Sunday, November 10, 2024

All political careers end in failure. His will, too.

Effective immediately, I am hanging up my hat as a prognosticator. Back in August, I predicted that Trump would never be president again. Oh haha. 

I mean, we have a bit of time until January 20; he could still be sent to jail or choke on a hamberder or something, but I'm not counting on it.

Since my comeuppance on Tuesday, I've mostly been laying low on social media. I've been reading comments from my friends, though, and the occasional news story when I have the stomach for it. (When John Dickerson said on CBS Tuesday night, as the returns looked increasingly dismal for Vice President Harris, that he wanted to talk about what an amazing comeback Trump had made -- "amazing comeback", forsooth! -- I turned off the TV and went to bed.) 

I have seen a lot of anguish from our side, of course, and fear about what will happen now. I've also seen some comments along the lines of, "They'll be sorry they elected him!" I've read some uncorroborated stories about that happening already; there was a memorable one by some poster somewhere who said their cousin's sister's uncle (or something) was shocked when the boss said they'd have to forgo their Christmas bonuses this year because the company needed to buy a bunch of manufacturing supplies now, before Trump's Chinese tariffs go into effect. Then the boss explained to them that tariffs don't work the way Trump said they do. There's no way for me to prove any of that, but it sure makes a great story.

There has also been an avalanche of news stories covering the nuts and bolts of how we were all mistaken when we thought the Harris/Walz campaign had it in the bag. Mostly it's been lots of finger pointing. I have been ignoring that junk, mainly because I ran into some revisionist history a while back about the reason some other Democratic candidate for president failed to win (I said it was this; others said no, scholars dug into it years later and discovered it was actually that). I don't remember now which election it was about, but it doesn't matter; my point is that the cause will be found out in due time, and it's likely that whatever the pundits are feverishly saying right now won't be it.

***

In counterpoint to these dour postmortems, I ran across this dose of encouragement today.

Andy Borowitz, who wrote a humor column for The New Yorker before they fired him, now publishes his work on Substack. He made today's blog post there free, and in it, he uses history to puncture a bunch of the doom-and-gloom that's been so pervasive on social media this week. I recommend this post to everybody. Pay attention in particular to what he says about Nixon and Reagan, who both won second terms in honest-to-goodness landslides that didn't turn out so well for them. You've heard of Watergate and Iran-Contra, I trust.

Anyway, the title of my post comes from Borowitz's post. It's a paraphrase of a quote by Enoch Powell, a British Conservative politician who died in 1918. Here's the quote in full
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

Here's hoping.

***

On Friday, Robert Reich, who was Labor Secretary under President Clinton and who seems to have repudiated Clinton's neoliberalism since then, posted an essay on his Substack that he called "The Lesson". It's a listicle of six of those "what happened" reasons I alluded to above, along with his critique of each one and his assessment of what really did happen (TL;DR: It's the economy, stupid. Biden made great strides in four years, but not enough to break through the right-wing punditry noise).

I want to touch on the third point in his listicle: Republicans won because of misinformation and right-wing propaganda... The answer is for Democrats to cultivate an equivalent media ecosystem that rivals what the right has built. He rates this as mostly true. I partly agree. But I disagree with the second sentence, and here I refer you, Gentle Reader, to my post on media bias from a couple of weeks ago. My point then, which I probably should have hammered harder, is that liberals and progressives have already built an equivalent media ecosystem to Fox News and the rest, and a whole lot of us are already siloing ourselves in it: MSNBC, CNN, and so on. Moreover, many are fleeing from sources of factual news like the major newspapers because they're not telling the story the way you want it to be told

Folks, that's pretty much the definition of "biased information". Just because you want a thing to be true doesn't make it so. Just because a liberal politician or a left-wing pundit or a political hanger-on tells you a thing, it's not necessarily the truth. We are all supposed to practice discernment -- not just the people on the other side.

Here's something to think about: Maybe you were shocked and surprised that Trump won because you'd siloed yourself from all information to the contrary. 

I am not saying everybody should stop watching Rachel Maddow and switch to Fox and Friends. I'm saying to take a step back. If something seems too good to be true, it's likely not. That's as true for statements from pundits and talk show hosts as it is for emails from Nigerian princes.

This goes for me, too. There were times over the past few months when I read something that pinged my ol' journalistic skepticism. I should have listened to it. But damn, it was comfortable in my silo, surrounded by like-minded friends, y'know?

***

One more thing -- this one from Jay Kuo. Not sure where he's getting his numbers (the AP's are different), but when Trump says he won in a landslide (as he inevitably will), at least we know it's not so: 


It won't stop Trump from lying about the election outcome, and it won't matter to his fans. There's only so much we can do.

***

Because the algorithm needs an illustration: I went to a wine-and-painting class last night, and this guy was the result. He seems wild-eyed in his spacy universe. Full of hope, maybe? 
Lynne Cantwell 2024
For now, I'm calling him Space Raven. Feel free to suggest a better name.

***

These moments of bloggy wishes for a happy juncture have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Resist!
 

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