I should add, I'm more concerned here with gaining the upper hand in how the issues get framed than I am with electability. Newsom fits fewer prejudices than do Pritzker or Buttigieg. I just don't think that what he is saying cuts through enough to change the conversation, and I think the conversation we are having is a losing conversation for the Dems.
Pete might lose, but at least he would be heard.
2025-10-07 18:32:05
lj- As a note, in Kamala Harris’ recent book, she said that she wanted Buttgieg, but thought that it was ‘asking too much of America’ (if I remember the quote correctly). I’m not second guessing that, I’m just imagining an America where it wouldn’t be asking too much.
I understand this reaction, but what wj had asked for was:
...someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.
I think Mayor Pete offers more of this than does Newsom. And I think that if the Dems want to break through, they are going to have to find someone that is more a brawler than a point fighter. Newsom is all jab with no follow-up, and he's too much of a lightweight to land a knockout with a jab. Both the guys I countered with seem capable of landing some body blows.
2025-10-07 04:47:10
wj- <i>I’d vastly rather look to someone else. But that requires there be someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.</i>
Buttigieg? Pritzker? I'd prefer either of them. Don't know where I'd stand on Beshear vs Newsom. Beshear seems like exactly the sort of person that Klein is dreaming of for The Great Centrist Messiah, and I mistrust that instinct immediately.
And despite all this, I am happy that Newsom is taking the stands he's taking and poking the old, gouty, amber colored badgers that he's poking. Newsom is the Killian's Irish Red of American politics, he looks fancy and he's better than a bland American pilsner, but he's still coming out of a big dollar brewery despite the fancy looking label.
2025-10-05 05:18:58
bobbyp - I read your link and I will admit that I have thought the same thing about our situation more than once.
I think that the constitution could be saved, but it would take another Lincoln or FDR to do it, and a lot of pushing through structural changes to shore up the weakest parts that are making it so hard to prevent the willful vandalism and disregard of the rule of law. I don't think that their critics are wrong to say that they used extra-constitutional means to achieve their ends, but part of their end in both cases was not just to preserve the union, but to preserve the constitution and keep continuity of government.
Of course both ended up having their work undone, and here we are again.
My fear is that this time the current GOP will force a suspension of the constitution and turn tyrant with the intent of undoing the constitution and replacing it with a Christian Nationalist authoritarian government. If so, then I don't know how the union is going to hold.
2025-10-04 23:30:13
Pro Bono - But I see no reason to be uncivil.
That's because you are seeing Republicans as people who have a different worldview and position, and trying to understand them in order to live with them as a part of your community. That's not the way that the core of the GOP thinks about Democrats. To them we are not Americans with a different point of view that must be negotiated. To them we are not really Americans, and their job is to protect America from us.
I'm not saying we should be uncivil to them. I'm saying that we fall outside of their view of what counts as civitas.
2025-10-04 21:59:20
Following on russell's comment, I'm going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I've written some of this before, but that's all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.
I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential - the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.
Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are "holding the American people hostage." That literally puts Democratic officials - and all the Americans who elected those officials - on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.
The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.
WTF are we supposed to do with that?
2025-10-04 01:39:58
I think a lot of people found the way that the early centrist blogs performed that even-handedness that russell identifies above to be productive and valuable for getting past ideological positions to something more dynamic. It was widespread enough that people learned how to do it as a sort of generic exercise. A lot of bright people have a hard time knowing how to get at that sort of cross-cutting commentary without falling back on the structures they have learned for writing those sorts of commentary.
That's not always a failure of good faith, sometimes it's just a struggle with form combined with an impatience with impasse.
But the effect of that, of course, is to create a sort of artificial leveling of the sides through equivocation, which hollows out the resulting conversation. That leads to a different form of impatience and frustration.
2025-10-04 00:35:09
I don't think the fault lies in CharlesWT so much as in the devolution of what passes for mainstream right wing politics. There's no way to structure things in a way that looks even and balanced when the right has decided that they don't need to listen to, work with, or care about anything and anyone on the other side.
An entire genre of blog commentary cannot function anymore, no matter how we try to replicate it.
2025-10-03 20:09:45
Afterword to my earlier comment about "play stupid games, win stupid prizes..."
I'd prefer that the prizes that people won for playing stupid games were the most gentle possible version of the prize that would actually relieve them of the urge to play stupid games and steer them into playing smart games that have prizes we all get to share to our mutual benefit.
2025-10-03 18:37:08
CharlesWT - Some journalists who have been beaten to the point of brain injury may wish to quibble.
I assume that this is about Andy Ngo. Important to note that Ngo does not usually wear anything identifying himself as a member of the press, and often follows groups like Patriot Prayer to film confrontations with antifa groups. He also is known for doxxing antifa protesters on his own channel, and selectively editing them.
His lack of any press identification while traveling with Patriot Prayer is going to get him in the middle of things and mistaken for being a member of that group while they are engaging in their own violent provocation. They may not be "attacking a journalist" so much as they are just trying to hold their own in a clash between violent groups, and they have no indication that Ngo is not a member of Patriot Prayer or associated with them.
But also, more than a few of the antifa people may know who Ngo was, and were going after him because of his having doxxed them or one of their friends. Ngo has given Portland antifa plenty of reasons to hate him personally. He could have been targeted for a beat down, but "journalist" is far too innocent and anodyne a description of his role in context. No one is attacking him for being there and trying to document things while staying out of the confrontation. He's an active participant on one side using his ambiguous position as a journalist to cast himself in a more innocent light.
I'm not defending antifa here. I'm sure that more than a few among them were engaged in felony violence. I'm also sure that many among them were also victims of felony violence and that some of that felony violence was committed by the people who were personal associates of Ngo.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard or read an alt-right associate say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to footage of college students being beaten by police, or by a right-wing activist during an escalation. Ngo is an avid player of stupid games. He's made his name as such, and has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, not all of whom are Russian bots.
A bit about antifa violence and videos, including some of Ngo's work - from Bellingcat:
I have a hard time watching any Ngo video and video of neutrally positioned (and clearly identified) journalists being targeted and fired upon with pepper balls and rubber rounds by riot police, and feeling like that's a legitimate comparison for both-siderism.
2025-10-02 17:23:34
Let me add +1 to russell's list of black bloc types - RW accelerationists wanting to turn up the temperature and provoke things like the Guard call-up.
No, I don't think that any of them are in the antifa camp in Portland. The people in the camp are either real antifa types, or are undercover feds (again, I think not, but that has been the case with the RW militias, so I leave open that possibility). The antifa folks would not take kindly to finding a Boogaloo Boy in their midst.
But, for example, in Minneapolis after George Floyd there were RW militia kids who were caught driving in from WI to loot and burn and try to provoke a violent response from the authorities.
If I see a single person in black with a mask wearing visible antifa markers, I automatically assume that they are false flag assholes. The usually get chased off by the activist leaders, but they hang around just far enough away to provoke.
2025-10-02 05:21:39
Here's some local media reporting of the situation:
It does note the breaking of one door at the ICE facility back in June, but also:
July 25: Assistant Chief Craig Dobson says that federal officers are “actually instigating and causing some of the ruckus that’s occurring down there” during testimony for a lawsuit seeking to compel officers to enforce noise rules at the ICE protests.
...and:
Sept. 4: Fox News airs a long report about the Labor Day protest at ICE. Mixed in misleadingly are clips from 2020 protests, showing chaotic scenes outside the downtown federal courthouse and near an elk statue.
Whatever the case, it doesn't look to me like there is any reason to send in the Guard when the situation is neither dangerous nor volatile. It's noisy sometimes, and people occasionally cause a bit of property damage. It seems like the people causing the damage are being stopped and arrested.
News of widespread violent unrest and lawlessness looks to me to be a right wing media PSYOP.
2025-10-02 00:13:17
At times, there have been several hundred protestors at the ICE facility.
And out of those, it's probably this same group of assholes and a dozen of their friends in visiting from somewhere else that are responsible for the water bottles and milkshakes. It's not a war zone. It's not an occupying force. It's not much more of a nuisance that people face when they live next to a live music venue or a biker bar. And it would be less of a nuisance if it weren't for the illegal actions of the current administration wanting to prove they are hard men.
People have a right to protest. But they don’t have the right to make other people’s lives unlivable, assault people, or destroy property.
All reasons why cities have laws, ordinances, and police forces. None of them have asked for ICE to step in. None of them need rescuing. All of them wish ICE and the Guard would GTFO so that the assholes would go home again.
I've known assholes like these. They get bored easily. They will go away if the feds dial back the authoritarian showboating. it will make Warrior Pete sad, but he'll still have tequila to comfort himself.
2025-10-01 22:38:45
CharlesWT - C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom is very concerned with ANTIFA, Satan, Drag Queens, Christian Oppression in the US, and the poor treatment of the J6 Prisoners.
I get that you aren't endorsing her, just looking at a few of her videos as evidence for ANTIFA presence in Portland, but I have a real hard time trusting her representation of anything given her Q-Anon obsessions and raving.
And in pretty much all of those, what I see is a small group of people being disruptive and annoying. I wouldn't want them as neighbors, but it's not the sort of thing we need the military to come in and deal with. It's not a war zone. It's just assholes with a cause being provoked by assholes with unconstitutional police powers.
I should add, I'm more concerned here with gaining the upper hand in how the issues get framed than I am with electability. Newsom fits fewer prejudices than do Pritzker or Buttigieg. I just don't think that what he is saying cuts through enough to change the conversation, and I think the conversation we are having is a losing conversation for the Dems.
Pete might lose, but at least he would be heard.
lj- As a note, in Kamala Harris’ recent book, she said that she wanted Buttgieg, but thought that it was ‘asking too much of America’ (if I remember the quote correctly). I’m not second guessing that, I’m just imagining an America where it wouldn’t be asking too much.
I understand this reaction, but what wj had asked for was:
...someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.
I think Mayor Pete offers more of this than does Newsom. And I think that if the Dems want to break through, they are going to have to find someone that is more a brawler than a point fighter. Newsom is all jab with no follow-up, and he's too much of a lightweight to land a knockout with a jab. Both the guys I countered with seem capable of landing some body blows.
wj- <i>I’d vastly rather look to someone else. But that requires there be someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.</i>
Buttigieg? Pritzker? I'd prefer either of them. Don't know where I'd stand on Beshear vs Newsom. Beshear seems like exactly the sort of person that Klein is dreaming of for The Great Centrist Messiah, and I mistrust that instinct immediately.
And despite all this, I am happy that Newsom is taking the stands he's taking and poking the old, gouty, amber colored badgers that he's poking. Newsom is the Killian's Irish Red of American politics, he looks fancy and he's better than a bland American pilsner, but he's still coming out of a big dollar brewery despite the fancy looking label.
bobbyp - I read your link and I will admit that I have thought the same thing about our situation more than once.
I think that the constitution could be saved, but it would take another Lincoln or FDR to do it, and a lot of pushing through structural changes to shore up the weakest parts that are making it so hard to prevent the willful vandalism and disregard of the rule of law. I don't think that their critics are wrong to say that they used extra-constitutional means to achieve their ends, but part of their end in both cases was not just to preserve the union, but to preserve the constitution and keep continuity of government.
Of course both ended up having their work undone, and here we are again.
My fear is that this time the current GOP will force a suspension of the constitution and turn tyrant with the intent of undoing the constitution and replacing it with a Christian Nationalist authoritarian government. If so, then I don't know how the union is going to hold.
Pro Bono - But I see no reason to be uncivil.
That's because you are seeing Republicans as people who have a different worldview and position, and trying to understand them in order to live with them as a part of your community. That's not the way that the core of the GOP thinks about Democrats. To them we are not Americans with a different point of view that must be negotiated. To them we are not really Americans, and their job is to protect America from us.
I'm not saying we should be uncivil to them. I'm saying that we fall outside of their view of what counts as civitas.
Following on russell's comment, I'm going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I've written some of this before, but that's all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.
I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential - the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.
Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are "holding the American people hostage." That literally puts Democratic officials - and all the Americans who elected those officials - on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.
The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.
WTF are we supposed to do with that?
I think a lot of people found the way that the early centrist blogs performed that even-handedness that russell identifies above to be productive and valuable for getting past ideological positions to something more dynamic. It was widespread enough that people learned how to do it as a sort of generic exercise. A lot of bright people have a hard time knowing how to get at that sort of cross-cutting commentary without falling back on the structures they have learned for writing those sorts of commentary.
That's not always a failure of good faith, sometimes it's just a struggle with form combined with an impatience with impasse.
But the effect of that, of course, is to create a sort of artificial leveling of the sides through equivocation, which hollows out the resulting conversation. That leads to a different form of impatience and frustration.
I don't think the fault lies in CharlesWT so much as in the devolution of what passes for mainstream right wing politics. There's no way to structure things in a way that looks even and balanced when the right has decided that they don't need to listen to, work with, or care about anything and anyone on the other side.
An entire genre of blog commentary cannot function anymore, no matter how we try to replicate it.
Afterword to my earlier comment about "play stupid games, win stupid prizes..."
I'd prefer that the prizes that people won for playing stupid games were the most gentle possible version of the prize that would actually relieve them of the urge to play stupid games and steer them into playing smart games that have prizes we all get to share to our mutual benefit.
CharlesWT - Some journalists who have been beaten to the point of brain injury may wish to quibble.
I assume that this is about Andy Ngo. Important to note that Ngo does not usually wear anything identifying himself as a member of the press, and often follows groups like Patriot Prayer to film confrontations with antifa groups. He also is known for doxxing antifa protesters on his own channel, and selectively editing them.
His lack of any press identification while traveling with Patriot Prayer is going to get him in the middle of things and mistaken for being a member of that group while they are engaging in their own violent provocation. They may not be "attacking a journalist" so much as they are just trying to hold their own in a clash between violent groups, and they have no indication that Ngo is not a member of Patriot Prayer or associated with them.
But also, more than a few of the antifa people may know who Ngo was, and were going after him because of his having doxxed them or one of their friends. Ngo has given Portland antifa plenty of reasons to hate him personally. He could have been targeted for a beat down, but "journalist" is far too innocent and anodyne a description of his role in context. No one is attacking him for being there and trying to document things while staying out of the confrontation. He's an active participant on one side using his ambiguous position as a journalist to cast himself in a more innocent light.
I'm not defending antifa here. I'm sure that more than a few among them were engaged in felony violence. I'm also sure that many among them were also victims of felony violence and that some of that felony violence was committed by the people who were personal associates of Ngo.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard or read an alt-right associate say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to footage of college students being beaten by police, or by a right-wing activist during an escalation. Ngo is an avid player of stupid games. He's made his name as such, and has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, not all of whom are Russian bots.
A bit about antifa violence and videos, including some of Ngo's work - from Bellingcat:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/11/18/million-maga-march-unravelling-a-violent-viral-video/
I have a hard time watching any Ngo video and video of neutrally positioned (and clearly identified) journalists being targeted and fired upon with pepper balls and rubber rounds by riot police, and feeling like that's a legitimate comparison for both-siderism.
Let me add +1 to russell's list of black bloc types - RW accelerationists wanting to turn up the temperature and provoke things like the Guard call-up.
No, I don't think that any of them are in the antifa camp in Portland. The people in the camp are either real antifa types, or are undercover feds (again, I think not, but that has been the case with the RW militias, so I leave open that possibility). The antifa folks would not take kindly to finding a Boogaloo Boy in their midst.
But, for example, in Minneapolis after George Floyd there were RW militia kids who were caught driving in from WI to loot and burn and try to provoke a violent response from the authorities.
If I see a single person in black with a mask wearing visible antifa markers, I automatically assume that they are false flag assholes. The usually get chased off by the activist leaders, but they hang around just far enough away to provoke.
Here's some local media reporting of the situation:
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2025/09/tracking-the-rise-and-fall-of-portland-ice-protests-key-developments-as-trump-troops-arrive-soon.html
It does note the breaking of one door at the ICE facility back in June, but also:
July 25: Assistant Chief Craig Dobson says that federal officers are “actually instigating and causing some of the ruckus that’s occurring down there” during testimony for a lawsuit seeking to compel officers to enforce noise rules at the ICE protests.
...and:
Sept. 4: Fox News airs a long report about the Labor Day protest at ICE. Mixed in misleadingly are clips from 2020 protests, showing chaotic scenes outside the downtown federal courthouse and near an elk statue.
Whatever the case, it doesn't look to me like there is any reason to send in the Guard when the situation is neither dangerous nor volatile. It's noisy sometimes, and people occasionally cause a bit of property damage. It seems like the people causing the damage are being stopped and arrested.
News of widespread violent unrest and lawlessness looks to me to be a right wing media PSYOP.
At times, there have been several hundred protestors at the ICE facility.
And out of those, it's probably this same group of assholes and a dozen of their friends in visiting from somewhere else that are responsible for the water bottles and milkshakes. It's not a war zone. It's not an occupying force. It's not much more of a nuisance that people face when they live next to a live music venue or a biker bar. And it would be less of a nuisance if it weren't for the illegal actions of the current administration wanting to prove they are hard men.
People have a right to protest. But they don’t have the right to make other people’s lives unlivable, assault people, or destroy property.
All reasons why cities have laws, ordinances, and police forces. None of them have asked for ICE to step in. None of them need rescuing. All of them wish ICE and the Guard would GTFO so that the assholes would go home again.
I've known assholes like these. They get bored easily. They will go away if the feds dial back the authoritarian showboating. it will make Warrior Pete sad, but he'll still have tequila to comfort himself.
CharlesWT - C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom is very concerned with ANTIFA, Satan, Drag Queens, Christian Oppression in the US, and the poor treatment of the J6 Prisoners.
I get that you aren't endorsing her, just looking at a few of her videos as evidence for ANTIFA presence in Portland, but I have a real hard time trusting her representation of anything given her Q-Anon obsessions and raving.
And in pretty much all of those, what I see is a small group of people being disruptive and annoying. I wouldn't want them as neighbors, but it's not the sort of thing we need the military to come in and deal with. It's not a war zone. It's just assholes with a cause being provoked by assholes with unconstitutional police powers.