Even without listening to this crap, just based on the few comments it drew, I can assure you that it's going to help Trump pick up thousands of new supporters.
Lori, _you're_ not the one who's confused. Good for you.
The supporters of Sanctuary Jurisdictions, breaking Federal Law, are concerned the Texas GOP may take some unknown action contrary to the Federal Executive? As I recall, California considered secession (I offered to assist, BTW). It is all theater.
During the 2020 election I watched VivaFrei on YouTube. Here's an example of the analysis. I wish Bari had asked Robert Barnes to be on the panel. Not because I found his remarks cogent, but also to see if someone could rebut what he's saying.
I actually listened(great moderating, Bari) and maybe it is just me, but people like Jonah are maddening at best. I did not vote for Trump in the 2016 primary and immediately recognized my mistake. My mistake was not seeing how people like Jonah and the other gent on this cast have no connection with people who make their living creating things in the real world whether it be a hamburger or an automobile.
Trump is the first republican in my 53 years that controlled immigration; of which there were no semi-trailers full of cooked humans, no 40% of all female crossers raped, or drug cartels earning $18,000,000,000 in crossing fees, etc. That is the connection we have with Trump that is not shared with the UniParty who benefits from cheap labor(pubs) and new voters(dems). Millions of foreigner's coming into this country in short timeframes like what the Left is doing now destroys our national cohesiveness. That is what Trump recognized and why we support him, not because we are a cult of Trump; we are a cult of America and Trump is a leader that actually sacrificed 1/3 of his wealth implementing the People's will. That is just one example of how Trump was preserving the American Dream for all, not just his elite friends.
How are we better right now? We're not. The party of crime, medical terror, green energy terror, and racist terror is in charge. Recognize it even if Jonah cannot.
I could only stomach 45 minutes because I am desperately trying to branch out from only listening to be Shapiro.This was not a round table at all, just a collection of snobs agreeing with each other. Bogus and boring
I thought the roundtable was crippled by the fact that it didn't address why voters might distrust election results. A short list might be: (1) A summer of democrat voters causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and several deaths with little to no consequences for them; (2) Russiagate that displayed the corruption of high level officials of the FBI, corporate media and intelligence communities; (3) mail in ballots that have an insecure chain of evidence. You normally do an outstanding job, but this one was a bit of a miss.
Love your podcasts Bari and very much value your work. However, it seems like your guests couldn't get over a certain amount of prissiness, and it is this deep-seated elitist disgust that is why Trump continues to have power. Yes, he and his supporters said bad stuff, and sure, some fakers freaked out on Jan 6 and the text messages revealed that. But the way your guests talked it was like a murder plot had been revealed. There is still an abject failure to connect with the root of why Trump supporters are angry, and to admit that the other side are equally nefarious, or perhaps worse because it is dressed up in messianic pouting. The point Jonah Goldberg made about the Sopranos reference and the 'intervention' actually speaks wonders about the elite mindset. 'Yes my side are bad, but your side are worse so all bets are off. We're close to civil war, we're so divided! But because we have God on our side, our divisiveness is actually good for the country.' I really found this frustrating to listen to. But thanks for the great quality podcasts and articles. xx
You state that you could never vote for a Republican because of that party's stance on abortion. Consider the following: a data analyst for the Bernie Sanders campaign, Ben Davis, wrote in an opinion piece in The Guardian stating:
"The Democratic party must reorient itself around radical democratic reforms and disempowering the supreme court, the Senate, and state governments. This is both necessary and inevitable. "
So let me ask, which party is the greater threat to our democracy and our Republic? If this is what the Democratic party starts moving towards, one might need to vote for opposing candidates. Disapproval with that party's positions on some issues, even some crucial issues, is secondary to that party's opposition to the authoritarianism proposed by the Democratic party.
This is the most critical issue facing America. Jonah has some of my money in his pocket. Kristen can always be counted on to be informative and insightful. Mr. Peters can always be counted on to out smug everyone else on any panel. Of the fifteen or so candidates in the field at the time Trump got into the race, I would have voted for any of them (did for Jeb) before I'd have voted for an unqualified Donald Trump. It took weekly lashings from my buddy Rebel Bob to convince me to vote for Trump. A pox (monkey) on both of their houses. Jonah is correct that both parties are weak as evidenced by the rise of the billionaires. If we cannot agree on how to conduct fair elections then we are doomed as a nation. America will cease to be.
One thing that disappointed me in the podcast was the constant mixing of different concepts. e.g. From the beginning line "A majority, or close to a majority of Republicans think Trump was cheated out of a fair election in 2020, and many of them think he straight up won." Being cheated out of a fair election is so different from actually winning. Thinking he was cheated practically concedes the loss.
But also, look at the bias in the framing. Here's the exact same information presented with a tweak: "Around half, or less than half of Republicans, think there was something unfair in the way Trump was treated by mainstream media in the run-up to the election. Of the less than half that think there was something unfair, some, but less than half, think he would have won if there wasn't election fraud as well."
29% of Registered voters are Republican. Less than half of less than half of that is below 7%. 7% of Americans believe Trump won, compared to 20% of Americans who believe there are extra terrestrials on earth today. (Google that if you don't believe it.)
My bigger issue: There are two conversations mixed together. One is based on observable facts that are problematic. Facebook and Twitter buried the Hunter Biden Laptop Story based on "government officials" telling them it was Russian disinformation. Or the way the Russiagate investigation went on and on as the FBI lied to judges to get warrants, pursued paths they knew were dead ends, etc. (Taibbi has great reporting on this whole sham.) We should be very concerned about these as true threats to democracy. If Google, Twitter and Facebook decided to work together to swing an election, they absolutely could. Isn't this unseemly? Isn't that unfair?
The other conversation is about totally crazy conspiracy theories that are unkillable with facts or logic. What do we do about those? Because Trump supporters don't have a monopoly on crazy conspiracy theories, and people are getting crazier all the time.
By mixing the two, the conversation doesn't really address either topic well.
actually it makes things worse as people can breezily wave off legitimate complaints, which of course feeds suspicion and resentment which make great fertilizer for conspiracy theories.
At the 13 minute point, one speaker says that Republicans did not make any serious objections to changes in voting procedures, like the ones in PA, before the election. This is nonsense. I was reading lots of complaints about this. I was also reading how frustrated many of us on the right were at how our side was not objecting enough to these changes.
This is wrong. I will assume the speaker is just ignorant. I find it frustrating that he dismisses these complaints so easily. Screw him.
You’re right, Hugh. I said the same in my comments above. But, I don’t say “screw him” . . . . I think how people are seeing events over the last six years is not simple. Why people now think as they do actually derives from a number of mental and emotional and ideological complexities.
While I was never one to seriously question the outcome of the election, I saw what people were concerned about and what they were assuming from what they witnessed, even if they made wrong conclusions. I did worry that things were going to get very ugly because people’s concerns (some quite warranted) were dismissed out of hand as “preposterous”. The people deserved better explanations and did not get them. Suddenly everyone bought into the notion that there was “no there there”. Some newscasters flipped on a dime from all in for Trump to denying any issue with the election--in ONE day. Those people no doubt feared for their jobs, if not their careers.
There were “theres there” to explain and I am certain that treated seriously, respectfully, and fully explained, many people would not today still be thinking the election was stolen. The concerns were not at all preposterous in the setting of broad changes to voting rules which democrats have been trying to do for years. A lot of people were objecting to changing rules and goal-posts and I don’t think it was all just about Covid but, true to form, the opposition latched right onto it as an excuse to have their way.
We also have to take into account--in terms of the backfire effect--Trump won the election because people were fed up with what the previous administration was doing. However popular as a likeable person Obama was, he wasn’t a good president. Then the minute Trump won, instead of the supposedly ‘deserving, anointed’ Hillary whose “turn” it was to occupy the WH (an absurd notion), the outraged left began creating false scandals launching everything they could to unseat him. Of course his supporters rose to fight for the guy who stood for them when the establishment did not.
As an aside, I probably come across as “right wing” because I am disappointed in this particular Common Sense discussion. I usually like Bari’s round-tables. I don’t think Trump was any great president either. I think he’s a big spending populist but he probably did not deserve a great deal of what was thrown at him. He also did some very good things that are being summarily and calculatingly undone.
But, I am independent and I try to stay sensible and above the politics. I observe the way the game has changed over many decades and I observe human psychology. If I’m siding with someone, it is sometimes the person on the left and sometimes the one on the right in any left-right battle. Solving our problems in this country or anywhere is, in my humble view, NEVER a matter of Left or Right. We, collectively, have aborted the promise of the gift of the Founders, and that is the biggest shame I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. I think many of our issues could have democratic and compromise solutions that would derive from employing our real democratic process as a representative republic. I’m an idealist because I believe we must have ideals to strive for. There is a flaw in our system somewhere that has permitted us to devolve to the depths we’re in today where each side is incapable of hearing the other, of understanding and of compromise. People are desperate to “win” instead of being desperate to do right by the WHOLE country. We are not capable of seeing our own scotomas and we are all mired into our own skewed and incomplete observations of reality. Each side is now lead by its extremes and each side views the other with disgust--any psychologist will tell you that’s an emotion that is impossible to move beyond.
To know this, all one has to do is consider what it would look like should Trump actually win back the office. I’m struggling to find an apt word for the image I have.
Well, I AM a lawyer so I could just as easily have written "sue him" but that is more trouble than it's worth. Thanks for the in depth comment! I enjoyed reading it.
One would be fair to have another roundtable asking the same questions about the Democratic Party. After all, lawmakers in that party have proposed legislation to pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College, and change the US Senate.
Jonah Goldberg...ugh. I've met him. He is funny, but he is an establishment Republican and an elitist. He has more in common with Democrats than he has with the modern working class that is taking over the GOP.
There is no evidence that Joe Biden would have lost the election, but there is lots of evidence that the election was not fair.
Here are the final two paragraphs from this story:
"From the perspective of Trump’s supporters, the entrenched bureaucracy and security state subverted their populist president from day one. The natural guardrails of the Fourth Estate were removed because the press was part of the operation. Election rules were changed in an unconstitutional manner that could only be challenged after the deed was done, when judges and officials would be playing chicken with a direct threat of burning cities. Political violence was legitimized and encouraged. Major newspapers and sitting presidents were banned from social media, while the opposition enjoyed free rein to promote stories that were discredited once it was too late to matter. Conservatives put these things together and concluded that, whatever happened on November 3, 2020, it was not a free and fair democratic election in any sense that would have had meaning before Donald J. Trump was a candidate.
Trump supporters were led down some rabbit holes. But they are absolutely right that the institutions and power centers of this country have been monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to prevent them getting it. I encourage people on the Left to recognize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in front of them. You’re not going to agree with the conservatives on everything. But if in 2004 I had told you that the majority of the GOP voter base would soon be seeing the folly of the Iraq War, becoming skeptical of state surveillance, and beginning to see the need for action to help the poor and working classes, you’d have told me such a thing would transform the country. Take the opportunity. These people are not demons, and they are ready to listen in a way they haven’t in a long, long time."
Thanks for pointing us to Darryl Coopers article which is a great description of how most republicans i know feel about the elites (DC and coasts), the media, and the election. It all started with the Russia-gate hoax. Most of us feel that what the elites did with the Russia hoax is a far greater danger to our "democracy" than Trump's lurching on Jan 6. The elites decided Trump should not have won and worked together to cripple his presidency. If the media (NYT for example) really want to understand why they are no longer trusted and why a majority of republicans and much of mainstream America support Trump even with all his flaws - read Cooper's article.
I gave Jonah over ten years of time and purchased his wonderful "Liberal Fascism" only to find out he turned on the one guy who actually did what NRO preached for decades. I am paying for Bari and refuse to give NRO, Bulwark, Dispatch a dime for a reason - she stands for something. Jonah has 20 year wars on his resume'. As someone who has been to war for this country it isn't a good thing.
Trump gained 12M votes and 'lost'. Right. Molly Ball at Time told us so. Common sense, pun intended. Doing my part becoming and election judge.
Bari - You would be better served including Michael Anton, Chris Buskirk, Roger Kimball, or Ned Ryun in discussions such as this. Respectfully.
100% agree with you on Jonah. I almost didn't listen to the podcast when I heard he would be the "conservative" voice. Interestingly Bari seems to have a far better handle on voter mistrust than Jonah.
How about David Horowitz and/or Brandon Straka? When you have a token conservative, it's good to have someone that conservatives think is conservative on the issue rather than liberals think is conservative.
The truth is, we do not have a democracy anymore. Somehow “The Left” obtained, metaphorically, nearly ALL the microphones and has been Dictating the country with them. Here’s my hyperbole on this situation: “The Left” took Orwell’s “1984” to be their Operating Manual.
We here can argue the semantics, but the fact is that the communication to the voters concerning the claims of stolen election was terrible! Everything I could find at the time and since simply listed the claims and denied their veracity. No explanation. Nothing was explained or debunked, and nowhere was it demonstrated why the claims were rejected or found to be untrue or unfounded. It was just decreed, one by one, that a claim was false, and each outlet just repeated it one after the other.
By no means was I unusual or an outlier in my desire to really know the truth of what happened. I brought this communication failure up multiple times; it landed on deaf ears. “The Left” had spoken and that was that. In the end, honest, concerned and truth-seeking people were made to look like fools! Those of us who wanted to see a real honest hearing on the matter never got it and the “The Left” had its decree spread far and wide by its Media as if it was Gospel itself. To hear the likes of Rachel Maddow speaking how hers is the party of democracy while all others comprise the party of open hostility to it. You can hear the disdain and disgust in her ignorant utterings. For her indoctrinated ilk, the First Amendment is there only for “The Left”. The truth is people like Maddow do not know what democracy IS. If things don’t go her way, it’s not democracy. The hyperbole is fully out of control. “Republicans,” for “The Left’s” mouthpiece, Maddow, has been made a dirty word and they are the Devil incarnate. Or, if not inherently evil, they are buffoons, uneducated, the unwashed.
For those of us on neither side (truly on the side of the democracy on which the country was founded) once again this phrase I coined for this phenomenon and impasse explains it:
“If one lives in the second dimension, one cannot conceive of the Third.” Those of us out here not drowning in that second dimension, struggle to get the foreign concepts of actual democracy through to those stuck in second and are hampered by their scotomas that apparently only Evolution can ever extract them from.
Broadly, we all have to consider the collective psychology of where we are finding ourselves today. Much of it is a broad-scale manifestation of “The Backfire Effect”.
JEREMY PETERS: For info, MANY republicans were speaking up about voting changes BEFORE the election was lost. But, thank you for pointing out that both sides have fringe erroneous views. Remember however, republicans are naturally always the underdog even when they have won because the Media is always against them. And, remember the “Backfire Effect” as relates to incessant telling republicans that their concerns are not legitimate.
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: I think you should walk your analysis back to how come Trump won his first election. Democrats have never taken any responsibility for their policies that alienated people which is what got us Trump. Weirdly, democrats (Hillary and Biden) have this bizarre idea that they “deserved” the presidency and that it was “their turn”. How in heck is that “democracy”?
Even without listening to this crap, just based on the few comments it drew, I can assure you that it's going to help Trump pick up thousands of new supporters.
Lori, _you're_ not the one who's confused. Good for you.
The supporters of Sanctuary Jurisdictions, breaking Federal Law, are concerned the Texas GOP may take some unknown action contrary to the Federal Executive? As I recall, California considered secession (I offered to assist, BTW). It is all theater.
During the 2020 election I watched VivaFrei on YouTube. Here's an example of the analysis. I wish Bari had asked Robert Barnes to be on the panel. Not because I found his remarks cogent, but also to see if someone could rebut what he's saying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCfyq8-Xz-k
I actually listened(great moderating, Bari) and maybe it is just me, but people like Jonah are maddening at best. I did not vote for Trump in the 2016 primary and immediately recognized my mistake. My mistake was not seeing how people like Jonah and the other gent on this cast have no connection with people who make their living creating things in the real world whether it be a hamburger or an automobile.
Trump is the first republican in my 53 years that controlled immigration; of which there were no semi-trailers full of cooked humans, no 40% of all female crossers raped, or drug cartels earning $18,000,000,000 in crossing fees, etc. That is the connection we have with Trump that is not shared with the UniParty who benefits from cheap labor(pubs) and new voters(dems). Millions of foreigner's coming into this country in short timeframes like what the Left is doing now destroys our national cohesiveness. That is what Trump recognized and why we support him, not because we are a cult of Trump; we are a cult of America and Trump is a leader that actually sacrificed 1/3 of his wealth implementing the People's will. That is just one example of how Trump was preserving the American Dream for all, not just his elite friends.
How are we better right now? We're not. The party of crime, medical terror, green energy terror, and racist terror is in charge. Recognize it even if Jonah cannot.
I could only stomach 45 minutes because I am desperately trying to branch out from only listening to be Shapiro.This was not a round table at all, just a collection of snobs agreeing with each other. Bogus and boring
Why bother
I thought the roundtable was crippled by the fact that it didn't address why voters might distrust election results. A short list might be: (1) A summer of democrat voters causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and several deaths with little to no consequences for them; (2) Russiagate that displayed the corruption of high level officials of the FBI, corporate media and intelligence communities; (3) mail in ballots that have an insecure chain of evidence. You normally do an outstanding job, but this one was a bit of a miss.
Love your podcasts Bari and very much value your work. However, it seems like your guests couldn't get over a certain amount of prissiness, and it is this deep-seated elitist disgust that is why Trump continues to have power. Yes, he and his supporters said bad stuff, and sure, some fakers freaked out on Jan 6 and the text messages revealed that. But the way your guests talked it was like a murder plot had been revealed. There is still an abject failure to connect with the root of why Trump supporters are angry, and to admit that the other side are equally nefarious, or perhaps worse because it is dressed up in messianic pouting. The point Jonah Goldberg made about the Sopranos reference and the 'intervention' actually speaks wonders about the elite mindset. 'Yes my side are bad, but your side are worse so all bets are off. We're close to civil war, we're so divided! But because we have God on our side, our divisiveness is actually good for the country.' I really found this frustrating to listen to. But thanks for the great quality podcasts and articles. xx
You state that you could never vote for a Republican because of that party's stance on abortion. Consider the following: a data analyst for the Bernie Sanders campaign, Ben Davis, wrote in an opinion piece in The Guardian stating:
"The Democratic party must reorient itself around radical democratic reforms and disempowering the supreme court, the Senate, and state governments. This is both necessary and inevitable. "
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/15/democrats-are-facing-asymmetrical-warfare-its-time-to-wake-up-and-fight-back
So let me ask, which party is the greater threat to our democracy and our Republic? If this is what the Democratic party starts moving towards, one might need to vote for opposing candidates. Disapproval with that party's positions on some issues, even some crucial issues, is secondary to that party's opposition to the authoritarianism proposed by the Democratic party.
Why am I paying you to read ads to me?
This is the most critical issue facing America. Jonah has some of my money in his pocket. Kristen can always be counted on to be informative and insightful. Mr. Peters can always be counted on to out smug everyone else on any panel. Of the fifteen or so candidates in the field at the time Trump got into the race, I would have voted for any of them (did for Jeb) before I'd have voted for an unqualified Donald Trump. It took weekly lashings from my buddy Rebel Bob to convince me to vote for Trump. A pox (monkey) on both of their houses. Jonah is correct that both parties are weak as evidenced by the rise of the billionaires. If we cannot agree on how to conduct fair elections then we are doomed as a nation. America will cease to be.
Bari. A book was mentioned near the end of this podcast. The word rage was in the title. Will you provide title and author?
One thing that disappointed me in the podcast was the constant mixing of different concepts. e.g. From the beginning line "A majority, or close to a majority of Republicans think Trump was cheated out of a fair election in 2020, and many of them think he straight up won." Being cheated out of a fair election is so different from actually winning. Thinking he was cheated practically concedes the loss.
But also, look at the bias in the framing. Here's the exact same information presented with a tweak: "Around half, or less than half of Republicans, think there was something unfair in the way Trump was treated by mainstream media in the run-up to the election. Of the less than half that think there was something unfair, some, but less than half, think he would have won if there wasn't election fraud as well."
29% of Registered voters are Republican. Less than half of less than half of that is below 7%. 7% of Americans believe Trump won, compared to 20% of Americans who believe there are extra terrestrials on earth today. (Google that if you don't believe it.)
My bigger issue: There are two conversations mixed together. One is based on observable facts that are problematic. Facebook and Twitter buried the Hunter Biden Laptop Story based on "government officials" telling them it was Russian disinformation. Or the way the Russiagate investigation went on and on as the FBI lied to judges to get warrants, pursued paths they knew were dead ends, etc. (Taibbi has great reporting on this whole sham.) We should be very concerned about these as true threats to democracy. If Google, Twitter and Facebook decided to work together to swing an election, they absolutely could. Isn't this unseemly? Isn't that unfair?
The other conversation is about totally crazy conspiracy theories that are unkillable with facts or logic. What do we do about those? Because Trump supporters don't have a monopoly on crazy conspiracy theories, and people are getting crazier all the time.
By mixing the two, the conversation doesn't really address either topic well.
actually it makes things worse as people can breezily wave off legitimate complaints, which of course feeds suspicion and resentment which make great fertilizer for conspiracy theories.
At the 13 minute point, one speaker says that Republicans did not make any serious objections to changes in voting procedures, like the ones in PA, before the election. This is nonsense. I was reading lots of complaints about this. I was also reading how frustrated many of us on the right were at how our side was not objecting enough to these changes.
This is wrong. I will assume the speaker is just ignorant. I find it frustrating that he dismisses these complaints so easily. Screw him.
You’re right, Hugh. I said the same in my comments above. But, I don’t say “screw him” . . . . I think how people are seeing events over the last six years is not simple. Why people now think as they do actually derives from a number of mental and emotional and ideological complexities.
While I was never one to seriously question the outcome of the election, I saw what people were concerned about and what they were assuming from what they witnessed, even if they made wrong conclusions. I did worry that things were going to get very ugly because people’s concerns (some quite warranted) were dismissed out of hand as “preposterous”. The people deserved better explanations and did not get them. Suddenly everyone bought into the notion that there was “no there there”. Some newscasters flipped on a dime from all in for Trump to denying any issue with the election--in ONE day. Those people no doubt feared for their jobs, if not their careers.
There were “theres there” to explain and I am certain that treated seriously, respectfully, and fully explained, many people would not today still be thinking the election was stolen. The concerns were not at all preposterous in the setting of broad changes to voting rules which democrats have been trying to do for years. A lot of people were objecting to changing rules and goal-posts and I don’t think it was all just about Covid but, true to form, the opposition latched right onto it as an excuse to have their way.
We also have to take into account--in terms of the backfire effect--Trump won the election because people were fed up with what the previous administration was doing. However popular as a likeable person Obama was, he wasn’t a good president. Then the minute Trump won, instead of the supposedly ‘deserving, anointed’ Hillary whose “turn” it was to occupy the WH (an absurd notion), the outraged left began creating false scandals launching everything they could to unseat him. Of course his supporters rose to fight for the guy who stood for them when the establishment did not.
As an aside, I probably come across as “right wing” because I am disappointed in this particular Common Sense discussion. I usually like Bari’s round-tables. I don’t think Trump was any great president either. I think he’s a big spending populist but he probably did not deserve a great deal of what was thrown at him. He also did some very good things that are being summarily and calculatingly undone.
But, I am independent and I try to stay sensible and above the politics. I observe the way the game has changed over many decades and I observe human psychology. If I’m siding with someone, it is sometimes the person on the left and sometimes the one on the right in any left-right battle. Solving our problems in this country or anywhere is, in my humble view, NEVER a matter of Left or Right. We, collectively, have aborted the promise of the gift of the Founders, and that is the biggest shame I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. I think many of our issues could have democratic and compromise solutions that would derive from employing our real democratic process as a representative republic. I’m an idealist because I believe we must have ideals to strive for. There is a flaw in our system somewhere that has permitted us to devolve to the depths we’re in today where each side is incapable of hearing the other, of understanding and of compromise. People are desperate to “win” instead of being desperate to do right by the WHOLE country. We are not capable of seeing our own scotomas and we are all mired into our own skewed and incomplete observations of reality. Each side is now lead by its extremes and each side views the other with disgust--any psychologist will tell you that’s an emotion that is impossible to move beyond.
To know this, all one has to do is consider what it would look like should Trump actually win back the office. I’m struggling to find an apt word for the image I have.
Well, I AM a lawyer so I could just as easily have written "sue him" but that is more trouble than it's worth. Thanks for the in depth comment! I enjoyed reading it.
One would be fair to have another roundtable asking the same questions about the Democratic Party. After all, lawmakers in that party have proposed legislation to pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College, and change the US Senate.
Jonah Goldberg...ugh. I've met him. He is funny, but he is an establishment Republican and an elitist. He has more in common with Democrats than he has with the modern working class that is taking over the GOP.
There is no evidence that Joe Biden would have lost the election, but there is lots of evidence that the election was not fair.
https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/author-of-the-mega-viral-thread-on
Here are the final two paragraphs from this story:
"From the perspective of Trump’s supporters, the entrenched bureaucracy and security state subverted their populist president from day one. The natural guardrails of the Fourth Estate were removed because the press was part of the operation. Election rules were changed in an unconstitutional manner that could only be challenged after the deed was done, when judges and officials would be playing chicken with a direct threat of burning cities. Political violence was legitimized and encouraged. Major newspapers and sitting presidents were banned from social media, while the opposition enjoyed free rein to promote stories that were discredited once it was too late to matter. Conservatives put these things together and concluded that, whatever happened on November 3, 2020, it was not a free and fair democratic election in any sense that would have had meaning before Donald J. Trump was a candidate.
Trump supporters were led down some rabbit holes. But they are absolutely right that the institutions and power centers of this country have been monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to prevent them getting it. I encourage people on the Left to recognize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in front of them. You’re not going to agree with the conservatives on everything. But if in 2004 I had told you that the majority of the GOP voter base would soon be seeing the folly of the Iraq War, becoming skeptical of state surveillance, and beginning to see the need for action to help the poor and working classes, you’d have told me such a thing would transform the country. Take the opportunity. These people are not demons, and they are ready to listen in a way they haven’t in a long, long time."
Thanks for pointing us to Darryl Coopers article which is a great description of how most republicans i know feel about the elites (DC and coasts), the media, and the election. It all started with the Russia-gate hoax. Most of us feel that what the elites did with the Russia hoax is a far greater danger to our "democracy" than Trump's lurching on Jan 6. The elites decided Trump should not have won and worked together to cripple his presidency. If the media (NYT for example) really want to understand why they are no longer trusted and why a majority of republicans and much of mainstream America support Trump even with all his flaws - read Cooper's article.
I gave Jonah over ten years of time and purchased his wonderful "Liberal Fascism" only to find out he turned on the one guy who actually did what NRO preached for decades. I am paying for Bari and refuse to give NRO, Bulwark, Dispatch a dime for a reason - she stands for something. Jonah has 20 year wars on his resume'. As someone who has been to war for this country it isn't a good thing.
Trump gained 12M votes and 'lost'. Right. Molly Ball at Time told us so. Common sense, pun intended. Doing my part becoming and election judge.
Bari - You would be better served including Michael Anton, Chris Buskirk, Roger Kimball, or Ned Ryun in discussions such as this. Respectfully.
Better yet, add Daryll Cooper.
100% agree with you on Jonah. I almost didn't listen to the podcast when I heard he would be the "conservative" voice. Interestingly Bari seems to have a far better handle on voter mistrust than Jonah.
Okay, you convinced me to listen. If anything, I have to do it for Bari :-D.
How about David Horowitz and/or Brandon Straka? When you have a token conservative, it's good to have someone that conservatives think is conservative on the issue rather than liberals think is conservative.
Absolutely! Both would be great, especially since they left the Leftist regimes...
add Molly Hemingway
Absolutely! Great point.
The truth is, we do not have a democracy anymore. Somehow “The Left” obtained, metaphorically, nearly ALL the microphones and has been Dictating the country with them. Here’s my hyperbole on this situation: “The Left” took Orwell’s “1984” to be their Operating Manual.
We here can argue the semantics, but the fact is that the communication to the voters concerning the claims of stolen election was terrible! Everything I could find at the time and since simply listed the claims and denied their veracity. No explanation. Nothing was explained or debunked, and nowhere was it demonstrated why the claims were rejected or found to be untrue or unfounded. It was just decreed, one by one, that a claim was false, and each outlet just repeated it one after the other.
By no means was I unusual or an outlier in my desire to really know the truth of what happened. I brought this communication failure up multiple times; it landed on deaf ears. “The Left” had spoken and that was that. In the end, honest, concerned and truth-seeking people were made to look like fools! Those of us who wanted to see a real honest hearing on the matter never got it and the “The Left” had its decree spread far and wide by its Media as if it was Gospel itself. To hear the likes of Rachel Maddow speaking how hers is the party of democracy while all others comprise the party of open hostility to it. You can hear the disdain and disgust in her ignorant utterings. For her indoctrinated ilk, the First Amendment is there only for “The Left”. The truth is people like Maddow do not know what democracy IS. If things don’t go her way, it’s not democracy. The hyperbole is fully out of control. “Republicans,” for “The Left’s” mouthpiece, Maddow, has been made a dirty word and they are the Devil incarnate. Or, if not inherently evil, they are buffoons, uneducated, the unwashed.
For those of us on neither side (truly on the side of the democracy on which the country was founded) once again this phrase I coined for this phenomenon and impasse explains it:
“If one lives in the second dimension, one cannot conceive of the Third.” Those of us out here not drowning in that second dimension, struggle to get the foreign concepts of actual democracy through to those stuck in second and are hampered by their scotomas that apparently only Evolution can ever extract them from.
Broadly, we all have to consider the collective psychology of where we are finding ourselves today. Much of it is a broad-scale manifestation of “The Backfire Effect”.
JEREMY PETERS: For info, MANY republicans were speaking up about voting changes BEFORE the election was lost. But, thank you for pointing out that both sides have fringe erroneous views. Remember however, republicans are naturally always the underdog even when they have won because the Media is always against them. And, remember the “Backfire Effect” as relates to incessant telling republicans that their concerns are not legitimate.
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: I think you should walk your analysis back to how come Trump won his first election. Democrats have never taken any responsibility for their policies that alienated people which is what got us Trump. Weirdly, democrats (Hillary and Biden) have this bizarre idea that they “deserved” the presidency and that it was “their turn”. How in heck is that “democracy”?