Turnout, Turnout, Turnout! Why Democrats love it and Republicans hate it.
Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic political centrist after my own heart, has a post up at his Substack blog, The Liberal Patriot, How Not to Build a Coalition, arguing, correctly, in my opinion, “High turnout is just not the magic key to Democratic victories the left wishes to believe.”
Ruy goes on to prove in detail why it isn’t the magic key. I’ll explain why Democrats want to believe it is, and why Republicans believe that stifling turnout is their magic key. In both cases, it lets them “forget” that the actual policies they’re selling aren’t that popular with the American people. The Democrats, as I’ve argued a lot, want to believe that their “universal” policies ought to appeal to everyone, though they don’t, because they’re simply redistributionist, taking from the rich and middle class to give to the poor. The middle class can see through this, of course, but Democrats (of course) refuse to see through their own illusions. I’m very much a redistributionist guy myself, but I want it tied to employment as much as possible, while most Democrats want to believe that the point of government is to give as much money to black people as possible, which I don’t. I’m also much more skeptical of the power of government bureaucracies to work wonders.
Republicans, on the other hand, simply don’t believe in anything, and, in particular, they don’t believe in democracy any more. They used to want to suppress turnout; now they want to override it.
Kenneth D. Williamson and George F. Will, both overthinking the power of three
Kenny D., in the midst of a not bad considering peroration on the dismalness of these indeed dismal times, lamenting in particular a comparison between the glory days of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher with the present time, quotes George Will on the Iraq debacle under George W. Bush as follows:
An old baseball joke is pertinent. A manager says, “Our team is just two players away from being a championship team. Unfortunately, the two players are Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.” Iraq is just three people away from democratic success. Unfortunately, the three are George Washington, James Madison, and John Marshall.
Here’s the thing, guys. Back in the day, Virginia did have George Washington, James Madison, and John Marshall, and Thomas Jefferson and George Mason and Patrick Henry as well, and still couldn’t do anything about the horrible institution of slavery, under which 40% of the human beings living in Virginia were essentially treated as livestock, except to wistfully hope, now and again, that it would all someday disappear. After they themselves were gone, of course. You couldn’t expect them to make the sacrifice, could you?
My point is not just that these so often so admirable men were incapable of resolving the corruption from which they profited, but that simple “leadership” cannot solve intractable problems.
Shorter “Dispatch”: Yo, Ukraine! What do you mean there’s no danger? We’re trying to scare the American people, and you ARE NOT HELPING!
Damn straight, Gate! The admirably anti-Trump though deplorably interventionist Dispatch, founded by Stephen Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and Toby Stock, is wetting its pants over the fact that Ukraine seemingly isn’t wetting its pants over the supposedly impending Russian invasion.
“We don’t have a Titanic here,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last Friday. “We do understand what is happening. But we have been in the situation for eight years. … We can’t say the war will happen tomorrow or by the end of February. Yes, it may happen, unfortunately. But you have to feel the pulse on a day-to-day basis.”
Listen, Volodymyr, don’t you know a crisis is a terrible thing to waste? Don’t you know how much airtime could be devoted to this? How many guest spots Steph and Jonah and Toby could score if you could just keep your mouth shut for one minute? And as for Oleksiy Reznikov, your defense minister—what is the deal with this guy? “There is no need for mobilization in terms of the current threat”? “I repeat once again: The [Russian] numbers are basically the same as in the spring of 2021”? Does he even know his job? He’s a defense minister! It’s always CODE RED, damn it! Always! Always! Always!
(If you follow the link I gave you, you’ll have to pay to read all this neocon angst. Since I get their emails, I get to read selected portions for free, so that’s what I’m giving you here.)
Afterwords
Dan Drezner, Daniel Larison, and Fred Kaplan, who all apparently think they’ll have jobs even without a war, have less frenzied takes on Ukraine, though one could certainly wish that someone in the Biden White House had as much sense as they do. We simply have no business trying to run Eastern Europe, or Central Asia, or the Middle East. But saying these things out loud is still considered pretty crazy in DC, despite twenty years of costly, bloody failure.
Yo, Ilya Shapiro! You can be a dick or you can be a dean. But you can’t be both!
Libertarian lawyer guy Ilya Shapiro, scheduled to begin working as executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Constitutional Studies, finds himself on hold after tweeting the following regarding Uncle Joe’s latest “saying the quiet part out loud” that he would make his first Supreme Court pick a black woman:
Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identify politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn't fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we'll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?
Because Biden said he's only consider[ing] black women for SCOTUS, his nominee will always have an asterisk attached. Fitting that the Court takes up affirmative action next term.
Ilya subsequently apologized for his “poor word choice”, which is a poor substitute for, you know, “truth”. The truth is, Ilya was being a dick, something that, apparently, he likes to do when women of color are being considered for the Supreme Court. Back in 2009, when President Obama picked Sonia Sotomayor for the Court, Shapiro wrote a whole column o’ sneers on the subject:
While Judge Sotomayor exemplifies the American Dream, she would not have even been on the short list if she were not Hispanic. She is not one of the leading lights of the federal judiciary, and far less qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court than Judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland or Solicitor General Elena Kagan.
The truth is, Ilya enjoys being a dick. I guess some people might say the same thing about me. Well, I can get away with it, mostly because no one reads my stuff, but also because I’m not representing a major public institution—although Ilya won’t actually be a dean, which I didn’t change, because of the alliteration thing. But, anyway, as Sam Rayburn used to say, if you want to get along, go along. For if you go out of your way to piss people off, you will eventually succeed.
Afterwords
I haven’t read anything written by Ilya when he wasn’t being a dick to women, of color, but, since I skew pretty libertarian when it comes to free speech, I’d probably agree with him, at least some of the time. Eugene Volokh, another libertarian lawyer guy, whom I don’t always like, has a nice, “libertarian” consideration of many of the issues involved, but the thing is, an administrative position, which is what Ilya is up for, is a political position, not a license to be a wise guy.
Shifting gears a little, I would remark that Spinoza, in his Ethics, while arguing against free will, says that those espouse that doctrine argue that “we have experience, that the mind alone can determine whether we speak or are silent.” Would that it were so, says Spinoza, but alas!
I submit that the world would be much happier, if men were as fully able to keep silence as they are to speak. Experience abundantly shows that men can govern anything more easily than their tongues, and restrain anything more easily than their appetites.1
Ilya, I think you just made Benedict’s point for him.
SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE: Absolutely nothing about Joe Rogan or Neil Young in this issue!
1. Benedictus de Spinoza. Ethics (Kindle Location 1353).
