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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30255 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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The UK general election has largely completed

Labour wins, Sir Keir Starmer is the new British PM

Results as of 8am, 6 seats undeclared:

LAB: 410, CON: 119, Lib Dem: 71, SNP: 9, Reform: 4, Green: 4, Plaid Cymru: 4, Independents: 5

I've left off Northern Irish parties

In many ways, there are few surprises, with Labour taking a hefty majority as everyone predicted and the Tories suffering their worst result in seat count in their history. There are a few bigger themes:

Labour wins by default

Despite their hefty seat count, Labour's share of the vote amounted to only 34%. To put that into perspective, Corbyn's (one of the independent seats, FYI) 2019 campaign picked up 32% of the vote. Up against one of the least popular Tory governments in history, Starmer barely managed to beat the divisive former leader. Predictions of 40% vote shares and a complete Tory wipeout didn't come to pass.

A poll taken just a few days before the vote highlights the problem for Labour: the main reason for people to vote for them was to get rid of the Tories. There was no enthusiasm for Starmer or his policies. They now have a hefty majority and 5 years in which to change that, but there's no sign in any of their policies that they will actually be radical enough, nor do they have much freedom to move. The Tories left behind a historically high tax take while the level of government services was only seen to decline. Raising taxes further is never a popular move, but without more cash Labour's traditional approach of pumping money into the NHS or education has no possibility. Starmer could be bold on areas related to productivity, housing, pensions, or immigration, but there's just zero sign he'll do so. Labour's vote is brittle and the remaining Tories are already looking to 2029 as a good chance to regain power.

Zero Seats fails to materialize

On the Tory side, things are looking pretty good. Which is to say, it's a terrible result for them but far less damaging than some polls indicated. Talks of not even being the official opposition or being taken over by Reform look like pure fantasy now. It's a blow for right wingers, who had hoped to expel the more moderate elements, and there's a good chance the next leader will be another neoliberal.

4 seats for Reform is not a terrible result under First Past the Post, but with initial exit polls giving them as many as 13 it will look disappointing in the morning light. Farage is in parliament at the 7th time of asking, but the rules of the commons can be quite effective at muzzling troublesome voices - if you don't get called upon by the speaker, then you cannot participate unless you are the official opposition.

FPTP looks increasingly ill-suited

Reform's 4 seats came from 14% of the vote. This is double the vote share of the Green's but both ended with the same number of seats. The Lib Dems received only 12% but ended with 65 more seats than either. The major parties had little enthusiasm but still managed to shut out the smaller guys, but the distribution of seats looks increasingly ridiculous as more third parties start to gather support.

With the left expelled from Labour and the Tory party avoiding a Reform merge, the hope now for left and right wingers is that 2029 might spell the end for FPTP in a hung parliament situation.

Scottish nationalism crumbles, but rises for Welsh and Irish republicans

The best result of the night surely goes to Scotland, who were able to mostly expel the utterly atrocious SNP. For a long time, the Scottish nationalists coasted along on independence sentiment and being "not the Tories". This masked the fact that on practically every devolved measure, they underperformed even the disastrous UK government. Labour's weakness does offer them a glimmer of hope, but with independence sidelined it's hard to see a way back to their previous strengths for a generation.

Wales saw the reverse, with their nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, gaining 2 more seats. Welsh nationalism and independence are far less popular than the Scottish varieties ever were, but the SNP came to the fore by slowly building up support, and perhaps the same will work for Plaid?

Northern Ireland remains a basket case. The republican party, Sinn Fein, has become the largest in their government, but not through gaining seats. Instead the main unionist party, the DUP, lost seats to other challengers. You'll probably see some xitter users proclaiming that results show a rise in republicanism due to Sinn Fein being the largest party, but the reality is a lot of the results appear to be down to petty squabbles related to power sharing and other administration-related issues.

All that's left now is to see what Labour can do. Given the US and right wing slants of the Motte, I doubt we have more than 1 or 2 Labour voters here, but if any are out there it will be interesting to hear their thoughts

I voted Labour, begrudgingly, and desperately hope that I will not have to do so again in 2029. My political philosophy is not very well aligned with the Labour party, but Kier Starmer is not Jeremy Corbyn. I am glad that the electorate has rewarded labour for ditching the loony left and putting someone in charge who has achieved more in life than dropping out of a Trade Union Studies course at North London Polytechnic. Your analysis is that this was not Labour’s win, but the Tory’s loss. I don’t entirely agree with that. I, for one, have been sick of the Conservatives since 2017, but I voted tactically to keep Corbyn away from the top job, and my feeling is that many did the same. In FPTP it is not sufficient to have concentrated appeal over a small geographical area – you must appeal broadly and Corbyn didn’t do that. Starmer has very conventional attitudes toward economics, foreign policy, patriotism etc. That was all I needed.

Given that, and how backbiting, ineffectual, and directionless the Tories have been under Sunak, it is hard to make an argument that the country will be worse off under Starmer for 4-5 years.

My primary issue with the Conservatives is that after 14 years in power, they are doing poorly on all the metrics that they as Conservatives should like to be measured on. Low taxes, law and order, an effective miliary, home ownership, robust immigration controls. They have achieved none of these things. Should I vote for a party that claims to want these things, but is unable (or unwilling) to achieve them? Their track record on the economy is poor as well, and from a purely financial point of view, Brexit was the Conservatives delivering a nasty self-inflicted wound. ‘A rising tide lifts all boats’ is a saying that conservatives are fond of. Well, If they can’t raise the tide, maybe we should see if someone else can. God knows I want my boat lifting.

Ultimately, the Conservatives are dead, and they will not resurrect without a substantial change in attitude. They are the party of the geriatrics. The age at which a person is more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is seventy. Seventy! They have pandered greatly - and transparently - to their aged base at the expense of the young. This strategy always had a time limit on it. The generation who remembered Thatcher as a great leader is dying out, and they will need to mint a new one. They need to figure out how they can turn the current generation of young adults from lonely nomads into professional homeowners, with a nuclear family, a well paying job, and something to lose, as these are the people who historically have voted Conservative. They also need to figure out how, after so many broken promises, they can win back the trust of the electorate.

Ultimately, the Conservatives are dead, and they will not resurrect without a substantial change in attitude.

You probably know more about your own country than me, so take it with a grain of salt, but...

There's this old quip that a pessimist is someone who says "it can't possibly get any worse", while an optimist is someone who'll respond with "oh yes it can!"

You're right that Tories are a failure on their own terms, and because of that the idea that the neoliberal wing of Labour will be some sort of an improvement is absurd to me. You'll get the exact same thing, but more. By the time they're done, people may very well decide that Tories weren't that bad after all. They might implode, but for that to happen they'd have to be replaced by someone like Reform.

the idea that the neoliberal wing of Labour will be some sort of an improvement is absurd to me. You'll get the exact same thing, but more.

That's my expectation. There probably will be some modest benefits if you're a front line public sector worker, and some negligible trickle down in turn to their clients, but the overarching mismanagement and short-termism will continue as it has for the last 20-30-40-x0 years. In the meantime I expect mainstream variety wokery to continue unabated while Labour's biometric-internet-porn-licences style of soft authoritarianism gathers momentum.

I mean, very possible. For me voting Labour was indeed a bit of a throw of the dice. Even ignoring their policies - and there are some good ones in there I think - my suspicion is that they will do better simply becase they have more competence, more ideas, more vigour. Britain's primary problem is stagnation, and a stagnant government doesn't solve that. But if Labour do fail, and the Tories come back in 2029 with a bit of sincerity, a bit of talent, and a goddamn plan this time, well then brilliant. If marginally worse governance is the price the country has to pay for a reinvigorated Conservative party than I think that's a price worth paying. Certainly the Tories were never going to improve until they got a punch in the mouth like they got today.

If marginally worse governance is the price the country has to pay for a reinvigorated Conservative party than I think that's a price worth paying.

Absolutely, I abhor the "lesser of two evils" logic.

Sure, but the alternative logic is so much worse.

You are not alone.

You're right that Tories are a failure on their own terms, and because of that the idea that the neoliberal wing of Labour will be some sort of an improvement is absurd to me.

I disagree. Specifically, I think that Labour is considerably more likely to be good at growing the economy and reducing the deficit for several reasons:

  • Labour is much more likely to spend money on services (and in particular on public sector salaries), rather than on tax cuts for the wealthiest, and this is likely to be better for overall economic growth.
  • The Conservatives dedication to austerity, Brexit and lettuce-brained tax cutting has been so appallingly damaging that it would be difficult to do worse.
  • Labour has not suffered from the purge of competence and expertise that the Conservatives inflicted upon themselves in an effort to get Brexit through. There has certainly been a purge of Corbynites from the party at large, but the parliamentary party was mostly dead set against him from the beginning so this was much less costly of experience and expertise what the Tories did to themselves.

There is also historical data to suggest that Labour tends to do better on economic growth than the Conservaives, which fits with the pattern that I have repeatedly observed: that, at least in my lifetime in the US, Canada, and the UK, the centre left party (Democrats / Liberals / Labour) has typically done better on some of the key measures, such as deficit reduction, than the centre right party (Republicans / Conservatives / Tories) usually try to lay claim to. (I recall some years ago finding a nice set of graphs looking at defecits in particular; alas I can't quickly relocate them, so consider this more my stating my priors than making a specific claim.)

Labour is much more likely to spend money on services (and in particular on public sector salaries), rather than on tax cuts for the wealthiest, and this is likely to be better for overall economic growth.

Unlike in 1997, there isn’t much more money to spend on services and public sector salaries. For all the much-maligned cuts in NHS spending, NHS spending grew every year under the Tories, even when inflation was almost nothing. The only way to spend more is to raise more, and that doesn’t mean taxing the rich, it means taxing everyone, either by bringing the 40% bracket down further or adding a new 30% bracket from, say, £25k, both of which would be extremely unpopular.

You correctly have a problem with the conservatives for failing at being conservatives (they are also so far to the left they fail at being moderate) but then then you decide to vote for labour under an expectation that Starmer would be a moderate. I am sorry but I find that highly unlikely considering what labour politicians are advocating and the history of both labour and Torry governance after Tony Blair. Plus, how other promised moderates like Biden have ruled. A Starmer rule will at best be a continuation of the Torries, and therefore not moderate, or probably more likely, will result in the blatant woke elements that Labour has bringing Britain into even a further left direction than they were even under the Torries. The Torries who also brought things in a considerably farther left direction under their rule.

I mean, very possible. For me voting Labour was indeed a bit of a throw of the dice. Even ignoring their policies - and there are some good ones in there I think - my suspicion is that they will do better simply becase they have more competence, more ideas, more vigour. Britain's primary problem is stagnation, and a stagnant government doesn't solve that. But if Labour do fail, and the Tories come back in 2029 with a bit of sincerity, a bit of talent, and a goddamn plan this time, well then brilliant. If marginally worse governance is the price the country has to pay for a reinvigorated Conservative party than I think that's a price worth paying. Certainly the Tories were never going to improve until they got a punch in the mouth like they got today.

The Torries might earn your vote in 2029 and be convincing to you, but why would they rule well? You complained that they weren't conservative but now you claim they might come back with a bit sincerity and competence. Why would that happen? Seems more likely they will act sincere, convince you and fail to deliver again. I don't see a good reason for them to change their stripes, when promising to be conservative and competent and not delivering is what they have done so consistently. The lack of competence has something to do with the assumed competent but not actually competent, mixture of ideologies and priorities of the kind of politicians labeled "moderate", or "neoliberals".

A bit like communism was the darling of people who loved the idea of technocracy and strongly associated with technocracy but was actually a disastrous and incompetent mess.

Of course, I don't expect Starmer to be to the right of the Conservatives; that doesn't make sense. But, fundamentally, he is a free marketeer. He is pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, and won't get rid of our nukes. He hasn't pandered to the Muslims over Gaza, nor has he pandered to the LGBTQs over gender ideology. He has also overseen a pretty serious purge to neuter the hard left in Labour, including the previous leader Jeremy Corbyn. That's about as much as I'd dare hope for. I'm not too worried about woke - it doesn't have as much of a toe-hold in the UK as it does in the USA, and common sense is the rule rather than the exception. Race is less of a hot button topic. I think Starmer sees clearly that there are more votes to be lost than gained by courting the ultra-progressives.

Seems more likely they will act sincere, convince you and fail to deliver again.

Well that's a judgement call to be made at the time. It's up to the Conservatives to be convincing and sincere, they certainly cannot count on my vote. how strong/weak is the rhetoric, how detailed are their plans, how unified is the party, how good is the talent, how coherent is the philosophy. And, of course, does Labour even need replacing? If Starmer is somehow able to drag the country into a productivity boom then I might be perfectly happy to keep him no matter what the Tories offer.

The Tories promised to cut immigration by 75% (“to the tens of thousands”) and instead increased it 300%. Certainly Starmer can make the situation worse (one need only look at Canada). But the Tories clearly deserved to be removed from power.

This is a good summary. A few thoughts:

  1. Hopefully the Lib Dems' strong showing could set the UK up for electoral reform in the future. The lack of enthusiasm for Labour and the difficult problems they'll have to face could lead to a hung parliament next time. The Lib Dems would certainly demand a change to the electoral system in exchange for their support, and should not be bamboozled in the same way Nick Clegg was.

  2. One area where I think Keir Starmer could genuinely change things is in the planning system. The UK (like most Anglo countries) makes it almost impossible to build houses and other infrastructure. Labour's manifesto did promise planning reform, and hopefully his strong majority and lack of reliance on middle class rural voters (like the Conservatives) would allow him to push it through. He seems to believe the only way he can be reelected is through strong economic growth, so I think he'd be willing to spend political capital on this, particularly if the UK continues with high immigration (very likely).

  3. The next Scottish Parliament election is in 2016. I expect we'll see a collapse in SNP support as we did yesterday, but who those seats go to is another question. I can imagine a relatively even split between the five main parties (Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and SNP) once independence fades into the background as a serious prospect. Previously, Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems fought for the Unionist vote. Now they might actually have to campaign on Policy!

  4. I don't expect Welsh nationalism to come anywhere near Scottish nationalism. Wales is poor, and the only reason it has a national identity is due to its language. Given that UK governments are broadly positive towards the Welsh cultural project (primarily Welsh medium schools) the only thing Wales has to gain from independence is the loss of vast subsidies from London. Wales becoming independent would be like Louisiana trying to secede because it has a large French-speaking population.

  5. This is the first UK general election where voter ID was required, having previously been trialled for local elections. Unlike in the US, this is considered by most to be a sensible technocratic fix rather than a sinister plot to disenfranchise anyone (although a few UK lefties seem to have imbibed US memes enough to see it as such).

  6. The fact that Commonwealth citizens can vote in UK general elections is looking more and more absurd. Polish and Italian nationals who have lived here for more than a decade and have visas that allow them to stay indefinitely cannot vote for the government that rules them, while Indian or Nigerian nationals on tourist or student visas can vote without knowing anything about UK politics or even knowing how to speak English. I do not expect the new Labour government to change this.

  7. I think the Conservatives will elect a true right-winger. They lost because right-wing voters were furious with ever higher immigration, ever higher taxes and woke takeover of every institution. Their only path back to government is to win these voters back and they're not going to do this with more Blairism.

Wales becoming independent would be like Louisiana trying to secede because it has a large French-speaking population.

Louisiana does not have a large French speaking population. Southern Louisiana has local areas with large-ish French speaking populations.

As a basic history lesson- and I’m oversimplifying immensely- refugees from the collapsing French new world empire were settled in then-Spanish Louisiana west of New Orleans to boost the white population. Their descendants we call the Cajuns and have a distinctive culture, including a reputation as amazing cooks that know how to throw a good party. However, the spread of Cajuns was limited by geographic barriers and poverty; today Cajuns are probably something like 20% of Louisiana’s population and only old people and hipsters really speak French anymore.

All of Louisiana tries to portray itself as Cajun because it’s the third poorest state in the Union right next to the fifth wealthiest, while also having the most liberal alcohol laws and some of the more liberal gambling regulations. This makes tourism a natural niche to aim for, and since Cajuns are known as really good cooks that know how to throw a party, playing up the Cajun/French heritage makes sense as a way to try to attract tourism dollars. Northern Louisiana is no more French than Arkansas and New Orleans proper is I suppose a bit more French than Mississippi, but not by that much. Strongly French areas are pockets of the rural southwest.

I’m oversimplifying immensely- refugees from the collapsing French new world empire were settled in then-Spanish Louisiana west of New Orleans to boost the white population.

Hoooo buddy. I definitely know an Acadian who would absolutely see red upon reading such an immense oversimplification. I would contend that the matter is somewhat subtle about the term "refugee", which often has a connotation of, "Well, some war or some shit was just happening, and it obviously sucked for people in the area, so they willingly chose the better of bad options to pick up and relocate," whereas the reality was that they were forcibly round up and deported. One can even have sympathies for the reasons why the deporters would do the deporting (or could even make a reasonable argument that whatever portion of the deported population shares in the blame for causing such reasons to exist), but my understanding is that the majority of them were collected by decree or chased down by men with guns, put onto ships at gunpoint, and then dumped in lands far away. It is not clear to me to what extent they were allowed much choice, once on the boat, as to which dump off spot they were dumped at.

The Acadians were ethnically cleansed(as were the white Haitians, which many Cajuns also trace descent to) but those who settled in Louisiana were mostly those who escaped whatever dumping ground they reached and made it too Louisiana voluntarily.

TIL that they didn't actually deport any Acadians directly to Louisiana. Thanks!

Oh I'm aware that Cajun French is basically dead, my metaphor was about a hypothetical Louisiana where it was a significant language, I should have made that clear.

"I grew up in Louisiana..."

"Woo!"

"Yeah, see... Whenever I do that, people... Some people will 'woo', but that's for New Orleans. Which is the best part."

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WULYEegtTGc&t=10s

I do not expect the new Labour government to change this.

It won't happen if people are talking about Nigerians and Indians, it's too racially charged.

The solution is to demonize those sinister Canadians.

Get Kulak to write about how he's planning to spend a few months in the UK for the next by-election and his Canadian readers should go as well.

This is the first UK general election where voter ID was required, having previously been trialled for local elections. Unlike in the US, this is considered by most to be a sensible technocratic fix rather than a sinister plot to disenfranchise anyone (although a few UK lefties seem to have imbibed US memes enough to see it as such).

It is well-known that voter ID was, in fact, a plot to disenfranchise young people. The main tell was that discounted public transport passes given to pensioners were eligible ID, but discounted public transport passes given to students and apprentices were not. Jacob Rees Mogg admitted this at the 2023 National Conservatism conference.

It is also well-known that the type of voter fraud that voter ID prevents (i.e. voting in person in the name of someone else) is not a problem in the mainland UK (it was a problem in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, so Northern Ireland has always had voter ID). The most corrupt election in recent British history was the 2014 mayoral election in Tower Hamlets, and the Election Court judgement convicts or at least credibly accuses Luftur Rahman of basically every form of electoral fraud or malpractice under the sun except that one. The in-person voter fraud Rahman committee involved Rahman supporters outside Tower Hamlets voting in their own name after registering at false addresses.

The difference between the US and UK voter ID debates is that there is no legal process where crying "waa waa it's racist" can invalidate a law, so the British left had no reason to do so. The Labour party did put out leaflets in student-heavy areas saying "the Tories are trying to use voter ID to disenfranchise you, here's how to stop them."

"the Tories are trying to use voter ID to disenfranchise you, here's how to stop them."

I might be missing something, but I don't see why you need a plan more complicated than "Get an ID card".

If "voting in person in the name of someone else is not a problem in the mainland UK" then I can also claim it's simply not a meaningful form of disenfranchisement. It's bizarre to any outsider that this is something controversial rather than the most basic security feature.

  • The main tell was that discounted public transport passes given to pensioners were eligible ID, but discounted public transport passes given to students and apprentices were not.

What are the conditions for obtaining the elderly pass vs the youth pass? In the US some make a similar argument with regards to a firearms permit vs a student ID, and it turns out that, I think, even non-citizens can obtain the latter. But I am certain the former has more checks.

What are the conditions for obtaining the elderly pass vs the youth pass? In the US some make a similar argument with regards to a firearms permit vs a student ID, and it turns out that, I think, even non-citizens can obtain the latter. But I am certain the former has more checks.

Both can be obtained easily by non-citizens who meet the other requirements (as can a driving license, which is the most commonly used form of acceptable ID) - this is specifically an identity check and not a citizenship check. British citizenship law is such a mess that requiring proof of citizenship to vote would effectively disenfranchise everyone who hadn't already proved their citizenship to apply for a passport (admittedly, 86.5% of UK adults do have passports). The official reason given was that the checks made when issuing elderly passes are more stringent but it isn't clear why - in particular there is no attempt to verify the photo if you apply for an elderly pass by post, whereas the photo on a student pass is cross-checked against the photo on your student ID.

I would expect most young people to have at least a driver licence if not a passport. Some might not have but I think they could obtain some kind of ID. Although many would not bother.

Non-citizens holding these documents doesn't matter because the electoral register is made separately and non-citizens are not included and will not be able at the polling station.

I would expect most young people to have at least a driver licence if not a passport

Tangential, but I wouldn't be surprised if passports were more common than driving licenses, especially among young people.

That's because almost everyone in the UK goes on cheap holidays to Europe. Spending time on holidays in the UK is more expensive and only rich people can afford it.

It would be more accurate to say that both the poor and the rich will (sometimes) vacation in Britain, but the middle all go abroad. You have Butlins / Blackpool and St Ives and $4m vacation homes by the sea in Devon but little in between.

If it were really a plot to disenfranchise young people, it would be the least effective way of doing it I could think of.

In order to drink, drive or leave the country anyone 18 or over must have a form of ID which is also valid for voting in an election.

I don’t have much faith in the tories’s competence but I think claiming this to be a serious attempt at gerrymandering is really unfair on them.

It's certainly within plausibility that Labour could be pro growth. The past years have been so bad that there's a lot of low hanging fruit, and in theory Labour have the ability to push through controversial changes. But at the same time, Labour is still enthralled by the Blairist civic religion of government, human rights and environment. They retain the primal socialist fear of someone, somewhere, being rich, and the liberal love of bureaucracy and process. Will anything actually happen? I think it is more likely that any ambitious project will be frustrated by endless judicial reviews, stakeholder consultations and activist action.

The median Labour activist isn't optimistic or resilient. They're bitter, envious, and neurotic. They despise most of the electorate, they despise success, they despise the country. The Tories insulate themselves from reality with a cloud of sunny complacency, but Labour wrap themselves in misery and cynicism.

"the only reason it has a national identity is due to its language"

To which a lot of Welsh people are actively hostile, especially (I think) in South Wales, where most of the population is.

This is the first UK general election where voter ID was required, having previously been trialled for local elections. Unlike in the US, this is considered by most to be a sensible technocratic fix rather than a sinister plot to disenfranchise anyone (although a few UK lefties seem to have imbibed US memes enough to see it as such).

I believe you correctly describe the general feeling about this, but even this UK centrist cannot help but notice how much more likely it is than an over–70 voter will already posess an acceptable piece of ID than an under-25 voter will. For example: why are travel passes for older persons accepted, but not ones for younger persons? Perhaps there is a good technocratric reason for the difference (maybe issuing of Freedom passes is more carefully regulated?) but I do expect that the incoming government to correct this apparent disparity rather than scrap the ID requirement altogether.

Since the 2000s every young person who drinks, smokes or buys scissors has gotten used to carrying ID, typically a provisional or qualified driving licence. It's basically impossible to function as a young adult without it, whereas older people don't get asked for ID when buying alcohol or cigarettes and so are much more likely to go without one.

Also, the list includes PASS cards, which are specifically intended to be used as youth identity cards. They are much more common than youth bus passes, which I have never seen in the wild.

These figures bear out my intuition, which is that old people are more likely to be ID-less than young people.

Vibe seems to be of Tory collapse more than anybody being especially pro-Labour or invested in their vision. Reform looks like might be indicative of a surge rightwards, but hard to see anything accomplished by Labour in the interim period.

Gaza-driven Politics continue to boggle the mind.

You'll probably see some xitter users proclaiming that results show a rise in republicanism due to Sinn Fein being the largest party, but the reality is a lot of the results appear to be down to petty squabbles related to power sharing and other administration-related issues.

The biggest reason the DUP lost is probably that their leader (up until 3 months ago) was recently charged with rape and 17 other sex related offences.

I voted SDP. Though they are the literally who party, and the various minor joke parties all came ahead of them where I live, it was the only time where I've ever voted and experienced zero hesitation when putting an "x" on the ballot.

Labour's victory was invetiable, given the electorate's love of the colours red and blue. For their performance over the past 2 years, the tories won far too many seats. This is probably to be expected, given the demographic makeup of the country and the top heavy age pyramid. More worryingly is the rise of the green party and a number of Members for Gaza, who are functionally a proxy for political islamism in Britain that neither of the big two have really got a handle on.

I do not expect things to improve in meaningfully in any way, given that Labour is 99% the pensions ponzi scheme party that the tories are. I at least take solace in that Farage won his seat and that the SNP have been utterly blown out, all over their chosen star buying an illegal camper van and her replacement shitting the bed at every possible opportunity.

To put the SDP in some perspective for outsiders to UK politics: they are the descendents of a centre-left breakaway from the Labour party in 1981, who largely dissolved in the late 1980s. Somehow, they managed to survive through a nuclear winter and have remerged a little as a party for people who like Brexit/social conservativism, but who are more economically centrist/left wing than the Tories or Reform. They are one of the tardigrade parties in the UK: no matter the hostility of the environment and their tiny size within it, they seem to just survive.

The 1st SDP didn't dissolve - it merged with the Liberals in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. The merger was supported by a majority of the SDP members in accordance with the SDP rulebook, so the Liberal Democrats are the legal successors of the original SDP.

The minority of the SDP who opposed the merger included David Owen (who had been leader until he resigned in 1987 after it became clear that the membership supported merger in principle, to allow someone who supported the merger to handle negotiations) and 3 of the 5 SDP MPs. They set up what was legally a new party, but claimed to be the spiritual successor of the 1st SDP and used the same name and logo. (In those days the UK had no laws about the misuse of party names and logos). But the 2nd SDP didn't have enough grassroots members to run effective campaigns, and consistently did worse than the Liberal Democrats in by-elections. David Owen and the executive committee disbanded the 2nd SDP after they got fewer votes than the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (which is as silly as it sounds) in the 1990 Bootle by-election. (The three SDP MPs sat as independents until the 1992 election, when Owen went into the House of Lords and the other two MPs narrowly failed to be re-elected as independents.)

The tiny number of SDP grassroots members who objected to this set up a 3rd SDP (also using the name and logo, despite being a legally unconnected organisation), which is the tardigrade party that suddenly started getting headlines again over Brexit. Because they were using it when registration of political parties came in in 1998, this group now control the SDP name and logo, which means that people who don't know better think they are the legitimate successor.

Since 1990, Lord Owen has consistently taken a position on Britain's relationship with the EU which is at the Eurosceptic end of the Overton window (for example, he was prominent in the cross-party campaign against the UK joining the Euro), only coming out in favour of Brexit after the referendum was called. He has nothing whatsoever to do with the 3rd SDP.

Ah yes, the continuity SDP, the most pathetic political party in the UK. By my account they got fewer votes than the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in both seats where both parties were on the ballot (Brighton Pavilion and Louth and Horncastle), and the only reason why they didn't lose to more Loonies is that most of the declared Loony candidates didn't manage to file their nomination papers on time. They should have stayed disbanded after losing to a Loony in the 1990 Bootle by-election.

Kudos to the author for writing a top notch post.

Despite their hefty seat count, Labour's share of the vote amounted to only 34%. To put that into perspective, Corbyn's (one of the independent seats, FYI) 2019 campaign picked up 32% of the vote.

One mitigating factor here is that Labour consciously sacrificed vote share by making policy declarations that would allow them to win in the constituencies they needed to pick up. The Corbyn strategy of loading the manifesto with pledges popular with their base saw them pile up enormous majorities in urban centres whilst leaving swathes of middle England a few % out of reach. Hopefully Starmer's pragmatism will extend to his premiership.

Starmer could be bold on areas related to productivity, housing, pensions, or immigration, but there's just zero sign he'll do so.

I voted Labour and really hope we do see some decisive action. Starmer has clearly been tight lipped on policy details as part of his campaign strategy so it'll be interesting to see how things pan out. House of Lords reform is a near certainty but hopefully we'll see ambition in other areas.

Personally, I'd love to see him crush the NIMBY malaise, bulldoze the greenbelt and get infrastructure and housing being built once again. Significant investment in nuclear power would also be fantastic.

2029 might spell the end for FPTP in a hung parliament situation.

The game theory is quite fun here I think. The Labour and Tory parties are committed to FPTP in part because changing to a PR system would inevitably result in schisms within their own parties. Unity is only maintained by the knowledge that breaking away leads to near certain electoral death.

Northern Ireland remains a basket case

I hope one day the somewhat sensible Alliance party can grow into being a serious party of regional government.

I'd love to see him crush the NIMBY malaise, bulldoze the greenbelt and get infrastructure and housing being built once again.

Apologies if I'm misrepresenting your preferred policies, but the constant insistence that we need to build more annoys me. I grew up in quite a nice part of the countryside. How about we leave that the way it is, and we don't import 600,000 people every year? The population of native British people is shrinking - we don't have a housing crisis, we have an immigration crisis and an economy that encourages treating shelter as an asset.

Infrastructure and nuclear, granted, we need.

It's not either or. Our population has already grown, and we need to build houses for these people. Even if we got net zero migration, faster housebuilding would bring prices down for current residents faster.

Plus, the green belt was a bad idea to begin with. Allowing cities to expand allows people to live and raise children near to where they work. Instead, we force them to live in far away towns and make them take long, misery-inducing commutes while prime land outside of productive cities is used to grow turnips instead of housing humans. I live in a popular city and am currently looking for a house. It drives me mad that you can drive for 20 minutes from the city centre and be surrounded by cows instead of suburbs. What a waste!

If there is beautiful land that we want to preserve, we should make it explicit with national parks and the like, not by freezing all of our cities at the size they were in the 1950s.

Something that seems to be neglected in NIMBY discourse: there's no reason beauty and building have to be mutually exclusive!

We are a far richer and mightier civilisation than the one that actually built all the pleasant Cotswolds stone villages and so on! There is absolutely no reason we couldn't build enough housing in a way that was actively aesthetically pleasing - possibly at greater cost than horrible concrete, but nothing compared to the effective cost of building being mostly illegal - if we wanted to.

Of course, we'd have to turn the architectural establishment on its head, but we should do that anyway. I propose an Ugly Tax.

In theory, I agree. The conservatives tried it with the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission but like so much else they failed to follow through. The head of the Commission (Sir Roger Scruton, the UK's equivalent of Thomas Sowell) was monstered on twitter using misrepresented quotes and the 'moderate' wing of the Conservatives instantly fired him (within five hours of the first tweet). I remain flabbergasted by the sheer wasted potential of the last 5 years of Tory government.

If Labour picked up the program, I would still argue for getting the population under control before doing lots of building, but I would be much happier with a proposed building spree.

One mitigating factor here is that Labour consciously sacrificed vote share by making policy declarations that would allow them to win in the constituencies they needed to pick up.

Yup. "Punch the far-left wing of your party as hard as you can as fast as you can" turns out to be a really good strategy for left-of-center parties.

FPTP looks increasingly ill-suited

Any chance that they'll actually change that system? It seems ridiculous. Until now it mostly benefited Conservatives at the expense of labor and third parties, right?

The only possibility as I see it would be a 2029 election where Labour loses their majority and is forced to go into coalition with the Lib Dems, who put electoral reform as a condition of their support.

In 2010 Nick Clegg was bamboozled by Cameron into agreeing on a referendum on version of FPTP which was almost as disproportional as the current system, I can't see them making that mistake again. I would expect them to demand actual change to the voting system without a referendum that could go wrong.

It has happened before elsewhere.

I voted Reform, and I'm very annoyed about the vote : seat ratio, but I'd still be hesitant to rush headlong into changing our voting system on the basis of one freaky election. European countries with proportional voting don't seem to have significantly happier and more representative politics, and FPTP has mostly worked for 200 years. I think our problem boils down to the professionalisation of politics more than to our voting system. Having 4 parties of PPE graduates doing backdoor deals doesn't necessarily seem like an improvement.

If we had a democratic voter system, we wouldn't be in a situation where the two main parties agree on Open Borders and the public has to choose the lesser of two evils. Sure, the current system can indirectly force the Tories to move to the right when they see their votes going to Reform, but imagine what a Conservative-Reform coalition would look like! Farage as Immigration Minister, Tice as Minister for de-Wokifying Institutions or whatever. Instead, the public gets a choice between Islington dinner party guests with blue ties, and Islington dinner party guests with red ties.

I agree completely. But as I say, proportional voting doesn't seem to be sufficient for producing a democratic system (look at the Cordon Sanitaire in France, or the way that the AfD are treated) and I'm also aware that we've had our current parliamentary system for 300 years give or take and changing it based on a twenty-year crisis is a drastic step.

(Imagine a Lib Dem, Labour, Muslim Independents, Green and Conservative Wets coalition and shudder).

I don't think you can reasonably describe disproportionate (and therefore undemocratic) voting as a recent issue. FPTP has been pushing out 3rd+ parties since we've had modern political parties. The Liberals were crowded out by Labour a century ago. Just because FPTP was more successful in the past doesn't make it more legitimate. There are more than two political positions and there always will be.

FPTP is like the rent control of politics, rewarding incumbents and disadvantaging everyone else.

I mean, I get not liking it, but a coalition that gets 50% of the seats and around ~50% of the votes is not anti-democratic.

If the people who voted for those parties don't like the fact they made a grand coalition, they can vote for other parties who won't do that, until the far-right gains enough support a grand coalition isn't possible.

I mean, I get not liking it, but a coalition that gets 50% of the seats and around ~50% of the votes is not anti-democratic.

I don't know. On the one hand that's true, on the other... there's something off about having people whose ideologies and needs are utterly incompatible linking hands to make sure Those Awful People never get anything they want. It's naked warfare, and I think it's also damaging because you get governments that can't run the country because they don't agree on anything. Basically you get FPTP back again but more impenetrable.

If the people who voted for those parties don't like the fact they made a grand coalition, they can vote for other parties who won't do that, until the far-right gains enough support a grand coalition isn't possible.

Only if you assume that politics under proportional representation is a perfect market with no market failures. But imagine a situation where, for example, the professional classes treat anyone associated with a populist party like a leper. (Oh, how I wish this were a hypothetical...) That means that anyone with experience of government doesn't join the populist party but stays with a centrist party which is enforcing the cordon sanitaire. A hypothetical voter might want to vote for a party that is competent and has a populist manifesto, but they can't because circumstances prevent such a party from forming.

What, would it be more democratic to somehow force them to make coalitions with Those Awful People if they don't want to? Generally, no-ones misleading the voters about anything regarding such preferences and parties communicate at least their negative preferences clearly in advance.

1.) Except they are compatible on the issue the far-right/populist/whatever word you want to call them has made the #1 issue - immigration/multiculturalism in general. So, if the main issue in politics is that, other disagreements can be put to the side. This is not new in coalitional politics, where people who disagree on issues that used to be important ally when a new issue pops up. Don't want people to ally over immigration, pro and anti? Don't make it the main issue.

2.) Sure, voters want all kinds of impossible things. The thing is, as I pointed out in another thread is the problem isn't nobody wants an anti-immigration party, they don't want an anti-immigration party with all the weird other right-wing issues connected as well. But, the issue is, many of the voters and most prominent supporters care deeply about the other right-wing policies, which is why many of these right-wing parties lose support once actually in a coalition government, because of a combination of having to compromise (which their supporters hate) and they prove themselves to be incompetent (which low-info voters dislike).

Again, I'm a left-wing SJW social democrat whatever, but I'll be happy to admit their is strong majority support for harsh immigration law in Europe...as long as the rest of the wackiness isn't pulled along behind it. A pro-Ukraine, pro-LGBT, pro-EU but anti-immigration party could do well, but the issue is many of the people behind these populist/right-wing/etc. parties also care about the other three things and being opposed to them. In both the UK & France, once it became obvious Reform & Le Pen's party was fairly anti-Ukraine, they lost support of a lot of soft right-leaning voters.

That's why Meloni has been largely successful in Italy - she's pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, not all that socially conservative, and also hasn't gone full police state when it comes to immigration, because even many anti-immigrant voters don't want an open sort of what would end up being somewhat violent crackdown on immigrants. But, the base of these right-wing parties do so.

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No, it benefits whoever is the ruling party. It almost guarantees that Labour and the Conservatives can just swap power, never giving anything to the smaller parties. The 2010 election briefly looked like an opportunity as the Lib Dems were able to get into power, but they were incompetent and blew their chance to make a change.

When the SNP were ascendant it looked like Labour would be forced into more coalitions, but this result has put paid to that as well. The best chance is that Labour are as useless as they seem and the Tories fail to recover, which might lead to another hung parliament in 2029.

Any chance that they'll actually change that system? It seems ridiculous. Until now it mostly benefited Conservatives at the expense of labor and third parties, right?

The problem we keep seeing with this in Canada is that changing it is almost never in the interests of the sitting government, i.e. whoever actually won the most recent election. After all, they just won under the current system, and therefore probably think that system is pretty swell. So no-one proposes any serious electoral reforms who actually has a chance of pushing them through successfully, even if they might have made some noise about it during the election campaign. (The clearest example being none other than the sitting PM.)

As a general rule that makes sense. But in this specific election, they only won because the opposition was fractured into two dueling parties. At some point, they're going to coalesce and then they'll once again have the votes. You'd think that labour might realize they have only a brief window of control here where they can act.

But in this specific election, they only won because the opposition was fractured into two dueling parties.

You could argue that the left is more fractured than the right, even if they're not warring, and that in most UK elections it is actually the Tories who have regularly won due to the other side being fractured. Labour + Lib Dems + Greens + SNP makes a significantly bigger share of the vote than Tories + Reform, and similar equations would have given similar results in the past.

I think to try for PR, Labour would have to believe that the fracture between Reform and the Tories was likely to soon mend, but it's a pretty deep schism so I can't believe they would even notionally consider it till a possible second term.

I am in the UK but I didn't vote.

My only concern is economy. I don't see anyone having any ideas whatsoever about it. My only hope that we don't know how but maybe some unknown figure will ascend unexpectedly to the power and will make necessary reforms. When Gorbachov became a leader of the USSR, no one suspected what will follow. Ironically, Russia has returned back to old ways of self-isolating from free trade.

I voted Labour. I'm basically a single issue voter on housing and infrastructure at the moment and the Labour party is the only one with a remotely credible plan (now it remains to be seen how far they go towards implementing it).

Abolish the green belt yesterday!

I still think it's astonishing that headlines went straight to "Labour wins, what's next" rather than taking a second and steeping in the fact that the Conservatives haven't done this poorly since, uh, ever. It's absolute annihilation out there. They even did better back in 1906! 1906. Let that sink in. Are the Conservatives even doing any introspection, or are they just blithely assuming Labour will muck it up and they'll be back in power before too long?

120 seats is not much different from 220 seats -- nobody is freaking out because it's not that bad.

They knew that they would lose and they did -- now they will see how it plays out. (yes Labour will probably fuck things up, but either way the next election will be a fresh start)

The national press aren't going to expend much ink on the losers, and as jkf says below seat count isn't that important. Compared to some of the pre-election polls, 120 seats looks like a downright great result. Coupled with the weakness of Starmer, there is plenty of reason to think the Cons could bounce straight back in.

You'll still find some introspection if you go to conservative media, blogs, and xitter spheres. It's going to be three competing parties: first, the "sensible centrists" who insist that the Tories were too right-wing, too toxic, and need to go back to being grown-ups with normal centrist policies and neolib economics. Second, the "reform was right" crowd, pointing out that the Tories basically bled all of their voters to their anti-immigration competition, and the party needs to go back to traditional small state, low immigration, tough on crime, etc. Third, the more technocratic wing, who might be termed Trussites if she wasn't so completely useless. They would favour a much greater focus on productivity, just without the rank stupidity of Liz Truss.

In the end the Tories are the natural party of government. Labour will find that the fundamental impossibility of British politics (that the public demand euro services at US tax rates), coupled with immigration that will stay high (the public’s memory that the Tories presided over a large increase will be short-lived) and various internal divisions on trans issues, woke in general, even things like affirmative action (which is a big campaign promise for Labour that the conservative-leaning tabloids will make great hay about) will quickly see support for them fall.

House prices will stay high, no party can afford for them to drop, which will hurt Starmer with the young. NHS waiting lists aren’t going to drop much; there is no money for Blair-tier investment now, and Truss’ folly showed the gilt market will punish any fiscal gambit harshly. More worryingly, in Scotland any opposition to Labour will return the SNP to power quite quickly once memories of Yousaf’s reign and the Sturgeon drama fade, which will be sooner than many people think. That’s another 30+ seats gone too. Boundary reform is still on the side of the Tories, a return to a comfortable Tory majority really doesn’t require a huge political shift in the UK, particularly if there’s a swing to the right to appease Farage fans (which has happened before and can again).

Starmer’s win feels kind of like Scholz’s, or perhaps Hollande’s or Macron’s in France, except without the charisma of the latter. It clearly and obviously presages a right-wing turn for what remains of the Tories followed by a hung parliament, possibly even outright Tory victory in 2029. It’s a big hurrah for the center-left, but it’ll be the last one for a while.

Meanwhile in Australia: Islam, Gaza, and Party Loyalty

Let's take a break from our regularly scheduled Trump-related programming to consider some drama in another country...

This is Fatima Payman. She's a Labor senator for Western Australia who's recently found herself in a spot of bother, which I found interesting enough to be worth comment. Let me set the stage with a bit of background first.

Australia has a Westminster system of government with a bicameral legislature. The lower house of parliament has MPs who are elected representing particular districts, but the upper house, or senate, has a different and convoluted method of electing its members. Each Australian state (there are six) gets twelve senators and each territory (there are two) gets two, for a total of seventy-six. Most of the time the way senators are elected is by political party. A senate ballot paper looks like this, and rather than number specific individual preferences, most voters merely vote for a single party, and then their votes are allocated according to that party's pre-selected preferences.

This is relevant because Fatima Payman, who's only 28, was third on the Labor list of preferences for the senate in Western Australia. She was not particularly expected to win - only six seats were up and Labor didn't expect to win three. So it's worth noting that neither the party nor Payman herself thought she'd get into the senate in 2022, and perhaps more importantly, almost nobody at the ballot box even knew who she was, much less expected her to win. How this affects her democracy legitimacy is for you to determine.

Labor, or in full the Australian Labor Party (ALP; note that the party is Labor even though the word 'labour' has a U in it in Australian English, it's because there was significant American influence on its foundation in the 19th century), is the centre-left party in Australia and is currently in government. Its traditional rival is the centre-right Liberal Party (in coalition with the National Party, hence Liberal/National Coalition, LNP, or just 'the Coalition'). Labor is traditionally a working-class, blue-collar party with a heavy base in the Australian union movement. In the 90s, like many labour parties in the West, it rebranded a bit to try to appeal more to the middle class and progressives, but the union heritage is still very much present.

Meanwhile, coming up on Labor's left flank is the Australian Greens. Australia has preferential, ranked-choice voting, so there's no spoiler effect, and this has allowed the Greens to rise without ruining the left's chances overall. The Greens were originally a one-issue environmentalist party in the 80s, but have since become a general progressive or far-left party. The Greens tend to take more idealistic, some might say extreme positions than Labor, and have been nibbling away at Labor's left flank for decades. The Greens tend to do best with middle-class or wealthy progressives and especially the young and students - stereotypically, they're the hipster, yuppie party.

One last thing is worth noting. Internally, Labor have traditionally had a strong emphasis on party discipline and solidarity. The norm for Labor has generally been that MPs and senators may voice disagreements in private, but once the party has come to a collective decision, everybody is expected to maintain discipline and stand by that decision, even if they disagree. Despite a few exceptions, Labor have generally stood by this in the past - one famous example was when the Labor party room agreed to oppose gay marriage, Penny Wong, a Labor MP and lesbian in a committed relationship (and obvious private supporter of same-sex marriage) voted against it and even argued against it in public, not changing her public view until the party as a whole came around.

So, time for the drama.

The Greens recently put forth a bill to recognise Palestinian statehood. This is a long-standing part of the Green platform. (The Labor platform includes something waffley about supporting a two-state solution in principle, but without committing to anything. They have been fending off criticism for this over the last few months.) Naturally it failed, with both Labor and the Coalition voting against. At the time, in May, Fatima Payman made some defiant pro-Palestinian speeches and was quietly censured.

Then last week, in the end of June, a motion in the senate to recognise Palestinian statehood came along. Again, Labor and the Coalition voted against it, but Payman crossed the floor to support the Greens.

Crossing the floor - voting against your own party - is a big deal in Australian politics.

Since then, Payman has been temporarily suspended from the Labor caucus, but not removed from the party; she may yet return to the caucus in good standing if she promises to follow the Labor party's rules. She has been criticised by some of her fellows, but supported by some authors, and the Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, seems to be struggling to find a middle path. The Greens are naturally praising Payman for her display of conscience, while the Coalition are mostly just pointing and laughing.

What's even more interesting is that local Islamic groups in Australia, which in the past have mostly been Labor voters (they don't like the Coalition for usual right-wing-party-related reasons, and they're not nearly socially progressive enough for the Greens) are strongly siding with Payman, and are flagging the possibility of an electoral revolt against Labor.

(The teals were a group of traditionally Coalition seats who cared a lot about environmental issues and climate change and revolted, electing independent MPs - so blue (the Coalition colour, conservatism) plus green (environment) equals teal. The possibility of a similar revolt against Labor would be terrifying for them.)

This rebellion may not come to anything and may not be very influential in the long run - there just aren't enough Australian Muslims, and most of them are in heavy Labor seats anyway - but with the next election rapidly approaching, Labor would really want to avoid any appearance of strife or disunity, especially with inflation, rising cost-of-living, energy policy, and the failed Voice referendum all making this government look a bit more ramshackle than they'd like - the Coalition are rapidly closing in on them in the polls.

As for Payman herself, it's not clear what she will do. She claims to have been bullied or intimidated, but at least from what's been seen in public so far, she appears to have been treated relatively gently. She could commit to abide by the Labor party's rules again and return to the caucus, or she could quit Labor entirely and become an independent senator, though this would make it extremely unlikely that she would ever get re-elected. Still, she's not up for re-election until 2028 anyway, so that might be worth it.

I don't have a conclusion to draw from this mess yet - but I think it's an interesting example of how Palestine and the Muslim vote are influencing centre-left politics in Western countries. Muslims aren't even a particularly large proportion of Australians (per the last census, 3.2% of Australians; compare 2.7% Hindus and 2.4% Buddhists), and yet they've got some influence here.

Of course, it's also possible that this is just a one-off - Labor screwed up the ticket in 2022 and by bad luck, a millennial who never should have been a senator in the first place got in there, and now she's grandstanding in a way that hurts her own party. Perhaps the only moral to draw from this is just "don't be stupid when selecting senate candidates". (A lesson the Greens might need to learn as well; this invites comparison to the saga of ex-Green independent senator Lidia Thorpe. But more on that some other time.)

Anyway, I offer the situation up for your reactions.

It baffles me how Israel-Palestine has blossomed into this defining political issue in so many countries with no real reason to have a vested interest in the matter.

I agree it seems strange, but not nearly as odd as BLM blowing up in countries with basically no black people.

This is not the first case of weird leftist obsessions crossing country boundaries in random ways.

Very hard to call it random when it's so consistent.

Trans hasn’t.

It very much has where I live in Scandinavia. It's barely even registers as a culture war issue. There's just 100% acceptance at every level. We even have smoother and more competent political navigators that have learned from the fires in the US with youth hormones, bathrooms, sports and such, solving those issues, to a degree, before they ever become a media thing.

It's almost embarrassing for the 'against' side, as they simply have no avenue to attack or resist. The imported 'against' narratives from America simply do not apply.

Wait, how’d they resolve those issues?

I dislike how much importance is afforded to that CW battlefront back here in the states. If there’s policy which skips over all the difficult bits, I want to know about it. We could defuse the whole awkward subject.

There's not really a resolution, just more media savviness, conflict aversion and less crazy people.

Everything is more behind the scenes. On the medical end everything is private. It's simply not made into a matter that the state is paying for breast augmentations for trans people. Most anti-trans activists can't even tell you how young the youngest person receiving HRT is.

Schools have genderless bathrooms and many public areas like pools are adding a third changing room.

At the same time there is a central LGBT organization that has a long history of 'fighting' for gay rights. So when there is a storm brewing they are very quick to get into action and quiet everything down if things don't look good for their side.

Basically, there is no big public battle. Everything that needs to happen happens behind the scenes. Everything that makes the rural townsfolk reach for their pitchforks is smothered down. That involves taking some L's, but in the long run it leaves the anti-trans side with nothing to fight against or rally around.

Yes, your(royal) solution to most of these problems was to stop looking, like explicitly not recording crime and rape stats by ethnicity, I wouldn't be surprised if gender affirmative care is not tracked/tabulated/stated up by age on purpose.

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What do you mean? I'm pretty sure it has, unless you're talking about Asia, Africa or the Middle East.

I repeat myself, but yes, seeing BLM in a German context was baffling indeed. We didn't ship them here as slaves, they came on their own!

In the Australian context, BLM was fascinating because we had copycat BLM marches... about a completely different issue.

BLM in the original context means 'African-American lives matter'. BLM marches in Australia were reinterpreted as 'Aboriginal lives matter', even though Australian Aboriginals have nothing whatsoever to do with African-Americans, and even by analogy, are much closer to Native Americans than they are to African-Americans. The relevant similarities are that some Aboriginals have dark skin, and that there's a perception of disproportionate police violence against them. That's it. It was strange to see the branding appropriated in real-time like that.

Indeed. I rather suspect that high levels of foreign interest in the conflict is why it continues to be unresolved. Other countries keep intervening politically to "promote peace", but that actually leads to the underlying issues never actually being sorted out.

The west stayed uninvolved in Rwanda, and while that was a horrible and protracted conflict with a shocking death toll, in the end Kagame and the Tutsis won, and it came to an end. Sometimes one side just needs to definitively win and one side needs to definitively lose for the fighting to stop.

The current situation in Sudan is awful, much worse than what is happening in Gaza. But I'm much more optimistic about that conflict being over ten years in the future than I am about Israel/Palestine.

Yes, it’s become almost impossible to solve the conflict due to outside meddling. Probably the best example of this is the creation of UNRWA, and the special Palestinian refugee status. As opposed to the UNHCR which aims to resettle refugees, UNRWA keeps them in perpetual refugee camps and decrees descendants of refugees to be refugees themselves - thus the Palestinian refugee problem will never be solved. This is by design.

Why would we support mass ethnic cleansing and a giant refugee crisis next to Europe?

They have every right to stay and it is best for the world if we don't get millions of refugees.

This happened in 1949, and is literally the reason that Palestinian stateless refugees number in the millions. By now they would have mostly died out.

I have bad news for you - there is already a giant refugee crisis next to Europe, hence the refugee camps.

Which is why we need to help them return and help the ones who are still there stay.

Return where? The lands they used to live in got conquered.

The nearest semi-stable company with conditions resembling the place that they took refuge from.

Or in Israel's case there's 2 million or so local Arabs who are largely prosperous compared to regional comparisons and aren't associated with Hamas. An Israeli Arab is generally healthier and wealthier than any other Arab aside from those privileged enough to have their hands in the till in Petrostates.

I'm pretty sure he means to send them back to the lands they used to live in and send the conquerors...somewhere.

The west stayed uninvolved in Rwanda,

This is not true, both France and the UN sent troops. UN troops didn't intervene militarily, but they did shelter thousands of people from the genocide.

As far as I understand, the UN (and the French peacekeepers in particular) were famously useless during the Rwandan Genocide, and their major contribution was in setting up refugee camps in DRC (then Zaire) for fleeing Hutu genocidaires after the Burundi invasion ended the genocide.

In other words, they did little to shelter people from the genocide, but mostly sheltered the people who had committed the genocide.

If that's wrong, I'd appreciate the fact-check. My opinion of the UN places them somewhere between people who talk in the theater and malaria, so I'd be delighted to find that they're not quite as contemptible as I had thought.

My opinion of the UN places them somewhere between people who talk in the theater and malaria,

It's lucky that they're so ineffective.

I don't think that's true but I'm not much of an expert. Certainly the UN sheltered many Tutsis in its mission's headquarters. Overall they did not do much though.

...The wiki article on the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda is tough reading.

The original UNAMIR mission was given a mandate under Chapter VI, meaning its role was exclusively to maintain a demilitarized zone and to negotiate peace after the earlier civil war. When the genocide began, the UN ignored the urgent requests of the force commander to expand its mandate (it waited 40 days before providing the go-ahead to "provide security" to refugees) but instead withdrew 90% of its local forces (drawing down from 2500 to 270) and ordered the remaining soldiers to prioritize the evacuation of foreign nationals.

UNAMIR also assisted with the evacuation of foreign nationals; a group of Belgian soldiers, who had been sheltering 2,000 Rwandans at the École Technique Officielle, were ordered to abandon their station to assist in the evacuation. After the Belgians left, Hutu militants entered and massacred everyone inside.

The protection of Tutsi refugees in Amahoro Stadium seems almost entirely incidental to the UN soldiers defending their own HQ.

On the other hand, the UN Security Council did authorize a French army (officially a 'multilateral force' with 2468 French soldiers and 32 Senegalese soldiers) to set up a 'safe zone' in SW Rwanda under the name Operation Turquoise. This military mission was officially intended to stop the bloodshed, but mainly served to delay the advancing RPF (Tutsi) army from ending the genocide in the 'safe zone', as well as providing supplies for the mass migration of Hutus into eastern Zaire, which set up the humanitarian crisis (and ongoing border conflict) that resulted in 'Africa's World War' a few years later.

At some point I really need to write up an effortpost about France and the Rwandan Genocide. Where the UN and US can be shamed as merely feckless, France was astonishingly brazen in their embrace of villainy. It takes a special kind of moral monster to sit next to Tutsi refugees fleeing a genocide as you evacuate the country, only to kick them out at a Hutu border checkpoint so you can watch them be butchered mere yards away from freedom. Appalling is far too weak a word.

They have Jewish (and now) Muslim populations, so they have reasons to care. Small numbers of dedicated people make a lot of noise.

It's also just...fun? A little geopolitical drama, a little proxy culture war to fill our days.

If you're a Westerner skeptical of Islam or the sorts of people who push for some cosmopolitan accommodation with it but are too cucked to just argue your own nationalism (or you don't have a nation) Israeli nationalism is something you can support.

If you're on the flip side you can inveigh about the brutality of Western imperialism and those who support it and believe you're like your parents opposing apartheid. And, of course, give voice to vicious instincts you're not brave enough to slake yourself.

Both sides get to pretend that they care about the world as such, and many smaller nations get to pretend they have a say in outcomes.

It's great for everyone but Israelis and Palestinians, tbh.

They have Jewish (and now) Muslim populations, so they have reasons to care. Small numbers of dedicated people make a lot of noise.

The role that Jews play in maintaining outside interest in the region is pretty much non-existent apart from in the US (which is the only country apart from Israel to have a large enough Jewish community to matter to anyone) and even the US is involved in the region for reasons that go far beyond AIPAC.

Crossing the floor - voting against your own party

As an interesting piece of political terminology geekery, in most Commonwealth countries "crossing the floor" means an elected office-holder leaving their party to join another party - a far more drastic step than just voting against your party on a single vote. In British parlance, voting against your party on a whipped vote is called "rebelling".

Interesting difference, then! In Australian media journalists have been describing Payman as 'crossing the floor' for a vote - I'm surprised to learn the phrase has a different meaning in the UK.

It has to do with our different procedures. In Australia MPs vote by literally sitting on one side of the chamber or the other. The British Commons doesn't work like that, they're packed in like sardines. So in the UK parliament you only (literally) cross the floor if you are changing parties.

Muslims side with the ummah against the kuffar, but are happy to exploit the spoils and values of infidels until the time is right. This is yet another case of muslim revealed preferences, and parties which seek to leverage muslim constituents are surprisingly blind to how muslims constantly explicate their preferences.

This particular instance was of a muslim that revealed her power level for no discernible benefit, and that is because of her lack of political acumen. Payman is a modal muslim who managed to become as a politician due to ranked choice voting shenanigans, not a politician who happened to be muslim. The main difference being the requirements for an actual politician to play the game of masking ones preferences until the opportune time, instead of actually Standing Up For Ones Beliefs.

The specific maladaptation in western countries is a failure to differentiate politicians from modals, leading to presumptions that politicians are really representative of their communities values instead of acting as laundering vehicles for the communities reputation - note that often this laundering is not requested by the community and instead is the politician exploiting voter bases for their own gains. Muslim voters, like other communities, have their own preferences and globally western muslims explicate their preference for sharia and antisemitism.

That Paymans deviation from party line shocks pundits is itself shocking to anyone who has observed the muslim world post 79. As more muslim votes become a prize for parties to cater to and the number of politically adept muslims decreases relative to their population, fully expect to see more deviations from party lines, if not full out splinterings. When the first islamist party sinks its teeth in western democracies, we will see the REAL fun.

Payman is a modal muslim who managed to become as a politician due to ranked choice voting shenanigans

It had nothing to do with ranked choice voting shenanigans. Payman had a big primary vote lead in the race for the 6th seat.

The primary votes were 34.5% ALP, 31.7% LIB, 14.3% GRN, with no other group getting above 3.5%. How do you think the 6 seats should have been allocated?

The allocation for the ALP isn't the issue, the inclusion of a wild card in their roster is the problem. Better internal party vetting and discipline. The allocations and split meant Payman ended up as a politician even though her political viability as an individual candidate is stymied by personal preferences untempered by either party discipline or becoming visible to the ground. The point I make is more about modal muslims being thrust into unearned political station and exercising their personal preferences against organizational requirements.

This is the specific problem I was highlighting: entryism by activist entities can disrupt a local polity and a failure to control this is a specific blind spot on leftist parties currying favor with disparate elements. Paymans islamist loyalties leading her to support greens is objectionable simply on party discipline grounds and if a militant environmentalist crossed lines to support banning nuclear or an animal rights activist crossed to ban animal culling it'll be the same problem: uncooperative externals making their personal preferences take priority over the organization they are ostensibly supposed too work for.

Sure, I don't dispute that she should not have been pre-selected. Simply that it had anything to do with "ranked choice shenanigans".

Hyperbole on my part! Strictly speaking I don't quite understand why 35% gets 50% of the prize, but the nebulous magicks of politics is the worst combination of legacy, compromise and procedure. Fun fun fun.

The reason is that a quota to get elected is 14.3%. This is the smallest number that ensures that only 6 people can win, much like how in a single member election 50%+1 is the smallest number than ensures only one person can win.

So straight off the primaries you have 5 senators elected on full quotas. 2 Labor, 2 Liberal 1 Green. There's one seat left.

Once you take 2 quotas away from Labor and the Liberals they are left with 5.9% and 3.1% respectively. There's a bunch of small parties as well, the biggest being One Nation on 3.5%. So Payman has a clear lead here. But none of these parties are close to 14.3% so they start getting knocked out, starting with the smallest ones, and their votes get reallocated to their next preference.

If the preferences flowed strongly to the Liberals or to One Nation, they might have been able to overtake the lead that Payman had. But they didn't, and she ended up beating the One Nation candidate by 23,490 votes.

Now of course while this is the way that the senate counts votes, you can theoretically use all sorts of other methods. But just looking at the primary votes, and knowing that you have to elect 6 people, it's hard to see a combination that makes more intuitive sense. 2 ALP 2 LIB 2 GRN? 2 ALP 3 LIB 1 GRN? 2 ALP 2 LIB 1 GRN 1 ON? All alternatives are pretty hard to justify.

I'm of the view that Payman will go independent. There's 0 chance she gets given a winnable spot on the Senate ticket after her antics, she's frozen out of the caucus and has no ability to influence the government internally, there's just no benefit from her perspective for her to stay within the Labor fold.

Most likely she forms her own party to try to get re-elected and fails miserably, following a long tradition of party defectors who have done just that. As you say, there's not enough Muslims in Australia to sustain an Islamic party, and there will be precious little crossover appeal to non-muslims. But she still gets 4 more years as a senator, and Senate numbers are always finely balanced. As an independent it's likely she would get to be a pivotal vote in some circumstances, and potentially be able to use that leverage to extract some sort of concessions on issues she cares about.

Crossing the floor - voting against your own party - is a big deal in Australian politics.

As I understand it, voting against your party basically never happens in British politics, because the party leaders can just replace you instantly with someone who toes the line. Is that also the case in Australia? or how hard is it to replace a "faithless parliamentarian?"

It's actually significantly more common in British politics (though still much less common than in America). For example, in the UK 56 Labour MPs broke ranks with the party over the Gaza issue, as opposed to just one here.

In neither system can the party instantly replace you. They can kick you out of the party or deny you pre-selection though, and that functionally means you will not be re-elected in most cases.

Australian Labor Party discipline is very, very tight. Payman is only the 20th Labor MP to ever cross the floor. I think the last time it happened was back in the 90s.

The Conservative side of politics is less extreme. You won't be kicked out of the party and you probably won't be denied preselection. But you have to give up any ministry positions and generally it hurts your political career. So a few opinionated people decide it's worth it, for example Bridget Archer has crossed the floor dozens of times. But overall it's still pretty rare, and the vast majority of Liberal MPs have never crossed the floor.

The British parties actually have a system for telling MPs (and Lords) just how unacceptable a rebellion would be. The party whips produce a roughly weekly newsletter for their MPs (also called "The Whip") giving warning of forthcoming votes and telling them which way to vote. The preferred vote is underlined once for an important vote where MPs are expected to show up, twice for a vote where MPs are required to show up (unless "paired" with an absent opposition MP) but only habitual offenders will actually be punished for not showing, and three times for a vote where MPs are required to show up and unauthorised absence will be punished by default. Rebelling against a three-line whip will, in theory, get you kicked out of the party caucus (in British terminology, "having the Whip withdrawn" because caucus membership is de facto defined by the circulation of the newsletter) but in practice only happens where there is safety in numbers such that the Party leadership can't afford to kick all the rebels out.

I understand that crossing the aisle is fairly common in American politics, because American political parties have very little way to punish it. A lot of factional politics in America therefore occurs within parties, rather than between them, as in Commonwealth countries.

It's pretty dangerous, but not necessarily suicidal - it depends on the particular party and your position in it. In Labor's case, it is usually suicidal, because Labor is unusually strict about party discipline. (They occasionally try to make hay of this by accusing the Coalition of being a disorganised rabble; the Coalition reply is usually that they have more respect for the consciences of individual members. This plays well with the perception of Labor as being more collectivist and focused on solidarity, with the Coalition as more individualist and focused on liberty.) There are a few statistics here - notice that every Coalition leader has faced MPs crossing the floor, while it is much more rare for Labor. Anthony Albanese is now only the second Labor PM since 1950 to have had a defection. As noted, your position in the party also matters - Barnaby Joyce did it a lot, but Joyce was popular in his own state, and he was a National. The Liberals have limited ability to punish a National member they don't like, due to the terms of the coalition agreement, which gave him more protection.

The Coalition also tends to be more vulnerable to it because the Coalition is more ideologically diverse than Labor - the Coalition has a moderate and a conservative wing, and both wings need the other in order to hold on to power. Sometimes MPs from one wing will defy the other, usually over a social issue, and remain within the party. (For example.) Labor in theory has factions as well - there's a Labor Left and Labor Right - but Labor's factions are less well-defined and tend to fight each other less as well. Same-sex marriage is a good example of the dynamic. As I mentioned in the top-level, Labor exercised very strong discipline on it, to the extent that even gay Labor MPs opposed it as long as the party opposed it, and then when the party supported it, everybody got on board. On the Coalition side, the moderates supported it and the conservatives opposed it, and there was much more outrage about whether or not the Coalition would allow a 'conscience vote' (i.e. every MP votes for what they think is right, party line be damned) on the issue. (There was a Labor discussion of a conscience vote - the pro-SSM side criticised the idea of a conscience vote there, because apaprently moral consistency is for suckers.) But I think that hit more strongly because the Coalition is known to be more divided than Labor on a range of issues.

At any rate, the answer is probably just "it depends". I think it is significantly more dangerous than in America, though, because in Australia the parties themselves have more direct control over their membership.

Labor in theory has factions as well - there's a Labor Left and Labor Right - but Labor's factions are less well-defined and tend to fight each other less as well.

This is kind of the opposite of the truth. Labor's factions are much more defined and organised. For example, they have a longstanding rule that the deputy leader has to come from the opposite faction to the leader (e.g. Albanese is from the Left, Marles is from the Right). Cabinet positions are allocated by quota among the factions. Specific seats and senate ticket positions are allocated to specific factions. Their infighting has often been extremely bitter.

Conversely, while the Liberals have had some nasty factional warfare over the last few decades (though mostly calmed down at the moment), their factions are more ephemeral and fluid. E.g. it used to be just the wets and the dries, but then Scott Morrison effectively created a three faction system, with his own centre-right group operating distinctly from the Turnbull moderates and the Abbott conservatives.

It's a little out of date but this article provides a great explainer of the Labor factions.

You think? Where I'm coming from is the sense that it's very easy to tell at a glance the difference between a moderate Liberal and a conservative Liberal - most famously, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott were practically from different parties. By contrast, I find it hard to name the specific wedge issues that might separate the Labor Left and Labor Right? For instance, Bill Shorten was from the Right faction, and Albanese is from the Left, but I would struggle to clearly define the policy differences between them.

There's a couple of factors here. One is that Labor is much more disciplined about hashing out their policy differences behind closed doors and everyone singing from the same songsheet in public while the Liberals are more free about having their policy arguments in full view. E.g. the infamous interview where Bill Shorten supported Julia Gillard's position without knowing what it was. I assure you that policy differences are just as stark in the Labor caucus as in the Liberal partyroom, you just don't hear about it on the news as much. For example there's hardcore anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage social conservatives on the Labor benches - but you'd never know that from the media coverage.

Another is that factional divisions are often more about building personal fiefdoms and less about actual policy. You still have to sign up to a specific faction, and you vote in lockstep with your faction in internal deliberations, and you have to be loyal to that faction... but there's a certain amount of flexibility about what you can actually think.

And a final consideration is that Labor tends to give their leaders more license to take public positions for strategic reasons (currently at least). For example while Albanese is to the left of Shorten, he's also more ruthless about publicly moderating for electoral advantage. Whereas a Liberal who tries that tends to run into serious and usually public pressure from the backbench.

That's a fair point - Albanese ran a relatively centrist, small-target campaign for election, and then in government he hasn't been particularly radical either.

Still, I am prepared to accept your correction here as completely reasonable, and would offer only that, as you say, the perception of division may be different. Labor minimise the appearance of disunity more effectively than the Coalition, so, fair enough.

Cool thanks. Yeah it's definitely different in America, where the congressmen are independantly elected and the parties have very little direct control over them. Sounds like in Australia they're... mostly under the thumb of the parties, but not completely?

Pretty much. I also reckon that's the main reason why America has such a strong two party system - individual politicians can just take whatever policy view they want and vote how they want and as long as they have local support the party can't do anything about it. Whereas our stricter party control leads to more discontent with the rigid party line and consequently more people splitting off to start their own parties and more space for independents and minor parties to exploit gaps left by the one-size-fits-all approach of the major parties.

voting against your party basically never happens in British politics, because the party leaders can just replace you instantly with someone who toes the line

No, quite the opposite? It's rare to vote against a governing party on a confidence vote, but that's because that could trigger the downfall of the government, and you have to REALLY be interested in rebelling to do that if your party is in government. It would be like a Democrat/Republican voting to remove a Democrat/Republican president, which AFAIK basically never happens in US politics.

It would be like a Democrat/Republican voting to remove a Democrat/Republican president, which AFAIK basically never happens in US politics.

I wouldn't say it's that uncommon – both Clinton and Trump (both times) got votes across party lines in their impeachments; Johnson didn't. So 3/4 impeachment attempts in US history were bipartisan.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

The only reason why labour would be pro Israel is because of the incredible ethnic activism by jews. Historically, Australians have had little reason to care about Israel/Palestine while a rich, influential and rabid minority have been aggressively pushing their ethnic agenda. Israel is a lot less popular with the population at large than with politicians who get free trips to the wailing wall. Causing a conflict over an issue where only 21% of Australians support the parties position is not a smart move. Clearly their voters are more pro Palestine than the politicians swayed by the lobby.

I think that statistic is very misleading.

The YouGov headline there - "More Australians are in favour than in opposition of recognising Palestine as an independent state" - is practically designed to mislead. What the poll results say is that 35% say Australia should recognise an independent Palestine, 21% say it shouldn't, and 44% don't know. "I don't know" is far and away the plurality winner. Moreover, I'd suggest that no specific proposal is given, and "recognise Palestine as an independent state" covers quite a lot of ground, so it's unlikely that all of that 35% want the same thing. Recognising Palestine as an independent state could mean a number of different types of two-state solution, it could mean totally destroying Israel, or something else. If a real proposal for an independent Palestinian state were on the table and being considered, approval for it would be likely to fall (cf. the Voice; it polled tremendously well when it was a vague proposal, but as specifics began to be mooted, support fell further and further).

Moreover, this is the current Labor platform on Palestine (p. 132):

  1. The National Conference:

a. Supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders;

b. Calls on the Australian Government to recognise Palestine as a state; and

c. Expects that this issue will be an important priority for the Australian Government.

The explicitly stated Labor position is to recognise Palestine as a state.

Why, then, did Labor vote against the Greens proposal to recognise Palestine as a state?

Well, it's what I said just above about details - the question is the way in which that recognition can or should happen. In the SBS piece I linked about the Greens bill in May, the Assistant Foreign Minister says:

"A Palestinian state cannot be in a position to threaten Israel's security, we want to see a reformed Palestinian governing authority that is committed to peace, that disavows violence," he said.

"On the question of recognition, we have made clear that we will be guided by whether recognition will advance the cause for peace."

It seems coherent that one could support recognising Palestinian statehood in the abstract while opposing a particular bill to do it at a particular time, if one judges that the time is not right.

On Israel in general, my sense is that a lot of this is unfortunately imported culture war from abroad. Historically, Australia really has very little connection to Israel or Palestine and no reason to care. Anti-semitism, fortunately, has never been a potent force in Australian history or culture (no doubt helped also by prominent Jewish-Australian heroes like John Monash), so it's largely just not been an issue. In the last year I've actually been particularly concerned by what seems like the importing of American-style activism over Israel/Palestine, with disturbing effects.

Moreover, I'd suggest that no specific proposal is given, and "recognise Palestine as an independent state" covers quite a lot of ground, so it's unlikely that all of that 35% want the same thing. Recognising Palestine as an independent state could mean a number of different types of two-state solution, it could mean totally destroying Israel, or something else.

I think it would be a safer assumption to just say that the supporting public wants to recognize Palestine as an independent state in the same way many other nations have. To invoke the total destruction of Israel as a potential reason why someone would want to do that seems rather silly.

The matter really isn't that complicated. From your post it seems like the main complication is politicians who are unwilling to do it unless it somehow serves Israels security interest. Which pretty much gels with what functor said.

Well, realistically I'd guess that the reason no one wants to do that now is that recognising Palestinian statehood comes off as "I am taking the Palestinian side against Israel".

That infuriates everybody who likes Israel, and it's also distressingly close to "I support Hamas", and no one in Labor wants to give the Coalition the opportunity to accuse them of being Hamas-loving anti-semitic terrorist-sympathisers. Nor, in fact, the Australian Jewish community, which retains significant public sympathy.

It would be much safer to say at a time when Israel and Palestine aren't at war after a brutal and horrifying Palestinian terror attack - at a time when any indication of support for Palestine wouldn't come off as hostile to Israel. But that is the time at present.

Well, realistically I'd guess that the reason no one wants to do that now is that recognising Palestinian statehood comes off as "I am taking the Palestinian side against Israel".

I recognize that this is largely true in practice, but I have been surprised at the complete lack of a middle ground internationally on this. One could imagine a hypothetical "we recognize a Palestinian state, with borders that explicitly do not span from the Jordan to the Mediterranean," which isn't exactly accepting maximalist Palestinian territorial claims.

There may well be good reasons this hasn't been done, but it's not like there aren't historical examples of this: Germany's post-1945 borders were effectively drawn by everyone else at the table, and they've pretty universally accepted this.

I feel those reasons are motivated more by philosemitism than an objective political eye.

Supporting Palestine after it committed a terror attack would be a bad move. So why is the topic and support for Palestine popping up? Maybe because the Israel response was particularly bad and poorly thought out? There has been no lack of support on the world stage for Palestine. The reasons you list make Palestine out to be a hot potato no one wants to hold but the reality is that it's not. No one is afraid of being branded a "Hamas-loving anti-semitic terrorist-sympathiser". The self victimizing cries of Israeli officials at the UN fall on deaf ears. People vote in favor of ending Israel's war effort. No one likes the bombing of women and children.

I think you could much more easily just take the Australians politicians on their word and say that they are withholding state recognition of Palestine as a bargaining chip for the future. Which would mean they are no closer to recognizing Palestine now than at any time prior regardless of whatever scuffles happen between Israel and Palestine.

Israel is the terrorist supporter. Israel has actively backed all sorts of jihadist in Syria as well as giving them air support.

Nor, in fact, the Australian Jewish community, which retains significant public sympathy.

Rather, a small loud and extremely vocal and ethnocentric minority lobbying for their ethnic interest.

brutal and horrifying Palestinian terror attack

Unlike Israels bombing of Gaza?

Israel was engaging in acts of war against Palestine and Hamas were well within their rights to attack military installations. If they are under blockade they are fully within their rights to attack installations imposing that blockade. Israel is engaging in genocide and there is not strong support for Israel in Australia.

  • -10

I'm not making a moral claim. I'm being descriptive, not normative - speaking to why I think Labor are acting the way they are.

In addition to the optics element I noted, I wouldn't be surprised if there's also an element of geopolitics. America likes Israel, and Australia needs to keep America on side as much as possible, for our regional security as regards China. From that perspective, visibly siding with Palestine annoys the Americans for zero material benefit to Australia. The move doesn't make sense.

To reiterate, I'm not myself arguing that Israel is good or Palestine is bad. Neither am I arguing that Israel is bad. That's not an argument that I think is likely to be interesting or constructive. I'm interested in why Australian poltiical parties behave the way they do.

is practically designed to mislead. What the poll results say is that 35% say Australia should recognise an independent Palestine, 21% say it shouldn't, and 44% don't know.

So most voters don't care and don't have an interest in the issue. Those who do lean pro Palestine and there are few of their voters that are actually pro Israel. No reason to cause conflict over such an issue.

well, it's what I said just above about details - the question is the way in which that recognition can or should happen. In the SBS piece I linked about the Greens bill in May, the Assistant Foreign Minister says

Israel is a great threat to Palestine and the lack of a Palestinian state is a direct threat to the Palestinians. There is no reason except the donors to value Israel higher than Palestine.

  • In the last year I've actually been particularly concerned by what seems like the importing of American-style activism over Israel/Palestine, with disturbing effects.

Israel is diversifying its support from the US and investing a lot more in lobbying in Europe and other places. They don't want to be dependent on one state. Unfortunately that is having an impact in other parts of the world when more politicians are going on paid trips to Israel and more Israeli lobbying money enters politics.

There is no reason except the donors to value Israel higher than Palestine.

Well I can think of a few, the israelis are culturally much closer to the west than the palestinians, which breeds sympathy. Frankly I don't think Palestine would enjoy any western support were it not for general ignorance of most westerners to palestinian culture and a certain knee jerk reaction among some westerners to support any underdog or group that opposes the west.

To western sensibilities the palestinians are barbarous and generally unpleasant. I personally find their combination of weakness and belligerence to be particularly repellant, demanding humane treatment that they themselves would never even consider granting their enemies were the situations reversed.

Israel's lack of cultural proximity is also the prime reason people don't like Israel. Zionists and philosemites make claims of Israel being very culturally 'western' whilst at the same time Israel is getting itself into all sorts of trouble relating to the conflict precisely because they are not acting 'western'.

The response to a muslim terror attack, as demonstrated by the many European nations that have suffered them, is not to bomb civilians into oblivion. In fact, the preferred response is to venerate the outgroup that hurt you and seek reconciliation even harder. Israel does not do this. Israel should be taking in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Possibly millions. Israel does not do this. Instead they bomb women and children. You could not be any less western.

By the same token, many people do not know how some jews view the outside world and have no concept of how ethnocentric semites are.

I think many zionists and philosemites need to understand that the 'rooting for the underdog' mentality that drives some support for Palestine is the same one that drives tolerance for semites around the world. You can not have it both ways. Either the culturally foreign, which includes both muslims and jews, is not tolerated or they both are. Trying to have it both ways because you love yourself so much more than anyone else is not going to cut it for fair minded westerners. In fact, trying to employ classic dehumanizing rhetoric like you do in your post is not going to work precisely because of jewish anti-prejudice propaganda driven into every westerners head.

The response to a muslim terror attack, as demonstrated by the many European nations that have suffered them, is not to bomb civilians into oblivion.

Ah, but the US is not a European country. And the US response to a muslim terror attack was to take over by force not just one but two Muslim countries -- one of them not even involved -- including lots of bombing which necessarily killed civilians. So the Israelis may be closer to the US than the Europeans, culturally.

The US response to a muslim terror attack was to follow a plan laid out by philosemitic neoconservative zionists in the American government. I see that more as a self reinforcing circle of zionist influence than anything else.

But aside from that, yeah, most Americans supported the war effort at the time. Many European nations joined in, a lot of muslims got annihilated in the name of women in the workplace, NATO, burgers and freedom. But how does the 'west' look at that effort today? Positive or negative? I'd say overwhelmingly negative.

To that end Israel might be western by an older standard that was defined a fair bit by zionism in American politics, but I would not say that this standard would cut it today.

Whether the US responded that way because The Jews made us or not, the US did indeed respond that way. Perhaps Philosemitic neoconservative zionists (whether in Israel or the US) are the real Westerners and Europe is just a shadow of itself, poisoned by postmodern European liberalism.

But how does the 'west' look at that effort today? Positive or negative? I'd say overwhelmingly negative.

Maybe the Europeans. I'm pretty sure US voters are still pretty happy about taking out Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's buddies, even if both wars dragged on far too long.

More comments

Israel does not do this. Instead they bomb women and children. You could not be any less western.

Bombing women and children has been a totally acceptable tactic utilized by Western militaries since at least World War 2, as you know. Was the United States not a Western country when it annihilated dozens of Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians? Or in Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Iraq, or Yugoslavia? And to be clear, this isn’t an “America Bad, therefore Israel also Bad” comparison. It’s just demonstrably true, as far as I can tell, that nothing Israel has done since October 7th is beyond the bounds of what any major Western military has done within our lifetimes, or would do if given a reason to.

Far from being a sign of how different and alien Israelis are compared to us, I think it actually just demonstrates that Israel is having to conquer its indigenous population in the age of social media and ubiquitous video cameras, whereas the United States had the luxury of having finished off the Amerindians long before anyone could have posted our atrocities on Twitter. (The Indians also didn’t have proper schools and hospitals to bomb, so the scale and optics of the destruction of their civilization was less photogenic.) Israel is the only significant modern example of a settler colonial state, which is a geopolitical model intimately familiar to the history of nearly every major Western country.

And the general western sentiment of bombing civilians today is that it is bad.

I'm not taking this comparison seriously. If you think Israel is acting western by repeating what every other western countries now count as dark periods of their respective histories I can only throw my hands in the air.

Western powers said: No more endless conquest, no more slavery, no more colonialism, no more bombing. We live in the present day and Israel needs to get with the program if they want to call themselves western. As I said before, the western response to a terror attack is not bombing but veneration for the outgroup that did it. Yes, in the past there would have been bombs, but we are not talking about acting western as the west was 100 years ago. These are moderns western standards being applied to Israel and Israel fails to meet them. By that token Israel is not acting western at all since you are not allowed to terrorize the defenseless little brownfolk anymore.

what every other western countries now count as dark periods of their respective histories I can only throw my hands in the air.

Who in those countries thinks this? Shitlibs! Progs! Why are you echoing and reifying their moral framework? The periods you’re referring to were, by any measure I care about, the civilizational peak for the European diaspora. You get to live comfortably in the shadow of that era today, enjoying all of its myriad fruits and consequences, and you simultaneously get to be sanctimonious and squeamish about it because it happened before you were alive to have to watch the sausage get made in real time.

Western powers said: No more endless conquest, no more slavery, no more colonialism, no more bombing.

They were able to say that because they’d already gotten everything they needed out of those things. (Except for the times when they actually still needed to make exceptions - like, again, the many times the American military has reverted to the old civilian-bombing, city-leveling model within my lifetime.) Meanwhile, as I said, Israel is in a position where the old model is still the only realistic option for them, given their geopolitical position and what they’re trying to do. (i.e. secure and expand their settler-colonial ethnostate)

Look, I share your squeamishness about bombing women and children! I visited Japan just a few months ago, and I spent a couple of days in Hiroshima, including a visit to the Peace Memorial Museum. When I ponder what the Americans did not only to that city, but to dozens of other Japanese cities during the closing stages of the war, I too feel strongly the pull of the peacenik instinct. Once upon a time I would have happily declared myself a pacifist.

However, I eventually had to reckon with what the world would look like today if the Americans had just let the Indians share the continent, or if Japan had fought the U.S. to a stalemate as a result of the Americans deciding to only have “fair fights” where civilians weren’t targeted. Is that actually a better world? Surely for the people who ended up dead and maimed in our timeline, yes, that would have been preferable. Would it be better for their posterity today, though? I think it’s a pretty tough argument.

Certainly the Israelis seem to believe that the current spasm of barbarity is ultimately necessary to secure the prosperity of future Israeli generations, who will certainly look back on their grandparents’ generation with the same level of sanctimonious disgust you’re demonstrating now. Such is the inexorable cycle of progress.

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If you think Israel is acting western by repeating what every other western countries now count as dark periods of their respective histories I can only throw my hands in the air.

If the commancheria was a going concern, I guarantee you we would be doing it and not feeling guilty.

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The response to a muslim terror attack, as demonstrated by the many European nations that have suffered them, is not to bomb civilians into oblivion. In fact, the preferred response is to venerate the outgroup that hurt you and seek reconciliation even harder.

I would point out that in no small part due to the European elites taking this stance, anti-muslim anti-immigration parties have grown enormously in power across Europe. Meloni is in charge in Italy, Wilders is in charge in the Netherlands, the National Rally is about to win the French election, AfD is rising in Germany, etc, etc.

This comes off the back of a decade of mass immigration, terror attacks that have left hundreds dead, thousands of children raped etc, etc.

I think it's fair to say Israel has a fair amount of catching up to do before they can justify putting forth a moderate right winger to lead their country, as is happening in Europe. Forget about the actual ethnonationalist zionism that underlines the Likud party. I mean, would such a thing even be allowed in Germany? You know, Zionism... but for Germans...

Well I can think of a few, the israelis are culturally much closer to the west than the palestinians

A lot of Palestinians are christians. Israelis on the other hand are a middle eastern group that is down right hostile group to European culture. There is no group that has had a more difficult time historically getting along with Europeans than jews and that includes Roma people. Genetically Palestinians and jews are similar. Both speak semetic languages, refuse to eat pork and circumcise boys. Unless they are Christian, in which case they are more similar to us. Jews are more ethnocentric and have a religion that doesn't see others as potential converts.

A lot of Palestinians are christians.

A lot of Palestinians who are not in Gaza or the West Bank (e.g. in parts of Paterson, NJ) are Christian. In the West Bank, very few. In Gaza, vanishingly few.

There is no group that has had a more difficult time historically getting along with Europeans than jews and that includes Roma people.

The Moorish Invasion, Reconquista, Siege of Vienna and the Crusades say otherwise.

Genetically Palestinians and jews are similar.

Well, Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews. Ashkenazi are rather different having significant European admixture.

(e.g. in parts of Paterson, NJ)

They managed to live there for over a millenia of muslim rule. A few decades with Jewish rule and they became refugees. Israel has been a disaster for the natural allies of Europeans in the middle east while creating a refugee crisis.

The Moorish Invasion,

Which the jews of Spain happily supported.

Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews_in_Israel

Abuout 45% of jews in Israel. Another 14% are Hasedic jews who aren't especially similar to Europeans culturally at all.

A lot of Palestinians are christians.

According to wiki, only 0.2% of Gaza are Christian, and somewhere between 1% and 2.5% of the West Bank, in contrast to 1.9% of Israelis. It doesn't seem like Palestine is significantly more Christian than Israel, and in the case of Gaza specifically, it is much less - Al Jazeera claims that as of November 2023, there are barely a thousand Christians left in Gaza. The number of Christians in Palestine has significantly declined over time, which Christianity Today claims is primarily due to economic migration, rather than persecution.

As far as I'm aware neither Palestine nor Israel are particularly good places to be Christian. In both states Christians are a small minority, and are, I believe, second class citizens. It's interesting to note that most of them favour a one-state solution, I'd speculate perceiving that either an explicitly Jewish state or an explicitly Islamic state would be bad for them?

At any rate, I'm not sure that siding with Christians is a heuristic that would naturally get you to siding with Palestine against Israel. Palestine doesn't seem noticeably more Christian than Israel.

The statistics in the linked poll seem to me to indicate that a plurality of Australians don't know about and probably don't care that much about this specific issue, with smaller camps that are either pro-Palestine or pro-Israel, though the intensity of each camp remains unclear.

Anecdotally - as an Australian who unfortunately comes into contact with activist groups, and who has links to both local Jewish and Islamic communities - my sense is that only small, loud minorities have strong opinions on Israel/Palestine either way, and that those minorities are disproportionately dominated by the relevant religious groups and by immigrants. Jews are smaller in number but generally have been in Australia longer, are richer, and have more access to existing institutions of power; Muslims are greater in number (about six times as many), but are more recently come to Australia and are less embedded in civic and political institutions. The anti-colonial left, significantly influenced by American cultural and political exports, also tends to be very pro-Palestine, but more seasoned politicians tend to be more sympathetic to Israel. So the result is what we see here - an insurgent youth politician and Muslim defecting from her party and likely self-destructing, but representing a change or potential risk that the Labor party will have to deal with.

At any rate, I notice you're being quite vague - 'the donors', 'Israeli lobbying money', and so on. I'm not sure that's helpful. I think you're trying to paint a picture where the Australian public as a whole is pro-Palestine and it's shadowy Jewish influence that subverts this. That doesn't seem to track with other figures. Sky in 2023 have a figure suggesting 31% support for Israel versus 7% for Palestine, which seems to fit with the majority of Australians not caring very much, but there being division between the combatants. (I grant that Sky, a conservative channel, likely have a pro-Israel bias.) Roy Morgan, also in 2023, shows similar divisions - 49% say we shouldn't take sides, 17% say we should help Israel more, and 19% say we should help Palestine more. Oxfam via the Canberra Times says that most support a ceasefire, but that's woolly enough that I'm not sure how to interpret it. For what it's worth, data from before October 7 generally seems similar - this report from 2021 suggests that most Australians are ignorant of the conflict, and most (62%) say that their sympathies are equally with both parties, with only 19% favouring Palestine and 11% favouring Israel.

My sense from on the ground is that this is probably correct. Most Australians don't care, and those who do vaguely want everybody in the region to live in peace and security and wish the violence would stop without taking a partisan perspective. When Palestinians do something awful (e.g. October 7), there's a bump in support for Israel and decline in support for Palestine, and when Israelis do something awful (e.g. much of the subsequent bombing), there's a bump in support for Israel and decline for Palestine. I would guess that these are likely to return to the average over time, as people forget or as different atrocities fall out of the forefront of people's minds. The most reliable partisans one way or the other are Jews and Muslims, for obvious reasons, but I think the bulk of Australians aren't strongly exercised about it.

Israel is a great threat to Palestine and the lack of a Palestinian state is a direct threat to the Palestinians. There is no reason except the donors to value Israel higher than Palestine.

I personally have no particular interest in the conflict and agree that what Israel is doing isn't particularly ethically sound, but I believe that if a one-state solution was to occur that that it'd likely be a far more successful and pleasant place to be if it was under Israeli administration instead of being yet another semi-failed Islamic state without meaningful oil wealth.

And where would all the Christians in the holy land be?

Also that means millions of arab refugees a few hundred km from Europe.

Israeli Christians are a model minority to the extent of Israeli officials pretending Maronites aren’t Arab.

There are far more Israeli Arabs living in peace and harmony than Palestinian Jews.

Also why would the Israelis remove the Christians? For the most part so long as you're not fomenting direct revolt they're generally not arbitrarily targeting religious minorities that are productive and peaceful.

Which donors? AIJAC is the main pro-Israeli lobby group and I haven't been able to find any record of political donations from them.

I’ve never been given a free trip or even been to a Holocaust museum, but I still think Israel looks better. Perhaps the same is true for most English-speaking countries?

Yeah, like one seems like a functioning democratic affluent society and the other feels like... Lebanon/Syria'd be best case scenario for a free Palestine.

The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden

The president’s mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters.

By Olivia Nuzzi

Just read the whole article. If not, the best parts:

Obsessive efforts to control Biden were not a new phenomenon. But whereas in the last campaign, the incredible stagecraft surrounding even the smallest Biden event — speaking to a few people at a union hall in rural Iowa, say, or in a barn in New Hampshire — seemed to be about avoiding the so-called gaffes that had become for him inevitable, the stagecraft of the 2024 campaign seems now to be about something else. The worry is not that Biden will say something overly candid, or say something he didn’t mean to say, but that he will communicate through his appearance that he is not really there.

...

In January, I began hearing similar stories from Democratic officials, activists, and donors. All people who supported the president and were working to help reelect him to a second term in office. Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?

When they discussed what they knew, what they had seen, what they had heard, they literally whispered. They were scared and horrified. But they were also burdened. They needed to talk about it (though not on the record). They needed to know that they were not alone and not crazy. Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. They would be fine. To admit otherwise would mean jeopardizing the future of the country and, well, nobody wanted to be responsible personally or socially for that. Their disclosures often followed innocent questions: Have you seen the president lately? How does he seem? Often, they would answer with only silence, their eyes widening cartoonishly, their heads shaking back and forth. Or with disapproving sounds. “Phhhhwwwaahhh.” “Uggghhhhhhhhh.” “Bbbwwhhheeuuw.” Or with a simple, “Not good! Not good!” Or with an accusatory question of their own: “Have you seen him?!”

Who was actually in charge? Nobody knew. But surely someone was in charge? And surely there must be a plan, since surely this situation could not endure? I heard these questions posed at cocktail parties on the coasts but also at MAGA rallies in Middle America. There emerged a comical overlap between the beliefs of the nation’s most elite liberal Biden supporters and the beliefs of the most rabid and conspiratorial supporters of former President Trump. Resistance or QAnon, they shared a grand theory of America in 2024: There has to be a secret group of high-level government leaders who control Biden and who will soon set into motion their plan to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. Nothing else made sense. They were in full agreement.

...

[April 2024] The first person I saw upon entering the subterranean space was the First Lady...

In the basement, I smiled and said hello. She looked back at me with a confused, panicked expression. It was as if she had just received horrible news and was about to run out of the room and into some kind of a family emergency. “Uh, hi,” she said. Then she glanced over to her right. Oh …

I had not seen the president up close in some time. I had skipped this season’s holiday parties, and, preoccupied with covering Trump’s legal and political dramas, I hadn’t been showing up at his White House. Unlike Trump, he wasn’t very accessible to the press, anyway. Why bother? Biden had done few interviews. He wasn’t prone to interrupting his schedule with a surprise media circus in the Oval Office. He kept a tight circle of the same close advisers who had been advising him for more than 30 years, so unlike with his predecessor, you didn’t need to hang around in West Wing hallways to figure out who was speaking to him. It was all pretty locked down and predictable in terms of the reality you could access as a member of the press with a White House hard pass.

I followed the First Lady’s gaze and found the president. Now I understood her panicked expression.

Up close, the president does not look quite plausible. It’s not that he’s old. We all know what old looks like. Bernie Sanders is old. Mitch McConnell is old. Most of the ruling class is old. The president was something stranger, something not of this earth. This was true even in 2020. His face had then an uncanny valley quality that injectable aficionados call “low trust” — if only by millimeters, his cosmetically altered proportions knocked his overall facial harmony into the realm of the improbable. His thin skin, long a figurative problem and now a literal one, was pulled tightly over cheeks that seemed to vary month to month in volume. Under artificial light and in the sunshine, he took on an unnatural gleam. He looked, well, inflated. His eyes were half-shut or open very wide. They appeared darker than they once had, his pupils dilated. He did not blink at regular intervals. The White House often did not engage when questioned about the president’s stare, which sometimes raised alarm on social media when documented in official videos produced by the White House. The administration was above conspiratorial chitchat that entertained seriously scenarios in which the president was suffering from a shocking decline most Americans were not seeing. If the president was being portrayed that way, it was by his political enemies on the right, who promoted through what the press office termed “cheap fakes” a caricature of an addled creature unfit to serve. They would not dignify those people, or people doing the bidding of those people, with a response.

My heart stopped as I extended my hand to greet the president. I tried to make eye contact, but it was like his eyes, though open, were not on. His face had a waxy quality. He smiled. It was a sweet smile. It made me sad in a way I can’t fully convey. I always thought — and I wrote — that he was a decent man. If ambition was his only sin, and it seemed to be, he had committed no sin at all by the standards of most politicians I had covered. He took my hand in his, and I was startled by how it felt. Not cold but cool. The basement was so warm that people were sweating and complaining that they were sweating. This was a silly black-tie affair. I said “hello.” His sweet smile stayed frozen. He spoke very slowly and in a very soft voice. “And what’s your name?” he asked.

Exiting the room after the photo, the group of reporters — not instigated by me, I should note — made guesses about how dead he appeared to be, percentage wise. “Forty percent?” one of them asked.

“It was a bad night.” That’s the spin from the White House and its allies about Thursday’s debate. But when I watched the president amble stiffly across the stage, my first thought was: He doesn’t look so bad. For months, everything I had heard, plus some of what I had seen, led me to brace for something much more dire.

As context, Nuzzi's writing was critical of Biden's age in 2020, and Biden people have had a grudge against her ever since.

And from a tweet, when asked why she's reporting this now and not earlier:

I work on most of my stories for months. This piece is about a conspiracy of silence that made people reluctant to talk. I’ve been chasing down what I heard since January. That’s how long reporting takes. Debate changed people’s calculations about how candid they would be, and even then not on the record.

Not a great look, and especially bad to only publish it now. All that work covering it up, and it accomplished nothing for the Democratic Party, just significantly increased the chance of Trump winning. Few could put together the bravery to speak out about the age issues of the eighty year old, despite this being The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime v3. Sadly, no competent elites in smoke-filled rooms pulling the strings. At best Ezra Klein with a column and podcast or two saying maybe we should replace him.

I think my earlier comment that this was a surprisingly bad Biden debate performance was true, and that this wasn't a problem for him in 2020 (and Nuzzi agrees), but I was definitely underestimating his decline.

I love the Lovecraftian descriptions. "40% dead." "Not of this earth." "Unnatural gleam." "He did not blink at regular intervals."

It reminds me of the (sadly unfinished) ZHP novel Barron where Bai Den is this font of limitless evil power:

Mueller had warned of this possibility days ago, explaining that the Satanic rituals of the DNC and the international pedophile cabal would send psychic ripples across the entire world, blanketing the country in madness and shadow. The reality of that turned out to be far worse than Barron had imagined, a sensation of something gnawing at him, trying to eat him alive.

The not blinking is weird. During the debate, I noticed that he hardly blinked when Trump was speaking. Is it drugs? I asked perplexity.ai and it says this is not an age-related condition.

Also, prop bet, will the 2nd debate have a split screen? Biden's expressionless, slack-jawed face and vacant eyes were worse than what he said. Will ABC "fix the glitch" and cut away from Biden when he's not actively speaking?

Zhp has an unfinished novel? I thought he only did short stories!

It's a short story which parodies the Xianxia genre. It was purposefully left unfinished.

I thought he gave up because people didn't like it, he said he had great fun writing it.

Gee, how could anybody dislike that particular short story? People are so sensitive these days!

I've gobbled up everything ZHPL has written except that one; I didn't finish it. I guess it was supposed to be funny in an over the top kind of way? Idk it just didn't grab me at all.

Excellent article, thanks for flagging it.

-- It's obvious at this point that Biden does not have control over his administration. Which brings the relative normalcy of the past four years into stark relief. The Biden years, especially coming after the Trump years, have updated my priors significantly and combined with other readings I think we need to come to terms with the idea that the President personally exercising effective control over the administrative state is actually a pretty rare occurrence. Biden is clearly too out of it, at best he might make it to a few meetings between 10 and 4 with a nap in the middle. Trump was consistently thwarted and lied to by bureaucrats throughout his tenure, from the lowest levels up to Cabinet posts, and was never able to achieve any kind of effective administration between people being forced out and people openly defying him; notably top Generals lied directly to him about the US presence in Syria to prevent him from pulling troops out. Obama was effective at times, but notably clashed with "The Generals" early in his tenure before settling into a more blob-approved foreign policy. Dubya early in his admin was running on autopilot with guys from his dad's admin who had cut their teeth under Reagan or even Nixon, Cheney was widely seen as the real power. Clinton and Pappy, I'm actually not aware of any allegations that they weren't running things. Reagan was notably fading by the end of his second term. And before Reagan, after Watergate the entire federal governing apparatus was in a bit of chaos from the time the scandal broke (Nixon did almost no presidential work, often as little as half an hour a day, after the story broke in the press) through two weak presidents until Reagan reasserted control. Nixon's early years, in turn, were marked by a permissiveness that lead to Watergate, though overall he was an effective president. LBJ was probably a pretty strong president, but let's not ask too many questions about JFK ranting about getting railroaded by the CIA into launching the Bay of Pigs invasion. Scoring it on the back of a napkin, it seems like we've had a really effective executive only maybe half the time since 1960? The administrative state is truly out of control when we don't even notice having a president who can't remember what day it is.

-- Related: good leaders are actually rare. Biblical Israel had, what, two great kings and two mid ones? Rome has a steep dropoff in the rankings after the top 15 emperors, far more bad than good, and far more mediocre as well.

-- My dark joke at barbecues the past few weeks: it's deeply unfair to an aging president to have the same issues that he's seen over and over for decades. This is, what, the tenth time the Israelis and Arabs have gone to war since Biden was in some federal office? And we're still chewing over the same two or three unsatisfactory and impossible solutions: two-states but Israel will never allow a real Palestine to exist, one-state but neither side really wants to live together, some kind of UN-Lead recolonization of important parts of the holy land. We've been mooting those same ideas since the 80s! When I saw The Capitol Steps when I was 12, they did parody duets between Yassir Arafat and the Israeli PM where the punchline was something like "well your great great grandfather once planned an attack, it's been hundreds of years who could ever keep track, no one can remember anymore!" How's anyone supposed to keep all this straight, let alone a fading old man?

-- In an update to my prior post: I've continued to schadenfreude-listen to several political podcasts. The Pod Save America guys are delusional, in complete denial at this point. What Nate Silver and the other FiveThirtyEight guys brought to politics was a little bit of the rigor and logic that had colonized sports analytics years ago. Listening to PSA is pure, pre-analytics, talk-radio call in level analysis of the race as a contest. They kept asking why Biden hasn't been doing tons of events and press conferences and rallies in the past week, clearly that would benefit him to appear on top of things, why isn't his campaign making that choice? They don't even ask whether he is capable of doing those things. This is what sports analysis looked like before the modern obsession with roster construction. FiveThirtyEight meanwhile has more intelligently asked, Does Biden Have the Juice to make a comeback, or is he too old to make that kind of push? Both are starting to acknowledge that the main question isn't who wins the POTUS race, but how it impacts down-ballot races. The problem is that Dems have backed themselves into a corner: how do you acknowledge that Trump is going to win if you've said that would be a world-ending event?

-- The dam is breaking. I expect Biden to step down by the end of the month. Kamala seems most likely, for legal-fundraising reasons. That is the primary obstacle at this point: the campaign has raised ridiculous sums of money, which must be spent on a Biden-Harris campaign. It is unclear by what mechanism they could be redirected anywhere else. Unless such a method is found, Newson or Big Gretch remain pipe dreams.

Scoring it on the back of a napkin, it seems like we've had a really effective executive only maybe half the time since 1960? The administrative state is truly out of control when we don't even notice having a president who can't remember what day it is.

Adding to this with one of my favorite subjects (early US Presidents), the record was no better in the 18th and 19th centuries. Washington was a good president given that he was setting all precedents. John Adams was a very good man but probably pretty mid as a president. Jefferson was not a very good man but a good president if you ignore that he basically ignored the Constitution and was a two-faced hypocrite. Madison, pretty good (except he got us into the War of 1812, not 100% his fault). Monroe, good, not great. John Quincy Adams, very mediocre as president. And so on all the way through the 19th century - for every lion like Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln, or effective bureaucrat like Polk, you had an apparatchnik like Van Buren or Fillmore or a failure with feet of clay like Tyler or Buchanan or Johnson, or just midwits whose greatest virtue was that they didn't do too much damage, like Pierce or Harrison.

History repeats itself and echoes frequently. People would be less stuck in presentism and "This is the greatest crisis in history!" if they read more history.

Adding to this with one of my favorite subjects

How can I nerd snipe you into sharing favorite anecdotes, intriguing obscure bits etc.?

I share the sentiment. I would especially like to hear about why Andrew Jackson was a “lion” of a president, somewhere in a neighborhood of Lincoln, which I interpret from the context to mean “highly impactful and in a net positive way.”

I don’t necessarily disagree — I don’t know much about the early American presidents — but this strikes me as a possibly heterodox assertion and the explanation might be juicy.

Andrew Jackson was a very strong president, who ignored the Supreme Court, muscled states around, and strong armed the federal government into paying off its debt for, quite literally, the only time in US history. You might not think he was a good president, but he was clearly lionlike in his forcefulness and strength.

History repeats itself and echoes frequently. People would be less stuck in presentism and "This is the greatest crisis in history!" if they read more history.

Yes! I want to scream literally every single time I see someone say “this is the most divided we have ever been” without a qualifier, as if the entire fucking civil war didn’t happen…

I'll still give Biden some personal credit for the Afghanistan withdrawal though.

Kamala seems most likely, for legal-fundraising reasons

I think this is wrong and misses why people support Harris, it's not exactly a tactical decision. Money isn't as important as people think for presidential elections - voters are voting for, above all, a party and a candidate, it's the face they'll see and the voice they'll hear. And Dem donors will still have piles of money available for any non-Harris candidate. Harris is, in my opinion, not a good candidate. She's not popular, with an approval rating virtually equivalent to biden's 37% (although biden's disapprove is 6 higher). She was received poorly in the 2020 primary. I don't feel the charisma whe nwatching her. The clips of her going viral on social media are of her making statements that are ironically endearing for their strangeness, greatest hits compiled here, and I'm not sure this'll translate to excitement among swing voters. In head to head polls she doesn't do much better than Biden, and though none of the governor alternatives do better either Harris has less of a name recognition gap to make up for. And she's burdened with the Biden brand - inflation, the age issues, and a cloud of malaise generally. I don't think money can make up for this! The recent Republican local races demonstrate the importance of candidate quality over anything else.

Even ignoring that, though, I think the campaign finance issues are overstated. The articles claiming this supports harris say things like:

The campaign could also give it all to the Democratic National Committee, but even with the DNC, there are rules governing coordinating with candidates that curb how freely the committee can spend. “That’s not necessarily as effective as a campaign spending money itself,” Noble said.

UPDATE: There is a possibility that the campaign committee funds could be transferred to the Democratic National Committee. But the DNC could then only give up to $5,000 directly to a candidate. It could use the funds on behalf of the candidate, but again the coordination and ad rate questions come up. And it is possible that Kamala Harris would have to comply with a transfer of those funds in that manner, in a scenario where she was just passed over for the top of the ticket.

Sure, "coordination costs" and "ad rate questions" mean it's "not necessarily as effective" as if Harris gets the money directly. It's not ideal. That language is a bit wishy-washy though. And using it to justify "practically speaking, Biden and Harris are really the only two choices available at this late stage of the campaign" seems to overstep.

And reviewing the language in those articles

That hasn’t stopped the endless fantasy league scenarios from those who see no avenue for Biden to defeat Donald Trump in November. ... This is a tremendous insult to Kamala Harris, who Biden himself handpicked as his second in command.

And it is possible that Kamala Harris would have to comply with a transfer of those funds in that manner, in a scenario where she was just passed over for the top of the ticket

One gets the sense that the desire for nominee Harris doesn't come entirely from pragmatism. She's the First Black Woman Vice President, and denying her the nomination SHE deserves is an insult. I get the same feeling from other pro-Harris arguments - "voters will be outraged that you passed over the Black Woman VP". Someone will be outraged, sure, but is it really voters, or is it the author? I taste notes of RBG's and Sotomayor's potential retirements here. It's not just that though, speculating, I think a novel and complicated plan like 'hold mini-primaries' is difficult to believe in, and feels dangerous in, in an environment with a weak 'party' where power is very decentralized and depends on networks of relationships. "The CEO will just declare it's time for primaries and pick someone good to run them" isn't the kind of thing that happens, but "she's my guy so I'll support her" and "looks like the consensus is moving towards her so i'm moving there too" is something that happens a lot. It's not an environment that cultivates the agency of individuals or the group.

A Matthew Yglesias post, "VP selections aren’t taken seriously enough" (of course with Matt, there's a framing making it look like he isn't picking on Harris), touches on all of these issues.

All the wrong reasons

The Herndon profile in particular is really clear on two things:

Biden was facing a lot of pressure from various inside party actors to select a Black woman, which in practice meant Harris.

Despite this, nobody was telling Biden that selecting Harris had significant electoral benefits. There was no polling or data or demographic analysis that suggested this “you should pick a Black woman” vibe was correct.

Here’s how Herndon describes the final showdown between Harris and Gretchen Whitmer:

After Whitmer impressed Biden during an in-person meeting in the veepstakes’ final stages, one question rose to the top: Could two white Democrats win?

Campaign research said yes — Biden could win with any of the four. Klain argued for Harris specifically. Obama played the role of sounding board, weighing the pros and cons of Biden’s options rather than backing anyone, including Harris, according to a person familiar with the conversation. But Harris was the only candidate who had the full complement of qualifications: She had won statewide, was a familiar name with voters because of her presidential run and enjoyed a personal connection with the Biden family, having been a close working partner of Biden’s son, Beau, when he served as attorney general of Delaware.

And she was Black, meaning the announcement would be met with enthusiasm rather than controversy. On Aug. 11, the day the campaign announced Harris as the running mate, it raised $26 million in 24 hours.

None of this is wrong, exactly. But note that in his telling, there is not a point in the process where Biden stops and thinks “who will be the best candidate in 2028?” or “if I die, who will be the best person to take over?” But note that even leaving Biden’s age out of it, the base rate for presidential death or resignation is nearly one in five!

Instead the decisive characteristic was that Harris would generate more enthusiasm.

And here I do think I should be clear about what I think this meant in practice: Picking Harris minimized short-term complaining. Plenty of people would have been thrilled with Whitmer and plenty of people were not thrilled with Harris. But as a rare person who criticized the Harris selection at the time, I know that given the atmosphere prevailing in the summer of 2020, that made me a kind of un-fun skunk at the party. By contrast, Harris proponents would have felt empowered to complain about a Whitmer selection. And to be clear, in Harris’ defense, she really is a properly qualified choice. The discourse around her has gotten so mean you’d think this was the greatest debacle in VP selection history when it’s not even close.

The problem is that this kind of fuzzy, short-term thinking is extremely common.

Again, the core absurdity of Democrats’ current Old President problem is that if you go back to the 2008 coverage of the Obama/Biden ticket, he was picked precisely because he was too old:

The choice by Mr. Obama in some ways mirrors the choice by Mr. Bush of Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000; at his age, it appears unlikely that Mr. Biden would be in a position to run for president should Mr. Obama win and serve two terms. Shorn of any remaining ambition to run for president on his own, he could find himself in a less complex political relationship with Mr. Obama than most vice presidents have with their presidents.

Oops!

Yes, indeed, Matthew. Oops. Oops all around.

But, of course, there are many worse screwups than this. If you go back to the fateful election of 1840, the Whigs put John Tyler on the ticket because he didn’t like Andrew Johnson without checking to see if Tyler was on board with Whig policies. William Henry Harrison died after 40 days in office, Tyler became president, and it turned out that — oops! — he did not agree with those policies

In the scheme of things, Harris is actually a totally fine choice. She is in line with the party mainstream on policy and ideology and is of appropriate age to take over, which sounds like a low bar to pass but is actually impressive in comparative terms.

Framing!

I believe that in part because I continue to think there is a pretty obvious way for her to get her mojo back. The basic reality is that Americans of all kinds put a good deal of stock into the personal identity of our political figures. And progressive Americans put even more stock into it than average Americans.

By the same token, there are certain things that Harris as a Black woman “can” say that Joe Biden as a white man “can’t” say — i.e., things that are moderate-coded about race and gender matters.

Sure. If she does this and wins the mini-primary with that, more power to her.

More Matt, "Kamala Harris should try to be really popular ... In spite of all!":

Perhaps the worst-kept secret in Washington is that tons of Democrats are terrified of the prospect of Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic Party presidential nominee at some point in the future.

Indeed, it’s such a poorly kept secret that it’s barely even a secret. For example, even though officially Biden has not announced a reelection bid — and given his age, this is formally an open question — absolutely everyone wants him to run again. But the terror is that he might not, or even if he does, he might not make it all the way through eight years. But beyond the possibility that Biden would die or step down, if he serves through 2028, it seems overwhelmingly likely that she’d win a primary.

Why are people scared? Well, mostly because her approval rating lags stubbornly behind Biden’s.

Personally, I am not that scared of her current approval numbers. What scares me instead is the reaction that you hear from the Harrisverse to these worries, which is mostly to accuse critics of sexism or to attribute her political problems to sexism. Indeed, just typing this paragraph I can feel the people getting ready to yell at me on Twitter. But my point isn’t to deny that sexism is real (it clearly is) or that it’s felt by women in politics (it clearly is) but that this kind of fatalism is paralyzing and politically deadly. There are women in politics who are popular and successful at winning tough races, and they didn’t do it by making sexism vanish from the planet earth any more than Barack Obama and Raphael Warnock ended racism.

Powerful framing. I do kinda enjoy reading matt's subtle contortions.

To give the dems some credit, there's been a lot of talk about nominating someone other than Harris and miniprimaries, it could even happen.

(matt's source for obama biden age isn't great, but other reporting linked from here confirms it)

A core part of the priors that lead me to settle on Harris as the pick: I am pessimistic about the Dems chances in this situation. Any hot swap other than an assassination of Joe Biden, which would clearly result in a Harris pick anyway, likely leads to a doomed Quixotic post-Biden campaign, designed more to put up a good show and avoid embarrassment than it is to win the electoral college. Given that, there is value for Dems in avoiding other issues.

Imagine a group of three coworkers, who travel together for work and take turns picking the place for lunch. One of them has horrendously bad taste, picking Subway or Checkers or Cracker Barrel some other bottom tier chain. It's his turn today, and everyone is dreading it, but they stopped for lunch at a turnpike rest stop anyway and he's picking among those options. It's not worth fighting him on his turn, even though his pick will suck, because lunch is going to be mediocre at best anyway.

Seems to me, none of the Democrats' options look great now.

  1. Stick with Biden-Harris, come what may. But can he handle a full campaign season? Will he have another Senior Moment? Will all the big donors believe he can do a full campaign without one? If his handlers keep him hidden away for the whole season, the voters will likely guess why and may react accordingly.

  2. Somehow dump Biden, full steam ahead with Harris-?. But is Harris much better of a candidate than Biden? What kind of influence will they need to convince Biden of this and how will it look if he doesn't go along so easily? But at least it isn't too bureaucratically weird.

  3. Somehow dump both Biden and Harris and run a campaign with some decent Governor or Senator. Might be a better candidate than either of the others, but how will the bureaucratic weirdness that would be necessary to do this affect the voters' confidence in the Democrat ticket? How much of a mess might Biden and/or Harris make on the way out? Not to mention the optics of kneecapping the female POC with the progressive wing.

Exactly. That's the point I've been trying to make here. Realistic assessment is that the Dems are deep underdogs for the presidency after that debate. Biden was already behind, which is bad, and he lost ground, which is worse, but worst of all by far he clearly lacks the juice to make up that kind of ground. Any chance the Dems have of winning is relying on Trump to self immolate. They're picking among bad options to cauterize the wound.

but how will the bureaucratic weirdness that would be necessary to do this affect the voters' confidence in the Democrat ticket

I don't really buy this. People are voting against Biden and Trump more than they're voting for them, and a young and confident voice saying all the right things will pick up a lot of votes, I think. "They're both too old" is an extremely common position, and I think that'll dominate any concerns about someone who wins a second "primary".

How much of a mess might Biden and/or Harris make on the way out

In terms of accusations / insults, past Dem nomination fights were bloody but that didn't really spill over into the general. And we're still months out, elections take around a month in some nations. In terms of throwing up procedural / legal issues, I doubt that's too big of an issue.

Not to mention the optics of kneecapping the female POC with the progressive wing.

I think it's a much bigger problem with the progressive wing of the elites than it is with the voters. Could just go Whitmer w/ black VP or something.

In terms of accusations / insults, past Dem nomination fights were bloody but that didn't really spill over into the general. And we're still months out, elections take around a month in some nations. In terms of throwing up procedural / legal issues, I doubt that's too big of an issue.

What I'm talking about is, most of the discussion has assumed that both Biden and Harris agree to step down voluntarily. What happens if one or both of them don't? Does the Democrat party actually have good options to replace them without their cooperation? How long would that process take, and how sketchy would it look?

If anything like that happens, I would presume the Dem party leadership expects it to all happen behind closed doors. If it ends up taking months and has at least bits of it leaking out into the public, well, it looks pretty banana-republic to me. Though maybe not necessarily more so than all the other stuff that's happened over the last 8 years? Maybe the voters won't care that much if they manage to get somebody young and confident in there somehow, or maybe not.

What happens if one or both of them don't

Yeah, most Biden-alternative discussion is premised on Biden choosing to back out, since he controls the delegates. There's a general sense there's a solid chance this happens.

Does the Democrat party actually have good options to replace them without their cooperation

Delegates could, in theory, reject Biden, the delegates are only obligated to "in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them". This seems difficult and unlikely though.

I strongly disagree, actually! I think a non-Biden/Harris/Newsom nominee is around 50% to win. Both Biden and Trump are historically unpopular presidential candidates, they poll terribly, both in approvals and in poll questions like 'are they fit to / too old to run'. I don't think the short period of time between now and the election is an issue, in part because American election seasons are just so much longer than other countries. There are a lot of options (Shapiro? Beshear? warnock?). Whitmer and co tie with biden in head-to-head polls, but I think that's mostly name recognition, once everyone's seen their face and the energy of a young candidate charismatic enough to be popular in their own state they should surge.

Name recognition is a double edged sword. Republicans don't realize they hate those names, because the right wing hate machine and oppo-research industrial complex hasn't been spun up against them yet. The most milquetoast middle of the road non-entities get turned into snarling monsters by the partisan media, from John Boehner and Paul Ryan to Joe Biden himself.

Though I would love to see Shapiro repeat his Gubernatorial campaign strategy of just repeatedly trying to bait his opponent into saying something about him being a Jew, and playing campaign attack ads that are just things his opponent said.

Some commentator said that the Biden/Harris campaign can donate money to a PAC that could then """independently""" decide to run ads for whomever happens to be the Democratic nominee.

Some commentator said that the Biden/Harris campaign can donate money to a PAC that could then """independently""" decide to run ads for whomever happens to be the Democratic nominee.

I would expect Dr. Jiil and Hunter to take an "over my dead body" approach to any attempt to divert that money out of their personal control. If they allow Biden to withdraw from the campaign, I would imagine that a good portion of his campaign funds will stick to him like glue.

I'm sure there are ways around it, but it seems like a potential minefield for future lawfare if Trump/Paxton can find one disgruntled donor.

Keep in mind this is probably a losing campaign regardless.

That commentator said doing this may start a legal battle. That isn't a fun or easy plan, but it may be possible.

I guess for me it's that Harris isn't a zero compared to Newsom or Whitmer. She's not, at this time, utterly unacceptable in the way Biden arguably is. So it's not, well we have to switch but there will be a legal battle but we have to. It's, well we can have Newsom who we rank a 54/100 or Harris who we rank a 48/100, but if we pick Newsom we might get shit about "passing over the woman/Negro/sitting veep" and we might get a bizarro lawsuit about the money and maybe we get an ugly/ier convention fight, so maybe we sand off those six points and stick with Harris. Especially given that they're probably going to lose, and probably going to face Ken Paxton in office with a mandate to settle scores.

Wouldn’t they need to find a plaintiff who donated to Biden but who was willing to sign on to a Paxton/Trump-favorable campaign? Seems unlikely.

Besides the straw donor possibility already raised by Mr. Nybs, and it wouldn't surprise me if both campaigns routinely arranged to have friends or relations donate to each other in order to scout info and engage in QC efforts.

Biden had well over one million donors back in March. Out of a group that big, one of them is gonna be weird. It's inevitable. People are weird. Somewhere in that million will be someone who loves Biden but hates Gretchen Whitmer for reasons so confusing as to be incomprehensible to rationality.

Wouldn’t they need to find a plaintiff who donated to Biden but who was willing to sign on to a Paxton/Trump-favorable campaign? Seems unlikely.

They could have a shill donate right now to preserve the case.

What’s the legal argument for why the Biden-Harris campaign can’t donate all its funds to the DNC, as somebody above suggested?

There is almost certainly an intern at the RNC/Trump campaign who donated $1 to the Biden campaign to get immediate access to emails sent to donors.

The other thing people aren’t aware of is large amounts of the money announced as raised isn’t going to the direct election fund. Even in the article that talks about 3.7 million raised between under 50 people. That doesn’t quite happen, it would be illegal. What happens is you cut a bundle check: you can give the individual max to the campaign, then again to the “primary” campaign, and then once again to each and every state DNC party. This means a single individual can give a total of a hundred thousand+ (forget the exact math), but crucially, only the ~5k or so is directly controlled by Biden-Harris.

Isn’t there a difference between a PAC and a super PAC? I thought the former had contribution limits but maybe I’m mistaken.

My uncle mentioned the fundraising issue yesterday, but upon further research it isn't as big of a sticking point as it may seem. Campaigns are allowed to make unlimited donations to the national committee, so the money won't be wasted. That and that I doubt lack of funds will be a deciding factor in this election.

We've been mooting those same ideas since the 80s! When I saw The Capitol Steps when I was 12, they did parody duets between Yassir Arafat and the Israeli PM where the punchline was something like "well your great great grandfather once planned an attack, it's been hundreds of years who could ever keep track, no one can remember anymore!" How's anyone supposed to keep all this straight, let alone a fading old man?

"All sides are equal" is unfair to the better side. And since we have white supremacists here, let me make clear that Israel is the better side. From the Israeli side, the punchline is "the Gazans made an attack yesterday".

"BIGOT!" he argued, logically.

You think white supremacists side with the Muslims?

Wouldn’t it be more of a ‘ they can settle it amongst each other ‘ kinda thing at best?

Most people on social media who are white supremecist coded / adjacent seem to be adopting “I just hope both sides have fun 🥰” as the default attitude.

Let's give the Christians a go at the Holy Land.

I think it's been tried before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Jerusalem .

Christians were technically in control 1918-1947 too.

I've seen it. May be because we're too quick to call people "white supremacists" when they never actually proclaimed themselves so. If you truly only care about skin being white, you'd support Israel, as the whiter country. At least some seem to be more about anti-semitism than skin color though, which means they don't mind seeing Israel lose, whatever that means exactly, as long as it doesn't directly threaten their preferred country.

Whilst this is equal parts sad, tragic and horrifying, the prevailing thought in my mind is that this is excellent material for a black comedy.

Something in the style of The Death of Stalin

The Hospice of Biden's Career?

Mister President, you can't sleep here. This is the rest room.

Unfortunately UK is totally incapable of producing gems like Yes minister or Blackadder anymore.

The UK is exporting people like Jesse Armstrong who worked on the last round of British political comedy like The Thick of It. And Ianucci did work with some Americans for Death of Stalin, which was pretty funny.

Can't write off getting a very dark comedy from them out of this.

I do like how you didn't challenge my assumption that it needs Brits for it to work.

Even if they wanted to do the same comedy Americans are probably too close to it.

It would end up like The Boys or Handmaid's Tale .

Yes, you need distance. It’s why GTA could never be written by Americans.

Weekend at Bernie Sanders's?

I wonder if Hunter remembers Wag the Dog.

It can’t be Albania this time, they’re NATO members.

injectable aficionados call “low trust”

My speculations about the meaning here are baseless. Can somebody clue me in? I cannot even tell whether "injectables" is botox or heroin.

Yep, injecting botox to round out your face: https://old.reddit.com/r/Splendida/comments/mzxqmf/low_vs_high_trust_faces_celeb_edition/

Botox, and also Fillers and probably other stuff that my wife could tell me all about but I'm not sure.

“Injectables” means botox and fillers.

A little goes a long way, but a little too much looks real bad.

This is good fucking writing. I like to think I’m (at my best) a very good writer. I think many, perhaps even most, regular contributors here are. I could have become a journalist; at an internship/shadowing thing I did at 17 at a PR firm, the ex-NYT reporter boss I had said I should aim for it, that I could do it. But this is much better than me, it’s nice to be reminded sometimes that there are journalists who are really good at their jobs.

I'm aware of Botox and collagen implants, but what on Earth is this stuff about?

His eyes were half-shut or open very wide. They appeared darker than they once had, his pupils dilated. He did not blink at regular intervals.

I think they're pointed out as physical symptoms of aging. You can see some of it by watching his TV appearances, he often seems to blink much less than he should and his eyes often seem a bit narrow and scrunched.


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