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Lucretia and Steve review the week’s news, and conclude that there’s a gathering storm of doom for the left. First, the incompetence of the Biden Administration from top to bottom is impossible to disguise effectively much longer. The attempt to blame inflation on Putin (because they can’t blame it on Trump after claiming for so long that it was merely a “transitory” supply chain issue) is destined to fail, and the infelicity of his pronouncements on the Ukraine crisis are surely unnerving our allies in Europe. (And that’s before he sent Kah-maaaallla over to underscore the shallowness of the administration.) Just wait till the recession hits in a few months. Steve lays out a few scenarios about how and why the coming recession may be one of the most unique and difficult to remedy in our history. Even Jimmy Carter belatedly figured out inflation in 1979, but the Biden crew seem imperious to experience.
Beyond the White House, there are scenes of a leftist crackup taking shape. Just as the left greeted the news of Asians defecting to the Republican Party as a sign that Asians had bought into “white supremacy,” the evidence that Hispanics are defecting from Democrats to the Republican Party in growing numbers has prompted the predictable response: Hispanics are becoming “white nationalists.” Seriously: Axios says so.
And if that wasn’t tedious enough, as Steve reported on Powerline, the ancient tourist attraction at Pompeii in Italy has gone woke, and is now emphasizing the role of race, class, gender, slavery, violence, and climate change in its representation of the most important aspects of the abrupt climate change event of 70 AD. Can you get more tedious than this? No: none more tedious. They went to eleven.
Finally, we ask the big identity politics question of the week: How can we observe “Women’s History Month” if there are no such thing as “women” any more—only “birthing persons”?
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My own life is a reflection of your discussion of the left defeating itself. I have a twin sister who (having no other faith) is totally wrapped up in the identity of being a Democrat. (One telling example: she placed pictures of the Obamas on her refrigerator door.)
Recently, though, she has acknowledged to me that wokeness is real and bad and that her former partner and still good friend will not even discuss it, something my sister—speaking loudly with hands covering her ears—would never do with me, and still won’t, because (I surmise) to do so would make her a traitor to her side. (I did a “very bad thing” voting for Trump, she told me at the time. “Leave me alone,” I responded.)
More recently, she mentioned having gone to The Bulwark, which she hesitantly said she found interesting, mostly because, I believe, of its Democrat-like snark directed at Trump. (I didn’t click on it, but the other day I saw a link to an article by Mona Charen with a headline reading something to the effect that Biden may not be handling Ukraine all that well but is nonetheless much better than the “horrifying alternative,” never mind that Putin made no move toward Ukraine from 2014 until 2022. I truly don’t see how the Bulwarkers sleep at night.)
All that said, if the U.S. Supreme Court essentially overturns Roe* (I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that “roe” means “eggs”), my sister’s emerging open-mindedness will come to an abrupt halt. I don’t mean to imply that I agree with or like that reality; I certainly don’t, and it may well be true that more and more Americans are becoming pro-life, but most definitely not so-called progressive women, the ones who make all the noise that causes so much of our social divide. Abortion is more important to her (decades past reproductive age) than the ruinous racialist and trans mania of late, much less the abandonment by Democrats of the working class and the rural poor as well as their embrace of government overreach regarding individual liberty.
Boggles the mind, but, unfortunately, Roe’s fate is very much the calculus of many Democrat voters.
* Though not legally trained, I do not think Roberts will let this happen, for the reasons I lay out here.
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/main-street-mcgurn/wsj-opinion-joe-biden-milton-friedman-and-a-lesson-in-inflation/E3400D7C-AA91-49CC-8341-65721E37BDF4
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/25/joe-biden-green-stimulus-207848
Tulsi Gabberd has a socialist voting record.
In a similar vein, Joe Manchin is a dishonest Democrat who votes for big spending bills, after occasionally hinting that the spending might be too high.
In re Democrats who draw praise from Republicans, I’m reminded of a Superman comic book of my youth – now that I think about it, it was likely Justice League of America. In the episode, a handful of superhero wannabes were trying to join the JLA. One of the applicants was a woman who could send streams of opaque darkness at villains. Superman exposed her as a fraud by demonstrating that she merely sent beams of low intensity light, that appeared dark when surrounded by bright ambient light.
That said, surfer girl Tulsi Gabbard is attractive, and I have a soft spot for all acne sufferers.
Lucretia is being Wayyyy too tough on Dana Perino……In a world of Psakis and Maddows and Behars and Whoopies, to be that tough on a pretty-down-the-line traditional conservative like Perino is a bit over the top. No?
And TOO much praise for Tulsi—I’ll grant you that she is a GIANT compared to the other Hawaii contributions to Congress—(Maisie Hirono ? She’s a Georgetown Law grad!! I had 8 years of Jesuits and the dumbest classmate was Einstein compared to Hirono. Asian Female Affirmative Action has its poster wench!)
Remember the Friedman and Sowell admonition: “Compared to WHAT?”
I’m not talking about this podcast, but I see a big problem with Republicans that wish way too hard that they had a bunch of Scoop Jackson’s to deal with. Those days are never coming back.
Also, if you enable Democrats in any way you are contributing to the ratchet effect. The Overton window.
The late, often great radio talk show host Jay Severin loved to repeat this truism by way of a joke:
Nothing is good or bad except by comparison.
Gabbard, besides being physically attractive, is sharp and very rhetorically quick on her feet, which you can see in interviews. While she’s solidly left on most conventional political issues, she’s actually been to the right of many Republicans on tech censorship, election integrity, and civil liberties for conservatives. Those are big issues and becoming more important. She’s ambitious, which is fine, but I’ve sensed a certain subtle cruelty from her. She seems to see some path forward for her brand of politics, and I think there’s a market for it. But it’s disruptive and dangerous to the regime. If she starts gaining traction within the Dem primaries in 2024 she better have good personal security. One wild card is her association with a weird Hindu cult.
The longer Perino has been on Fox the worse she has gotten, especially when it comes to defending her former boss and other members of the establishment. Overall, apart from Tucker, Fox seems to be very much into yellow journalism these days, complete with their ridiculous war maps treating the conflict as if it’s just another election night special. It’s disgusting. Totally agree about Gabbard though. She’s pretty much a broken record and it’s difficult to know what she really believes.
Steve, what’s your book event schedule? We’ll be in D.C. this weekend.
Tulsi Gabberd seems like a bit of kook who you would not be shocked to discover with a lot of money from Putin.
America has to do a delicate balancing act between supporting all wars and defending no one. Neither is a good solution.
There is something very funny in the linked, Axios article.
Here’s the caption to a picture: “Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio wears a shirt supporting Derek Chauvin, the police officer convicted of killing George Floyd.”
The T-shirt reads, “WESTERN CHAUVINIST”, which is an ironic motto of the Proud Boys.
The term derives from France in the 1830s and has nothing to do with Derek Chauvin — except that his unlucky surname would tend to bias the jury against him!
Totally agree (I know this comment is really late – but I haven’t been on in a while and I just discovered these conversations between Haywood and ‘Cretia – they be awesome) this is such a profound observation that needs to really sink in.
Maybe one day there will be a different party across the aisle to work with – but this aint that time. If there are those who want Scoop Jackson’s to work with, you can find them INSIDE the GOP. Being a Big Tent party, we have all the Scoops in our party already. Best thing to do is work within, continue the realignment of the Republican Party, and – like the Dems last century – run the country for 100 years.