Like many others I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of liberal democracy over the last three years. I have many thoughts, as they say. But for now I want to share a few articles with you about the future of the American right and particularly a wing of the American right which seems increasingly soured on pluralism and democracy itself.
Big topic, of course. So let me try to hit on one angle into it and get us started with a few links.
The Daily Beast has a story out today that Think Progress, the progressive news site which is part of the The Center for American Progress, faces a vast budget shortfall of something like $3 million. The story says TP experienced a 40% decline in ad revenues in just one year. This has spurred a new flurry of conversation about the financial woes of the news media and the particular claim that the news industry somehow used the platforms (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as crutches or outsourced their traffic and distribution and monetization to the platforms and now have only themselves to blame.
My favorite story of the day. Maine Republicans are upset that the new official state ballad favors the USA over the Confederacy.
Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke today to the Second Circuit Judicial Conference and according to a copy of her prepared remarks dropped a number of tantalizing clues about some of the most important cases still pending before the Supreme Court this term.
The 2020 presidential election is an election with everything on the line for the United States. Four years of Trump is a national disaster. Eight years is a confirmation that it was no fluke. It embeds his degenerate style of government in the fabric of the Republic for the future. For those of us who believe in civic republicanism and a liberal future, no stone can be left unturned to ensure his defeat. It’s not just that the stakes are so high. He has big advantages in the electoral college. Incumbents usually get reelected. And let’s be frank: he already did once what many of us thought was all but impossible.
But we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t recognize another possible scenario, one which a lot of the factual evidence suggests is not at all unlikely. That is that Trump is a historically unpopular president; he routinely polls over 50 percent of the voting population saying they will definitely vote against his reelection; and he is likely to be crushed in his bid for reelection in 18 months.
Trump supporter arrested for threatening death against numerous members of congress.
Fascinating, an on-going public opinion analysis project that goes back more than half a century says the public mood currently is the most liberal ever recorded.
I was on vacation last week when I got the news that the TPM Union had ratified the contract we’d agreed upon. Without a doubt, the union makes TPM a better company. Now that I’m back in the office, I wanted to talk a bit about why.
Some of TPM’s longtime readers may know me but most of you will not so let me introduce myself. I’m Joe Ragazzo, executive publisher at TPM. In my previous life I was a journalist but moved over to the “business” side because it upset me how the news industry was dying and I hoped in some small way I could help improve it.
We have three simple goals at TPM. We want to do great journalism. We want to be the best media company at which to work. We want to make enough money to do the first two things.
Oh my. Michael Flynn has fired his lawyer and retained new counsel ahead of sentencing. Story coming shortly.
In recent days we’ve been talking about the pace and strategy of Democratic investigations of President Trump. Impeach or not to impeach has taken up a lot of the discussion. We’ve also discussed the need to dramatically up the pace and the aggressiveness of the push, quite apart from whether or not it’s labeled an impeachment inquiry. As I’ve been at pains to explain, when you have a recalcitrant, indeed a law-defying President, most of this quickly ends up in the courts. There the logic of legal strategy usually fits at best uneasily with the logic of politics. No one’s going to be satisfied with the pace. Keeping the substance and the optics and the strategy in alignment is a complicated task.
As a general matter I’ve assumed, I think accurately, that people’s aims are on the up and up whatever disagreements there may be about strategy. But just in the last few days I’ve started to wonder about Rep. Richard Neal (D), dean of the Massachusetts delegation and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. That’s the tax writing committee which is normally of most concern to policy wonks and corporate lobbyists. But in our Trump corruption moment it’s a position with unique hold over the question of getting the President’s tax returns.