The Weekly Sift

My thinking continues to be dominated by the Trump transition and trying to learn the lessons of the election. This week’s featured post examines one of the lessons I hope Democrats don’t draw from the election: that we need to disassociate ourselves from unpopular victims of discrimination. “Should Democrats Abandon the Trans Community?” should be out before 10 EST.

In last week’s comments I took criticism for not picking out misogyny as the reason Harris lost. It’s true I’m resisting that conclusion, but not because I’m blind to misogyny. If we conclude that Harris lost because she’s a woman, then the obvious lesson to draw going forward is: Never nominate a woman again. I really don’t want to go there.

The weekly summary has three long notes that I could have hived off as separate posts:

• conclusions to draw from the failure of the Matt Gaetz nomination,
• a fascinating discussion David Roberts and Dan Savage had about Democrats claiming their identity as an urban party rather than running from it,
• preparing for all the disinformation we’re about to get from Elon Musk and his minions about the federal government.

In other news, there’s the ICC’s indictment of Netanyahu, Brazil’s indictment of Bolsonaro, the UK’s economic underperformance, and a few other things. Expect the weekly summary to post around noon.

After Tuesday’s disaster, I’ve mainly been focused on recovery. It’s hard for me to focus on anything but the election and what it means.

So the featured post will be a wide-ranging election reaction, starting with my personal response, followed by an examination of what happened and possible explanations of why. I’m going to discourage one kind of reaction: Don’t jump on some I-was-right-all-along interpretation. It’s easy to do, and it can provide some short-term comfort, but it guarantees that you won’t learn anything from this event. And I think there are things to learn, but I don’t quite have a handle on them yet.

Anyway, that post is almost done and should be out shortly.

Beyond that, I once again will not do justice to the rest of the world. It’s going to take at least another week to regain my curiosity about events unrelated to the election and the new administration. So the weekly summary will probably be short and appear before noon.

Take care of yourselves out there. Some of you need to reach out to friends, while others need to be alone for a while. Do what you need to do.

Maybe more important than what I’m writing about today is what I’m not writing about: I’m not analyzing polls and trying to predict who will win the election.

One thing I often warn against on this blog is speculation: It can eat up all your time and drive you nuts. And since no one actually knows what’s going to happen, speculating about it usually serves no purpose beyond entertainment. So if you enjoy trying to forecast things in a who’s-going-to-win-the-World-Series way, feel free. It’s harmless. But it’s also unproductive. One way or another, the election will happen and we’ll find out then who wins.

Personally, I find that I’m not enjoying whatever time I spend on speculation. Predictions, good and bad alike, just raise my anxiety. So I’m trying to avoid them.

Speculation also has an addictive quality. Anxiety about the future just leads to looking for more speculation to find reassurance, which usually just raises more anxiety. A better way to assuage your anxiety is to do something. Vote early. Write a check. Encourage your apathetic friends to vote. Volunteer.

So anyway, what am I covering this week. First, because the election isn’t the only thing happening in the world, I read the 199-page lawsuit three red states filed to roll back the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. I know, you thought that lawsuit got dismissed. But that was on a technicality, which this lawsuit tries to fix. And it mostly does fix the technical problem, but it also introduces some truly creepy arguments that aren’t getting nearly enough attention. Like this: Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho are complaining that their teen pregnancy rates aren’t high enough.

So anyway, that reading led to the article “Mifepristone, round 2”, which is done and should post shortly.

My second featured post this week looks at how Trump seems to be coming apart the closer the election gets. That’s “Trump’s Weird Week”, and it should appear between 10 and 11 EDT. The weekly summary ten has a lot of odds and ends, and should post around noon.

This week Kamala Harris sat for an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle and released an 82-page report on her economic proposals. Neither of these moves satisfied the Harris-needs-to-answer-questions chorus in the media, which routinely lets Trump get away with “answers” that consist mostly of insults, lies, and long rambles about sharks.

This week I decided to stop just complaining about mainstream coverage of this campaign and offer something constructive. My proposal is that if you think Harris needs to answer more questions, you should tell us what those questions are, rather than save them for some “hard-hitting interview” you imagine doing someday. Let Harris decide for herself how she wants to provide that information to voters.

I demonstrate that approach in this week’s featured post by listing questions I think Donald Trump still needs to answer — a topic the NYT et al generally ignore. I have done my best to ask questions I think voters might actually be curious about, and to frame my questions as fairly as possible. For example, here’s a question about Trump’s plan for mass deportations: “If we deport millions of workers, how will the US economy replace them? In particular, won’t deporting low-wage workers increase inflation?”

This topic — questions not yet answered by presidential candidates — is the one big exception to the NYT’s tendency to frame every issue in a both-sides way. Only Harris, not Trump, needs to answer more questions.

That article is just about done and should appear shortly. The weekly summary covers the hurricane, Mayor Adams’ indictment, Israel’s attack on Lebanon, Trump’s race to squeeze as much money as he can out of his sheep before the election, and a few other things, before closing with a collection of memorable lines the late Maggie Smith delivered as Downton Abbey’s dowager countess. That should be out around noon.

One of these weeks, I’m going to make a plan for what I’m going to talk about and then carry it out. Ever since the conventions ended, I’ve been planning to write a state-of-the-race article. But something else always comes up: Trump desecrates Arlington National Cemetery, or Georgia election officials lay the groundwork for another January 6, or something.

This week, an apparent Trump assassination attempt broke too late for me to say anything substantive about it, but the eating-dogs-and-cats thing was just impossible to ignore. So I’ll just have to double up: the state-of-the-race post will come out later this morning, maybe around 11 EDT.

But I also found an interesting slant on the Springfield dogs-and-cats story: The Bug-Eyed and Shameless blog draws a parallel to the Irish Fright of 1688, when tens of thousands of Englishmen became convinced that rogue Irish troops from the British army were marauding through England, destroying everything in their path. Spontaneous militias barricaded bridges and crossroads, waiting for rampaging Irishmen who only existed in their imaginations.

It turns out that disinformation can spread and start a panic even without the internet.

Anyway, I think there’s a lot to be learned from Americans’ propensity to believe bizarre and scary things about non-White immigrants. I’ll collect some in “Lessons from the Haitian Fright”. I’ll try to get it out soon. The state-of-the-race article will follow, and then the weekly summary, which will review the Harris-Trump debate, what little we know about the shots fired in Trump’s vicinity, the Laura Loomer thing, and a few other notes. I’m aiming to have that out by noon, but it may run later.