Even if his lies about the 2020 election were true, it would still be very unflattering story for him. Will Ron DeSantis say so? Plus: A worthwhile housing initiative.
It's nice to see the Right isn't the only place where commonsense approaches to real problems go to die. Josh, you posited a fantastic little item about Democratic solutions to real world problems - affordable housing...hell, any available housing, and all you get back in the comments is DeathSantis, anti-vax cowards, etc. Love the idea of so little sympathy for unvaccinated people getting sick. The reality is there is way too much real world hard living for most everyone to give a crap about Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated. They have moved on. 85% of adults are Vaxxed. 10% of the left and 10% of the right are fighting it out, and the rest of the world is ignoring politics completely and trying to pay for dinner tonight, or getting a better job, or keeping the one they have.
The first political party to competently address these issues will clean up at the polls for a decade. Betting odds right now are "None of the Above" in a landslide...
It’s a great point! However I do think it’s just another of the plethora of intelligent arguments that makes perfect sense if you’re a rational, thoughtful, decently intelligent person. But that contingent does not generally think logically nor intelligently and they are easily distracted by emotion and wedge issues. Plenty has been written about this phenomenon - the strongest of which I believe is What’s The Matter With Kansas where it’s laid out with data explicitly that the vast majority of republicans vote against their own economic interests.
So while I completely agree with your post, I’m not sure it would translate to that base.
Regarding your reference at the top of the article for people to click the "Subscribe Now" button; I'm a subscriber but new to Substack; does that show up even if I'm already subscribed? is there not a way to remove it?
Josh, curious whether, having looked at this dispassionately as a national issue, you have any mixed feelings about the MA policy given that the (drastic?) development is happening in *your* hometown? In other words, any misplaced NIMBY feelings given it's IYBY?
For me, the need for more housing is undeniable (I look at SF for example and shake my head). But when the charming old flower nursery near the rail station in my smallish single-family zoned hometown sold to a developer last year (who are building dense, generic-ish townhouses, not quite multifamily), it was a major bummer to me and many folks in town.
Like any normal primary jockeying, I think its appropriate to see the "stolen election" narrative as a necessary but insufficient condition for anyone seeking the nomination, which doesn't necessarily mean it will be a deciding factor in the primary. Somewhere between 50-60% of Republicans believe that Trump is the "true" president, and Republicans make up about 26% of the electorate. This means that while some kind of stock line about the election being stolen is required to be competitive in the primary, it is unlikely that there will be competitive rhetoric in the primary to see who can out-'stop the steal' Trump. Very few independents are really interested in re-litigating the issue in the 2024 election, and few Republicans are interested in a debate about how "the steal" could have been stopped better. For that reason I think the "powers of the presidency" retort to Trump's blustering is likely to be more important in how candidates present their policies on other issues, like education, health care, immigration, etc. Trump's implied advantage in all of those areas—which he had due to his obvious self-presentation as an outsider in 2016—is much less significant now. So if Republicans can field a candidate who creates and articulates the national Republican position on those issues (which requires the Trumpian sort of reactionary position) *better* than Trump (as DeSantis has done on vaccines), that's where the real rubber will hit the road.
Re: DeSantis it seems like his entire strategy is based on the vaccines being Trump's Achilles heel, the one issue where his vanity and impulse to take credit for things is preventing him from responding to the anger in the conservative base. Not sure how that's going to play in 2024, but it's certainly what DeSantis has been foregrounding. And I mean it's morally horrible but arguably not as bad for the country in the long run as helping make "state legislatures should overturn election results when we lose" the center of the Republican platform.
It's nice to see the Right isn't the only place where commonsense approaches to real problems go to die. Josh, you posited a fantastic little item about Democratic solutions to real world problems - affordable housing...hell, any available housing, and all you get back in the comments is DeathSantis, anti-vax cowards, etc. Love the idea of so little sympathy for unvaccinated people getting sick. The reality is there is way too much real world hard living for most everyone to give a crap about Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated. They have moved on. 85% of adults are Vaxxed. 10% of the left and 10% of the right are fighting it out, and the rest of the world is ignoring politics completely and trying to pay for dinner tonight, or getting a better job, or keeping the one they have.
The first political party to competently address these issues will clean up at the polls for a decade. Betting odds right now are "None of the Above" in a landslide...
It’s a great point! However I do think it’s just another of the plethora of intelligent arguments that makes perfect sense if you’re a rational, thoughtful, decently intelligent person. But that contingent does not generally think logically nor intelligently and they are easily distracted by emotion and wedge issues. Plenty has been written about this phenomenon - the strongest of which I believe is What’s The Matter With Kansas where it’s laid out with data explicitly that the vast majority of republicans vote against their own economic interests.
So while I completely agree with your post, I’m not sure it would translate to that base.
Regarding your reference at the top of the article for people to click the "Subscribe Now" button; I'm a subscriber but new to Substack; does that show up even if I'm already subscribed? is there not a way to remove it?
Josh, curious whether, having looked at this dispassionately as a national issue, you have any mixed feelings about the MA policy given that the (drastic?) development is happening in *your* hometown? In other words, any misplaced NIMBY feelings given it's IYBY?
For me, the need for more housing is undeniable (I look at SF for example and shake my head). But when the charming old flower nursery near the rail station in my smallish single-family zoned hometown sold to a developer last year (who are building dense, generic-ish townhouses, not quite multifamily), it was a major bummer to me and many folks in town.
Not a subscriber to NYT - can someone give me the gist of the Douthat column???
Like any normal primary jockeying, I think its appropriate to see the "stolen election" narrative as a necessary but insufficient condition for anyone seeking the nomination, which doesn't necessarily mean it will be a deciding factor in the primary. Somewhere between 50-60% of Republicans believe that Trump is the "true" president, and Republicans make up about 26% of the electorate. This means that while some kind of stock line about the election being stolen is required to be competitive in the primary, it is unlikely that there will be competitive rhetoric in the primary to see who can out-'stop the steal' Trump. Very few independents are really interested in re-litigating the issue in the 2024 election, and few Republicans are interested in a debate about how "the steal" could have been stopped better. For that reason I think the "powers of the presidency" retort to Trump's blustering is likely to be more important in how candidates present their policies on other issues, like education, health care, immigration, etc. Trump's implied advantage in all of those areas—which he had due to his obvious self-presentation as an outsider in 2016—is much less significant now. So if Republicans can field a candidate who creates and articulates the national Republican position on those issues (which requires the Trumpian sort of reactionary position) *better* than Trump (as DeSantis has done on vaccines), that's where the real rubber will hit the road.
Re: DeSantis it seems like his entire strategy is based on the vaccines being Trump's Achilles heel, the one issue where his vanity and impulse to take credit for things is preventing him from responding to the anger in the conservative base. Not sure how that's going to play in 2024, but it's certainly what DeSantis has been foregrounding. And I mean it's morally horrible but arguably not as bad for the country in the long run as helping make "state legislatures should overturn election results when we lose" the center of the Republican platform.