Designed-in countermajoritarian features contribute to minority rule Michelle Goldberg speaks with Harvard government professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. The authors of “How Democracies Die” (2018) released “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point” this morning. What shocked them since 2018 was how swiflty the GOP slid sown the behavioral sink into insurrection. They did not consider the Republican Party an authoritarian party in 2018, and “did not expect it to transform so quickly and so thoroughly.” Goldberg writes: “Tyranny of the Minority” is their attempt to make sense of how American democracy eroded so fast. “Societal diversity, cultural backlash and extreme-right parties are ubiquitous across established Western democracies,” they write. But in recent years, only in America has a defeated leader attempted a coup. And only in America is the coup leader likely to once again be the nominee of a major party. “Why did America, alone among rich established democracies, come to the brink?” they ask.
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But he did it anyway McCarthy doesn’t take questions. He told Breitbart 11 days ago he wouldn’t launch an impeachment inquiry without a House vote. Opening one now unilaterally is a major reversal for the speaker. It comes as he doesn’t appear to have the votes to proceed. pic.twitter.com/H0rSVvqLlt — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 12, 2023 McCarthy pulled the trigger as we knew he would. He didn’t have the votes for a real inquiry, however, which means that the new rules they say they need will have to be litigated because a full vote of the House is required. So, this may end up being yet another performance art project which the extremists hope will make voters assume there must be something to it and write off Trump’s corruptions and criminality because “both sides do it.” It’s ridiculous but we expected nothing less. Now let’s see if McCarthy bought himself at least an extension to get the government funded. I won’t be surprised if they say, “that’s nice, but we also need to have the DOJ and the “woke” Pentagon de-funded.
In his newsletter today, Dan Pfeiffer looks at the bizarre phenomenon of a presidential candidate getting much more popular after he’s indicted four times: A number of theories surfaced to explain this unexpected and deeply concerning outcome — Republicans are a cult, Ron DeSantis sucks, etc. Elections are dynamic enterprises. There are a lot of interrelated factors that lead to an outcome. It’s not as simple as “Ron DeSantis sucks,” even if he is one of the most maladroit candidates in modern political history. Here are X findings from recent polls that help explain why Republican voters are flocking to Trump as his likelihood of spending the rest of his life in prison skyrockets: 1. Republicans Trust Trump Over Everyone Else Donald Trump is one of the most prolific and obvious liars the world has ever known. Here’s how the Washington Post fact checker summarized Trump’s presidency: Trump’s dishonesty is so blatant that most Americans find it disqualifying, but Trump’s voters see only qualifications. They do not believe he is dishonest. They think he is the only honest man in public life.
Krugman discusses why people people believe things that just aren’t true: Remember “American carnage?” Donald Trump’s 2017 inaugural address was peculiar in many ways, but one of the most striking oddities was his obsession with a problem — urban crime — that had greatly diminished over the past generation. For reasons we still don’t fully understand, violent crime in America fell rapidly from around 1990 to the mid-2010s: True, there was a crime surge after the pandemic, which now seems to be ebbing. But that lay in the future. Trump talked as if crime was running rampant as he spoke. Yet if Trump had false beliefs about trends in crime, he had plenty of company. Gallup polls Americans about crime every year, and all through the great decline in violent crime a majority of Americans said that crime was increasing: Were the crime statistics misleading? Homicide numbers are pretty solid. And people behaved as if crime were falling; notably, there was a wave of gentrification as affluent Americans moved into newly safe central cities. But all the same, people told pollsters that they believed crime was rising.
You’ve probably already heard about the Ukraine/Russia controversy surrounding Walter Isaacson’s new book about Elon Musk. (If not, you can click this link.) But there’s a lot more in the book apparently, which is discussed here in this piece by Matt Pearce in the LA Times: Musk is already one of the most well-known and extensively covered leaders in American corporate life (and one of its most unavoidable figures on the service he has renamed X). Isaacson’s biography is a Musk agonistes: a portrait of a (largely) self-made, emotionally volatile entrepreneur from South Africa who has a tortured relationship with his father and an addiction to crises of the self-inflicted variety.
Josh Marshall has a smart column on the right’s attempt to jettison the phrase “pro-life” because it’s toxic.(As a twitter wag quipped, “when ‘pro-life’ is a losing slogan for you, you’ve got bigger problems.”) Marshall points out just how thoroughly the anti-abortion movement has been pushed back on its heels: It now seems clear that the only thing that will be at all memorable about the GOP’s first presidential debate of the 2024 cycle on August 23rd will be that brief speech from Mike Pence in which he staked his campaign on his bible-rooted, evangelical, pro-life record and endorsed a 15-week national ban. I remember finding it stunning in the moment. Kate Riga took it up the next day. The U.S. doesn’t keep perfect data on abortion care in the United States. The most readily available numbers look at the number of abortions on or before the 13th week (91.1%) and 21st week (98.7%). Even this anti-abortion rights group says that 6% of abortions take place on or after week 15, for instance.
STEVE HILTON (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): I mean, of course it’s laughable, the Biden aspect. Almost everything with Biden is laughable. But it’s really serious, it’s really infuriating, Harris. Because we never had what I and many others called for, which is a completely objective, independent assessment of the COVID policies that were implemented to see what worked and didn’t. We never had that. And so as a result we are now back to these absurd, preposterous kind of witchcraft and voodoo masquerading as public health from these tin-pot fascists and their authoritarianism, exactly as Rand Paul was talking about. We have to resist this. We have to resist it at every level, as J.D. Vance is doing at the federal level, we have to resist this at the state level, the local level, the individual level. We cannot let them go back to this madness. Here’s more: Uhm, toddlers can have total hysterics when you try to put their pants on or wash their hands. They’re toddlers. So are these right wingers who are still having tantrums over wearing masks. And they are wrong about the efficacy of wearing them.
The looming impeachment has a grander purpose Noah Berlatsky writes: Republicans have openly admitted that their efforts to impeach President Joe Biden — which will begin in earnest this week as House members return to DC from summer break — are in bad faith. They don’t just want to tarnish Biden. They want to tarnish the impeachment process itself. As the GOP has become increasingly authoritarian and anti-democracy, Republicans have become increasingly committed to undermining and mocking forms of democratic accountability. A nakedly partisan and clownish impeachment is useful because it signals to voters that all impeachments are clown shows, and all impeachments are partisan. That exculpates former President Donald Trump and delegitimizes resistance to him should he win the presidency again. It’s absolutely the case that they are doing this for Trump because he has demanded it. That goes without saying. But since they are all bent on destroying democracy and the constitutional order, de-legitimizing the impeachment process is a no brainer.
Think again A children’s book about a lion raised by two men has been banned in Florida because right-wing activists suspect the men might be gay – despite nothing in the book suggesting they have any romantic relationship, according to a report. The Florida Department of Education released new information about books that were banned or temporarily removed pending investigation in various county school systems as part of the state’s new laws making it easier to challenge material in a school library, reported the Tallahassee Democrat. One of the books was “Christian, the Hugging Lion.” According to the report, schools in Manatee County, a conservative community just south of Tampa, withdrew the book that’s based on the true story about a pair of men who raise a lion in their London apartment, then are lovingly remembered by the animal when they go to Africa to see him years later. Nothing in the book indicates the two men are in a same-sex relationship — but activists speculated that they might be, which was enough for a complaint about the book.
They’re making every effort to prove it First thing this morning, up pops a Kaitlan Collins CNN interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). Collins posts: Rep. Nancy Mace says she supports a House impeachment inquiry. Asked isn’t it supposed to be the evidence that leads you to pursue an impeachment inquiry, Mace responds, “That’s what the inquiry is for, to get more evidence.” Marcy Wheeler (@emptywheel from Ireland) responds: BREAKING: @NancyMace admits, 1) She hasn’t read Biden’s tax releases, which unlike Trump, Biden releases 2) she’s willing to engage in a constitutional abomination of impeaching BECAUSE there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. Trump wants his retribution NOW Let’s cut to the chase. Digby summarized what’s behind this nonsense on Monday: It’s absolutely the case that they are doing this for Trump because he has demanded it. That goes without saying. But since they are all bent on destroying democracy and the constitutional order, de-legitimizing the impeachment process is a no brainer.