Editors’ Blog

It’s Not as Simple As Saying ‘No’ to Interest Groups Prime Badge
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Let me return to something I wrote about yesterday and said I’d return to: Adam Jentleson’s piece in the Times on whether the Democratic Party can learn to say no to interest groups that often demand assent to various positions and commitments that are either obscure or toxic to a majority of voters. Trans rights aren’t the only issue Jentleson was talking about. But the larger debate clearly revolves around the ad the Trump campaign ran against Kamala Harris saying she supported tax payer-funded sex change operations/gender affirming care for prisoners. This was a question Harris checked “yes” to on an ACLU candidate questionnaire in 2019 as part of her 2020 run for the presidential nomination. There is at least the perception among some that it played a non-trivial role in turning the campaign against her

As a general matter I agree with Jentleson’s point. Not specifically about trans rights issues, but more generally. The goal of parties and campaigns is first to win elections.

But I can’t say that without noting some recent history.

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Sic Transit

Here’s a morsel of news that shows you how far we’ve come over the last eight years. Donald Trump made a heavy play for the crypto world in the last campaign, promising to be a “crypto president” and courting donors in that space. He’s now in talks to buy (through the parent company of Truth Social) the crypto trading firm Bakkt. This comes after he already founded his own new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Bakkt was formerly led by former appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was later defeated by Sen. Raphael Warnock. This was when Loeffler was an executive at Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of The New York Stock Exchange. Loeffler’s husband Jeff Sprecher is ICE’s CEO. Both Loeffler and Sprecher remain major backers and financial supporters of Donald Trump.

No Podcast Today (11/20)

Due to scheduling conflicts, the newest episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast will be released Thursday. We’ll be back to our regular schedule next week just in time for Thanksgiving!

Miscellaneous Thoughts on a Democratic Path Forward Prime Badge
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Because these thoughts are provisional and in process, I’ve decided to package them seriatim, as a list of ideas, possibilities, counters and so forth.

  • One of the shortfalls of the recriminationfests that come after a big political defeat is that the people getting the most attention are usually those shouting loudest and making the most totalizing claims. But there are important caveats and qualifiers to keep in mind. One is that anything obvious, sure-fire and without real costs would have been tried already. There’s no silver-bullet solution. This is just common sense, perhaps even conventional wisdom. At worst, it can be used to stifle new thinking or taking new chances. That’s another important pitfall. But it’s still true.
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Were The American Rescue Plan and the IRA Political Failures? Prime Badge
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I’ve written in general against post-election recriminations since November 5th. This post may seem like one such recrimination on the surface. But I think if you bear with me, you’ll see that it’s really not. I should be clear, too, that being anti-recriminations, whatever that might mean, doesn’t or shouldn’t mean people shouldn’t try to figure out what was done right or wrong, criticize whoever needs to be criticized. Of course they should. What it means to me at least is that in the desolation of a really, really hard defeat, a very consequential one, people shouldn’t rush in to take shots at the folks they’ve always had it in for, using the devastation less as a wound to overcome than an opportunity for the old score-settling.

So here’s the issue I want to discuss.

Until his campaign began to come undone this last summer, it was widely understood and accepted among Democrats that Joe Biden, to the surprise of many, was the most progressive Democratic president, with the most consequential progressive legislative agenda, in at least half a century. This was widely believed because it was unquestionably true. Because of a series of decisions by both Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden ended up governing with a trimmed down version of the legislative agenda of the progressive left. What counts here as “trimmed down” is obviously a pretty critical question. There was no Medicare for All. But on lots of policy and regulatory positions, the left’s agenda was Biden’s. This isn’t just me saying this. Ask Bernie Sanders, or at least ask him until a week ago. The point I’m making here really isn’t open to much debate.

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Annals of Mandates

With Donald Trump now appearing to fall below the 50% threshold in the popular vote, according to the most up to date count, it will now fall to the Democrats to speak for the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for him.

Listen To This: Mapping Out The Future

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss how Democrats can ready themselves to take back power and analyze Trump’s early Cabinet picks.


You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

The Most Pernicious Anticipatory Obedience Hides in Plain Sight Prime Badge
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In the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign, Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos became the target of widespread and deserved disgust for nixing The Washington Post’s policy of endorsing presidential candidates to avoid antagonizing Trump. As I wrote at the time, it’s not that there’s anything magical or even necessary about newspaper endorsements. The whole concept strikes me as a bit dated. The issue was why they were being dropped. Bezos wasn’t being paranoid. There is abundant and persuasive evidence that Trump used the levers of government to punish Bezos through Amazon and his Blue Origin space delivery company during his first term. The phrase many people used to describe this behavior is “anticipatory obedience.” (I’ve been told the phrase might originate with Timothy Snyder. I don’t know if he coined it or simply brought it to wider use.) But there’s another kind of anticipatory obedience I’ve seen like a torrent in the days since Trump won the election, and it’s more paradoxical because it comes from people who feel they are the most intense of opposers.

During harrowing times some people become overwhelmed and even lose hope. It’s not a one-way progress. Almost everyone has their moments. But there’s a particular kind of militant doomerism afoot at the moment. Any discussions of next steps in the battle against Trumpism or the preservation of civic democracy, any suggestions or strategies, are met with a chorus of, “don’t you get how it worked under Hitler and Stalin!!?!” Or “don’t you know rules don’t matter to Donald Trump!?!?!”

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The Trump Cabinet Comes Into View

I’ve been mulling a post on Trump’s Cabinet appointments and had planned to share some thoughts about them this afternoon. Today’s appointments, which not surprisingly are of a different character, allow me to add a bit more.

Let’s start with everything up until today. I said the first-thing announcements were different from what many expected. They were mainly not ideologues. They were mostly ride-or-die Trumpers. They had shown Trump they’re 100% loyal and up for anything. In many cases, they had shown little or no Trumpiness before Trump came on the scene. And they were people who if you watch closely don’t actually show that much today that is coming from them organically. They’re just 100% on board for anything Trump tells them to do. There are a few who are ideologues but they’re mainly hawks. Some of those you wouldn’t have been surprised to see in a Mitt or Jeb administration. So in a very Trumpy way, those choices all appear to be totally about loyalty. The White House makes the call to this or that department and it’s “You got it, boss” from any of these people. Yes, some of them are true believers. But they’re true believers in Trump.

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TPM is 24 Years Old Prime Badge
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Today is the anniversary of this site, founded 24 years ago today.

It’s always been one of the features of TPM’s history that these anniversaries come right on the heels of elections — so either another milestone amidst the reverie and relief of good results or a reminder of the long view in the daze of bad ones. And it’s no accident. The site literally began as an effort to cover an election that was already over, or that was supposed to be over. That wasn’t the only reason the site began. I had it hazily in my mind to do something like it. There were even a few false starts at it in the few months before I did. But the election was the trigger. I had planned to spend a week with my then-girlfriend in New Haven after the 2000 election was concluded. But it turned out not to be over. The story was fast-moving, couldn’t wait on daily publishing schedules, let alone the weeks-long ones at my day job at The American Prospect, where I wasn’t going to have free rein in any case. So I just dove in and it never stopped.

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