Heather Cox Richardson sees something more ominous in Nikki Haley’s failure to mention slavery as “a cause” or “the cause” of the Civil War. She sees the death of what were once Republican Party ideals and the emergence of new style of authoritarianism, closely linked to parties that have effectively squelched the rights of their people.
When asked at a town hall on Wednesday to identify the cause of the United States Civil War, presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley answered that the cause “was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do…. I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are…. And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.”
Haley has correctly been lambasted for her rewriting of history. The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, was quite clear about the cause of the Civil War. Stephens explicitly rejected the idea embraced by U.S. politicians from the revolutionary period onward that human enslavement was “wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.” Instead, he declared: “Our new government is founded upon…the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.”
President Joe Biden put the cause of the Civil War even more succinctly: “It was about slavery.”
Haley has been backpedaling ever since—as well as suggesting that the question was somehow a “gotcha” question from a Democrat, as if it was a difficult question to answer—but her answer was not simply bad history or an unwillingness to offend potential voters, as some have suggested. It was the death knell of the Republican Party.
That party formed in the 1850s to stand against what was known as the Slave Power, a small group of elite enslavers who had come to dominate first the Democratic Party and then, through it, the presidency, Supreme Court, and Senate. When northern Democrats in the House of Representatives caved to pressure to allow enslavement into western lands from which it had been prohibited since 1820, northerners of all political stripes recognized that it was only a question of time until elite enslavers took over the West, joined with lawmakers from southern slave states, overwhelmed the northern free states in the House of Representatives, and made enslavement national.
So in 1854, after Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed the spread of enslavement into previously protected western lands, northerners abandoned their old parties and came together first as “anti-Nebraska” coalitions and then, by 1856, as the Republican Party.
At first their only goal was to stop the Slave Power, but in 1859, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln articulated an ideology for the new party. In contrast to southern Democrats, who insisted that a successful society required leaders to dominate workers and that the government must limit itself to defending those leaders because its only domestic role was the protection of property, Lincoln envisioned a new kind of government, based on a new economy.
Lincoln saw a society that moved forward thanks not to rich people, but to the innovation of men just starting out. Such men produced more than they and their families could consume, and their accumulated capital would employ shoemakers and storekeepers. Those businessmen, in turn, would support a few industrialists, who would begin the cycle again by hiring other men just starting out. Rather than remaining small and simply protecting property, Lincoln and his fellow Republicans argued, the government should clear the way for those at the bottom of the economy, making sure they had access to resources, education, and the internal improvements that would enable them to reach markets.
When the leaders of the Confederacy seceded to start their own nation based in their own hierarchical society, the Republicans in charge of the United States government were free to put their theory into practice. For a nominal fee, they sold farmers land that the government in the past would have sold to speculators; created state colleges, railroads, national money, and income taxes; and promoted immigration.
Finally, with the Civil War over and the Union restored on their terms, in 1865 they ended the institution of human enslavement except as punishment for crime (an important exception) and in 1868 they added the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution to make clear that the federal government had power to override state laws that enforced inequality among different Americans. In 1870 they created the Department of Justice to ensure that all American citizens enjoyed the equal protection of the laws.
In the years after the Civil War, the Republican vision of a harmony of economic interest among all Americans quickly swung toward the idea of protecting those at the top of society, with the argument that industrial leaders were the ones who created jobs for urban workers. Ever since, the party has alternated between Lincoln’s theory that the government must work for those at the bottom and the theory of the so-called robber barons, who echoed the elite enslavers’ idea that the government must protect the wealthy.
During the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt reclaimed Lincoln’s philosophy and argued for a strong government to rein in the industrialists and financiers who dominated society; a half-century later, Dwight Eisenhower followed the lead of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt and used the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights.
After each progressive president, the party swung toward protecting property. In the modern era the swing begun under Richard Nixon gained momentum with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Since then the party has focused on deregulation, tax cuts, privatization, and taking power away from the federal government and turning it back over to the states, while maintaining that market forces, rather than government policies, should drive society.
But those ideas were not generally popular, so to win elections, the party welcomed white evangelical Christians into a coalition, promising them legislation that would restore traditional society, relegating women and people of color back to the subservience the law enforced before the 1950s. But it seems they never really intended for that party base to gain control.
The small-government idea was the party’s philosophy when Donald Trump came down the escalator in June 2015 to announce he was running for president, and his 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy indicated he would follow in that vein. But his presidency quickly turned the Republican base into a right-wing movement loyal to Trump himself, and he was both eager to get away from legal trouble and impeachments and determined to exact revenge on those who did not do his bidding. The power in the party shifted from those trying to protect wealthy Americans to Trump, who increasingly aligned with foreign autocrats.
That realignment has taken off since Trump left office in 2021 and his base wrested power from the party’s former leaders. Leaders in Trump’s right-wing movement have increasingly embraced the concept of “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” as articulated by Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin or Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has demolished Hungary’s democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship. On the campaign trail lately, Trump has taken to echoing Putin and Orbán directly.
Those leaders insist that the equality at the heart of democracy destroys a nation by welcoming immigrants, which undermines national purity, and by treating women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people as equal to white, heteronormative men. Their focus on what they call “traditional values” has won staunch supporters among the right-wing white evangelical community in the U.S.
Ironically, MAGA Republicans, whose name comes from Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again,” want the United States of America, one of the world’s great superpowers, to sign onto the program of a landlocked country of fewer than 10 million people in central Europe.
MAGA’s determination to impose white Christian nationalism on the United States of America is a rejection of the ideology of the Republican Party in all its phases. Rather than either an active government that defends equal rights and opportunity or a small government that protects property and relies on market forces, which Republicans stood for as recently as eight years ago, today’s Republicans advocate a strong government that imposes religious rules on society.
They back strict abortion bans, book bans, and attacks on minorities and LGBTQ+ people. Last year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis directly used the state government to threaten Disney into complying with his anti-LGBTQ+ stance rather than reacting to popular support for LGBTQ+ rights. Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey early this month used the government to go after political opposition, launching an investigation into Media Matters for America after the watchdog organization reported that the social media platform X was placing advertising next to antisemitic content. “I’m fighting to ensure progressive tyrants masquerading as news outlets cannot manipulate the marketplace in order to wipe out free speech,” Bailey said.
Domestically, the new ideology of MAGA means forcing the majority to live under the rules of a small minority; internationally, it means support for a global authoritarian movement. MAGA Republicans’ current refusal to fund Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression until the administration agrees to draconian immigration laws—which they are also refusing to participate in crafting—is not only a gift to Putin. It also suggests to any foreign government that U.S. foreign policy is changeable so long as a foreign government succeeds in influencing U.S. lawmakers. Under this system, American global leadership will no longer be viable.
When Nikki Haley said the cause of the Civil War “was how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do,” she did more than avoid the word “slavery” to pander to MAGA Republicans who refuse to recognize the role of race in shaping our history. She rejected the long and once grand history of the Republican Party and announced its death to the world.
—
“death of the GOP”
26 Republican governors
24 Democratic governors
US Senate
49 GOP
48 Dems with 3 independents voting Democratic
I think that Heather was referring to the death of the mainstream GOP, which attracted people with intellect and ideals in the Lincoln tradition. Lincoln would be appalled by MAGA. Remember that Nixon created EPA and affirmative action. Today’s MAGA hate both.
“mainstream GOP” from 50 to 150 years ago?
Linda, yes, the “old” GOP represented respect for tradition, norms, community and continuity. They did not make war on the public schools or on the right to vote. They were staunchly anti-Communist. I served on a national commission to prevent the integrity of voting rights in 2001. Half the commission was Democratic, Hal was Republican. Everyone—without exception—believed that every adult had the right to vote, and all impediments to vote should be eliminated.
The perpetual echo was: everyone should vote and every vote should be counted.
No MAGAs on the panel.
Rev. Wendell Griffen’s writings about the faithful and democracy, published at Baptist News Global, provides some insight about Trump’s followers. Griffen is a former judge in Little Rock, Ark. Currently, his church is New Millennium Baptist Church. One of his articles is, “A brief history the hateful faithful’s threat to democracy through the Supreme Court.”
In the central states, people have known since, at least the time of MLK, that the Republican Party attracts racists and, that it is a party that serves landowners and not, labor.
Richardson’s informed view from the educational foundation she received at Philips Exeter and Harvard, now teaching at Boston College.
Of course every individual whoever attended Phillips Exeter and/or Harvard must be morally and ethically challenged. How about citing evidence of malfeasance rather than condemning with innuendo.
She is so brilliant. And so well educated and insightful. I LOVE reading her. Her and Timothy Snyder.
sped
Your wish has been granted-
the political writers, the staffs at DC think tanks, university presidents (private and public), US senators, SCOTUS jurists (and, the clerks they select), the generational richest 1%, etc. – outsized representation by graduates of elite universities-
the US as monarchy
An excerpt from a novel by Rosemary Hennigan
“Privilege like this attracted more privilege, success more success….It was easy to talk about human rights and equality in cushioned seats in paneled lecture halls, but one way or another, it was wealth that got us in the door, the hard work and the grades moot without the means to pay the hefty entrance fee. It didn’t seem right that the people making, writing, and adjudicating our laws inevitably came from, or acquired, a privilege most people could only dream of.”
Hennigan could have added, the rarefied experience renders those in the cloister unable to see what is beyond.
“Hennigan could have added, the rarefied experience renders those in the cloister unable to see what is beyond.”
And this young Irish writer who benefited from a prestigious education is therefore qualified to use her broad writing brush to characterize all people who have had the good fortune to attend prestigious schools (except, of course, for those few scholarship individuals who for some unknown reason think it worthwhile to go to these schools)? I hope she would find your comment rather “cloistered” itself.
My point about Robert Kagan and Richardson was not about ethics, it was about, respectively, Kagan identifying an all-inclusive list of Trump’s supporters while omitting the religious right voters and, Richardson pronouncing as dead, a party that currently has (with no predictions of major change by other pundits), the majority of Governors and US Senators.
Btw, what percentage of state legislatures are controlled by the GOP?
My suggestion to account for their viewpoints which defy ample evidence known by others, is their situational framework.
If Sped speculates otherwise, it might inform the opinions of blog comment readers like me.
Most would agree that Ivy League educations and/or connections facilitate opportunities to write for the top publications in the nation unlike the credentials of writers at small circulation sites like Baptist Global News which published an article about a Richardson omission (see comment below at 11:51).
Two situational characteristics- (1) religionists on the east coast largely vote Democratic and, in the electoral college-rich central states, they vote GOP. People in the central states know the GOP is not dead.
Considering the Republican small state advantage advantage they should be doing a lot better.
The ups and downs of the Republican Party, notwithstanding, the issue we face in interceding in the march to fascism, what the Democrats will do. They need to change course. The Republican-lite of the last 3 decades failed. Too many see no politicians that are on their side and may sit out the next existential election.
I share your concerns. Biden is down in the polls for both the young and people of color. Nobody knows the impact of third party candidates or some changes to how primaries operate some states. While these groups are tired of neoliberal Democrats, they may inadvertently help the MAGA maniacs win.
RT, check the polls at Real Clear Politics, a conservative site. Rasmussen is the pollster that usually has good numbers for GOP.
The Republican-lite of the last 3 decades failed.
YES!!!!!
Great column! Happy New Year, Cali Sent from my iPad
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Thank you, Cali. Happy 2024!
About Richardson (and, the earlier post by Wagner)
“Richardson’s analysis did not go far enough…she did not mention the ‘hateful faithful…'” (Baptist News Global, Jan 4, 2023, “Epiphany, GOP Dysfunction and Supplementing What Richardson Did Not Mention”
I loathe Trump, but Haley or no Haley, he is GETTING into office. When this thing goes to SCOTUS, the debauched justices will vote in his favor to compel states to keep him on the ballot. He has 80 million+ supporters who love his working-common-man rhetoric, and they are eager and motivated to vote. The Democrats have had decades to build a movement of economic paradigm shifts, and they are not interested in doing so. Their stand on labor rights, higher education, public education (Obama, Clinton), and healthcare have been far less than tepid. They have been good for identity politics, which is fine in my book, but there’s a lot more to being a democracy. People like Pelosi and Obama saying we can’t have a heavily regulated or nationalized healthcare system because we are not a socialist country. And then Pelosi declaring herself in front of Leslie Stahl to be a “progressive” on 60 Minutes. This is what happens when there is no true party any more to represent the interests and needs of working class people, who eventually turn to anyone who says exactly the things they want to hear . . . . . until it is all or will be too late.
CEEL, thanks for your comment.
Politicians like Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Schumer, Bill Clinton etc. prevent(ed) the nation from having a party of the people. Or, the financial system that they rely on to be elected, stops the nation from overthrowing the 400 richest families who have and continue to govern the US.
Biden needs to step aside. Another Trump presidency would be a catastrophe for the entire world.
Biden is not stepping aside.
For relief, look at the site Real Clear Politics, which sums up all polls.
. According to RealClearPolitics, the latest poll average for the 2024 general election between Trump and Biden shows that Trump is leading with 46.8% of the votes, while Biden has 44.5%1. However, it’s important to note that polling predictions can be wrong 2.
Bob, who will run instead of him? Is there another Bernie or populist?
Warnock, Buttigieg, Newsom, or my fav, Al Franken
Pelosi and Schumer don’t/didn’t want competition that will/would harm their positions and wealthy associates so, the pipeline of progressives hasn’t been nurtured. Then, there’s the question of where would progressives’ campaign funds come from.
Best bet- Whitner or Beshears.
Agree, strong candidates, both.
Well said. All I know is that progressives like Bernie, AOC and Fetterman are all in for Biden. My gut is telling me he has made a deal with them for some good progressive policy in a second term, but maybe I’m just wishfully thinking.
I hope so. But I’m scared to death. He could well lose.
Good progressive policy can’t happen unless Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress. The GOP controls the House now and it is in chaos. They have been unable to agree on anything.
And, also needed, a Supreme Court that has jurists that aren’t activists for the right wing
The ugly folks who represent the now Repugnican Party love to refer to themselves as “the party of Lincoln” even though they have retreated from everything that the party stood for at its inception and now represent the precise opposite. It is now the party of fat cats and ignorant racists.
I agree . . .
“Warnock, Buttigieg, Newsom, or my fav, Al Franken”
And in what world do you think any of them could mount a successful campaign in 9 months? I would wager that they are far less well known than you seem to think. By the way, I love Al Franken.
Find me someone 20-30 years younger with the political credentials of Biden and I will vote for them. No newbies. We can’t afford leaders with a long learning curve and a lack of connections.
I am having this really strong feeling of deja vu. I wrote again and again that Hillary would not win. And again and again people piled onto me, told me how great she was, how I had to get behind our candidate. Even though, as I said repeatedly, she was EXTREMELY WIDELY DISLIKED, had low approval ratings. Well, Biden’s are even lower. Going into the election, her approval rating was 42.8 percent. Biden’s is currently 39 percent. All the polls at 539 except one, which is really skewed, either put Trump ahead or are neck and neck.
A lot is going to depend on the democrats messaging going forward. With Biden’s track record, he should be far ahead of Trump if the democrats were doing the job. Hilary won the popular vote handily. She was not as widely hated as you believe apparently. We really have to pay attention to the voting in swing states especially (although no one should be ignored). If the election is lost, it will be in the electoral college.
Here’s the thing, Speduktr: Those who disliked Secretary Clinton didn’t just sort of disapprove of her. They really, really hated her. A lot of people did. Was this unfair? Was it probably mostly sexism? Yes. But it was the reality. Well, same with Biden. Those who disapprove of him REALLY disapprove of him. Yes, Hillary won the popular vote, but she drove enough Hillary haters to the polls to make for a very close race and SHE LOST in the Electoral College vote–the one that matters.
Like it or not, the same situation prevails today. Those who dislike Biden do so PASSIONATELY, INTENSELY. Go read some right-wing press. You’ll see. That hatred galvanizes the base base.
The Right wing press!? Seriously? Hilary lost because Democrats bought the fake news, not because the right hated her. They just orchestrated the successful smear campaign. Moreover, every time you turned around there was some Democrat whining that she wasn’t Bernie (I still have my Bernie button.).
I make it a practice to read what the rightwingers are saying so that I can keep a figure on that pulse. They HATED Hillary Clinton, and that brought them out in enormous numbers. Same with Biden. They don’t just dislike him. They LOATHE him. It’s bizarre, but it’s true, and that strong feeling galvanizes voters.
So now we are supposed to field a candidate that the far right won’t hate? And who might that be?
Now we are supposed to field a candidate that the far right has not been subjecting to a propaganda campaign for four years now. They will have to start from scratch with a candidate not represented on stickers on gas pumps throughout the South and Midwest that say, “Thanks, Biden, for the high gas prices.”
Apparently those stickers are beginning to backfire on the perpetrators. Gas prices have come down precipitously in the last year, so now the stickers are pointing at the decline in prices.
My point was not the stickers per se. My point was that Biden has been the target of widespread propaganda attacks for four years now. And this is reflected in his dismal approval rating (Gallop shows his job approval right now at 39 percent). Obama was a great choice back in 2008 because he was a fresh face without a lot of baggage with the electorate. Clinton was not. Biden is not.
Oh joy! Just what we need! Another
fresh face with no baggage…and no experience. Baggage comes with actually doing something, especially in politics from what I can see.
Just what we need is someone likely to win.
Somehow most of our elections seem to be close.
Yes.
I know this unfair, but I’ll say it anyway.
So stop doing Putin’s job for him and put together a position paper on why Biden is the only choice. Outline the disaster that was Trump’s presidency, and compare it to what Biden has accomplished. Come up with some pithy slogans for Biden that we can repeat over and over again. (I’m sitting here trying to come up with some anti-Trump slogans as well.) Come on, people!
Clinton was not a candidate that large numbers of people were really excited about. Same is true of Biden. That’s unfair, but it’s the case. Democrats have this bad habit of signing onto a losing team.
I don’t need to be really excited to vote for competent leadership.
I wish everyone thought this way. But they don’t. Democrats are notorious for not getting to the polls. We have had far too many elections in which large portions of the Democratic electorate simply stayed at home.
Would you agree, Speduktr, that people are in general more likely to go vote for a candidate that they are excited about than for one that they are not excited about? Obama’s candidacy galvanized a lot of Democratic voters who had often sat on the sidelines, including young people and people of color.
I dare to make a prediction:
Biden will beat Trump by an even larger margin than 2020.
I sooooooo hope you are right, Diane! Certainly, the Dems whipped some Repugnican tushy in the last election, and that was a very welcome surprise. Maybe we are have come farther along than I thought. Certainly, in the not-so-long term, things look dire for Repugnicans of the Greying Old Party (GOP).
And going to fantastical lengths to justify having done so. They are always, but if people just knew, or whatever, and I say, but me no buts. It is not wise to run candidates with very low approval ratings when so much is at stake. I have been very pleased with President Biden. I think he’s done a great job. Now it is time for him to retire honorably, having done great service to his nation.
Yeah, her approval ratings were so low she won the popular vote.
Man, what a loser.
At the time of the election, 42.8 percent of the population said that it approved of her. Not enough people went out to vote for her for her to win the Electoral College. Again, it is a freaking tautology that people with low approval ratings are less likely to win elections than people with high ones.
So, what her approval rating was at the time is simply a matter of fact. 57,2 percent of the voting population of the United States at the time of the election did not approve of Hillary Clinton.
And according to a Gallop Poll just released, 61 percent of the voting-age population of the United States does not approve, right now, of “the job Joe Biden is doing as President.” That’s just the grim fact that the Democrats are up against. There is a lot to be done.
Loser. n. One who lost.
So we should have abandoned Obama since I believe he had very low ratings at this point as well.
Obama’s average approval rating over his first term was 10 points higher than Biden’s is right now.
I am talking about when Obama first ran. He never would have even had a first term if we had all paid attention to the early polling. Biden has accomplished much more in his first term than Obama did.
Biden has been a great president. I have said that repeatedly. It is very possible that he might lose to Trump, and the precautionary principle would tell us, that’s too great a risk to take. Many perceive him to be too frail for the job, and he is, indeed, to frail to do vigorous campaigning via public appearances. The opposition base detests him for lots of bizarre reasons having nothing to do with reality, and this might well drive them to the polls.
So we ditch poor, old Joe, and pick a candidate who has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. If the Republicans and other bad actors are able to beat Biden with misinformation, etc. than what makes you think they can’t mount an even more successful account against someone who is still wet behind the ears? No one else comes close to having the creds Biden has.
61 percent of the voting population of the United States at present disagrees with you. And me, for that matter. About Joe’s “cred.” That matters. He is at a time in life when he needs to step aside and act in an advisory role.
Step aside for whom? Ya got some hot candidate up your sleeve?
The Democratic Party is full of exciting younger talent. Beshear, Buttigieg, Newsom, Warnock, Whitmer, for example. And of older talent that is far more vigorous and has great name recognition: Al Franken.
None of whom have the national name recognition to win a presidential election 10 months from now. They need the next four years to (I hate this expression) “develop their brand.”
Did Obama need four years to develop his brand? Uh, no.
I believe he did need more than ten months. Since none of the Democrats you mentioned have any chance of winning the presidential election in ten months from now, they have the luxury of a few years to become viable presidential candidates in 2028.
Bob,
Biden will be the candidate. If he hasn’t stepped aside by now, don’t expect him to do so in the future. Not happening. Biden is raising money for the race.
Yeah. This is all really frightening.
I’m not so sure, Diane. It’s early yet. Something major could happen. He’s an elderly man. He could have a disastrous fall, for example. Anything could happen, though of course, I hope it won’t.
You mean like what happen to John Fetterman (55)? Of course none of your other potential choices as candidates could ever have an accident or face a health crisis. Maybe Al Franken can come back from being disowned by his own party for sexually “inappropriate” actions. After all the current Republican front runner has…repeatedly.
People age at different rates. Joe is 81. He is much more likely than, say, is Pete Buttigieg, to have a serious health crisis in the next 10 months, simply as a function of his age. Franken should NOT have caved. The whole thing leading to his resignation was a fiasco.
I agree about Franken. He was railroaded
You guys stayed up late!
“Franken should NOT have caved. The whole thing leading to his resignation was a fiasco.”
I think he didn’t want to be a distraction. Too bad. Didn’t his accuser say she never wanted him to have to resign. BS. What the heck did she think would happen? It was a stupid stunt on his part, for which he apologized, but I suspect not “beyond the pale” in a Saturday Night Live type of environment.
Franken should have had a hearing before the Ethics Conmittee. He was railroaded out of the Senate.
Biden is 81. He moves and speaks like a man much older. And he has a job approval rating below 40 percent. No incumbent president has had an approval rating below 40 per cent at this stage.
He is getting stiff, but I am not sure he speaks much differently than he has for a number of years. Pete Buttigieg is an accomplished speaker but he is not ready for prime time. Neither was Kennedy, for that matter.
Men of Biden’s age have a 22.3 percent probability of having a stroke. The probability of a heart attack for someone 80 and above is 2-3 times higher than for someone in his or her sixties. The probability of developing dementia doubles every five years after age 65. 29.8 percent of people in their late 70s and early 80s have a serious fall. And so on.
You realize you are citing statistics that includes every beer drinking, nacho eating, couch potato.
When I was in my late thirties, I was running a publishing house and overseeing many extremely complex editorial and design projects, as well as our financial, marketing, R&D, customer service, human resources, and fulfillment functions. I am somewhat younger than Biden is, but I am CERTAIN that I would not, today, be up to that task–to having that many balls in the air, that many complex issues to handle, that many hours to put in simply to do the job at all adequately. I wouldn’t have the stamina. It would kill me trying to do it, and I wouldn’t even try. How much more demanding is the job of President of the United States? Well, if done right, . . .
I am no less than I was. I actually know more. But I am not as quick a study, and I am not as agile and as flexible. And I certainly don’t have anything like the stamina I had then. I could edit for 12 hours straight and then update a dozen GANT charts. and study them for bottlenecks. LOL. No more.
Nor did you have a whole executive branch to support and inform you? Totally different scenarios although it is obvious that being president ages those who fill that job. Biden is the first president since Johnson to come to the job with such wide and long experience in the federal government. I’m sure someone will argue with me, but Johnson was instrumental in the advances we made in civil rights. I think I heard something about Nixon sabotaging his attempts to end the Vietnam War, but I may have that fiasco scrambled.
I had a couple hundred employees to support me, but I was their boss. I had to understand what was going on. I had to keep track of it all. I had to be competent and to appear to be competent. No way I could do that job now. This makes me no less of a person. It just means that I am an elderly one. When I was at Houghton, we had a rule that the CEO had to step down at 75. There was a reason for that rule.
My father was responsible for making all investment decisions of a major corporation. He, too, had 100s of employees who technically supported him. Of course, most of them were not directly responsible to him. They had supervisors who had supervisors who reported to my father. By the time information got to him, it had been reduced to a critical mass. The same is true of Biden. He does not deal with the minutia. I agree that age slows us down. The question is whether his judgement has been impaired by age. Give me that younger candidate with his breadth of experience and his political skills. If that person existed, they already would be running.
I am judging from personal experience. I could not at present do what I do then because of my age. Mr. Biden is 81 years old. I’m sorry, that’s too old to be doing this job, and it is supremely irresponsible for him to cling to it.
We disagree on his motivation. You seem to be convinced that his decision to run is based on hubris. I disagree. I would expect to have seen substantial evidence that he was encouraged not to run. I have not seen that.
Motivation is not the right word. A motivation is more than just a reason why a person does something. It is also something that a person wants. So, a person can be motivated by a desire for money, for sex, for status, or whatever. So, it is not right to call hubris a motivation. It is, rather, a personality characteristic. It seems to me over the top prideful to think that it is appropriate for him to run again at his age. His handlers keep him from public-facing activity for more than a few minutes at a time and a couple hours a day. And mark my word, he will not do much in the way of public appearances as part of his campaign. These are just too fraught with disastrous potential because of his weakened condition.
All this is just bizarre. Mitch McConnell is so elderly that he has these episodes in which he freezes up and cannot speak. But he remains in office. When is enough enough?
Perhaps I was unclear, but I didn’t tend to imply that hubris was his motivation. I am quite aware of the difference. I do not believe that his decision to run was driven by arrogant self conceit. I am probably still unclear, but I think you can figure out what I am trying to say.
I think Biden is running for re-election because he believes he has done a good job, he loves what he is doing, and he loves serving his country.
I just read a story about Rev. Dr. William Barber having been evicted from a movie theater in NC because he insisted on sitting on his own chair, required by his disability. The AMC chain CEO is meeting with him to apologize and to promise to change its policies to accommodate people with needs.
https://x.com/dianeravitch/status/1741673368703627507?s=46&t=9ko2QEoKmRIlvHb1PdtjSw
I mention all this because of Barber’s great quote at the end of the article:
Rev. William Barber: “There’s no way to follow Jesus without learning to pay attention to whoever is broken and vulnerable in society,” Barber said. “Because that’s where God shows up.”
I do want to say that I appreciate your devotion to Mr. Biden. He’s a good guy. He’s been a great president.
I would not characterize my support for Biden as devotion but rather as rational. I do not see a rational alternative at this point and think continuing to discuss the potential drawbacks to his candidacy is counterproductive. As I said before, I just want someone as president who is experienced and competent. By the way, the last crush I had on a public personality was Ricky Nelson, and even then I was not into swooning.
Sorry. Yes. I stand corrected. Happy New Year, Speduktr.
Speduktr,
I can tell you about LBJ. He was a legislative genius, and he won the presidency in a landslide in 1964.
As president, he sponsored the most consequential civil rights bills that we have: not only the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. He was incredibly successful in passing landmark legislation. The GOP has spent the past Hal century trying to roll back LBJ’s legislation.
I think that its purest hubris that would cause a person to hang onto this job at his age. It’s not a responsible thing to do. And he might at any time come to that conclusion himself, that it’s time. Or some event, at his age, might force him to make this decision. Meanwhile, I hope the court will have the sanity to allow states to kick the vile, moronic, ignorant, morally deficient, racist, sexist, criminal insurrectionist, rapist, con man, liar, and wannabe dictator Jabba the Trump off the ballots.
I would never have thought to describe Biden as arrogant. I think he rightly realized that there was no other Democrat that was ready or able to beat Trump. Cold, hard reality. He is not running to create a legacy. He is running to protect our democracy. If he is so flawed, you have got to wonder why all your choices chose not to challenge him. Could it be that they, too, recognized that he has the best chance to defeat Trump?
As you said, anything could happen in the next 10 months.
I just finished reading Liz Cheney’s book. One conclusion: that liar must never again sit in the White House.
OMG no. What did you think? I should buy it simply because I respect that woman so much for standing up to him.
I will write a review in a few days. The first 2/3 of the book are gripping.
I respect her for throwing away her leadership position and her office. She knew what she was doing.
One pollster gave Obama’s approval rating just before the election in October 2012 as 63 percent. That’s 24 points higher than Biden’s is right now.
And yet there is no comparison in what they were able to accomplish.
Click to access APR_Obama1012.pdf
Oops. Sorry. That was a California survey. My bad.
And I am going to be long gone before the freaking Democrats recognize that they need to take the gloves off in their messaging. Namby pamby generalization doesn’t move people to go to the polls. Build Back Better. Our Best Days Are Ahead. Finish the Job. Fine as slogans, but these don’t move people off their sofas.
if the democrats were doing the job.
They aren’t.
A huge problem that Biden has going forward is that he is too old and frail to do much in the way of public appearances. It’s too risky. So he is going to have to run YET ANOTHER campaign from the basement, as the Republicans framed this.
Again the rhetoric directed against Hilary Clinton was vile and successful. too many Americans were taken in by the propaganda. I’m sure Trump is depending on Putin to support his campaign covertly again. even more than he already is.
The foreign agents who populate social media are the ones to counter, here. I feel the Republicans will hate anyone who is the Democratic nominee…period. The hatred of Biden is political in total.
Democrats need to get the message out that what they are perceiving as an economy that isn’t working for them is not Biden’s doing, and he is working to change it for the better. He already has.
Democrats can and will take this election if they get their heads out of their behinds and stop being short-sighted.
We know that Republicans loathe Biden, but it’s not their votes that will make or break Biden—it is the votes of Democrats as a voting bloc and enough Independents that can put Biden back in office for another term.
The message needs to be loud and clear: Biden is fighting the special interests and his policies ARE and will continue to help the average American. Everything else is bluster from misinformation and disinformation. Don’t believe the hype, as the song says.
I enthusiastically agree that the Biden campaign has a superb story to tell. It really does. But they have to stop being so freaking cautious in their messaging and get aggressive about telling that story and contrasting it with Trump. We have a profoundly ignorant populace. It has to educate them about a LOT of issues and about what President Biden has done. I agree that he has been a great president, and if he is the nominee, he will absolutely have my vote. And Jill Stein and others who want to siphon off votes from the Democratic Party, well, Diane doesn’t allow on her site the language that I have for them.
And you are right that the United States is awash in foreign agents. This is one of the problems with being an open and free society. The power these people have over the Repugnican Party now is truly astonishing. It’s THE intelligence story, I think. I believe that a lot of major figures in the Repugnican party have been compromised and are Russian agents or assets.
Yes, Thom Hartmann has a superb article on why foreign agents have been legally permitted to infiltrate the messaging:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/why-is-the-gop-joining-putin-xi-and-49d?r=ottd6&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Thanks for the link.
Sic semper l’amateur.
A better title for Richardson’s opinion piece- “Well-crafted mythology that justified right wing voting by east coast elites/wealthy, takes a hit from Nikki Haley’s pandering.”
The National Archives has listed, by state, the electoral college votes for Biden and Trump. The list shows the significance of Republican votes for President, by region. Evidently, the GOP’s prior death, in the northeast, escaped the notice of political writers who are based in the northeast. The GOP flourished in the central and southern states as a result of religious votes of right wing Catholics and,…. That phenomenon also escaped media’s notice. Media is, however, aware of the right wing votes of protestant evangelicals. Forty percent of them who self identify in that way, don’t go to church so they aren’t getting Republican messaging from political organizations like the Catholic Conferences (located in almost every state with hired lobbyists and sophisticated voter mobilization).
Linda, I would like to gently suggest that you seek professional help to deal with this monomania, this utter obsession, about Catholics. It’s way, way, way over the top. Yes, there are right-wing elements in the Catholic church. Yes, there are powerful right-wing figures who are Catholic (Leo, Alito). Yes, these people are scary. But it is also the case that the leader of the Catholic Church right now is progressive and taking a lot of heat for being so.
Practically everything you post involves seeking SOME connection of whatever is bad to Catholics and Catholicism. Often, you go to absurd lengths to find some Catholic connection. The frequency and volume of these anti-Catholic screeds screams out for satire:
According to news sources, when the drive-by shooting occurred, there was a Catholic customer buying candles at a nearby shop. Was this an accomplice seeking to distract the store owner so that she would not come to the aid of the shooting victim? See “Laicism in the Crosshairs.”
$900,000 spent by Ohio dioceses to destroy democracy in Ohio in August 2023, also among the top 5 spenders is an organization founded by Robert P George.
Not one word in national media.
Review posts and comments at this blog – topics – attacks against abortion and LGBTQ rights. Until I add comment about the origin- religion- rhetorically, how frequently is it mentioned?
When and by whom was Notre Dame Prof. Nicole Stelle Garnet first mentioned at this blog?
The reason that religious charter schools will be exempt from civil rights employment law is the Biel v. St. James Catholic school case. When and by whom was it first mentioned at this blog?
If the 2nd largest employer in the nation (revenue provided by taxpayers funding
the usurpation of government function) was as politically right wing as the 3rd largest, would media find the topic of enough interest to write about it?
In states like Ohio, almost all of the voucher money goes to Catholic schools, not other private schools. When did that info. first reach the awareness of blog readers?
Pope Francis doesn’t govern in the US for which democracy should be very grateful.
If you don’t want to read my comments.. don’t. There’s the possibility that a new reader will learn the threat posed to democracy by the Catholic Church by reading my comments
This blog host gives you the right to discount me and thereby my comments. You believe the disparagement is productive in moving the needle forward for public schools. We’ll agree to disagree.
According to a survey conducted in 2022, the percentage of Hispanic Catholics who reported attending religious services at least a few times each year has dropped from 65% in 2019 to 47% in 2022. The percentage of white Catholics who reported attending religious services at least a few times each year has dropped to 45% in 2022 from 73% just three years earlier.
In addition, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that from 2014 to 2017, an average of 39% of Catholics reported attending church in the past seven days. This is down from an average of 45% from 2005 to 2008 and represents a steep decline from 75% in 1955.
When I taught in a Catholic girls’ school in the early 1990s, all the folks I taught with, with a couple exceptions, were either priests or nuns, and all wore their habits or vestments. My grandchildren now attend Catholic school, and NONE of their teachers have been nuns or priests. And that is a symptom, ofc, of the PRECIPITOUS DECLINE in the number of people taking up a Catholic religious vocation.
Furthermore, almost no Americans practice Catholicism now in the traditional way–going to daily mass, routinely attending church on Sundays, tithing 10 percent of their incomes. And according to Pew, those who identify themselves as Christian in the U.S. today are as likely to believe in Astrology and reincarnation as they are in hell or the Virgin Birth.
In other words, we are seeing a faith IN SHARP DECLINE. And that’s why the ideas of people like Alito and DeSantis are so deeply unpopular. And their actions, well, those are the mad king with his sword drawn against the sea.
Yes, the Church has been responsible for terrible things. It has left rivers of blood throughout history (not only the blood of heretics but in far, far, far greater numbers, the blood of pagans in non-Christian lands being appropriated). It has sex shamed women for millennia and has treated sex and sexuality as dirty and stood in the way of normal, healthy sexual flourishing. It has held back philosophical and scientific development. But these are issues that we are putting behind us, rapidly, in this time of cultural change.
I am a lot more worried about the fact that we allow the rich far too much power in our politics and about the prospect of Trump being reelected. Oh, and btw, religious kooks of lots of different kinds vote for Trump, not just Catholic ones, and a LOT of Catholics are non-Trumpers.
I still wonder what happened between you and the Catholic Church that drove you to this complete obsession with it, to this quotidian posting about how evil the Church is, to this attempting to tie every bad thing that happens back to it. It’s like listening to Trump about Marxists or Cruz about CRT. It’s extreme.
And, of course, there is lots and lots of Catholic charitable activity that does a lot of good in the world, and a lot of folks in the South and Midwest send their kids to Catholic schools because unlike their local public schools, these are not places where the kids are running wild all the time and teachers have lost control. That’s not true in all public schools, but it is true of a lot of them, and I know this having been in schools all across this country as part of my work. It’s an issue that public schools need to have the power to deal with, but denying it is sticking one’s head in the sand.
Bob,
I agree. I’m married to a practicing Roman Catholic who is well aware of the faults and abuses of the Church but embraces the body of belief. We agree that men in skirts are a problem.
As for kids running wild, we have our courts to thank for that.
As for kids running wild, we have our courts to thank for that.
That is exactly the case. You have this way of going to the heart of the matter, Diane.
Now about those skirts, I have five words. Kilts, thobes, and dashikis. I wish that men would start wearing these in our culture. They are very comfortable.
Bob-
I’d like to gently suggest that media, liberal bloggers and commenters get professional help to deal with Elon Musk reporting. If they are writing in opposition to his right wing politicking or to expose it,
when do they plan to stop?
His firms rank about 50th in the nation in number of employees. Owners of his firm theoretically pay taxes. The number of White people he influences to vote GOP would be speculation.
I know of a taboo on media coverage for a non-profit that is the 3rd largest employer in the nation. One that is exempt from taxes while a significant amount of the revenue generated is from citizens’ tax dollars.
I know that more than 60 percent of their participating members voted for Trump.
I know they spent $900,00 in August in Ohio to destroy democracy (Issue 1) despite the public claim from them that the issue had no moral content. I know that the non-profit’s affiliated people and groups initiate(d) school privatization.
If there wasn’t a taboo about reporting, a measure of impact for the nation could be
directly assigned to them in term of loss of LGBTQ and women’s rights, delay in ACA, siphoning of funds from public schools, etc.
But, let’s focus on stopping the monomania directed at Musk, instead.
HAAAAAA!!!!!! Ooooooo. That big bad scary Catholic Church!!!! I can hardly sleep at night because of them. All that dangerous wafer eating and candle lighting and incense burning!!!! Sooooo frightening.
Bob can believe declines in church membership offset almost $1,000,000 spent a few months ago to destroy democracy (local reporting in one state, one issue, how many other states and how many dollars going forward?).
As alternative to Bob’s cited cause for Catholic school enrollment, parents may want their kids attending Catholic schools to learn the cowering/obedience that makes them easily led, adherence to a comfortable White male superiority and/ or, in the central states, to be surrounded by White kids from higher income families.
Women’s lives are being lost and families impoverished by the legislation gained through the Catholic Church’s ongoing politicking. The LGBTQ community is being harmed grievously by the same source. Bob may believe that him verbally acknowledging it periodically means no further reporting/action (or, a level he approves of), should be pursued by others.
Btw- Catholic “charity” is subsidized by taxpayers. That usurpation of government function has come with discriminatory application which is inconsistent with the spirit of US law.
Nations with strong democracies do not have similar numbers of right wing religionists. It’s a correlation that has been examined and causes have been identified by researchers. Bob may believe that that info belongs in dusty stacks in the library.
Bob can believe that the worldwide shift to the right wing would occur without the current influence of right wing religion.
Those who hold a different opinion from Bob’s shouldn’t be defending their viewpoint from charges of mental illness or an unidentified, purported vengeance motivation based on some alleged, speculated, personal, distant experience with a church. If odd comments have entered the picture, blog readers can weigh which makes more sense, naming and fighting an enemy (like those signing Robert P George’s Manhattan Declaration and the school choice campaign at Notre Dame) or quashing what appears to be uncomfortable information.
Went to my kitchen this morning, and a teacup had fallen and shattered. Must be the Catholic Church that did that. LOL.
CRT smashed the teacup
I don’t know, Diane. About that teacup.
I can’t but remember that it was the Catholic countries of Spain and Portugal that harassed the East India Company’s tea shipments for centuries, and one has to ask, why wine instead of tea for Communion? See how the piece fit together? I only hope that this conspiracy is fully revealed before the Church entirely eliminates tea, the tea trade, and tea growers and drinkers worldwide. Enjoy your Lapsang Souchong and White Silver Needle, your Ripe and Raw Pu-erh, your Russian Caravan and your London Fog while you still can!!! Is it a coincidence that one of the perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party studied Latin with a Catholic teacher in elementary school? I think not!!!!
I don’t think it a coincidence that one of the principals in a company that manufactures supposedly protective glazes for teacups lived in the same apartment in Yunnan with a young priest doing missionary work there. The Catholic connection to my broken teacup seems pretty solid.
And yes, of course the reason why my daughter sends her kids to Catholic school is so that they can learn cowering obedience to the patriarchy. ROFLMAO.
It doesn’t have anything at all to do with their having first-rate sport, science, and art facilities; calm, orderly and well-supplied classrooms; actual libraries with actual librarians; and truly exceptional teachers. No, it’s entirely because she wants for them the Handmaid’s Tale dystopia that you imagine these schools to be. ROFL.
Oh, and I failed to notice that 1,000,000 was spent and democracy has now been destroyed. By golly! That’s AMAZING.
gaslighting