Paul Waldman/WaPo:
Joe Biden just flip-flopped on abortion. Good. It proves the system works.
You could not ask for a better case study in how presidential campaigns define and refine party ideology than this one. While it all revolved around Joe Biden, he was really just a vehicle for the process to play itself out, the net result being a Democratic Party that is more unified than it was at the beginning of the week in both its general commitment to abortion rights and its intention to pursue specific policy changes to put its beliefs into action.
First, a word about Biden’s justification for his change in position.
Actually he flip-flopped on the Hyde amendment.
NPR:
Poll: Majority Want To Keep Abortion Legal, But They Also Want Restrictions
A total of 77% say the Supreme Court should uphold Roe, but within that there's a lot of nuance — 26% say they would like to see it remain in place, but with more restrictions added; 21% want to see Roe expanded to establish the right to abortion under any circumstance; 16% want to keep it the way it is; and 14% want to see some of the restrictions allowed under Roe reduced. Just 13% overall say it should be overturned.
Nicholas Grossman/Arc Digital:
Do Social Conservatives Really Face an Existential Crisis?
The flawed assumption underlying both sides of the intra-conservative debate kicked off by Sohrab Ahmari
Conservative circles are currently engaged in a debate between two approaches to politics in the broadest sense — not just political office, but the entire enterprise of advancing interests in the public sphere. The debate primarily concerns whether social conservatives, especially Christians (both Catholic and Protestant), should respect classical liberal values or abandon them to fight the culture war.
New York Post editor Sohrab Ahmari kicked it off by denouncing National Review columnist David French for being “nice” and “guileless,” arguing that conservative Christians must “fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”
French countered by advocating “consistent and unyielding defense of civil liberties, including the civil liberties of your political opponents,” arguing that upholding individual rights is both morally correct, and the best long-term strategy to defend Christian interests.
What I find most striking about this debate is how all participants share the premise that American Christians face an existential threat. They’re arguing about strategy — how to counter the threat, whether the threat means one must back Trump, etc. The notion that social conservatives are a victimized minority who, if they’re not careful, will soon be wiped out is taken as obviously true.
Comes across to me as “how much of an asshole do we get to be when our side is losing”, but there are lessons about how people act when they see things as existential threats. For example, how will you react if/when your candidates loses? Happens to us all, sooner or later, that our candidate loses. Are you going to come in as the thought police and berate everyone who doesn’t agree with you? Or are you going to be civil?
Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight:
Bulletpoint No. 3: Younger Democrats care less about electability. Here’s a theory about why.
It’s no secret that older Democrats are more moderate than younger ones. Relatedly, older Democrats put more emphasis on electability. Last month’s Monmouth University New Hampshire poll asked Democrats whether they’d prefer a “Democrat [they] agree with on most issues but would have a hard time beating Donald Trump or a Democrat [they] do not agree with on most issues but would be a stronger candidate against Trump.” Among Democrats 65 or older, only 13 percent wanted the candidate they agreed with if the candidate would have a hard time beating Trump. But among Democrats younger than 50, 42 percent were willing to take a chance on the less electable candidate.
The cause and effect is difficult to sort out. Maybe younger voters deemphasize electability because they’re more liberal and think the concept is being used to prop up more moderate, establishment friendly candidates like Biden.
But it’s at least possible that some of the causality runs the other way: Younger voters are more liberal because their lived experience gives them less reason to think there’s an electoral penalty for liberalism.
See also:
Christian Vanderbrouk/Bulwark:
Catch-45
The twisted logic of Trump defenders would make a fine Joseph Heller novel.
This is where the logic of Trump’s defenders breaks down, collapsing into a bizarre singularity where the basic concepts of justice and republican governance no longer apply. We’ve gone from “a president cannot be indicted” to “a president cannot be investigated by the executive branch” to “the president cannot be investigated by Congress.” It’s as much Lewis Carroll as Joseph Heller.
What’s the solution? For starters, I’d suggest that executive branch officials take another look at their oaths of office.
An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: “I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Yes, the president’s aides and appointees answer to him, and (with some exceptions) they serve at his pleasure. But they don’t take an oath to the president; they swear to defend the Constitution.
Paul Farhi/WaPo:
Lies? The news media is starting to describe Trump’s ‘falsehoods’ that way.
A recent sampling:
● CNN: “The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and falsehoods.”
● Minneapolis Star Tribune: “President Trump lies to troops about pay raise.”
● Financial Times: “The real reason Donald Trump lies.”
● Los Angeles Times: “Mueller report exposes all the president’s liars.”
● Chicago Tribune: “Why are Trump’s lies not ruinous to him? Because truth can be in the eye of the beholder.”
● The New Yorker: “It’s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He’s Doing It on Purpose.”
● Foreign Policy: “Does It Matter That Trump Is a Liar?”
Washington Examiner:
Walmart against monopolies: The retail giant is filing a price-fixing lawsuit against a shady Brazilian meatpacker
The lawsuit adds just another legal episode for the troubled billionaire Batista brothers. In 2017, Joesley and Wesley Batista admitted to police to bribing hundreds of officials in the Brazilian government. In May, Wesley Batista was indicted by a Brazilian federal court for insider trading. The brothers are also linked to Diosdado Cabello, the president of the Nicolás Maduro-backed Venezuelan National Assembly, who was reportedly behind an assassination plot against Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
This all relates to who owns our food chain, rural and farm policy, and Trump corruption. Birds of a feather and all that…
Catherine Rampell/WaPo:
Everyone’s got a climate plan. So where’s the carbon tax?
These candidates [Warren, Biden, O’Rourke, Inslee], to their credit, have offered thoughtful solutions for addressing the most pressing policy challenge of our time. Their proposals are highly detailed and thorough, often running to dozens of pages in length.
And it’s precisely because they’re so detailed and thorough that it’s so bizarre none of them explicitly mentions the obvious, no-brainer tool for curbing carbon emissions: putting a price on carbon.
A carbon tax (or its cousin, a cap-and-trade system) is almost universally embraced by economists on both the left and the right. With good reason, too. Taxing carbon means pricing in, upfront, the implicit costs that come from using fossil fuels — especially, though not exclusively, the cost of warming our planet.