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The COMMENTARY podcast breaks down the liberal psychological breakdown that followed Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, and the activist left’s response to the Trump administration’s border crisis by advocating the abolition of ICE. Have Republicans caught a break as their opponents go over the edge?
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Trump doesn’t even have to try. The Democrats are driving even many former Never Trumpers into his noisome embrace.
Amazing how John, Abe, and Sohrab take for granted the idea that the Democratic Party is too radical for its base. Only Noah disagreed with them. Noah briefly, at around 51:20, tossed out the possibility that crazy left wing ideas are now becoming mainstream — that they are palatable now to a large percentage of Democrats. Which, he correctly observes, “is terrifying.”
There is no such thing as alt-left. The more the extremists scream “abolish ICE” or “Impeach Trump” democrat candidates should be compelled to distance themselves from the nuts – they will not because they can not bring themselves to alienate even the smallest most extreme elements of their own base.
Giving plenty of quotes from mainstream candidates to be used in republican ads, seemly or openly endorsing the nuts on the left. Its a shame that Manning didn’t win the primary.
Is the heat getting to JPod? The “did ya know” assertion that Ted Kennedy was the most stalwart pro-life senator in the 1980s was lunacy.
Overall a very entertaining show. Sohrab was comprehensively smart and Noah was sharp and pointed. But John was really barmy starting with his unqualified “Kennedy was a conservative” opening to his “Gorsuch could have been Souter” musings to his claims about Kennedy the down the line pro-lifer in 80s.
The left objected to the Citizens United decision because they don’t want people voluntarily giving money to political causes the left disagrees with. The left objected to the Janus decision because they want people to be compelled to give money to political causes the left agrees with.
Democrats are lost in fantasy land. They never seem to learn that what plays in Peoria is still a thing.
I’m reading between the lines and deducing that you are far less nervous about the trend line than I am. I believe the Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky view of America is rapidly overtaking the Peoria view. Mostly because it is.
Not sure John’s assertion that Justice Kennedy was a conservative was “unqualified.” Didn’t John surround his remarks with caveats about his votes on issues like gay marriage?
And what makes you think John was wrong about Ted Kennedy’s position as a pro lifer in the 1980s?
It certainly seems like that on social media and indeed on main stream media, but then how did we get Trump? I believe the left is vastly overplaying their hand and it is going to bite ’em.
–Noah Rothman
Re Kennedy’s conservatism John here and in other podcasts has too easily classed him as a conservative; I’d class him as a libertarian centrist with a highly peculiar and erratic conception of federalism. Sohrab’s summary of Kennedy’s jurisprudence was much more astute.
Why do I think John is wrong about Kennedy’s pro life bona fides in the 80s? Because he was an almost unqualified supporter of Roe after the decision was invented. The Kennedy family was convening Catholic intellectuals in the mid-60s to help them develop their pro-choice talking points for the future. You can find one report of Ted speaking against abortion in 1970 in the context of expanding the welfare state for more generous support for childcare. There’s another first hand report of some vague opposition that same year in an off the cuff speech.
Good grief, remember the Bork hearings? Kennedy was a fierce abortion advocate from the mid-70s. The suggestion that he was the most stalwart pro-life senator in the 80s is nuts. Might as well claim that Reagan was DC’s foremost supporter of the Sandinistas.
Well, I love me an argument resting on a big strong scaffolding of facts. Yours was. Well done sir.
How did we get Trump? We nearly didn’t. Have you forgotten how Trump received fewer votes than the person he lost to, and that the difference between them was in the millions??
Do you honestly think American progressivism has diminished in strength since 2016?
And do you honestly think that young people – – the largest voting block in U.S. history – – is starting to warm toward the GOP?
Young people tend not to vote in mid term elections. This is largely why Brexit passed in Britain, the pro-euro youth stayed home on election day. The kids where shocked the next day, to find the old folks had voted them out of Europe.
It doesnt matter if more people vote for democrat than republican – because the democrats are packed tightly into enclaves they’ll win all the seats where republicans have no hope – but will lose nearly everywhere else. Watch Pelosi and Watters get 80% of the vote – but still not win the house, or the senate.
270 to win house election map has the republicans safe in 210 seats, leading in 41 more and leaning in 21 others, they’re a shoe in to keep the house. If the democrats keep pounding on immigration issue they’ll loose the election resoundingly. There are only 27 competitive house races. In the senate there are 7 competitive seats.
Wanna see the democrats really loose their minds – see what happens after the republicans keep the house and win the senate. The entertainment value of the nightly news will double.
Competitive (AZ, FL, MO, WV, ND) flipping (MT, WI, MI, OH, PA) – 60 Seats. I know as about as likely as Trump winning…
We got Trump because the left’s BS didn’t play in Peoria. Also known as states Hillary couldn’t bother with because she thought they were in her back pocket. And they haven’t learned a thing.
@occupantcdn Exactly.
Great. Want to see conservatives (like us!) lose our minds? Maybe have them turn away from congressional wins and losses for a moment to pay attention to an increasingly progressive media, entertainment industry, and education system making mincemeat of classic American ideals — imposing in their place more social justice, more anti-Americanism, and more political correctness.
That’s the story. The culture is the story.
The rest is noise.
The “mainstream” media is losing influence at a galloping pace. They’re losing viewers, subscribers and money hand over fist, eventually shareholders will demand a return to profitability – that will cause management shake ups, asset sales, and hopefully a new direction for the media. Network managements can’t prioritize ideology over profits forever. Eventually they’ll be held accountable.
Yes and they are overplaying their hand in the culture war. Young people don’t want Trump, but many of them also don’t want socialism. They don’t want to be wearing a red hat and carrying a tiki torch and they don’t want to live in Seattle or San Francisco with feces and used syringes in the streets either. Most of the screaming resistance will quit as soon as someone’s air conditioning stops working.
False. Young people are embracing socialism at higher rates than ever before. 61% of Americans under 30 now have a high opinion of socialism. You can wave this away by saying, “Well, they’re young, that’s the way young people are” etc., but that’s a falsehood. Polls of young people 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago did not show these numbers. This is new, and further indication that America is fast becoming a Western European-style social democracy.
Not Mao’s China. Not Stalin’s Russia. But rather, modern-day France and England.
Well I hope not. But if it is indeed so these young people are in for a rude awakening. Good luck keeping your European style social democracies without the USA’s capitalism keeping them afloat with its powerful military. That’s the only thing they won’t spend money on. The evil still exists in the world and it won’t take much to unleash it.
I suppose if you are correct, the young of today need to see what they are asking for. I promise you they won’t like it.
Yeah but what’s tragic is, they have to see it first, and experience it, in order to realize how bad it is. History isn’t enough for them. And it should be.
But, as Edmund Burke once observed, “Experience is the school of mankind and it can learn at no other.”
So these kids are going to take us down a very, very dark road that terminates in a very bad place. And there’s not a lot the rest of us can do to prevent it.