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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26301 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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Some updates from New Mexico since two weeks ago.

Firstly, the court ruled on requests for a temporary restraining order, most pertinently that:

... Defendants New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico Department Secretary Patrick M. Allen, New Mexico Department of Public Safety Jason R. Bowie, Chief of the New Mexico State Police and any other New Mexico officials (“Defendants”) are ENJOINED from applying, enforcing, or attempting to enforce, either criminally or civilly, Section (1) of the New Mexico Department of Health’s “Public Health Emergency Order Imposing Temporary Firearm Restrictions, Drug Monitoring and Other Public Safety Measures” (“PHO”) published on September 8, 2023, which reads:

(1) No person, other than a law enforcement officer or licensed security officer, shall possess a firearm, as defined in NMSA 1978, Section 30-7-4.1, either openly or concealed [within complex metric that means Bernallio County]...

In addition, Defendants are ENJOINED from applying, enforcing, or attempting to enforce, either criminally or civilly, Section (4) of the New Mexico Department of Health’s “Public Health Emergency Order Imposing Temporary Firearm Restrictions, Drug Monitoring and Other Public Safety Measures” to the extent it imposes additional restrictions on the carrying or possession of firearms that were not already in place prior to its issuance.

The next hearing, for a preliminary injunction, was originally scheduled for October 3rd, three days before the initial state of emergency was scheduled to end, though I'd expect that gets delayed. How did the governor respond?

No person, other than a law enforcement officer or licensed security officer, shall possess a firearm, as defined in NMSA 1978, Section 30-7-4.1, either openly or concealed in public parks or playgrounds, or other public areas provided for children to play [within complex metric that means Bernallio County]...

It's not terribly clear how this will work, either as matter of enforcement or of law. I'd say that she's trying to maneuver for mootness and standing challenges to the lawsuit, but this is still unconstitutional under Bruen and the state constitution, the loose definition raises serious due process concerns, and it's not even very likely that the state's public emergency law permits it even outside of the right to bear arms problems. This revision to the emergency order can't or at least shouldn't avoid the TRO, and were it a right-wing effort it'd likely just get the judge mad; as it is, the Biden appointee sounded just disappointed during the initial hearing.

Nor, on the other side, have I seen any reports of the video-driven Grisham enforcement had claimed to be bringing during initial protests. On the other hand, even while enjoined anyone who wants to carry needs to evaluate whether they're willing to become a poster child for today's constitutional challenge.

What sort of fallout is Governor Grisham looking at? KOAT7 has a wonderful quote from one of the state politicians:

"People need to realize this is the first time in New Mexico history that a governor could be impeached," State Rep. John Block said.

That is somewhat undermined by reality: No, they don't, because no, she can't.

There's only been one successful legislature-initiated special session in New Mexico history, and its context (responding to a budget's veto) made it far easier to coordinate on top of the far simpler political calculus (the final budget vote passed 90%+ in both houses). The paper gives a single federal Democrat saying he'd be willing to vote yes to condemn Grisham, should it reach the floor of Congress, but the same man voted against considering the resolution, which failed without a single Dem yes, which isn't quite the same as a vote against the resolution (because it was mixed with two other process matters) but makes for awkward bedmates. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the state's congressional Democratic party's official position is against a special session or impeachment.

It ain't happening, bruh.

There's been a bit of embarrassment from state politicians and police pushing back -- the state AG, another Dem, did not defend the executive order -- which, fair, kudos. Not the most significant kudos, but worth mentioning.

What about that shooting that motivated this whole thing? NBC reports:

A third arrest was made Friday in connection with a shooting outside an Albuquerque baseball stadium that killed an 11-year-old boy and prompted the New Mexico governor to issue a controversial gun ban. Albuquerque police took Daniel Gomez, 26, into custody a day after two other men were identified as suspects. Police didn’t immediately release further details about Gomez’s arrest.

Romero was already wanted for failing to appear in court in connection with alleged drug dealing, Medina said. Garley happened to be in custody when he was arrested in connection with the killing. He had been stopped by state police on Sept. 13 while returning from Arizona and authorities found a gun and about 100,000 fentanyl tablets in the car, state Police Chief W. Troy Weisler said at the news conference.

Police alleged that the men, both reputed gang members, pulled up in a car and attacked the pickup truck that was leaving the minor league game at Isotopes Stadium.

I haven't been able to find any records showing their CCW permits being pulled. Or that they had CCW permits. For some reason.

Apropos of nothing, a couple other interesting notes in firearms law :

The New York State Police will pay $447,700 to the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association in attorneys’ fees and costs after the US Supreme Court ruled that refusing to grant citizens the right to carry a concealed handgun for self defense violates the Second Amendment. The state National Rifle Assocation chapter had asked for $1,235,567 in fees and costs after arguing that the complexity of Kirkland & Ellis LLP’s work in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen warranted compensation commensurate with the quality and effort of counsel.

On one hand, great work if you can get it. On the other hand, Paul Clement and Erin Murphy, the men who lead Bruen, no longer can, and it's just over half of their old law firm's typical billing rate. The reasoning, such as it is:

Plaintiffs failed to show that this was “a case requiring special expertise [and] that no in-district counsel possessed such expertise,” or that local counsel “were unwilling or unable to take the case,”.. .Plaintiffs’ arguments in support of out-of-district rates are limited to pointing to Plaintiffs’ success at the Supreme Court and the conclusory statements that “few in-district attorneys regularly practice Second Amendment litigation and even fewer practice this constitutional litigation on behalf of plaintiffs against government entities; . . . even fewer in-district attorneys have briefed or argued Second Amendment cases before the Second Circuit and the Supreme Court, like the attorneys Plaintiff selected; and . . . no in-district attorneys have the experience necessary for Plaintiffs’ challenge.”

I expect Clement and Murphy won't exactly cry all the way to the bank, to whatever extent their biglaw contracts covered this sort of case, but neither will it be a big war chest for their Second-Amendment-focused law firm, to whatever extent NYSPRA wasn't forking over those fees well before this point and is down some pretty pennies. Which matters quite a bit given NYSRPA was better titled NYSRPA II, and NYSRPA I was filed in 20_13_. Nor will it serve a particularly strong disincentive to avoid losing future court cases, or, for a matter where New York state might actually be persuadable, pad future court battles with beggaring levels of necessary paperwork to beggar their challengers.

At least they won, right? Well... Back in response to the NYSPRA II decision at the old place, a couple posters had different perspectives (with some format edits for brevity) :

@The_Nybbler:

Yes, the jursdictions which want to ban guns will simply claim historical justification, and the lower courts all the way up to the courts of appeals will pretend to believe them ("a bee is a fish"), and nothing will change. I expect New York's list of "sensitive locations" to include : Banks including ATM lobbies, Subways and other public transportation, taxis and other licensed transportation, All public buildings, All premises licensed to serve alcohol, Maybe all public parks.

You won't be able to practically carry legally in NYC.

@huadpe:

Many, and it would require a whole-of-government sort of rebellion to engage in that level of open defiance. Even if Governor Hochul attempted to enforce the law, state judges would not follow such an instruction, especially as against an explicit binding precedent. I can go through the mechanisms if you like, but the idea that NY would openly defy this ruling is an absolute pipe dream for a few radical accelerationists on either side, and will not happen.

And neither is wrong, and indeed excepting a few quibbles Huadpe's later post is a good overview of procedural protections. No one planted their feet at the door of a school house, so it's not true Massive Resistance, it's just sparking legal warfare. On the other hand, if Nybbler had a time machine or a crystal ball, his description of the Bruen response bill and its reception in the judiciary would have been broader, not more narrow. And on those broader points, the state has been playing with mootness and standing to avoid the obvious revelation that it still does exactly what Bruen says the state may not.

And that's just the explicit stuff. One thing neither Nybbler's list nor I expected:

The NYPD approved fewer new licenses to people requesting permits to carry or keep firearms in their homes or businesses in 2022 than the year prior, data obtained by THE CITY shows — despite the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found a key provision of the state’s long-standing gun control law violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

In 2021, the NYPD — which vets firearm permits — received 4,663 applications and approved 2,591 of them, about 56%, all under the stricter “proper cause” standard the Supreme Court struck down last year. That standard required gun owners in New York to show “proper cause” in order to receive a permit to carry a weapon, but the court said licenses should be granted by default unless there was a specific reason to deny an applicant.

In 2022, the NYPD saw an increased number of new applications — 7,260 — but approved just 1,550, or 21%, even though applications filed in the second half of that year no longer had to meet the “proper cause” standard where applicants had to make an affirmative case for why they needed a license.

It's far from alone, here. Hawaii's response bill has repeated many of the same steps and components, California was just weird for waiting til this year before informing people that their right to carry a firearm is limited to sidewalks. Dick Heller from the 2008 Heller v. DC case is still working on being allowed to own the semiautomatic pistol and magazine he started that whole matter on. Defense Distributed is still fighting its mess of a case.

When I've made motions around this before, people have rejoined that lawsuits are a process: winning a case, no matter how big, does not mean winning everything forever and hearing the lamentations of your opponent's women. There have indeed been where state defiance has lead to significant costs. I don't mean to suggest that the court's never work.

But at the same time, it's hard to even find a pretense that this faces the same level of legal opprobrium or cynicism that favored rights get. Nor is it limited to guns. There's been a lot of Recognition that the aftermath of SFFA v. Harvard would result in a tremendous change in legal discrimination as teams of lawyers would be going through every admissions process in the country, and that's not wrong! But they've done so to hilariously transparent efforts. And there are lesser and lesser-known variants on a pretty wide variety of topics. There's no conservative equivalent that leads a country-wide and overnight shakeup, or even a state-level one, even in fairly egregious matters.

There's an argument that this shows what Really Matters is The Institutions, and while that might feel a little be retroactively defined by whatever conservatives aren't doing or by what they'd face massive discrimination should they wear their hearts on their sleeves -- can I point to Clement and Murphy again, and that even if you had their skills you'd be a fool to think you could follow in their paths -- it's not exactly wrong.

But then we're back to denouement of the post two weeks ago, but more so, and much broader.

I have it on good authority from a friend in New Mexico state politics: Governor Grisham is always proposing crazy schemes, but is reined in by her chief of staff. Said chief of staff was on vacation when Grisham issued this executive order.

That's funny if true (though I'm not finding any obvious evidence supporting it, and it'd be kinda disappointing for a chief of staff who can't delegate for a vacation), but...

Do you know who else was a chief executive always proposing crazy schemes, who had to be constantly managed by his staff, and who had awful hair and little respect for individual rights?

Sorry for the snark, but that, more than the policy being bad, or some in vino moron veritas, or even unconstitutional, is a good bit of what I'm getting riled up about, and have been for a while. There could perhaps be reasons to set certain political actions away from personal liability, or to make them consistently available, but instead we're finding increasing amounts of society insistent on 'for my enemies, the law' as a bedrock principle. Worse than even that, we're simultaneously telling people that their 'betters' can play stupid games with human rights with no personal risk, and they must violate the law at significant risk to challenge it.

Well sure, blue states are trying their damnedest to ignore federal gun rights. I won’t dispute that because it isn’t wrong.

I do want to point out that, in practice, the usual anarchy-tyranny thesis will not apply. The cops are by and large able to tell who’s law abiding other than guns, and have to wish to get into a confrontation over laws they privately think are silly. Yes, some people will get unlucky- but a lot of them will get their cases overturned, either by federal court or by state level authorities trying to give federal courts an excuse for the ‘no standing’ game. If anything, it’ll be the opposite- the cops will mostly arrest for gun violations where they expect to find weed or something else that lets them keep the feds away, and red tribers who don’t otherwise break the law will increasingly ignore gun laws.

I do want to point out that, in practice, the usual anarchy-tyranny thesis will not apply.

It absolutely applied in the recent spate of rioting, where legal outcomes were markedly better for rioters than for the law-abiding attempting to defend themselves.

It absolutely is applying in administrative actions, like the longstanding de-facto policy to ignore straw purchases by associates of gang members and violent criminals, compared to the aggressive pursuit of law-abiding Federal Firearms License holders over minor clerical errors or even no error at all, provided the statutes can be subjected to sufficient creative interpretation.

...Your basic argument is that pro-gun-control politicians are not actually aiming their coordinated meanness at the law-abiding gun culture. That assertion is patently absurd.

...Your basic argument is that pro-gun-control politicians are not actually aiming their coordinated meanness at the law-abiding gun culture.

No, my basic argument is that pro-gun-control politicians are not capable of coordinating meanness, and don't fundamentally care enough to become capable.

...okay, what's your standard for coordinated meanness? What set of facts would convince you of the contrary?

Yes, some people will get unlucky- but a lot of them will get their cases overturned, either by federal court or by state level authorities trying to give federal courts an excuse for the ‘no standing’ game.

it's the opposite, most people who get involved will have their lives permanently damaged and a small few lucky ones will have the money or principle to go to trial, get convicted, perhaps spend time in prison, and maybe get their case overturned

people uninvolved in the system vastly overestimate the amount of justice which is dolled out by it; the truth is the vast majority of people will simply be ground into dust, plead out, pay their legal bills, and attempt to move on damaged whether the specific case against them is constitutional or legal

you see a case in the news about a court overturning a case and it gives you the perception of this being common in many of these scenarios when the reality is it's not common, it's extremely expensive, and the entire time the outcome is in doubt and many who go this route do not make it to the just outcome you think is a regular remedy and even when they succeed, they've had this affect years of their lives and likely lost a fortune in cash to pay legal bills and opportunity cost

Unfortunately, the opposite effect exists as well. Normal high-functioning law-abiding citizens who technically break a law will often get it enforced on them over low-functioning criminals because it's less risky and/or an easy way to make numbers look good. And this especially happens on people whom the police is biased again in the first place, which is the entire point of anarcho-tyranny. A typical example is that honest & otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants will often get into more trouble with the state than criminal immigrants, because the former will naively seek out directions from the state, while the latter will just actively avoid the state entirely. Independent on whether you think the former should be here, this is often a misallocation of resources & attention away from the difficult but truly important towards the easy but overall meaningless (aside from also setting up terrible incentives).

Existing examples of gun laws in blue states don’t work that way, though. The cops ignore rednecks with their guns and affirmative defense to obviously illegal gun restrictions are common.

That's a little complicated. The cops up western Massachusetts or upstate New York don't religiously enforce the laws. If you stop to piss in Albany or live in New Jersey, they will absolutely love to come down on a rando like a stack of bricks. Gets their numbers up, no one that matters is gonna complain, and it's not like a law-abiding gun owner is going to resist arrest or shoot back, right?

Anarcho tyranny is in full effect. Use a gun for a proper purpose, like defending yourself from a rioter, and you will end up in the clink. The rioter, not so much.

Yes, some people will get unlucky- but a lot of them will get their cases overturned, either by federal court or by state level authorities trying to give federal courts an excuse for the ‘no standing’ game.

They'll plead out to whatever's offered just to avoid being killed on Rikers Island. Because you know the soft-on-crime prosecutor won't be offering bail to white collar gun criminals.

What chance does the average white collar criminal have of getting murdered on Rikers lol

As our local black pill Nybbler points about below, Rikers is a jail, not a prison, and as such hasn't segregated the population into violent pyschopaths and others.

There are thousands of assaults at Riker's each year, and in 2021, 15 inmates died.

If an otherwise upstanding citizen were to defend himself from rioters using a gun in NYC, he could absolutely end up at Riker's where there is a high chance of being assaulted and a non-trivial chance of death.

From searching, it seems almost all deaths at Rikers are suicide or drug related, not homicide.

We separate prison pop by gender and bad-dude-ness, why exactly aren't we separating by ethnicity too?

Prison is effectively segregated by race in several states, most notably California.

Rikers is technically a jail, not a prison. And its reputation is very useful for exactly the reason stated -- it can be used to force people who aren't hardened criminals to accept a deal. Why would the city want it to be any better?

We do, just not until you get in.

If Democrats are so strong then why do they have some a lack of POTUS level candidates? I agree they control institutions but that always felt like the not elite people and the midtwits.

The GOP has a much deeper bench of Presidential people while I see nothing on the Dem side. How can the 10 people in the federalist society at Harvard out produce top tier talent than the other 99% of Harvard? Ted Cruz I think is cringe in his public persona and he’s quite far down the GOP bench but my guess is he’s more intelligent than anyone for the left. Same with Romney.

Only thing that I can come up with is leftist elites personal ethics turn off too many people in their own base to rise. AOC is the only one on the left besides Biden who seems to come off likeable though her weakness is she’s probably a bit mid intellectually.

I’m concerned I’m grading on a curve of my own biases but

they nominate someone with serious Alzheimer questions without serious challenges makes me think I’m not making it up.

Or is their coalition too difficult to manage so their is a lack of potential national candidates.

OK, guess I have to speak up as probably the only actual social democratic partisan Democrat here -

The reason Joe Biden is running for reelection is because he's the incumbent President and wants to run for reelection, and primary challenges agains incumbent President's go badly, and most importantly, nobody would beat him. Like, contrary to popular opinion, there is no secret Deep State Cabal of Obama, Hillary, and whomever running the country. No, it's the codgy old guy, the people who have been around him for years, and a bunch of former Warrne staffers. Secondly, even if he did step down, Kamala's the nominee because she's the VP, still has good approvals among Democrat's, and so on.

Now, we're probably going to disagree on the fundamentals on who's smart or not, but going to the bench - the thing people miss is much of the current Democratic bench is in the states - Whitmer in Michigan in the same state Biden barely won, wins by ten, and also turns the Michigan legislature entirely blue for the first time in decades, Shapiro in PA wins by a landslide, Pritzer in Illinois's a little more controversial but you beat a bad billionaire with a good class traitorous billionaire, there's Governor Roy Cooper in North Carolina who has won two terms in a light-red state, while running as a standard issue liberal, Andy Beshear in Kentucky is a pro-choice and pro-LGBT Governor of that state about to win reelection, Tim Walz has been a solid governor of Minnesota, and for more well-known folks, there's Newsom in Cali, and for the more moderates/neoliberals, Polis in CO. In the Senate, even then, there's Raphael Warnock, a pretty down-the-line liberal Senator who won in Georgia.

Like, on pure electoral talent, 2022 shows the Democrat's have plenty of it, simply looking back at the historical record of midterms.

I also, frankly, think people have gone so over the board underestimating Kamala, that they'd assume she'd lose in some 40-state landslide. As a social democrat, she wouldn't be my preferred candidate in 2028 (Whitmer or Warnock for me), but at worst, Kamala loses the EC 312-226, and even then, still only narrowly loses the popular vote, and that's if the GOP doesn't nominate somebody Trump-adjacent or somebody with no charisma like DeSantis. So yeah, a boring ticket like I don't know Brian Kemp/Kim Reynolds probably wins that election that way, but Tucker/Vivek, or something like that - Kamala can totally win because people will choose cringe they're embarrassed guy by the weirdos, and as seen by some of the right's reaction to the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce thing, they're entirely too much the weirdos.

Finally, probably most controversially, Fetterman. He outran Biden in Pennsylvania and has the look much closer to the median American than anybody else. Hell, polling showed the stroke made voters more sympathetic to him, as the elite media was telling him to withdraw, savaging his debate performance, and so on.

I'm not somebody who says the GOP can't win in 2024 or 2028, but this weird idea, because Biden's the nominee there is no bench is simply false, and I'd make the opposite argument for the GOP. Whose somebody that can win a primary with a Trumpian base, that can actually win a national election?

Now, we're probably going to disagree on the fundamentals on who's smart or not, but going to the bench - the thing people miss is much of the current Democratic bench is in the states - Whitmer in Michigan in the same state Biden barely won, wins by ten, and also turns the Michigan legislature entirely blue for the first time in decades, Shapiro in PA wins by a landslide, Pritzer in Illinois's a little more controversial but you beat a bad billionaire with a good class traitorous billionaire, there's Governor Roy Cooper in North Carolina who has won two terms in a light-red state, while running as a standard issue liberal, Andy Beshear in Kentucky is a pro-choice and pro-LGBT Governor of that state about to win reelection, Tim Walz has been a solid governor of Minnesota, and for more well-known folks, there's Newsom in Cali, and for the more moderates/neoliberals, Polis in CO. In the Senate, even then, there's Raphael Warnock, a pretty down-the-line liberal Senator who won in Georgia.

Most of those people won because their opponent sucked. Some of them even got to choose their opponent, like Pritzker.

I don't think any of these people could get serious traction nationally, except maybe Shapiro or Newsom (and Newsom has some hard caps nationally). The rest would be running, at best, as 'Generic Democrat'.

Whose somebody that can win a primary with a Trumpian base, that can actually win a national election?

Assuming trump’s not running, Hawley, Youngkin, Cruz, Abbott, all come to mind as normal candidates who can win the trump base.

To say nothing of the fact that based on current polling, the winner of both the trump base and the general is… trump.

Gop does have a bit of personality cult now which helps trump.

Perhaps no one has emerged since there is an incumbent but it still feels weak to me and Joe wasn’t all there in 2020. A lot of the GOP generally does like Trump while Joe always felt like a figurehead and why there couldn’t be some Harvard trained PMC to take the job from him in 2020.

Especially at the top the Dems field looks low IQ to me. None of the top 3 went to an elite school. While all the GOP top 3 went to the schools you would expect them to for a highly motivated high IQ person. Yet people are telling me the left owns the institutions.

there is no secret Deep State Cabal

Aren't the super-delegates effectively a cabal of elite officials that have significant influence on picking at least one major party's presidential candidates?

Super-delegates are now prevented from voting on the first ballot. They only come into play if the primary voters don't give any candidate a majority of pledged delegates.

Aha, well that's a good change.

Only thing that I can come up with is leftist elites personal ethics turn off too many people in their own base to rise. AOC is the only one on the left besides Biden who seems to come off likeable though her weakness is she’s probably a bit mid intellectually.

They literally had to go out casting for AOC. If anything she's a perfect example of their lack of talent.

There are a few reasons for the lack of candidates...

First the racial organizing that the Dems do. It's worked out well for them for the past 40 years, but there is a problem. It's hard to make a jump from being the top black organizer or the top hispanic organizer to being a leader of the entire state. So the ethnic organizers can't jump into leadership, but they are also too powerful and experienced to be thrilled about falling in line behind some white guy in his 40s. So boomer politicians (and earlier) tend to dominate because they have influence going back to before ethnic organizing was dominant.

So big rich blue states that should have deep talent pools have past their prime senators occupying space who can never launch a presidential run. To name some names, Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray. Old Republicans like Mitch McConnell tend to represent lower gdp states where a replacement won't have the resume to launch a presidential run.

Next the Obama effect. Obama was more popular than his policies, he was dragging them into power with his charisma. However at the state governor level he was toxic. Dem politicians without his charisma or ability to excite black voters had to run defending his policies. So purple states were not generating politicians that could make presidential runs.

There are other factors. The two Obama terms were expected to be followed by two Hilary terms, so anyone planning to run for president before 2024 just didn't get involved.

There's also a split between how left wing the press expects a D nominee to be and where the country is. Keep in mind that Obama campaigned in 2008 as a prays every day Christian who believed marriage was a union of one man and one woman.

If Democrats are so strong then why do they have some a lack of POTUS level candidates? I agree they control institutions but that always felt like the not elite people and the midtwits.

Who is in the White House now? Does it matter if they can produce the votes?

they nominate someone with serious Alzheimer questions without serious challenges makes me think I’m not making it up.

ppl used this argument in 2020 and it failed. The vast majority of voters don't care if the president is not mentally at 100%. For either Biden or Trump. Outside of a small subset of people on Twitter, average people do not care about the gerontocracy, or even welcome it. Rather than old people being seen as competition or incompetent, old people being in power gives hope to others that age is not a limiting factor to success, and that it's not too late.

Ted Cruz I think is cringe in his public persona and he’s quite far down the GOP bench but my guess is he’s more intelligent than anyone for the left. Same with Romney.

For the right at least, IQ does not win general elections .

There’s mentally not 100% and there’s barely aware. Biden is pretty far gone into dotage. The guy who scans an audience looking for dead people, who needs to be told how to exit a stage, or apparently falling asleep in a memorial service for victims of the Maui fires is pretty far gone.

And part of why the mental acuity of Joe Biden never became an issue is that unlike Trump, there were not really any large scale public appearances where his mental decline would be on display. He didn’t hold rallies or big campaign events where he’d be expected to speak without preparing a speech. Or where someone might notice that he needs help to exist a stage. His campaign was largely social media and traditional ads where his speech and behavior could be edited for coherence in a way that can’t be done at a live event.

Of course this was massively helped by the constant drumbeat of “voting for anyone other than Joe Biden and Democrats is a vote for literal nazi fascist ideology.” That sort of discourse makes critical evaluation of the candidates much harder. Biden never really came off as a good candidate, even among the democrats I talked to. Nobody was excited about him. The entire thing was about Trump and the importance that Trump not win.

If Democrats are so strong then why do they have some a lack of POTUS level candidates?

Causally related. Because every Democrat is treated to a friendly media environment they all have artificially boosted popularity, which erodes in a national campaign, because, 2020 excepted, you still have to actually campaign to become president. Basically, they all are running for office on easy mode, and for a presidential candidate, that can't be fully maintained. Sure, national media is still a D++ advantage nationally, but I seriously doubt they could win in Illinois without the media bias. At the state level its worth like 20 points in the polls.

I think this would have been true before internet, social media and cell phones. Biden essentially had to avoid live events as much as possible to get by, and even then people noticed that Biden was doing few live events. Any future candidates will have to appear in public and the public will be perfectly free to post and comment on anything he says or does amiss. Short of another pandemic, Biden can’t win because he’ll have to go do live events and rallies and his failures will be filmed and obvious.

I think the same goes for anyone else. Yes a friendly media helps, but given how easy it now is to share information, I don’t see any way to prevent negative things from coming out. Even with Twitter bans and a press eager to squash the story, most people had at least heard about the Biden Laptop. It was “suppressed” but everyone who cared about it could easily find at least some information about it. Which means that the media isn’t that good of a filter for democrats at the moment.

Democrat intellectuals are completely unpalatable to the general public. They have to have plausible deniability when it comes to the Marxists who hate the United States and want to teach preschoolers sex-ed. The media can tell you not to believe your lying eyes when it comes to schools putting strap-on-sucking books in libraries, but a presidential candidate would be hard to run cover for.

The GOP has a much deeper bench of Presidential people

Does it? Trump stomped the 2016 field and appears poised to do the same in 2024 for a reason, and it isn't that the Republicans have a great bench. Looking at his closest competitors, DeSantis appears to be a walking charisma deficit and clueless at the art of campaigning, which is a shame because I like the job he's done in Florida a lot more than I like Trump's record in office. Ramaswamy possesses a brain and is willing to say interesting things, but is a transparently flip-flopping con man. Nikki Haley is only getting attention because the other options (Is Youngkin even running? He's undercooked even if so IMO.) are total non-entities (Doug Burgum? Lol.).

I'll grant you that the Democrats have troubles on their end (though I think Newsom is underestimated at one's peril), but it's more because being a successful Presidential candidate in the TV and post-TV age is HARD. Since Nixon (who more or less won 1968 by default as the Democrats imploded; note that he lost in 1960 against better put together candidates), the Republicans have had one great TV politician (Reagan) and the Democrats two (Bill Clinton and Obama). 2016 Trump gets half-credit because he created enemies as fast if not faster than supporters and only barely beat Hillary. Dubya IMO was passable but had the fortune of running against weak opposition (He barely beat Al Gore, the personification of boring, and still enjoyed the rally around the flag effect against Kerry.).

Gore still seems traditional even if boring. Harvard, served a little in Vietnam, Senator first. Just feels like elite but more relatable background. Actually looks like someone who would end up dissident right Republican today.

Maybe the issue comes from not having white straight men coming up in the party. I don’t dislike Kamala personality as much as others but her background doesn’t feel like the higher IQ type.

I do respect Blinken but I’m not sure if guys like him are capable of being on the ticket today.

Trump somehow got popular with the new right. I agree I like Desantis a lot and the GOP still has a few of his types that could be promoted without a trump. I do see guys like him available to the Dems.

Thank you for writing this update.

I was glad to see the state AG condemn the order. (Though I can’t find the original text of his letter anywhere…) It leaves me wishing there was a more obvious feedback mechanism for an elected official to be punished for flaunting the rules. Grisham ought to be staking something, anything, on her orders’ constitutionality. As it is, she can continue playing stupid games with the law.

Did @TracingWoodgrains post that anywhere other than Twitter? I found it fascinating, too. I tend to think the Long March theory is oversold, but this is a much more defensible version. It’s a particularly good lens for looking at the Trump executive branch: the roster wasn’t even deep enough to fill those positions.

Not yet, but I’d like to polish it up a bit and post it on substack/disseminate it further.

(Though I can’t find the original text of his letter anywhere…)

There's a copy here.

It leaves me wishing there was a more obvious feedback mechanism for an elected official to be punished for flaunting the rules. Grisham ought to be staking something, anything, on her orders’ constitutionality.

I think my frustration is more that there are obvious feedback mechanisms. The state is one of few that allows citizen grand juries to indict her under, New Mexico has blocked qualified immunity in 'most' civil cases and has a few relevant state torts, and federally speaking there's a wide array of laws that could apply. Legislators could call a special session next week and impeach or, if they wanted to be soft-handed, 'just' cut down the NM Governor's emergency powers, including with warnings that they'll impeach next time if she doesn't knock it off. But being existent doesn't make it accessible: to be accessible, some nontrivial number of state legislators or courts or federal prosecutors would have to take things seriously even when someone on their side does it.

And for the most part, suspending part of the constitution just doesn't hit that mark. And while the Second Amendment makes that more clear than most cases, it's not like this is new or even limited to the United States. As much as Kulak might want to pray otherwise, Canada's flirtations and more importantly clear acceptance of the same is plain as day. The United Kingdom, to what limited extent Brits ever had rights to begin with, is running roughshod through the problems as well. There are mechanisms to punish overreach, they're just not swords that cut both ways in any seriously evenhanded sense.

Did TracingWoodgrains post that anywhere other than Twitter?

He mentioned an intent to post on his normal blog (presumably substack) eventually, though I've not seen it there or at theschism yet.

I tend to think the Long March theory is oversold, but this is a much more defensible version.

I think it's more defensible as a description of the scope of the problem, but I think its model of the cause goes one or two steps too short.

This was an exceptional read and summary, and would love to see more posts like this on the site.

I have long since memory-holed how much of a shitshow the ongoing war against the second amendment in the US has become.

imho, I like shorter posts more. they leave more up for interpretation whereas effort posts tend to cover bases

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