"For Democrats this means abandoning the turn-the-page/turn-the-cheek ethos of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in favor of proud accountability for enemies of democracy."
Crack down on corruption = Push Trump's Qatar jet off the back of an aircraft carrier to turn it into a coral reef.
Get tough on illegal immigration = Hire a bunch of immigration judges. Then for people who came here the right way (claimed asylum at a border crossing) swear them in as citizens 100k a pop at college football stadiums across the country.
Be tough on crime = Prosecute Elon Musk for flouting election laws and Jeff Yass for tax evasion.
A lot of people who came here "the right way (claimed asylum at a border crossing)" were not legitimate asylum seekers. Biden's embrace of "asylum" as a loophole to allow millions of people to enter the country to the warm embrace of Republicans singing "fake", "open borders" and so forth was a major factor in Harris' defeat.
Of course, the USA needs immigrants. Of course the system is broken. But Brian's message here applies to Dems on immigration - brag about deportations of criminal immigrants and criminal gangs, champion long-term immigrants who even red-staters understand are their neighbors (make the road to citizenship clearer).
The border chaos was a huge factor in Trump getting reelected. But Biden didn’t wake up one morning and say “gee this asylum thing would be a clever way to get immigrants in the country” - he did not embrace it. It was law. The immigrants recognized they could exploit it because of the extreme lack of immigration judges and that’s exactly what they did. And Biden actually fixed this by requiring refugees to set up appointments via an app from their home countries, ending the scenes of chaos. Of course this came far too late.
Most voters have a misperception that immigrating to the US is relatively straightforward as long as you dot your i's and cross your t's. This is completely wrong though. It's a long complicated process that often goes nowhere.
People who say "my great grandparents came here the right way" are referring to a time when folks could just book a ticket and show up. As long as they a) weren't sick and b) answered officials that they didn't have a job already lined up, then they could stay.
Voters' perceptions of how easy it is to come here legally are completely off. It would be a pretty straightforward policy change to make reality match their perceptions.
Most voters are idiots - otherwise, we would have had Presidents Hilary Clinton and whatever followed. Isn't that the whole point of Brian's Substack? Dems need to deal with the reality of the electorate's perceptions and tell stories that show the best side of good governance.
The asylum law "loophole" (as Bill points ou abovet, it was law) could and was closed, but WAY TOO LATE.
Bringing a bunch of asylees, along with a mix of people who came here in other ways (TPS, refugees, skilled workers, etc) and mixing them all together and swearing them in as citizens 100k at a time accomplishes just that.
These are people who came here legally, followed the process. We can have fireworks, a ton of American flags, all the pomp and circumstance. This is the kind of thing that people like about immigration.
I think generally speaking, specifically to the second half, this is entirely correct. The first half needs to be stronger.
As a Minnesotan who wants us to do better, the reason Nick Shirley was able to walk in and make such a mess is because Tim Walz and his administration left the door wide open and invited him in. To say that "the issue was being addressed professionally" is only a half-truth. It's being addressed professionally now, but the Walz Administration totally botched its handling of these programs, only got serious about it when it became a political liability, and is still screwing this issue up.
For instance, yesterday it was revealed that Walz's "fraud czar" isn't a state employee as first announced but is an employee of consultant firm and that firm won't let him be interviewed by the media. (In the past, as well, outsourcing to a consultancy firm has been a dodge to avoid transparency, as the work product generally then belongs to the firm, not the state. As a less substantial example of this, much of the behind-the-scenes work including the development of incentives for Minnesota's bid for Super Bowl LII was obscured using this method.)
Tim Walz has rightly lost his political future as a result. This should be a lesson to all Democrats: take this shit seriously from the beginning.
I'm a Minnesotan too and a die-hard Dem........and Sean's narrative is basically correct. It WAS being addressed before Nick Shirley arrived, but it had taken way, way, too long and the amount of money that was part of this fraud was huge.
Unfortunately, we will now get Amy Klobuchar as governor, who has always wanted to be on the Supreme Court or President of the U.S. and has seen her route to that goal as appeasing and reaching out to Republican senators who could vote on her Supreme Court appointment. Amy is a deeply cynical political who still can't figure out what her position should be on ICE in Minneapolis. (She is probably waiting for the polling or focus group reports to come in so she can fine-tune her language.) She is among the top ten Democrats when it comes to approving Trump's atrocious appointees. She's the Dem version of Susan Collins.
She has never shown any principles beyond electability and her own ambition. Plus she's mean. Really mean. (Comes with the narcissism.) So she has very few friends or political allies. BUT she is the choice of "centrists," big-money donors, "respectable" Republicans, national pundits and the usual Democratic political consultants----the same people who brought us the inspiring leadership of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
Will she be better as governor than a Republican? Sure, but what a low bar.
Does she inspire anyone? No. In fact, she makes people---especially young people--hate Democrats even more.
On one hand I know very little about the particulars of this scandal on the other hand this critique of Walz sounds simplistic or maybe just off base.
On The Josh Marshall podcast a few weeks back there was some commentary on this. The scandal and the difficulties in containing it owes much to the lack of state capacity because of outsourcing so many functions. This stems from being trained to believe government is bad and it should be limited. Same thing applies to the California high speed rail project.
Certainly reduced state capacity is part of it. But how the remaining capacity is used is key. If you go back to the OG scandal, the Feeding Our Future one, they just totally whiffed on doing basic oversight. At its peak in spring 2021, FOF claimed to be providing meals equivalent to 3 per day for 130,000 people (29x more than the year before). Yet, despite these numbers and despite receiving multiple complaints about FOF, they did precisely zero in-person site visits to verify these numbers.
I'll grant you that the GOP alternative of racism and retribution is far worse, but we can't go around excusing failures of this magnitude.
We have spent 10 years pulling our hair out over the fact that there is a double standard between democrats and republicans. And, there is! It's worse than ever before.
What's doing the best right now as far as democratic branding? I think there are three categories that are converging, which will either unite into a TRUE response to the trump era and its root causes:
1.) Zohran: We should not settle for mediocracy. Government can and will be excellent and best-in-class at getting shit done and I will prove it.
2.)"Fighters": Fuck it, this isn't a perfect system but god damnit I'm gonna fight for the right to make it better and put my heart into it instead of just rolling over
3.) Economics/American Dream: Something has been taken from our country over the last 60 years: the middle class itself. 250 years ago people literally declared they deserve the pursuit of happiness. We have lost our way there. How did we get from there to fucking payday loans on your mcdonalds order? You're a chump if you pretend this is normal.
I think that this is alllll coming around to the same core concept, bare with me.
The middle class is not supposed to exist in human civilization. By default, people are going to lie, cheat, murder, violate others, oppress, and exploit when they need to. I'm willing to give Stephen Miller that one.
America, more than literally any other civilization in written human history, rejects this. It is quite literally the reason the United States of America exists: "Dude we can do better than this shit!"
It's why we came here. It's why we fought the civil war. It's why we created the New Deal. It's why MLK marched on Selma.
What is "it"? The fight to try to make the american dream real, for everyone. The unfulfilled promise: a nation of free people, leading itself with integrity and PULLING IT OFF. America is an answer to a question: Do humans need a King or can they be free?
The day after Woodstock, people in power gave up on this project of proving we don't need a king. The hedge fund manager was born. Reaganomics. 9/11. Neoliberalism. But the middle class isn't natural. Without constantly nurturing and protecting it, it will naturally decay. What's happened is that the citizens of this country know this in their hearts, but see that politicians either don't know or are willfully blind to it.
The truth is, right now, democrats should be standing up with their nuts hanging and say "I believe in building this dream. I accept the double standard. You'll have to kill me to get me to give up on this project" It's not just messaging, it's not just policy, and it's not just vibes. It's everything everywhere all at once.
I wrote this A YEAR AGO now. Yeesh:
"The story of America is not the American dream. It is the fight to make the dream real. Is is not the dream, it’s the ability TO dream. The courage and vision that has allowed us to keep this bizarre and lovable experiment running for this short life we’ve had as a civilization. The arrogance and love we have for ourselves, the main character syndrome that makes us think we are just crazy enough to be able to do anything that we fucking want because we are Free."
Brian, you’re assuming that public demonstrations of accountability will matter to people who have already decided that one side is all good and the other is all evil. It will not.
You can see it in the fringe views that social media amplifies. On one side: “all immigrants are criminals,” despite the data cutting the other way. On the other: “stopping undocumented brown people at the border is racist,” when preconceptions about identity are the last thing anyone should want at a border crossing.
Unfortunately, these siloed attitudes keep surviving contact with reality. Over and over.
I so agree with this post. But given our current media and 50-year-long fearful, timid pose of the Democratic party, I fear we will not get prosecutions, only another round of "Let's All Move On and Look to the Future." The NYT will be one of the loudest voices to move on.
Hi Brian! I had a question about a simple political fix; parties are private entities by law, so they can make their own rules, run their own primaries. There's no reason the Democrats can't hold a primary for the Speaker of the House / Majority Leader roles. And then when they're seated they'll be obligated by party to vote for who was chosen by the voters, or face primaries themselves for being faithless! This should make fundraising prowess less important for leadership so we're not constantly governed by Wall St.
Beyond that, I had an idea for a patent law change- for safety fixes. I have ideas for fixing space heaters, desktop pc cases, cell phones, refrigerators, medical cots and gas stoves. If we change it so safety fixes can get patents- and a cut compelled by the government from the manufacturer, who is also compelled to produce the new, safer version- it would create a virtuous system of reward for making the world healthier and safer, create jobs and increase productivity. If you know anyone interested in running a story on this, I'd appreciate it- it will probably have to get to a foreign politician, too, because our congress is probably too corrupt and deadlocked to address this.
Thanks for reading! And kicking Elon out on an immigration charge would be delicious; I'm all for it.
I'm sympathetic to this view from a small-d democratic standpoint, but I don't think it will do much to help on its own when Democratic voters have proven themselves to be absolutely awful at choosing primary winners, kicking things off in '72 with the worst loss in history.
As Miles notes, Dem primary voters are special sunflowers. I have been thinking about Democratic primaries since I was checking old links for something completely different and stumbled over a piece from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA,) called "Want to elect socialists? Run them in Democratic Primaries." From 2017. It was somewhat risque back then to consider this and there was opposition to attaching themselves to the Democratic Party at all. But many seem to have been able to cope.
Odd that a DSA candidate can run in a Dem primary but here in my state, independents etc aren't welcome to *vote* in our closed primaries. This seems like a recipe for ensuring the most extreme candidates (though thanks to the great and strategic voters in MD, it's not as bad as it could be.) I know I risk the wrath of open and big tents, but isn't it time to at least think about all of this stuff from a structural standpoint? In a state like Maryland or Texas on the other side, most elections are sealed in the primary. Maybe it's time for the party to seriously retool.
I think we need to reinterpret "vote" to allow RCV at the federal level and get more parties. Without primaries we'd just get more soulless centrist ghouls
"For Democrats this means abandoning the turn-the-page/turn-the-cheek ethos of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in favor of proud accountability for enemies of democracy."
1000%
Crack down on corruption = Push Trump's Qatar jet off the back of an aircraft carrier to turn it into a coral reef.
Get tough on illegal immigration = Hire a bunch of immigration judges. Then for people who came here the right way (claimed asylum at a border crossing) swear them in as citizens 100k a pop at college football stadiums across the country.
Be tough on crime = Prosecute Elon Musk for flouting election laws and Jeff Yass for tax evasion.
A lot of people who came here "the right way (claimed asylum at a border crossing)" were not legitimate asylum seekers. Biden's embrace of "asylum" as a loophole to allow millions of people to enter the country to the warm embrace of Republicans singing "fake", "open borders" and so forth was a major factor in Harris' defeat.
Of course, the USA needs immigrants. Of course the system is broken. But Brian's message here applies to Dems on immigration - brag about deportations of criminal immigrants and criminal gangs, champion long-term immigrants who even red-staters understand are their neighbors (make the road to citizenship clearer).
The border chaos was a huge factor in Trump getting reelected. But Biden didn’t wake up one morning and say “gee this asylum thing would be a clever way to get immigrants in the country” - he did not embrace it. It was law. The immigrants recognized they could exploit it because of the extreme lack of immigration judges and that’s exactly what they did. And Biden actually fixed this by requiring refugees to set up appointments via an app from their home countries, ending the scenes of chaos. Of course this came far too late.
Most voters have a misperception that immigrating to the US is relatively straightforward as long as you dot your i's and cross your t's. This is completely wrong though. It's a long complicated process that often goes nowhere.
People who say "my great grandparents came here the right way" are referring to a time when folks could just book a ticket and show up. As long as they a) weren't sick and b) answered officials that they didn't have a job already lined up, then they could stay.
Voters' perceptions of how easy it is to come here legally are completely off. It would be a pretty straightforward policy change to make reality match their perceptions.
Most voters are idiots - otherwise, we would have had Presidents Hilary Clinton and whatever followed. Isn't that the whole point of Brian's Substack? Dems need to deal with the reality of the electorate's perceptions and tell stories that show the best side of good governance.
The asylum law "loophole" (as Bill points ou abovet, it was law) could and was closed, but WAY TOO LATE.
Bringing a bunch of asylees, along with a mix of people who came here in other ways (TPS, refugees, skilled workers, etc) and mixing them all together and swearing them in as citizens 100k at a time accomplishes just that.
These are people who came here legally, followed the process. We can have fireworks, a ton of American flags, all the pomp and circumstance. This is the kind of thing that people like about immigration.
I think generally speaking, specifically to the second half, this is entirely correct. The first half needs to be stronger.
As a Minnesotan who wants us to do better, the reason Nick Shirley was able to walk in and make such a mess is because Tim Walz and his administration left the door wide open and invited him in. To say that "the issue was being addressed professionally" is only a half-truth. It's being addressed professionally now, but the Walz Administration totally botched its handling of these programs, only got serious about it when it became a political liability, and is still screwing this issue up.
For instance, yesterday it was revealed that Walz's "fraud czar" isn't a state employee as first announced but is an employee of consultant firm and that firm won't let him be interviewed by the media. (In the past, as well, outsourcing to a consultancy firm has been a dodge to avoid transparency, as the work product generally then belongs to the firm, not the state. As a less substantial example of this, much of the behind-the-scenes work including the development of incentives for Minnesota's bid for Super Bowl LII was obscured using this method.)
Tim Walz has rightly lost his political future as a result. This should be a lesson to all Democrats: take this shit seriously from the beginning.
I'm a Minnesotan too and a die-hard Dem........and Sean's narrative is basically correct. It WAS being addressed before Nick Shirley arrived, but it had taken way, way, too long and the amount of money that was part of this fraud was huge.
Unfortunately, we will now get Amy Klobuchar as governor, who has always wanted to be on the Supreme Court or President of the U.S. and has seen her route to that goal as appeasing and reaching out to Republican senators who could vote on her Supreme Court appointment. Amy is a deeply cynical political who still can't figure out what her position should be on ICE in Minneapolis. (She is probably waiting for the polling or focus group reports to come in so she can fine-tune her language.) She is among the top ten Democrats when it comes to approving Trump's atrocious appointees. She's the Dem version of Susan Collins.
She has never shown any principles beyond electability and her own ambition. Plus she's mean. Really mean. (Comes with the narcissism.) So she has very few friends or political allies. BUT she is the choice of "centrists," big-money donors, "respectable" Republicans, national pundits and the usual Democratic political consultants----the same people who brought us the inspiring leadership of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
Will she be better as governor than a Republican? Sure, but what a low bar.
Does she inspire anyone? No. In fact, she makes people---especially young people--hate Democrats even more.
On one hand I know very little about the particulars of this scandal on the other hand this critique of Walz sounds simplistic or maybe just off base.
On The Josh Marshall podcast a few weeks back there was some commentary on this. The scandal and the difficulties in containing it owes much to the lack of state capacity because of outsourcing so many functions. This stems from being trained to believe government is bad and it should be limited. Same thing applies to the California high speed rail project.
Certainly reduced state capacity is part of it. But how the remaining capacity is used is key. If you go back to the OG scandal, the Feeding Our Future one, they just totally whiffed on doing basic oversight. At its peak in spring 2021, FOF claimed to be providing meals equivalent to 3 per day for 130,000 people (29x more than the year before). Yet, despite these numbers and despite receiving multiple complaints about FOF, they did precisely zero in-person site visits to verify these numbers.
I'll grant you that the GOP alternative of racism and retribution is far worse, but we can't go around excusing failures of this magnitude.
My favorite piece you've ever written.
We have spent 10 years pulling our hair out over the fact that there is a double standard between democrats and republicans. And, there is! It's worse than ever before.
What's doing the best right now as far as democratic branding? I think there are three categories that are converging, which will either unite into a TRUE response to the trump era and its root causes:
1.) Zohran: We should not settle for mediocracy. Government can and will be excellent and best-in-class at getting shit done and I will prove it.
2.)"Fighters": Fuck it, this isn't a perfect system but god damnit I'm gonna fight for the right to make it better and put my heart into it instead of just rolling over
3.) Economics/American Dream: Something has been taken from our country over the last 60 years: the middle class itself. 250 years ago people literally declared they deserve the pursuit of happiness. We have lost our way there. How did we get from there to fucking payday loans on your mcdonalds order? You're a chump if you pretend this is normal.
I think that this is alllll coming around to the same core concept, bare with me.
The middle class is not supposed to exist in human civilization. By default, people are going to lie, cheat, murder, violate others, oppress, and exploit when they need to. I'm willing to give Stephen Miller that one.
America, more than literally any other civilization in written human history, rejects this. It is quite literally the reason the United States of America exists: "Dude we can do better than this shit!"
It's why we came here. It's why we fought the civil war. It's why we created the New Deal. It's why MLK marched on Selma.
What is "it"? The fight to try to make the american dream real, for everyone. The unfulfilled promise: a nation of free people, leading itself with integrity and PULLING IT OFF. America is an answer to a question: Do humans need a King or can they be free?
The day after Woodstock, people in power gave up on this project of proving we don't need a king. The hedge fund manager was born. Reaganomics. 9/11. Neoliberalism. But the middle class isn't natural. Without constantly nurturing and protecting it, it will naturally decay. What's happened is that the citizens of this country know this in their hearts, but see that politicians either don't know or are willfully blind to it.
The truth is, right now, democrats should be standing up with their nuts hanging and say "I believe in building this dream. I accept the double standard. You'll have to kill me to get me to give up on this project" It's not just messaging, it's not just policy, and it's not just vibes. It's everything everywhere all at once.
I wrote this A YEAR AGO now. Yeesh:
"The story of America is not the American dream. It is the fight to make the dream real. Is is not the dream, it’s the ability TO dream. The courage and vision that has allowed us to keep this bizarre and lovable experiment running for this short life we’ve had as a civilization. The arrogance and love we have for ourselves, the main character syndrome that makes us think we are just crazy enough to be able to do anything that we fucking want because we are Free."
A turn to virtue
Brian, you’re assuming that public demonstrations of accountability will matter to people who have already decided that one side is all good and the other is all evil. It will not.
You can see it in the fringe views that social media amplifies. On one side: “all immigrants are criminals,” despite the data cutting the other way. On the other: “stopping undocumented brown people at the border is racist,” when preconceptions about identity are the last thing anyone should want at a border crossing.
Unfortunately, these siloed attitudes keep surviving contact with reality. Over and over.
I so agree with this post. But given our current media and 50-year-long fearful, timid pose of the Democratic party, I fear we will not get prosecutions, only another round of "Let's All Move On and Look to the Future." The NYT will be one of the loudest voices to move on.
Hi Brian! I had a question about a simple political fix; parties are private entities by law, so they can make their own rules, run their own primaries. There's no reason the Democrats can't hold a primary for the Speaker of the House / Majority Leader roles. And then when they're seated they'll be obligated by party to vote for who was chosen by the voters, or face primaries themselves for being faithless! This should make fundraising prowess less important for leadership so we're not constantly governed by Wall St.
Beyond that, I had an idea for a patent law change- for safety fixes. I have ideas for fixing space heaters, desktop pc cases, cell phones, refrigerators, medical cots and gas stoves. If we change it so safety fixes can get patents- and a cut compelled by the government from the manufacturer, who is also compelled to produce the new, safer version- it would create a virtuous system of reward for making the world healthier and safer, create jobs and increase productivity. If you know anyone interested in running a story on this, I'd appreciate it- it will probably have to get to a foreign politician, too, because our congress is probably too corrupt and deadlocked to address this.
Thanks for reading! And kicking Elon out on an immigration charge would be delicious; I'm all for it.
- Matt Hissong
I'm sympathetic to this view from a small-d democratic standpoint, but I don't think it will do much to help on its own when Democratic voters have proven themselves to be absolutely awful at choosing primary winners, kicking things off in '72 with the worst loss in history.
Agreed, though I usually think thry're too centrist with their camdidates. I hope Platner wipes the floor with Collins!
As Miles notes, Dem primary voters are special sunflowers. I have been thinking about Democratic primaries since I was checking old links for something completely different and stumbled over a piece from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA,) called "Want to elect socialists? Run them in Democratic Primaries." From 2017. It was somewhat risque back then to consider this and there was opposition to attaching themselves to the Democratic Party at all. But many seem to have been able to cope.
Odd that a DSA candidate can run in a Dem primary but here in my state, independents etc aren't welcome to *vote* in our closed primaries. This seems like a recipe for ensuring the most extreme candidates (though thanks to the great and strategic voters in MD, it's not as bad as it could be.) I know I risk the wrath of open and big tents, but isn't it time to at least think about all of this stuff from a structural standpoint? In a state like Maryland or Texas on the other side, most elections are sealed in the primary. Maybe it's time for the party to seriously retool.
I think we need to reinterpret "vote" to allow RCV at the federal level and get more parties. Without primaries we'd just get more soulless centrist ghouls