint,” then standing should be your jam. Current Issue View our current issue
Unfortunately, most Republicans don’t believe in judicial restraint; they believe in activist conservative judges who do through the courts what Republicans cannot do at the ballot box. While Roberts and the three surviving liberal justices seemed amenable to kicking the whole case on standing, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg probably means there’s no longer a fifth vote to defeat this ACA challenge on standing. This will probably be the first time we see the “Amy Coney Barrett effect” on the court.
So that moves us to the second argument: the question of the constitutionality of the newly zeroed-out individual mandate. On this point, all six conservative justices sounded ready to strike it down. They gave Republican lawyers little pushback on those arguments. Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor were having none of it, however. Breyer was downright feisty when pushing back on the notion that the ACA has suddenly become unconstitutionally coercive now that it’s not generating money. The liberals further pointed out that a new administration and Congress (ahem) might decide to restore the individual mandate’s tax penalty—returning the law to its original form, which, of course, the court has already ruled constitutional.
Still, I think we have to assume that the individual mandate is dead as a constitutional proposition. I did not see two votes from the conservative wing to save it.
Which means the fate of the ACA comes down to the question of severability.
This shouldn’t be a difficult question for the court to answer. Think of it this way: By zeroing out the individual mandate, Republican lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give the ACA gangrene. The judicial solution should be to cut off a leg, not decapitate the patient. The technical legal term for this kind of Supreme Court surgery is called “severability.” Courts do it all the time.
Legally, the ACA should survive the loss of the individual mandate, and many are confident that Roberts agrees. But without Ginsburg, there needs to be at least one other conservative to vote for this obvious thing.
And so the biggest moment of the hearing came when alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh said the obvious part aloud. Kavanaugh told former Obama solicitor general Don Verrilli, arguing on behalf of the Democratic-led House of Representatives: “I agree with you that this is a straightforward case for severability under our precedents, meaning that we would excise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place.”
That one line may well save the whole law. Kavanaugh will probably give the red states standing to make their ridiculous claim, and he’s going to join the ruling that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. But if he applies the “straightforward” precedent on severability, as his comments suggest he will, then the rest of the ACA should survive. More from Mystal Trump Is Trying to Overturn the Election, but I’m Not Panicking—Yet Elie Mystal Black People Repudiated Trump Like He Was a Piece of Used Gum Elie Mystal
A lot needs to happen between today and an actual majority opinion upholding the ACA. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will likely try to convince Kavanaugh to come over to their view, and Kavanaugh always seems like the kind of guy who can be peer-pressured into stealing the change bucket from a homeless man if his frat brothers put the screws to him. Moreover, the argument that the Supreme Court should rule the mandate unconstitutional and kick the severability question back down to the conservative US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, setting up another Supreme Court showdown on the ACA next year, could still be in play. It was hard to get a clear read on Barrett during only her third week on the job. There are still a lot of pitfalls.
But given the universe of possible oral arguments, this one was as good as it was likely to get. The ACA might barely survive this frivolous and baseless attack on its constitutionality. Republicans who want Democrats to be placated just enough to accept permanent conservative control of the Supreme Court will be thrilled. This could be the kind of big-ticket ruling they use to argue their side is “reasonable,” especially if another seat opens up that Mitch McConnell refuses to let President Biden fill for four to eight years.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has about 70 days left to unveil his health care plan.


thenation--2020-11-12--Is There a Cure for Burnout?

Is There a Cure for Burnout?

During a trip home a few years ago , I casually asked my mother ’ s partner , D , for some financial advice .
I was starting my third job in three years , and a byproduct of all this shuffling of tax forms was that I possessed two or three 401 ( k ) accounts , each containing a paltry amount I nonetheless didn ’ t want to languish forever .
D is a responsible , intelligent man in his 70s whose concerted investing efforts paid dividends throughout his life , and within days , he prepared a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mutual funds and stocks for whenever I got around to rolling over those disparate accounts into one .
Ca n't Even : How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation I said something like , Looks great , before asking if he could winnow it down a little .
Well , no , he told me : I just had to do the reading , and decide for myself .
But what if I don ’ t have a lot of faith in the stock market ?
Well , it comes and goes , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and not stress it too much… until it ’ s time to stress !
( Big smiles at the dinner table . )
But what if I just like looking at a big number ?
Well , big numbers are wonderful , but if you ’ re smart about it you can look at an even bigger number within five to 50 years .
But what if I don ’ t have any faith in the long-term future of Western financial markets and/or society ?
He had no answer for that .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the coming days my enthusiasm waned every time I glanced at the portfolio .
The amount I needed to redistribute was so negligible that the man at Fidelity more or less laughed when I walked in to ask for more advice .
He told me to call the hotline , but the idea of talking on the phone about my stocks seemed deeply alienating for reasons I couldn ’ t articulate .
And so the money just sat there .
For 18 months .
Until one day I mentioned it to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said I was being a baby , and provided the specific instructions I desired , which I carried out after googling “ [ mutual fund ] good ?
” to confirm at least one of us knew what she was talking about .
Most of this was laziness .
But I was working full-time ; I had an active social schedule ; and the Fidelity website said I ’ d need to invest a whole lot more in order to avoid destitution in my geriatric years .
Putting too much effort into maximizing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a better job or a winning lottery ticket , just didn ’ t seem worthwhile .
Every day , the news delivered some ominous portent about how millennials ( my generation ) were more underpaid and overworked than ever , how corporate America was nakedly stacking the deck against workers , how the economy was shedding permanent jobs for transient giglike distractions meant to tempt us with flexibility instead of health care .
Also , climate change .
Without some kind of transformative , society-shaking upheaval , it felt beyond obvious that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ baby boomer peers were able to take for granted when they were my age—especially the white male ones—would never come .
That it took maybe 10 minutes to handle my 401 ( k ) situation after 18 months of waffling only underscored the pervasive sense of futility distracting me and perhaps millions of others from doing what was theoretically in my best interest .
Why bother with the little stuff when the big stuff is so profoundly insurmountable ?
This enervating psychic stasis might be chalked up to burnout , according to Can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Burnout Generation , a new book by the academic and culture writer Anne Helen Petersen about how our generation ( people born from 1981 to 1996 ) exists in a perpetually hollowed-out mental state .
Can ’ t Even is an expanded version of “ How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation , ” a viral article she wrote in January 2019 for her then-employer , BuzzFeed , and whose success is mentioned multiple times in the text .
The piece has collected over “ more than seven million readers ” since its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ website editor ’ s ( and at least one book editor ’ s ) eyes pop like a horny cartoon character .
The economic and cultural forces that induce burnout are problems faced by all millennials , Petersen says , and with this book she positions herself as an expert on that suffering and offers some lessons that might guide us toward a healthier future .
Burnout is a medical diagnosis that the psychologist Herbert Freudenberger coined in 1974 when , after an extended period of working long hours , he found himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was different from exhaustion or depression , and early on Petersen sums up the difference : “ Exhaustion means going to the point where you can ’ t go any further ; burnout means reaching that point and pushing yourself to keep going , whether for days or weeks or years.
” More expansively , the psychoanalyst Josh Cohen defines it as “ an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it can not be attained , that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are classic candidates for burnout ; so are people likely to announce on social media that they were gifted kids .
Petersen slots into the former , having oriented her life toward a perpetual state of work : grad school , teaching , a career in the ceaseless churn of digital media .
In November 2018 , after she found herself “ fighting tears every time I talked to my editors , ” her BuzzFeed boss suggested she might be suffering from burnout , a diagnosis she initially rejected .
But when she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realized that her scrambled mental state might be symptomatic of something greater than mere physical fatigue .
“ For months , whenever I thought about going to bed , I felt overwhelmed by the steps I ’ d have to take to responsibly get from the couch to the bed , ” she writes .
“ I felt underwhelmed by vacations—or , more precisely , like vacation was just another thing to get through on my to-do list.
” Work was fine ( it ’ s all she seemed to do ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reward , like getting her knives sharpened or her boots resoled , continued piling up .
So she began researching what she terms “ errand paralysis , ” an anecdotal condition appearing to plague thousands of people across the Internet , rendering them similarly incapable of completing basic tasks .
Her first instincts brought her to “ adulting , ” a term coined around 2013 that regards adulthood as an ongoing performance in which fulfilling dull errands feels like cosplaying as your parents .
Underneath adulting , Petersen finds the reasons for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and errands of everyday life don ’ t lead to better living , so it ’ s difficult to conceive of them as a necessary part of the life we have .
But actual work no longer leads to a better life because of decades of sustained corporate and political effort to make labor and its rewards shittier , depriving us of a basic right to simply live off the fruits of our endeavors .
All of this runs contrary to Petersen ’ s received wisdom “ that if I just worked hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If it did , millennials would have savings , stable employment , and homeownership .
The simmering dread that comes from considering these fundamental tensions among the need to work and the endlessness of that work and the uselessness of that work formed the basis of Petersen ’ s spin on burnout , leading her to write that article and eventually the book .
Thus Can ’ t Even is structured as an investigation into the dismal realities of millennial life—the gig economy , the education-industrial complex , the oversaturation of social media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ burnout .
Each chapter is sprinkled with testimonies from other millennials , as she acknowledges early on that no one framework applies to the generation ’ s diversity of race , gender , and sexuality ( or any generation ’ s , for that matter ) .
After all , an estimated 73 million Americans qualify as millennials , and even an article that attracted over 7 million clicks speaks for only a minority .
“ Decentering the white middle-class millennial experience as the millennial experience is an ongoing and essential aspect of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But she is a white middle-class millennial , and her frequent reliance on the plural “ we ” often hinders that decentering process .
One example comes during an early passage in which she discusses how burnout won ’ t be cured by “ productivity apps , or a bullet journal , or face mask skin treatments , or overnight fucking oats.
” She adds , “ We gravitate toward these personal cures because they seem tenable , and promise that our lives can be recentered , and regrounded , with just a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a better email organization , or a new meal planning.
” The urgency of this prose suggests its fidelity to a shared lived experience , though on a second pass , it seems clear she ’ s still circling back to white middle-class millennials .
( Also , overnight oats are fine . )
Shortly thereafter , she introduces what might be a mission statement : “ Before we can start fighting what is very much a structural battle , we first need to understand it as such.
” Here the book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Gary John Bishop ’ s Unfu*k Yourself by acknowledging that the problems we face are broader than any individual cluster of decisions .
But a conflict arises between the universality of these issues and the unavoidable way Petersen ends up centering herself .
More and more , her solutions to these structural issues end up sounding like ones that would best benefit another type-A achiever who desperately wants to find meaning in work .
Some people might respond to burnout by switching jobs or moving to another city , but Petersen just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t the first writer to take a crack at diagnosing the millennial condition , as anyone who has ever gone online can tell you , and Can ’ t Even liberally refers to its antecedents .
Most notable is her repeated citation of Malcolm Harris ’ s 2017 book Kids These Days , a broad look at how the education-industrial complex has shaped the millennial class into worker drones .
The two books diverge in plenty of ways , but they draw on a similar body of evidence to demonstrate how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the facts aren ’ t really up for debate .
Millennials have been screwed .
We ’ re the first generation to have a worse economic outlook than our parents .
We control less than 5 percent of US wealth , despite making up the largest chunk of the workforce , and plenty of millennials won ’ t make up that difference after their parents die .
What matters more are the divergences and who they ’ re meant to accommodate .
Harris identifies as a Marxist , and his prose—in his book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ putting word to suspicions he ’ s held for his politically educated life .
“ None of our institutions look as if they will transform American society in the ways we ’ d need them to in order to reverse the trends described in this book , ” he concludes .
Petersen is no less bullish about her positions , but she ’ s more sanguine about the possibility of reorganizing the system from within rather than tearing it down altogether .
Furthermore , she tends to write from a place of surprise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to begin with .
She claims otherwise : “ Few millennials are surprised , ” she writes in an author ’ s note appended to the beginning that addresses how Covid-19 has exacerbated many of these tensions—but much of her personal testimony centers on the ongoing deflation of the myths she learned growing up .
She does a lot of related work to ease in those readers who might not be readymade radicals .
In one such effort , she writes that it may be “ hard for many Americans to hear or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capitalism is not benevolent .
Halle Butler ’ s Millennial Workplace Novel Has All the Precarity and None of the Pathos It ’ s important to remember this as Petersen builds her case piece by piece , beginning with a straightforward history of how the baby boomers—the generation that has the most political and economic capital—grew self-interested and how they taught their children to construct their lives in anticipation of the bountiful adulthood to follow .
From there , she dives into the rise of surveillance culture at work ( bad ) and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and steady employment for the working class ( also bad ) .
Few of the claims are novel ( you could glean as much by scrolling through several months of Bernie Sanders ’ s tweets ) , but her dutiful approach is geared toward those who weren ’ t already aware or convinced of the circumstances swirling all around .
“ Most burnt-out millennials I know have arrived at that point of calling those expectations into question , but it didn ’ t happen right away , ” she writes .
“ Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Even after watching our parents get shut out , fall from , or simply struggle anxiously to maintain the American Dream , we didn ’ t reject it.
” I want to stress how much I empathize , because I know a political awakening requires more than a list of facts .
But as a reader , these types of generalizations are unsatisfying because they rely so heavily on trusting she has had a representative experience .
Who are her friends ?
What ’ s the work they wanted to do ?
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to find a social world of millennials who didn ’ t require decades to realize the American dream was flawed , internalized that lesson as teenagers and young adults , and adjusted their worldview accordingly .
There are plenty of comparably broad observations dredged from specific experience .
Referring to Alexandra Robbins ’ s The Overachievers : The Secret Lives of Driven Kids , a 2006 book about overworked teenagers trying to get into the college of their dreams , Petersen notes , “ multiple people told me they read it as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polled the teens I knew in 2006 , most of them would have taken it as a warning guide against being too much of a nerd .
Similar questions accompany each of these confident declarations about how millennials act and think .
My experience doesn ’ t invalidate hers , and it might even be less representative , depending on whom you ask .
But that ’ s the difficulty of interpreting clear evidence—the precarious position millennials undoubtedly occupy—through such a personal lens .
And Can ’ t Even is unavoidably personal .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( culled from “ over three thousand responses ” to surveys she created alongside “ countless interviews and conversations ” Petersen tells us she conducted ) , most of which predictably underline whatever point she ’ s making , we almost always circle back to what she thinks , based on her life and experiences .
It ’ s her book , but it ’ s impossible to cultivate a position of objective expertise from such memoiristic subjectivity , especially given her rarefied work trajectory : academia to media , where she has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( She recently left her job at BuzzFeed to work full-time on her paid Substack newsletter—a choice that only a small fraction of writers could make . )
An easy conclusion would be that the millennial experience is too broad to generalize in any direction , beyond pointing to the hard metrics about our average net worth ( or lack thereof ) , consumption patterns , voting habits , and so on , but Petersen ’ s book , rather than decentering its writer , makes her experience a heuristic and projects her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ admission comes at the end of a chapter about how millennials were duped into accepting poorly salaried work they were convinced they loved because it allegedly provided them social capital and a feeling of purpose .
The cool job has been a staple of the millennial market , and Petersen can certainly empathize , since BuzzFeed is a hip digital media outlet whose boss once explicitly discouraged the idea of unionizing .
( After suffering years of layoffs , the staff finally voted to unionize in 2019 . )
“ For many , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not to feel embarrassed around it : I settled for so little because I was certain that with enough hard work , things would be different , ” she writes .
This is bold and endearing—a concession that she may have just messed up , without any grander pathologizing .
But it follows a series of hypotheses that the future of millennial work may be uncool jobs or “ one that doesn ’ t exploit you and that you don ’ t hate.
” Two examples she cites , via outside testimony : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to middle school students .
“ The new millennial refrain of ‘ Fuck passion , pay me ’ feels more persuasive and powerful every day , ” she concludes .
Setting aside the fact that teachers are wildly underpaid , only a workaholic could envision better work as the solution to bad work , despite her calls that a profound restructuring of the economy is crucial for anyone , not just millennials , to have a future .
It ’ s true that a psychic reorganization could ameliorate the cumulative effects of burnout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won ’ t play by your rules ” remains a satisfying way of reclaiming one ’ s agency within a broken system .
But all jobs , not just cool ones , are subject to the ongoing degradations levied by venal politicians and corporations .
None of the problems she describes happened by chance ; they were all products of specific decisions made over the decades , meant to maximize profits at the expense of people .
A radical approach or solution might scare her readers , but it ’ s no less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems by simply contorting our brains to accommodate them .
Switching careers to a job that hasn ’ t been hollowed out by capitalism is just a more ornate version of overnight oats , in terms of thinking it can fix what ails you and us .
Permit me a sports analogy : In the 1990s a basketball analyst named John Hollinger , who at the time was the sports editor of The Oregonian ’ s website , developed a formula called player efficiency rating ( PER ) .
Instead of comparing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s performance—points , rebounds , assists , shooting percentage , steals , blocks , etc.—fans , executives , and analysts could refer to this catch-all number to summarize his contributions .
Because of his position as an innovator of advanced statistics , which were becoming increasingly influential in the broader sports world , Hollinger rose quickly .
He moved to Sports Illustrated , became a senior analyst at ESPN , and in 2012 was hired as the vice president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies , an NBA team .
Meanwhile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to codified league wisdom .
Contemporary basketball video games allow you to look up a digital player ’ s rating , and it ’ s not uncommon for commentators to casually bring it up during a game .
But PER has its detractors , who have pointed out issues with the formula ’ s calculations , how it doesn ’ t account for defense ( literally half of the game ) , and how it diminishes the cultural factors that make up why anyone cares about basketball to begin with .
For example @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most lauded , influential , and beloved NBA players of the past 25 years—was just “ pretty good , ” a claim that would get you outright ejected from most professional locker rooms .
While reasonable people would acknowledge that PER is just one paintbrush used to color in a complete picture of the NBA , Hollinger has cashed in massively on the idea of his expertise , even when you don ’ t need a complicated statistic to affirm that Michael Jordan is the best player of all-time ( career PER @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I thought about PER every time Petersen somehow found a way to bring an argument back around to burnout , a term she uses in some permutation about 140 times .
Granted , it ’ s in the title .
But does looking at Instagram really lead to burnout ?
Is not wanting to take a vacation always a sign of burnout ?
Or not mowing the lawn ?
Couldn ’ t that be just an aversion to yardwork or simply—gasp—laziness ?
The last decade has seen no shortage of catchy concepts popularized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one ’ s personality , such as imposter syndrome , the Myers-Briggs test , and adulting .
Burnout is positioned here to become another one , and by default , this book makes Petersen a burnout expert , a nice job for someone to have .
It ’ s not that burnout isn ’ t real , though its classification as a medical diagnosis should give anyone pause before blithely declaring it ’ s what ails them .
But its credibility dissipates with every enthusiastic invocation and the ingrained belief that many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or lead to it .
The insistence on grafting burnout onto every discussed topic transforms a technically informative , unfortunately bland book into an advertisement for the author ’ s grand theory of life , a theory that , given the evidence , is highly up for critique .
Toward the end , Petersen insists she wants to avoid prescribing any solutions , before showing her hand : “ Actual substantive change has to come from the public sector—and we must vote en masse to elect politicians who will agitate for it tirelessly.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but coming at the tail end of so many dire anecdotes and data points , it ’ s as satisfying as a Democratic National Committee talking head reminding us to vote every time Donald Trump opens his mouth .
In some ways , this book ’ s timing dramatically underscores that lack of political imagination and casts it as one of those self-help books she sought to avoid .
Current events can dramatically expose the need for societal reforms : Witness the sudden shift in support for universal health care during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ George Floyd ’ s killing .
Greater investment in local politics or mutual aid or the normalizing of mass protests against unabashed wrongdoing have all emerged as necessary shifts in our collective political thinking , which is why it ’ s disappointing her book stops short of imagining specific action beyond a broad citation of platitudes and that benign call to vote .
Like Petersen , I want things to change , and I also know that change requires broad support across all demographics .
I ’ m just not sure if we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this long to put the pieces together , because it means there ’ s plenty more the person won ’ t see coming .

During a trip home a few years ago, I casually asked my mother’s partner, D, for some financial advice. I was starting my third job in three years, and a byproduct of all this shuffling of tax forms was that I possessed two or three 401(k) accounts, each containing a paltry amount I nonetheless didn’t want to languish forever. D is a responsible, intelligent man in his 70s whose concerted investing efforts paid dividends throughout his life, and within days, he prepared a modest portfolio of annotated printouts suggesting some mutual funds and stocks for whenever I got around to rolling over those disparate accounts into one. Books in Review Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation By Anne Helen Petersen Buy this book
I said something like, Looks great, before asking if he could winnow it down a little. Well, no, he told me: I just had to do the reading, and decide for myself. But what if I don’t have a lot of faith in the stock market? Well, it comes and goes, you just have to go with your gut and not stress it too much… until it’s time to stress! (Big smiles at the dinner table.) But what if I just like looking at a big number? Well, big numbers are wonderful, but if you’re smart about it you can look at an even bigger number within five to 50 years. But what if I don’t have any faith in the long-term future of Western financial markets and/or society? He had no answer for that.
I was joking but not really, and in the coming days my enthusiasm waned every time I glanced at the portfolio. The amount I needed to redistribute was so negligible that the man at Fidelity more or less laughed when I walked in to ask for more advice. He told me to call the hotline, but the idea of talking on the phone about my stocks seemed deeply alienating for reasons I couldn’t articulate. And so the money just sat there. For 18 months. Until one day I mentioned it to a coworker, who rolled her eyes, said I was being a baby, and provided the specific instructions I desired, which I carried out after googling “[mutual fund] good?” to confirm at least one of us knew what she was talking about.
Most of this was laziness. But I was working full-time; I had an active social schedule; and the Fidelity website said I’d need to invest a whole lot more in order to avoid destitution in my geriatric years. Putting too much effort into maximizing this amount of capital, before I had a better job or a winning lottery ticket, just didn’t seem worthwhile. Every day, the news delivered some ominous portent about how millennials (my generation) were more underpaid and overworked than ever, how corporate America was nakedly stacking the deck against workers, how the economy was shedding permanent jobs for transient giglike distractions meant to tempt us with flexibility instead of health care. Also, climate change.
Without some kind of transformative, society-shaking upheaval, it felt beyond obvious that the financially stable future D and his baby boomer peers were able to take for granted when they were my age—especially the white male ones—would never come. That it took maybe 10 minutes to handle my 401(k) situation after 18 months of waffling only underscored the pervasive sense of futility distracting me and perhaps millions of others from doing what was theoretically in my best interest. Why bother with the little stuff when the big stuff is so profoundly insurmountable? Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
This enervating psychic stasis might be chalked up to burnout, according to Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, a new book by the academic and culture writer Anne Helen Petersen about how our generation (people born from 1981 to 1996) exists in a perpetually hollowed-out mental state. Can’t Even is an expanded version of “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,” a viral article she wrote in January 2019 for her then-employer, BuzzFeed, and whose success is mentioned multiple times in the text. The piece has collected over “more than seven million readers” since its publication, numbers that would make any website editor’s (and at least one book editor’s) eyes pop like a horny cartoon character. The economic and cultural forces that induce burnout are problems faced by all millennials, Petersen says, and with this book she positions herself as an expert on that suffering and offers some lessons that might guide us toward a healthier future.
Burnout is a medical diagnosis that the psychologist Herbert Freudenberger coined in 1974 when, after an extended period of working long hours, he found himself extraordinarily incapable of experiencing joy. It was different from exhaustion or depression, and early on Petersen sums up the difference: “Exhaustion means going to the point where you can’t go any further; burnout means reaching that point and pushing yourself to keep going, whether for days or weeks or years.” More expansively, the psychoanalyst Josh Cohen defines it as “an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it cannot be attained, that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which can’t be silenced.” Overachievers are classic candidates for burnout; so are people likely to announce on social media that they were gifted kids.
Petersen slots into the former, having oriented her life toward a perpetual state of work: grad school, teaching, a career in the ceaseless churn of digital media. In November 2018, after she found herself “fighting tears every time I talked to my editors,” her BuzzFeed boss suggested she might be suffering from burnout, a diagnosis she initially rejected. But when she took a few days off, she realized that her scrambled mental state might be symptomatic of something greater than mere physical fatigue. “For months, whenever I thought about going to bed, I felt overwhelmed by the steps I’d have to take to responsibly get from the couch to the bed,” she writes. “I felt underwhelmed by vacations—or, more precisely, like vacation was just another thing to get through on my to-do list.” Work was fine (it’s all she seemed to do), but the little tasks with no great reward, like getting her knives sharpened or her boots resoled, continued piling up. Related Article The Precarious Generation Sarah Jones
So she began researching what she terms “errand paralysis,” an anecdotal condition appearing to plague thousands of people across the Internet, rendering them similarly incapable of completing basic tasks. Her first instincts brought her to “adulting,” a term coined around 2013 that regards adulthood as an ongoing performance in which fulfilling dull errands feels like cosplaying as your parents. Underneath adulting, Petersen finds the reasons for the millennial flavor of burnout: The busywork and errands of everyday life don’t lead to better living, so it’s difficult to conceive of them as a necessary part of the life we have. But actual work no longer leads to a better life because of decades of sustained corporate and political effort to make labor and its rewards shittier, depriving us of a basic right to simply live off the fruits of our endeavors. All of this runs contrary to Petersen’s received wisdom “that if I just worked hard enough, everything would pan out.” If it did, millennials would have savings, stable employment, and homeownership.
The simmering dread that comes from considering these fundamental tensions among the need to work and the endlessness of that work and the uselessness of that work formed the basis of Petersen’s spin on burnout, leading her to write that article and eventually the book. Thus Can’t Even is structured as an investigation into the dismal realities of millennial life—the gig economy, the education-industrial complex, the oversaturation of social media, etc.—and how they inevitably culminate in burnout. Each chapter is sprinkled with testimonies from other millennials, as she acknowledges early on that no one framework applies to the generation’s diversity of race, gender, and sexuality (or any generation’s, for that matter). After all, an estimated 73 million Americans qualify as millennials, and even an article that attracted over 7 million clicks speaks for only a minority.
“Decentering the white middle-class millennial experience as the millennial experience is an ongoing and essential aspect of this project,” Petersen writes. But she is a white middle-class millennial, and her frequent reliance on the plural “we” often hinders that decentering process. One example comes during an early passage in which she discusses how burnout won’t be cured by “productivity apps, or a bullet journal, or face mask skin treatments, or overnight fucking oats.” She adds, “We gravitate toward these personal cures because they seem tenable, and promise that our lives can be recentered, and regrounded, with just a bit more discipline, a new app, a better email organization, or a new meal planning.” The urgency of this prose suggests its fidelity to a shared lived experience, though on a second pass, it seems clear she’s still circling back to white middle-class millennials. (Also, overnight oats are fine.)
Shortly thereafter, she introduces what might be a mission statement: “Before we can start fighting what is very much a structural battle, we first need to understand it as such.” Here the book diverges from upsettingly popular millennial self-help books like Gary John Bishop’s Unfu*k Yourself by acknowledging that the problems we face are broader than any individual cluster of decisions. But a conflict arises between the universality of these issues and the unavoidable way Petersen ends up centering herself. More and more, her solutions to these structural issues end up sounding like ones that would best benefit another type-A achiever who desperately wants to find meaning in work. Some people might respond to burnout by switching jobs or moving to another city, but Petersen just wrote a book about it.
Petersen isn’t the first writer to take a crack at diagnosing the millennial condition, as anyone who has ever gone online can tell you, and Can’t Even liberally refers to its antecedents. Most notable is her repeated citation of Malcolm Harris’s 2017 book Kids These Days, a broad look at how the education-industrial complex has shaped the millennial class into worker drones. The two books diverge in plenty of ways, but they draw on a similar body of evidence to demonstrate how and why we got here, because the facts aren’t really up for debate. Millennials have been screwed. We’re the first generation to have a worse economic outlook than our parents. We control less than 5 percent of US wealth, despite making up the largest chunk of the workforce, and plenty of millennials won’t make up that difference after their parents die.
What matters more are the divergences and who they’re meant to accommodate. Harris identifies as a Marxist, and his prose—in his book and elsewhere—thrums with the cynicism of someone putting word to suspicions he’s held for his politically educated life. “None of our institutions look as if they will transform American society in the ways we’d need them to in order to reverse the trends described in this book,” he concludes.
Petersen is no less bullish about her positions, but she’s more sanguine about the possibility of reorganizing the system from within rather than tearing it down altogether. Furthermore, she tends to write from a place of surprise that we’re in this situation to begin with. She claims otherwise: “Few millennials are surprised,” she writes in an author’s note appended to the beginning that addresses how Covid-19 has exacerbated many of these tensions—but much of her personal testimony centers on the ongoing deflation of the myths she learned growing up. She does a lot of related work to ease in those readers who might not be readymade radicals. In one such effort, she writes that it may be “hard for many Americans to hear or think about” the idea that unchecked capitalism is not benevolent. Related Article Halle Butler’s Millennial Workplace Novel Has All the Precarity and None of the Pathos Katie Bloom
It’s important to remember this as Petersen builds her case piece by piece, beginning with a straightforward history of how the baby boomers—the generation that has the most political and economic capital—grew self-interested and how they taught their children to construct their lives in anticipation of the bountiful adulthood to follow. From there, she dives into the rise of surveillance culture at work (bad) and how the consultant class helped devastate pensions and steady employment for the working class (also bad). Few of the claims are novel (you could glean as much by scrolling through several months of Bernie Sanders’s tweets), but her dutiful approach is geared toward those who weren’t already aware or convinced of the circumstances swirling all around.
“Most burnt-out millennials I know have arrived at that point of calling those expectations into question, but it didn’t happen right away,” she writes. “Instead, it’s taken decades: Even after watching our parents get shut out, fall from, or simply struggle anxiously to maintain the American Dream, we didn’t reject it.”
I want to stress how much I empathize, because I know a political awakening requires more than a list of facts. But as a reader, these types of generalizations are unsatisfying because they rely so heavily on trusting she has had a representative experience. Who are her friends? What’s the work they wanted to do? You don’t have to look far to find a social world of millennials who didn’t require decades to realize the American dream was flawed, internalized that lesson as teenagers and young adults, and adjusted their worldview accordingly. There are plenty of comparably broad observations dredged from specific experience. Referring to Alexandra Robbins’s The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, a 2006 book about overworked teenagers trying to get into the college of their dreams, Petersen notes, “multiple people told me they read it as a sort of instruction manual.” If I polled the teens I knew in 2006, most of them would have taken it as a warning guide against being too much of a nerd.
Similar questions accompany each of these confident declarations about how millennials act and think. My experience doesn’t invalidate hers, and it might even be less representative, depending on whom you ask. But that’s the difficulty of interpreting clear evidence—the precarious position millennials undoubtedly occupy—through such a personal lens. And Can’t Even is unavoidably personal. Though every chapter incorporates multiple outside testimonies (culled from “over three thousand responses” to surveys she created alongside “countless interviews and conversations” Petersen tells us she conducted), most of which predictably underline whatever point she’s making, we almost always circle back to what she thinks, based on her life and experiences.
It’s her book, but it’s impossible to cultivate a position of objective expertise from such memoiristic subjectivity, especially given her rarefied work trajectory: academia to media, where she has built a sizable brand and audience. (She recently left her job at BuzzFeed to work full-time on her paid Substack newsletter—a choice that only a small fraction of writers could make.) An easy conclusion would be that the millennial experience is too broad to generalize in any direction, beyond pointing to the hard metrics about our average net worth (or lack thereof), consumption patterns, voting habits, and so on, but Petersen’s book, rather than decentering its writer, makes her experience a heuristic and projects her assumptions onto the world.
A telling admission comes at the end of a chapter about how millennials were duped into accepting poorly salaried work they were convinced they loved because it allegedly provided them social capital and a feeling of purpose. The cool job has been a staple of the millennial market, and Petersen can certainly empathize, since BuzzFeed is a hip digital media outlet whose boss once explicitly discouraged the idea of unionizing. (After suffering years of layoffs, the staff finally voted to unionize in 2019.) “For many, including myself, it’s hard not to feel embarrassed around it: I settled for so little because I was certain that with enough hard work, things would be different,” she writes.
This is bold and endearing—a concession that she may have just messed up, without any grander pathologizing. But it follows a series of hypotheses that the future of millennial work may be uncool jobs or “one that doesn’t exploit you and that you don’t hate.” Two examples she cites, via outside testimony: working in foster care and teaching history to middle school students. “The new millennial refrain of ‘Fuck passion, pay me’ feels more persuasive and powerful every day,” she concludes.
Setting aside the fact that teachers are wildly underpaid, only a workaholic could envision better work as the solution to bad work, despite her calls that a profound restructuring of the economy is crucial for anyone, not just millennials, to have a future. It’s true that a psychic reorganization could ameliorate the cumulative effects of burnout, as “The hell with this—I won’t play by your rules” remains a satisfying way of reclaiming one’s agency within a broken system. But all jobs, not just cool ones, are subject to the ongoing degradations levied by venal politicians and corporations. None of the problems she describes happened by chance; they were all products of specific decisions made over the decades, meant to maximize profits at the expense of people.
A radical approach or solution might scare her readers, but it’s no less unrealistic than imagining we can escape these problems by simply contorting our brains to accommodate them. Switching careers to a job that hasn’t been hollowed out by capitalism is just a more ornate version of overnight oats, in terms of thinking it can fix what ails you and us.
Permit me a sports analogy: In the 1990s a basketball analyst named John Hollinger, who at the time was the sports editor of The Oregonian’s website, developed a formula called player efficiency rating (PER). Instead of comparing the myriad statistics used to track a player’s performance—points, rebounds, assists, shooting percentage, steals, blocks, etc.—fans, executives, and analysts could refer to this catch-all number to summarize his contributions. Because of his position as an innovator of advanced statistics, which were becoming increasingly influential in the broader sports world, Hollinger rose quickly. He moved to Sports Illustrated, became a senior analyst at ESPN, and in 2012 was hired as the vice president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies, an NBA team. Meanwhile, PER went from niche mathematical tool to codified league wisdom. Contemporary basketball video games allow you to look up a digital player’s rating, and it’s not uncommon for commentators to casually bring it up during a game.
But PER has its detractors, who have pointed out issues with the formula’s calculations, how it doesn’t account for defense (literally half of the game), and how it diminishes the cultural factors that make up why anyone cares about basketball to begin with. For example, PER states that Allen Iverson—one of the most lauded, influential, and beloved NBA players of the past 25 years—was just “pretty good,” a claim that would get you outright ejected from most professional locker rooms. While reasonable people would acknowledge that PER is just one paintbrush used to color in a complete picture of the NBA, Hollinger has cashed in massively on the idea of his expertise, even when you don’t need a complicated statistic to affirm that Michael Jordan is the best player of all-time (career PER ranking: No. 1).
I thought about PER every time Petersen somehow found a way to bring an argument back around to burnout, a term she uses in some permutation about 140 times. Granted, it’s in the title. But does looking at Instagram really lead to burnout? Is not wanting to take a vacation always a sign of burnout? Or not mowing the lawn? Couldn’t that be just an aversion to yardwork or simply—gasp—laziness? The last decade has seen no shortage of catchy concepts popularized in millennial circles as a shorthand for one’s personality, such as imposter syndrome, the Myers-Briggs test, and adulting. Burnout is positioned here to become another one, and by default, this book makes Petersen a burnout expert, a nice job for someone to have.
It’s not that burnout isn’t real, though its classification as a medical diagnosis should give anyone pause before blithely declaring it’s what ails them. But its credibility dissipates with every enthusiastic invocation and the ingrained belief that many of our problems are either explained by it or lead to it. The insistence on grafting burnout onto every discussed topic transforms a technically informative, unfortunately bland book into an advertisement for the author’s grand theory of life, a theory that, given the evidence, is highly up for critique. Toward the end, Petersen insists she wants to avoid prescribing any solutions, before showing her hand: “Actual substantive change has to come from the public sector—and we must vote en masse to elect politicians who will agitate for it tirelessly.” This isn’t entirely untrue, but coming at the tail end of so many dire anecdotes and data points, it’s as satisfying as a Democratic National Committee talking head reminding us to vote every time Donald Trump opens his mouth.
In some ways, this book’s timing dramatically underscores that lack of political imagination and casts it as one of those self-help books she sought to avoid. Current events can dramatically expose the need for societal reforms: Witness the sudden shift in support for universal health care during the Covid-19 pandemic and for police reform after George Floyd’s killing. Greater investment in local politics or mutual aid or the normalizing of mass protests against unabashed wrongdoing have all emerged as necessary shifts in our collective political thinking, which is why it’s disappointing her book stops short of imagining specific action beyond a broad citation of platitudes and that benign call to vote. Like Petersen, I want things to change, and I also know that change requires broad support across all demographics. I’m just not sure if we should take direction from someone who took this long to put the pieces together, because it means there’s plenty more the person won’t see coming.


thenation--2020-11-12--Donald Trump Has Suffered a Defeat of Historic Proportions

Republicans have their differences , but they generally agree on Ronald Reagan , the conservative icon who for the better part of five decades has been their party ’ s emotional and ideological touchstone figure .
So here ’ s a reference point for the Republican Party leaders who are now joining Donald Trump in a go-down-with-the-ship refusal to concede the 2020 presidential election : Joe Biden is currently winning that election by a higher percentage of the national popular vote than Reagan did in his historic victory over President Jimmy Carter .
Reagan took 50.7 percent of the vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 50.8 percent of the vote , and that percentage will continue to rise as millions of additional ballots are counted in the heavily Democratic states of California , Illinois , and New York .
Even before the last of the votes are counted , the Democrat entered into historic territory .
Biden has won the presidency with a higher percentage of the vote than Trump in 2016 , George W. Bush in 2004 or 2000 , Bill Clinton in 1996 or 1992 , Reagan in 1980 , Jimmy Carter in 1976 , Richard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1960 , or Harry Truman in 1948 .
What that means is that , even as Trump keeps claiming that “ WE WILL WIN !
, ” he has already lost .
Bigly .
This Would Be a Very Good Time to Impeach William Barr John Kasich Contributed Nothing to Biden ’ s Election , So Why Should Democrats Listen to His Claptrap ?
Biden has not merely received more votes than any candidate for the presidency in American history—77,400,000 and counting—he has finished the 2020 competition with a higher level of popular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most of the presidential elections since the end of World War II .
What ’ s especially striking is the scope of Biden ’ s win as a challenger to a sitting president .
Now that he has surpassed Reagan ’ s 1980 percentage in the race with Carter , Biden ’ s getting a higher percentage of the vote than any rival to a incumbent since Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt upended Republican Herbert Hoover in 1932 .
Every election has different dynamics , ranging from the relative strength of third-party candidates to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But The Wall Street Journal headline from the day after this election— “ Trump , Biden Locked in Close Election Contest ” —no longer applies .
This is not a “ too-close-to-call , ” or a “ tight ” or an “ uncertain ” election .
Despite what House minority whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana suggests , his fellow Republican did not have “ a strong finish.
” Trump ’ s been defeated resoundingly .
The fact that he is a major loser does not sit well with this egomaniacal president .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facts .
Trump ’ s tantrums will not alter the vote patterns .
There is no unfounded charge of fraud that is going to improve his fate .
What ’ s gone badly for the president already is likely to get worse .
He can announce on Twitter that “ I WON THIS ELECTION , BY A LOT !
” His buffoonish yes-men can make their humiliating pronouncements , as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did with his claim , “ There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no legal or legitimate way to rearrange the result they report .
Consider this : Barack Obama won the 2012 election with what was broadly accepted as a comfortable margin of 51.1 percent of the vote to 47.2 percent for Republican Mitt Romney .
One week after the 2020 election , Biden is leading Trump by a 50.8 to 47.4 margin and the gap could well grow to match or exceed the one Obama enjoyed in 2012 .
For those who dismiss popular democracy and focus on the archaic and antidemocratic Electoral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daunting .
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win .
Biden now has an advantage of at least 279-217 ( some networks call it at 290-217 ) and he leads in the ongoing counts in Arizona and Georgia .
Trump ’ s ahead in the continuing North Carolina count .
If those three states stick to pattern through the final tabulations , canvasses and recounts , Biden ’ s advantage will go to 306-232 , the same initial split that Trump secured in 2016 .
Since Biden ’ s electors are likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s votes are announced on December 14 , the Democrat will win with a slightly higher number of electoral votes than were counted for Trump in 2016—when a pair of Republican “ faithless ” electors in Texas backed former Texas US Representative Ron Paul and former Ohio governor John Kasich .
Trump bragged that he prevailed in 2016 by “ winning the Electoral College in a landslide.
” Trump political counselor , pollster , and eventual White House aide Kellyanne Conway amplified that remark with a tweet that announced , “ 306 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Good Riddance to Trump : A Political Obituary I Have Waited 5 Years to Write The landslide claim was debatable .
But Biden looks to be on track to beat Trump with a higher level of Electoral College support—57 percent—than George W. Bush got in 2004 or 2000 , than Jimmy Carter got in 1976 , than Richard Nixon got in 1968 , or than John Kennedy got in 1960 .
Indeed , Biden ’ s likely to finish with a better Electoral College percentage than a dozen presidents who were elected over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Adams and Thomas Jefferson .
Reagan did not hesitate to claim a mandate to govern when he received 50.7 percent of the popular vote in 1980 .
Nixon did not hesitate to claim a mandate when he won a far lower percentage of the popular vote and a somewhat lower percentage of the Electoral College vote in 1968 .
And when Bush won with lower percentages of both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote in 2004—a year that , like 2020 , finished with several close and contested counts—he declared , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ numbers and delivered an historic victory.
” Biden has every right to claim his mandate at this point .
Whatever Pompeo says to the contrary , whatever unreality Republican lawmakers are living in , Biden will take office on January 20 , 2021 .
As for Donald Trump , he has finished the 2020 election as a loser .
Like all the defeated candidates in all the presidential contests before this one ( many of whom attracted substantially greater support than he has attracted in his failed reelection bid ) , he now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concession speech .
If Trump refuses to accept that duty , he will make a little more history : as the most pathetic loser of all .

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Republicans have their differences, but they generally agree on Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon who for the better part of five decades has been their party’s emotional and ideological touchstone figure. So here’s a reference point for the Republican Party leaders who are now joining Donald Trump in a go-down-with-the-ship refusal to concede the 2020 presidential election: Joe Biden is currently winning that election by a higher percentage of the national popular vote than Reagan did in his historic victory over President Jimmy Carter.
Reagan took 50.7 percent of the vote in 1980.
Biden so far has 50.8 percent of the vote, and that percentage will continue to rise as millions of additional ballots are counted in the heavily Democratic states of California, Illinois, and New York. Even before the last of the votes are counted, the Democrat entered into historic territory. Biden has won the presidency with a higher percentage of the vote than Trump in 2016, George W. Bush in 2004 or 2000, Bill Clinton in 1996 or 1992, Reagan in 1980, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Richard Nixon in 1968, John Kennedy in 1960, or Harry Truman in 1948.
What that means is that, even as Trump keeps claiming that “WE WILL WIN!,” he has already lost. Bigly. More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
Biden has not merely received more votes than any candidate for the presidency in American history—77,400,000 and counting—he has finished the 2020 competition with a higher level of popular support than most of the winners of most of the presidential elections since the end of World War II.
What’s especially striking is the scope of Biden’s win as a challenger to a sitting president. Now that he has surpassed Reagan’s 1980 percentage in the race with Carter, Biden’s getting a higher percentage of the vote than any rival to a incumbent since Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt upended Republican Herbert Hoover in 1932.
Every election has different dynamics, ranging from the relative strength of third-party candidates to the overall level of voter participation. But The Wall Street Journal headline from the day after this election—“Trump, Biden Locked in Close Election Contest”—no longer applies. This is not a “too-close-to-call,” or a “tight” or an “uncertain” election. Despite what House minority whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana suggests, his fellow Republican did not have “a strong finish.” Trump’s been defeated resoundingly. What a Loser Good Riddance to Trump: A Political Obituary I Have Waited 5 Years to Write Sasha Abramsky
The fact that he is a major loser does not sit well with this egomaniacal president. But his feelings can’t change the facts. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Trump’s tantrums will not alter the vote patterns. There is no unfounded charge of fraud that is going to improve his fate. What’s gone badly for the president already is likely to get worse. He can announce on Twitter that “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” His buffoonish yes-men can make their humiliating pronouncements, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did with his claim, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
The numbers are the numbers. There is no legal or legitimate way to rearrange the result they report.
Consider this: Barack Obama won the 2012 election with what was broadly accepted as a comfortable margin of 51.1 percent of the vote to 47.2 percent for Republican Mitt Romney. One week after the 2020 election, Biden is leading Trump by a 50.8 to 47.4 margin and the gap could well grow to match or exceed the one Obama enjoyed in 2012.
For those who dismiss popular democracy and focus on the archaic and antidemocratic Electoral College, the numbers are even more daunting. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win. Biden now has an advantage of at least 279-217 (some networks call it at 290-217) and he leads in the ongoing counts in Arizona and Georgia. Trump’s ahead in the continuing North Carolina count. If those three states stick to pattern through the final tabulations, canvasses and recounts, Biden’s advantage will go to 306-232, the same initial split that Trump secured in 2016. Since Biden’s electors are likely to stick with him when the college’s votes are announced on December 14, the Democrat will win with a slightly higher number of electoral votes than were counted for Trump in 2016—when a pair of Republican “faithless” electors in Texas backed former Texas US Representative Ron Paul and former Ohio governor John Kasich. Trump bragged that he prevailed in 2016 by “winning the Electoral College in a landslide.” Trump political counselor, pollster, and eventual White House aide Kellyanne Conway amplified that remark with a tweet that announced, “306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic.” Current Issue View our current issue
The landslide claim was debatable. But Biden looks to be on track to beat Trump with a higher level of Electoral College support—57 percent—than George W. Bush got in 2004 or 2000, than Jimmy Carter got in 1976, than Richard Nixon got in 1968, or than John Kennedy got in 1960. Indeed, Biden’s likely to finish with a better Electoral College percentage than a dozen presidents who were elected over the past 231 years, including John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Reagan did not hesitate to claim a mandate to govern when he received 50.7 percent of the popular vote in 1980. Nixon did not hesitate to claim a mandate when he won a far lower percentage of the popular vote and a somewhat lower percentage of the Electoral College vote in 1968. And when Bush won with lower percentages of both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote in 2004—a year that, like 2020, finished with several close and contested counts—he declared, “The voters turned out in record numbers and delivered an historic victory.”
Biden has every right to claim his mandate at this point. Whatever Pompeo says to the contrary, whatever unreality Republican lawmakers are living in, Biden will take office on January 20, 2021. As for Donald Trump, he has finished the 2020 election as a loser. Like all the defeated candidates in all the presidential contests before this one (many of whom attracted substantially greater support than he has attracted in his failed reelection bid), he now has a responsibility to deliver his too-long-delayed concession speech. If Trump refuses to accept that duty, he will make a little more history: as the most pathetic loser of all.


thenation--2020-11-12--Working People Dragged Joe Biden Over the Finish Line

Getting Donald Trump out of office was uniquely important because his reality TV stardom allowed him to go from acting like a jerk on The Apprentice to playing a real-life authoritarian strongman .
People bought into his “ drain the swamp ” and “ I tell it like it is ” rhetoric while he and his family engorged themselves on the hard-earned taxes of the working class .
Joe Biden was not the first choice of most progressives , but when the full might of the national Democratic Party leadership converged to anoint him , he became our only hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lost sleep and relationships , any sense of day or night , weekend or weekday ; together they pushed a not-great candidate over the finish line .
No matter how uninspired people felt about Biden , there simply was no other choice .
That Trump got over 70 million votes means racism and misogyny are far too ingrained in the United States to give most caring people any lasting sense of deep satisfaction .
The resentments he revealed and stoked with strategic brilliance and fury will take years to overcome .
Where and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump and the forces behind him ran a vicious campaign based on division and unparalleled voter suppression .
( Slowing Postal Service delivery and destroying sorting machines was a stroke of evil genius . )
But division and suppression have been corporate America ’ s response to every unionization election in this country since at least the 1970s .
As the infamous union buster Martin Jay Levitt wrote , his was “ a field populated by bullies and built on deceit .
A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such , it is a war without honor .
The only way to bust a union is to lie , distort , manipulate , threaten , and always , always attack.
” Because the forces behind Trump ran his 2020 campaign using the exact same strategic repertoire as union busters , it ’ s useful to understand what happens in the days and months after these slash-and-burn campaigns are over—assuming the workers manage to eke out a win .
As a result of the brutal nature of a union campaign , the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) victory , workers wake up having won their union representation with intense levels of division , mistrust , and hatreds of all kinds running high .
This is despite the fact that before the campaign got under way , what relationships they had were largely positive .
Yet when workers win these hard-fought unionization elections , they ’ ve actually won nothing , except the right to fight for their first union contract .
Union busters don ’ t just go away after workers win the right to unionize ; that first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second opportunity to destroy the workers ’ hopes for positive change and a union .
Under anti-worker US labor law , if the first contract isn ’ t achieved in 12 months , workers may petition for another election to throw out the union .
( The analogy continues : Think about what will happen in the 2022 midterms if the Democrats don ’ t deliver . )
For workers to win the policy changes they want , they must quickly overcome their exhaustion and repair and rebuild their stressed solidarity .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health care for themselves and their families , a fair-wage system that eliminates racial and gender biases with life-changing raises , and the right to not be fired because their managers don ’ t like them—they have to build to supermajority unity .
Short of a General Strike , How Can Labor Stop Trump From Stealing the Election ?
Biden Needs to Talk About Jobs on Labor Day .
And Every Day .
We Really Need to Tax the Rich Removing Trump from office is only the first step on the path to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the promises made by the Democratic Party that Biden was the candidate to deliver the Senate , he hasn ’ t done so—yet .
Removing Trump is a victory worth celebrating .
But now , facing a hugely empowered corporate elite , an extremist Supreme Court , and a hostile Senate ( the slim chance of winning two seats in Georgia would still produce a chamber where corporate Democrats like Joe Manchin have too much sway ) , we need to get up from our well-earned nap and start rebuilding solidarity , fighting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must .
Enough workers have proved , even in the past four years , that when we fight smart , strategically , and with discipline , we can win , even against the stiffest of odds .
The transition from gaining hard-fought , highly polarized , narrow wins to transformational policy isn ’ t easy .
But it can be done .

This article appears in the November 30/December 7, 2020 issue.
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Getting Donald Trump out of office was uniquely important because his reality TV stardom allowed him to go from acting like a jerk on The Apprentice to playing a real-life authoritarian strongman. People bought into his “drain the swamp” and “I tell it like it is” rhetoric while he and his family engorged themselves on the hard-earned taxes of the working class. Joe Biden was not the first choice of most progressives, but when the full might of the national Democratic Party leadership converged to anoint him, he became our only hope.
Tens of thousands of grassroots activists lost sleep and relationships, any sense of day or night, weekend or weekday; together they pushed a not-great candidate over the finish line. No matter how uninspired people felt about Biden, there simply was no other choice. That Trump got over 70 million votes means racism and misogyny are far too ingrained in the United States to give most caring people any lasting sense of deep satisfaction. The resentments he revealed and stoked with strategic brilliance and fury will take years to overcome. Where and how do we start that process?
Trump and the forces behind him ran a vicious campaign based on division and unparalleled voter suppression. (Slowing Postal Service delivery and destroying sorting machines was a stroke of evil genius.) But division and suppression have been corporate America’s response to every unionization election in this country since at least the 1970s. As the infamous union buster Martin Jay Levitt wrote, his was “a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. As such, it is a war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack.” Because the forces behind Trump ran his 2020 campaign using the exact same strategic repertoire as union busters, it’s useful to understand what happens in the days and months after these slash-and-burn campaigns are over—assuming the workers manage to eke out a win.
As a result of the brutal nature of a union campaign, the day after their (almost always very narrow) victory, workers wake up having won their union representation with intense levels of division, mistrust, and hatreds of all kinds running high. This is despite the fact that before the campaign got under way, what relationships they had were largely positive. Yet when workers win these hard-fought unionization elections, they’ve actually won nothing, except the right to fight for their first union contract. Union busters don’t just go away after workers win the right to unionize; that first contract battle is the union busters’ second opportunity to destroy the workers’ hopes for positive change and a union. Under anti-worker US labor law, if the first contract isn’t achieved in 12 months, workers may petition for another election to throw out the union. (The analogy continues: Think about what will happen in the 2022 midterms if the Democrats don’t deliver.) For workers to win the policy changes they want, they must quickly overcome their exhaustion and repair and rebuild their stressed solidarity. And to win radical improvements—like fully funded employer-paid health care for themselves and their families, a fair-wage system that eliminates racial and gender biases with life-changing raises, and the right to not be fired because their managers don’t like them—they have to build to supermajority unity. More From Jane McAlevey The Teamsters’ Proposed Agreement With UPS Is a Great Victory by and for the Workers July 28, 2023 Contract Talks by Teamsters and the UAW Have the Potential to Change Our Politics June 27, 2023 How Should Workers Respond to the Supreme Court's Ruling in “Glacier Northwest”? June 1, 2023
Removing Trump from office is only the first step on the path to policy wins. Especially because, despite the promises made by the Democratic Party that Biden was the candidate to deliver the Senate, he hasn’t done so—yet. Removing Trump is a victory worth celebrating. But now, facing a hugely empowered corporate elite, an extremist Supreme Court, and a hostile Senate (the slim chance of winning two seats in Georgia would still produce a chamber where corporate Democrats like Joe Manchin have too much sway), we need to get up from our well-earned nap and start rebuilding solidarity, fighting like hell to win the changes we must. Enough workers have proved, even in the past four years, that when we fight smart, strategically, and with discipline, we can win, even against the stiffest of odds. The transition from gaining hard-fought, highly polarized, narrow wins to transformational policy isn’t easy. But it can be done.