Dear Weekend Jolter,
An epoch ago, President Biden was running in defiance of biology and time, Donald Trump was exploiting it, and the media were perfectly happy ignoring the disaster that loomed because of these two things.
Five weeks later, everything has changed. And nothing has.
Matthew Continetti, in NR's cover story, chronicled the remarkable sequence of political events that unfolded at the tail end of June through the month of July. As the Economist put it, after Trump was shot and nominated but before Biden dropped out, the country "passed through one of Lenin's weeks in which decades happen." The significance of the moment is not lost on those living it. This "may end up being one of the momentous periods in American politics," Representative Tom Tiffany (R., Wis.) told Audrey Fahlberg. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) likened these times to the late '60s, freighted with a sense of "What in the world is coming next?"
Fortunately, so far, the turmoil is not at 1968 levels. Biden's decision to bow out just weeks before his party's convention and effectively install his vice president atop the ticket was historic and consequential, no doubt. Democrats are emboldened, despite lingering concerns about Kamala Harris's acumen, aptitude, and consistency; Trump could soon lose his front-runner status.
At the same time, as Audrey observes in her piece on this whiplash period in politics, "in some ways, things have reverted to the mean." Everything is different after these seismic events, Jeff Blehar writes, “yet everything is curiously the same.”
On the Democratic side, journalists were salivating over the prospect of an open convention — until Harris locked down the delegates needed to presumably avoid it. Jeff notes how the race is resetting and Democrats are returning to their "prevent defense" strategy — while Harris is more or less running as Biden. As for the conduct of the campaign, as noted before, Biden's call to lower the "temperature" after the Trump assassination attempt was heeded by no one; the president himself continued to warn that Trump wants to rule as a dictator. The Harris camp has doubled down, distorting a clumsy wisecrack about how he would fix all the country's problems such that people wouldn't have to vote anymore as Trump's "promise to end democracy."
Donald Trump tries to tell a half-joke and mangles it in such a way that his opponents can plausibly retail a far more sinister version of it: That sounds a lot like every episode of the Trump Show we've watched since 2015.
On the Republican side, voters caught a glimpse of a subdued version of their nominee in his soft-spoken convention speech. Fast-forward a few days, and you'd never know Trump had had a near-death experience, save for when he talks about it. The freewheeling, boisterous, often-inflammatory candidate returned to the stump with impersonations and gripes about the "rigged" election and blistering attacks, this time trained on "lunatic" Kamala Harris. He followed this up with a radio interview in which he appeared to agree with the host's comment that Harris's husband Doug Emhoff is a "crappy Jew," and then a sit-down at a National Association of Black Journalists conference where he questioned his opponent's racial identity. Trump's running mate is married to a child of Indian immigrants, and they have produced offspring. Pray they never have to see this transcript:
[Harris] was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now, she wants to be known as black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?
As for the media, it really was nice to have had them for a month, stepping into their proper adversarial role. But as Becket Adams writes, it seems like a lifetime ago that the press corps was challenging the Biden administration over the president's fitness for office, or at least for reelection. Once Biden was pushed out, most outlets returned to the status quo ante, protecting the presumptive nominee and burnishing her image while letting the questions on who knew what when about Biden's condition fade into the background.
Allow me to nod to the stubborn metaphor of American politics as cinema: There's a jarring moment in a movie by another famous Judd, Funny People, in which the wealthy, self-centered, and cancer-stricken comedian played by Adam Sandler starts to morally regress after his confrontation with mortality had prompted him to treat people better. In the scene, he, his friend, and the ex he's trying to win back are watching a video of her kid — but Sandler's character, by this point in remission, is smirking and checking his phone. Back to his old ways. It feels like 2024 is at that point in the plot. Stuck, perhaps.
If there was ever a time for Democrats to cool the end-of-democracy rhetoric, for Republicans to stop being so profoundly off-putting to people who don't wear red hats, for the media to rediscover impartiality, now would be good. Natan Ehrenreich argues — if counterintuitively — that what could actually shake our politics is the response from November's loser. The two major parties are really minority parties, deeply underwater in public opinion, he notes; what if the losing one were to stop narrowcasting and start building a coalition that can truly last?
One of our major political movements — Trumpism or wokeness — will be humiliated less than four months from now. If the losing political party jettisons that unpopular vision it has presented to American voters and instead is pushed to adopt a serious governing agenda capable of commanding approval from independents and moderates, it could control the next era of American politics as a true majority movement and, in due course, reap monumental electoral benefits.
Stranger things have happened — in just the last few weeks.
* * *
Prisoner swaps with Russia, which takes innocents hostage to use as pawns, are always going to be wildly out of balance, since America doesn’t do that. But this week’s release of Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, and others was great news, even considering the swap’s terrible trade-offs. Welcome home.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Kamala Harris is shedding her old positions, for now, at remarkable speed: Here Come the Flip-Flops
He had it coming: Good Riddance to Ismail Haniyeh
Maduro is a dictator. Back the opposition, to the hilt: Venezuela's Stolen Election
ARTICLES
Dan McLaughlin: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden Propose Their Own January 6 for the Courts
Charles C. W. Cooke: Kamala Harris's Policy Problem
Noah Rothman: Kamala Harris's Reboot Won't Work
Noah Rothman: Can the 'Disciplined' Trump Campaign Impose Discipline on J. D. Vance?
Henry Olsen: How J. D. Vance Can Make It through His Trial by Fire
Jack Butler: Against Olympics Cynicism
Dominic Pino: Flushing Taxpayer Money: Paris's Socialist Mayor Failed to Clean the Seine for Olympic Swimming
Jim Geraghty: Hard Truths for the Trump Camp
Jay Nordlinger: A Big Day
Jay Nordlinger: An Extraordinary Ordinary Man
Jimmy Quinn: 'Insidious': Activists Say China's 'United Front' Was behind Assaults against Protesters in the U.S.
Caroline Downey: Meet the Trans-Identifying Male Felons of the Washington State Women's Prison
Neal B. Freeman: The Man of the Year Is Doug Emhoff
Abigail Anthony: Woman Quits Olympic Boxing Match against Opponent Who Was Previously Disqualified over Sex-ID Test
James Lynch: Exclusive: USAID, National Science Foundation Cut Off Funding to Nonprofit Tied to Wuhan Lab
James Lynch: Acting Secret Service Head 'Cannot Defend' Trump Rally Failures, Says Agents Didn't Know Shooter Had Gun on Roof
David Adesnik: Kamala Harris Misleads on Gaza Food Shortage
David Zimmermann: Donated Home Provides Stability for Army Vets in New '1776 Community'
CAPITAL MATTERS
Andy Puzder tips his hat to Trump's "no tax on tips": Trump's Win-Win Tax Proposal
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Is there a better artistic genre than pooch paintings? No. No, there is not. Brian Allen finds this New York show fetching: Alert the Pupperazzi — These Dogs Have Bow Wow Wow Power
PODIUM-WORTHY EXCERPTS
Meanwhile, on the Republican ticket, J. D. Vance is having a heckuva time. Noah Rothman assesses:
It is early, but the Trump campaign has shown few initial indications that it understands why Vance's rollout has underwhelmed. Nor has it demonstrated an inclination to change course.
Take, for example, the furor that has erupted following the dissemination of opposition research on Vance — oppo that should have been vetted by the Trump camp and preemptively neutralized. The comments that set the internet alight and are translating into the real world were made in an August 2021 appearance on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" — the font from which so many bad decisions flow — in which he disparaged the "childless cat ladies" in control of the Democratic Party who "are miserable in their own lives and the choices they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too." Vance subsequently doubled down on those comments, soliciting donations for his nascent bid for U.S. Senate by denouncing the "radical childless leaders in this country."
There are ways to defuse these remarks, but not many. They were designed to be as polarizing and transgressive as possible, which advanced Vance's prospects in the Ohio GOP's Senate primary in which transgression is currency. Still, the supposedly "disciplined" campaign Trump's team is running this time around should have attempted to massage these remarks at the outset as merely passionate advocacy for programs like the Child Tax Credit. Instead, they let Vance off the leash, letting him double down on these comments in an appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show.
"Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I've got nothing against cats," Vance joked disarmingly. But that was the extent of Vance's effort to soften his approach. "People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance, and the substance of what I said, Megyn — I'm sorry, it is true," the Ohio senator continued. . . .
There is time between now and Election Day for Vance to soften his image among persuadable voters who don't spend their days consuming hyperbole and bombast that populates the darkest corners of the internet. Vance has yet to show interest in that project, much less the acumen to pull it off. More ominous, the campaign to which he is attached seems unwilling or unable to rein him in.
Dan McLaughlin explains just why the Biden-Harris Court "reform" plan is not worthy of that description:
With today's rollout of a Court-packing-lite scheme to force the three most senior conservative justices off the Supreme Court, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are proposing their own January 6 for the court system. . . . This isn't "saving democracy" but destroying it. If we saw this in any other country in the world — a president frustrated with rulings of his country's top court trying to remove the judges — we'd call it the authoritarian coup that it is. Remember the massive protests, covered lovingly by the American press, when Benjamin Netanyahu tried to rein in the power of the Israeli Supreme Court? And that was responding to a court that has no constitutional powers to overrule its parliament. Biden and Harris are proposing a far more dramatic break with American history and law than anything Netanyahu did. . . .
The American system is unique. We're the world's first nation to be democratic (the people rule), republican (no kings or hereditary aristocracy), liberal (the people have individual rights), and constitutional (the rules are written down and bind the government). Our system separates the power to make rules from the power to enforce them, and it is also federalist (power is divided between the nation and states and localities) and deliberative (the division of power makes it cumbersome for government to act hastily, which promotes consensus). Ours is fundamentally a system of rules: The rule of law means that everybody agrees to play by the rules written in advance, rather than just throw them out when they lose.
Why was Donald Trump's course of conduct after the 2020 election such a grave political offense that he should have been removed from office by the Senate and barred from seeking it again? Because the basic deal in a system of rules is that you hold an election, the winner takes office, and the loser accepts defeat. There are rules-based mechanisms for challenging an election's conduct, but when those are exhausted, neither the vice president nor mobs in the street are empowered to overturn it.
Since 1789, we've also had a rules-based system for controlling who sits on the Supreme Court: You win presidential elections, and you get to nominate justices; you win Senate elections, and you get to confirm them; and they serve for life. Since 1869, when we stopped adding to the size of the Court to accommodate the nation's westward territorial expansion, that system of rules has also included the understanding that the size of the Court is fixed at nine justices.
Now, Biden and Harris want to break that bargain in precisely the same way that Trump did in January 2021: refusing to accept that the current Court was built through the same legitimate democratic system that both parties and all ideological factions have played by since 1869. It may look more decorous because it involves a policy paper rather than a mob — although Democrats and their allies have done their best to sic mobs on the justices, incite protests at their homes, and publish photos of their vacation houses, and even ended up with an armed assassin showing up at Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house. But make no mistake: Just like Trump's constant drumbeat of a stolen election building the crescendo to January 6, this is a calculated multifront effort to destroy the legitimacy of the rules-based outcomes of our democracy, in order to overturn those outcomes.
ICYMI last weekend, Jack Butler respectfully and effectually takes on the Olympics haters:
Olympics skeptics can summon a lot of arguments in their favor. As a human institution, the Games are, unsurprisingly, imperfect. But if they did not exist, we would have to invent them. If they were canceled, they would eventually come back to life. And not just out of raw inertia or status-quo bias. There is something both thrilling and transcendent about the Olympic Games. [Kyle] Smith and others may be right that not all of the events are very exciting to watch. Enough are, however, to give the entire affair a suitably epic quality that arises from the assembly of the world's most physically skilled humans. Sticking with the sport I know best, I recall Jesse Owens's four gold medals in Berlin in 1936 (so much for Aryan supremacy), Abebe Bikila's 1960 barefoot Olympic marathon win, and Carl Lewis's matching Owens's achievement in 1984.
It is not surprising that so many of the most thrilling historical Olympic episodes lend themselves so readily to film adaptations, with Games from nearly 90 years ago still being depicted on screen as recently as last year's The Boys in the Boat. The Olympics are tailor-made to leap into myth, and above their many obvious faults.
Whether each individual event is engaging to spectators, though, is beside the point. The Olympic Games are a proving ground for the capabilities of mankind. The journey of each athlete to the starting line, diving board, or gym mat has entailed undulations of trial and error, success and failure, euphoria and sadness. That in some cases it all comes to an end in an instant ought not negate the process. We should look with admiration on the feats of these Olympians.
The modern Olympiad, more even than the myriad sporting events featured regularly throughout the world (of which it is an apotheosis), also attests to and displays the virtues attendant to physical fitness. This is not to say the athletes themselves are inherently virtuous. But discipline, determination, delayed gratification, and individual agency are essential traits for Olympic athletes, and for all of us. We need not all be Olympians, nor can we be, as I have learned to my own disappointment. But at a time when cultural forces increasingly deny the possibilities of the individual save in service of untrammeled self-expression, and when so many have surrendered to self-destructive, unhealthy behavior often disguised as self-love, it is good to have paragons of pure potential running, cycling, and rowing among us. They remind us of something we sometimes forget, in a digital age: We are embodied beings.
It is true that all but a select few athletes will fall short in their bids for immortality. When the Games are over, all the participants will return to their homes and prepare for what comes next. Eventually, their quest for glory will recede into memory, where, if they're lucky, it will stay. But as they recall, while they still can, what they did, they may feel something to which we all can relate. Something I felt back in Olympia, as I left the ancient stadium where I myself lost: the feeling of connection and aspiration to something bigger, something greater, that will endure after all rational hope of earthly remembrance has diminished. And that feeling is something not even cynics should sneer at.
Shout-Outs
Isabel Vincent & Sara Nathan, at the New York Post: Biden camp suggests president quickly endorsed Kamala Harris to defy Barack Obama
Rafael Mangual, at City Journal: More or Less Progressive
Joe DiVita, at Loudwire: What Gojira's Olympics Performance Really Means for Metal & Its Future
CODA
As Kamala Harris was sewing up the Dem nomination, a year-old video of her outside a record store briefly made the rounds online. This note has contained and will contain criticism of the VP, but not here: She held up a copy of Mingus's Let My Children Hear Music, and, in honor of that superb choice, do enjoy "The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers." Surely, one of the best song titles not only in jazz but in any genre.
Have a great weekend.
Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥 vol. 3, issue 13 | December 6, 2024 Quick Hits All the news you need in...
No comments: