Spot on. I like Klein a lot, and actually think that (this most recent column aside) he has been one of the most persuasive, nuanced and sensible voices in the whole Biden mess. But this week was a misfire, for precisely the reasons you give. (I can't help thinking he wrote it before Biden bowed out, and then adapted it after he did, but without taking account of how instant, overwhelming & spontaneous the embrace of Harris was—it reads like a column that simply wasn't caught up on the news.)
And in the intro to Friday's episode he said, "On Sunday, we got the news that Joe Biden was dropping out. I was on a plane that night. I feverishly wrote the audio essay that I then recorded Monday that came out Tuesday. And by Tuesday, I felt like we were in a fully different world than when I was writing." — Which I am taking is confirming my suspicion that it was a column that wasn't caught up, and in fact by the time it came out he knew it. (I think if he'd been *really* on the ball he might have realized by Monday that it needed revision, but still, being a day behind isn't *that* damning.)
All I know is that my stomach unclenched after the announcement. The chaos caused by the unrelenting attacks on Biden was frightening to me and most of the folks I know who believe that the Democrats must not lose this election. An open convention would have increased that chaos.
*metaphorical* bedbug. It is the policy of this substack to always make clear that the bedbugs are just a metaphor. ...I don't want him writing to my provost again!
Yes - the fake competition is a really dumb idea - at best, you would return to the 2020 lack of consensus around a D candidate, which wouldn’t be good for anyone. At worst, it would look like a pretend process, which he is clearly saying it is - maybe 2d or 3d tier candidates would participate? That seems fruitful and productive, for the VP to stand up there with Marianne Williamson.
The enthusiasm and fund raising is real - maybe you needed this bizarre option if that didn’t happen this week, but it did. I really don’t think the electoral equation has changed much, but this is our best shot - let’s get going.
This is absolutely right. Also, it strikes me as very strange when pundits exclaim "the American people didn't choose Kamala! Where's democracy!" because... uh, they did choose Kamala! They voted Biden with the full understanding that, if he wasn't able to proceed, Kamala Harris would step in! The letter of the law on that one might have been about after the election, rather than before, but it's not like it's inconsistent for her to be up there. People are just coming up with a headline then searching for the argument.
I'm not the only one to note this, but a lot of conservative-leaning columnists have been unusually clumsy in tipping their hand on this issue and showing that the singular idea underlying all of their punditry is to generate concern-trolling mental memes that choke up the public sphere like kudzu. Parker Molloy has a great example of a WSJ columnist who last week was, "Biden should go, Harris should replace him" and this week is "Oh No, Not Harris! She's a Bicoastal Extremist!" None of this writing comes from any coherent perspective other than "Let's see if I can get the Democrats to fight more". They said they wanted Biden to go because they didn't think he would and it would pin the party down, now they're all "oh noes! Biden went! Ok, how about 'oh the democracy! there should be more of it!'" It's not that Stephens and his ilk are ever subtle or smart about it, but their intellectual thinness and instrumental trollage has been on particularly obvious display lately.
I was originally planning to rip into Stephens a bit more, but his column read like a set of lightly-fleshed-out bullet points. It was such thing gruel that I couldn't make a meal of it.
Very much agreed and resonates well with Mark Harris (a journalist himself, but mostly on entertainment/film history) wrote this on Blue Sky a few days ago:
“Journalists were virtually the only people in America invested in a scenario in which Biden would withdraw, 7-8 Dems would instantly jump in, and it would all be settled in 2 weeks by...TV debates and edit-board meetings? It was never real, and it's bizarre to watch them all go into mourning for it.”
Hot damn, this is the best take I have read, and I dd write about Bretbug as my "Human Garbage of the Week" for his piss poor take this morning. Well done sir!
It’s true, the confidence in backing Vice President Harris now feels like it did back in 2008. When we know WE KNOW. Let’s lead with that! We already knew that she was the next logical candidate. Why would we mire ourselves in asking twenty questions, when we’re crystal clear about who she is and the path to get her to the next level? If we spent extra time trotting out lesser known B, C and D level candidates at this stage, it would definitely make us look like we don’t know what we’re doing. I’m WITH HER.
Ezra Klein didn’t want Kamala Harris. That’s the long and short of it with him and the other pundits. Biden didn’t decline his nomination for their sake. He did it for democracy. A thing they don’t understand. And there’s only 100 days until the election. Time’s a wasting.
Columnists are always fighting the last war, trapped in an outdated heuristic—or trying to pull us into their narrative, one where we are uncertain and unworthy and nothing can be done to improve our situation.
A person can be continually amazed at how deeply stupid they seem. They are always topping themselves. Many people have commented on this—how it appears that an ABSENCE of insight into events combined with a desire to herd people into the status quo combined with a callous lack of interest in the welfare of people affected by the subject with which you are concerned seem to be the qualifications to be a columnist, particularly in the NYT, particularly lately.
The sea change is because there is a new war now. Of course columnists are the last to know. But everyone else knows it, and this is having a very profound impact on almost everyone who values some or most of the features of liberal democracy or prefers these to authoritarianism and rule by billionaires. From the people who say ‘oh, Kamala Harris is like all non-fascist American politicians—she is bad. But this doesn’t mean I will never vote for for her to prevent the fascists from taking over the government’ To the people who are oddly fascinated with what shoes she wears, and dying to create a cult of personality around their new candidate to replace the cults of personality they seem to create around every candidate. We all know we are in the crosshairs even though temperamentally and in many other ways, we are not alike, and we really bug each other.
Catastrophe looms has been true for a long time, but it’s so glaringly true now that most people who take an interest in these electoral events and don’t want fascism are smart enough to know when someone has it in for them. The super rich have it in for us ordinary American people whose yearly income is not over $1 million, who do not make piles of money off the stock market, who are not members of the groups the fascists guarantee they will make psychologically, physically, and economically secure (white, upper income, Christian, male, heterosexual, cisgender, etc.) The only thing we can do is band together with the other people who recognize our shared situation, try to hold them off, and hope even a little we can get further fortifications for what is to come from the politicians we vote for.
I expect that when the ultrawealthy realize this is what is happening, that we’re shit scared and annoyed as hell and we’ve decided to band together, they’re going to try to make us forget what we have not-so-recently figured out. (It’s been over 5 years for most of us, but even more than that.) They need us panicking and attacking each other. The main way to do this is to get us distrusting each other, fighting over scraps, and feeling despair. So I think we have to brace ourselves but try not to let our emotions erase the knowledge that this is pretty much the only thing we’ve got going at the moment. Better strategies might come but this is the only game in town at the moment.
Reading this for the first time and, many weeks further into the new version of the democratic campaign, it’s still excellent. You might have possibly opened my mind to Klein again, who’s campaign to remove Biden angered me and who can be unbearably smarty-pants insufferable at times. What an interesting and heartening trip it’s been!
Spot on. I like Klein a lot, and actually think that (this most recent column aside) he has been one of the most persuasive, nuanced and sensible voices in the whole Biden mess. But this week was a misfire, for precisely the reasons you give. (I can't help thinking he wrote it before Biden bowed out, and then adapted it after he did, but without taking account of how instant, overwhelming & spontaneous the embrace of Harris was—it reads like a column that simply wasn't caught up on the news.)
And in the intro to Friday's episode he said, "On Sunday, we got the news that Joe Biden was dropping out. I was on a plane that night. I feverishly wrote the audio essay that I then recorded Monday that came out Tuesday. And by Tuesday, I felt like we were in a fully different world than when I was writing." — Which I am taking is confirming my suspicion that it was a column that wasn't caught up, and in fact by the time it came out he knew it. (I think if he'd been *really* on the ball he might have realized by Monday that it needed revision, but still, being a day behind isn't *that* damning.)
All I know is that my stomach unclenched after the announcement. The chaos caused by the unrelenting attacks on Biden was frightening to me and most of the folks I know who believe that the Democrats must not lose this election. An open convention would have increased that chaos.
Aside from the astute insight, it’s lines like “Bret, as usual, isn’t worth taking seriously though.)” that makes your newsletter a must read!
Ugh. Brett Stevens? What a bed bug.
*metaphorical* bedbug. It is the policy of this substack to always make clear that the bedbugs are just a metaphor. ...I don't want him writing to my provost again!
Glad my comment found it’s audience of one.
Yes - the fake competition is a really dumb idea - at best, you would return to the 2020 lack of consensus around a D candidate, which wouldn’t be good for anyone. At worst, it would look like a pretend process, which he is clearly saying it is - maybe 2d or 3d tier candidates would participate? That seems fruitful and productive, for the VP to stand up there with Marianne Williamson.
The enthusiasm and fund raising is real - maybe you needed this bizarre option if that didn’t happen this week, but it did. I really don’t think the electoral equation has changed much, but this is our best shot - let’s get going.
This is absolutely right. Also, it strikes me as very strange when pundits exclaim "the American people didn't choose Kamala! Where's democracy!" because... uh, they did choose Kamala! They voted Biden with the full understanding that, if he wasn't able to proceed, Kamala Harris would step in! The letter of the law on that one might have been about after the election, rather than before, but it's not like it's inconsistent for her to be up there. People are just coming up with a headline then searching for the argument.
What they are saying is that they wanted someone else and to shunt Harris to the side.
That would have been a disaster (but it would have helped them sell a lot of papers/garner a lot of clicks)
I'm not the only one to note this, but a lot of conservative-leaning columnists have been unusually clumsy in tipping their hand on this issue and showing that the singular idea underlying all of their punditry is to generate concern-trolling mental memes that choke up the public sphere like kudzu. Parker Molloy has a great example of a WSJ columnist who last week was, "Biden should go, Harris should replace him" and this week is "Oh No, Not Harris! She's a Bicoastal Extremist!" None of this writing comes from any coherent perspective other than "Let's see if I can get the Democrats to fight more". They said they wanted Biden to go because they didn't think he would and it would pin the party down, now they're all "oh noes! Biden went! Ok, how about 'oh the democracy! there should be more of it!'" It's not that Stephens and his ilk are ever subtle or smart about it, but their intellectual thinness and instrumental trollage has been on particularly obvious display lately.
Yes, strongly agreed.
I was originally planning to rip into Stephens a bit more, but his column read like a set of lightly-fleshed-out bullet points. It was such thing gruel that I couldn't make a meal of it.
Very much agreed and resonates well with Mark Harris (a journalist himself, but mostly on entertainment/film history) wrote this on Blue Sky a few days ago:
“Journalists were virtually the only people in America invested in a scenario in which Biden would withdraw, 7-8 Dems would instantly jump in, and it would all be settled in 2 weeks by...TV debates and edit-board meetings? It was never real, and it's bizarre to watch them all go into mourning for it.”
Hot damn, this is the best take I have read, and I dd write about Bretbug as my "Human Garbage of the Week" for his piss poor take this morning. Well done sir!
It’s true, the confidence in backing Vice President Harris now feels like it did back in 2008. When we know WE KNOW. Let’s lead with that! We already knew that she was the next logical candidate. Why would we mire ourselves in asking twenty questions, when we’re crystal clear about who she is and the path to get her to the next level? If we spent extra time trotting out lesser known B, C and D level candidates at this stage, it would definitely make us look like we don’t know what we’re doing. I’m WITH HER.
Ezra Klein didn’t want Kamala Harris. That’s the long and short of it with him and the other pundits. Biden didn’t decline his nomination for their sake. He did it for democracy. A thing they don’t understand. And there’s only 100 days until the election. Time’s a wasting.
Columnists are always fighting the last war, trapped in an outdated heuristic—or trying to pull us into their narrative, one where we are uncertain and unworthy and nothing can be done to improve our situation.
A person can be continually amazed at how deeply stupid they seem. They are always topping themselves. Many people have commented on this—how it appears that an ABSENCE of insight into events combined with a desire to herd people into the status quo combined with a callous lack of interest in the welfare of people affected by the subject with which you are concerned seem to be the qualifications to be a columnist, particularly in the NYT, particularly lately.
The sea change is because there is a new war now. Of course columnists are the last to know. But everyone else knows it, and this is having a very profound impact on almost everyone who values some or most of the features of liberal democracy or prefers these to authoritarianism and rule by billionaires. From the people who say ‘oh, Kamala Harris is like all non-fascist American politicians—she is bad. But this doesn’t mean I will never vote for for her to prevent the fascists from taking over the government’ To the people who are oddly fascinated with what shoes she wears, and dying to create a cult of personality around their new candidate to replace the cults of personality they seem to create around every candidate. We all know we are in the crosshairs even though temperamentally and in many other ways, we are not alike, and we really bug each other.
Catastrophe looms has been true for a long time, but it’s so glaringly true now that most people who take an interest in these electoral events and don’t want fascism are smart enough to know when someone has it in for them. The super rich have it in for us ordinary American people whose yearly income is not over $1 million, who do not make piles of money off the stock market, who are not members of the groups the fascists guarantee they will make psychologically, physically, and economically secure (white, upper income, Christian, male, heterosexual, cisgender, etc.) The only thing we can do is band together with the other people who recognize our shared situation, try to hold them off, and hope even a little we can get further fortifications for what is to come from the politicians we vote for.
I expect that when the ultrawealthy realize this is what is happening, that we’re shit scared and annoyed as hell and we’ve decided to band together, they’re going to try to make us forget what we have not-so-recently figured out. (It’s been over 5 years for most of us, but even more than that.) They need us panicking and attacking each other. The main way to do this is to get us distrusting each other, fighting over scraps, and feeling despair. So I think we have to brace ourselves but try not to let our emotions erase the knowledge that this is pretty much the only thing we’ve got going at the moment. Better strategies might come but this is the only game in town at the moment.
All of this is absolutely correct.
Reading this for the first time and, many weeks further into the new version of the democratic campaign, it’s still excellent. You might have possibly opened my mind to Klein again, who’s campaign to remove Biden angered me and who can be unbearably smarty-pants insufferable at times. What an interesting and heartening trip it’s been!
I can’t even figure out what they mean, exactly. One where the delegates vote for who they want to vote for? That’s what we’ve got.
I used to like Ezra Klein a lot on MSNBC, until I noticed - there's not a Republican "frame" for any issue that he isn't happy to swallow whole.