One thing I have realized in this bizarre era of Trump politics is that there are some people who confuse machismo with competence. When I see Trump’s aggressive bullying, his testosterone-driven rage posting on social media, his contempt for anyone who disagrees with him, I see a psychotically dysfunctional criminal masquerading as a good businessman and politician. But others apparently don’t see past the facade.

There are people who think that being tough means that you are good at getting things done. Who think that winning a war is more about being good at using violence than it is about being good at tactics and strategy and logistics and developing new weapons. Putin made this fatal mistake in Ukraine, believing that the overwhelming numerical advantages Russia had in manpower, tanks, fighter jets, etc. meant that they could achieve a decisive victory very quickly. Four years later, we know that the will of the Ukrainian people, their collective determination to resist, the support of their allies in the rest of the democratic world, and the Ukrainian’s amazing ability to adapt, means far more than Russia’s ability to mobilize brute force.

Trump made the same mistake in Iran, believing America’s military might would take out Iran’s military so decisively that the war would be over in weeks, apparently ignorant of what so many others understood, that Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz.

Using force, threatening it, and encouraging others to use it, are, tragically, hallmarks of the Trump brand. If we include abusive and degrading language, rhetorical violence, abuse of the legal system by filing frivolous lawsuits, Trump uses and threatens violence almost constantly. He does so because it has worked for him for decades. And it works for him partially because other people aren’t used to it and don’t have great responses or defenses. But it mostly works for him as president because there are people who think it’s effective, and who think that it means that he is fighting for them.

And using violence - rhetorical, legal, political - works for Trump partially because there are people who want to do the same, and many of those are his supporters.

As we have seen in Ukraine, however, there are limits to how effective the use of force can be when used as a strategy for resolving conflicts.

There have always been men like Trump, men who believe that violence is an acceptable way of getting things done, of resolving conflicts, of forcing other people to do what you want them to do. This has been true throughout history, in every culture, around the world. It’s a condition of being a male human being.

But there have also always been men who believed the opposite, that getting things done requires brains rather than brawn, that conflicts are best resolved through the use of diplomacy, negotiation, listening, argument, and ultimately, the rule of law, and that force should only be used as a last resort.

This conflict between the two approaches towards getting things done and how to resolve conflicts has been one of the great driving forces of civilization. It goes back to Moses and Confucius, to Jesus and the Buddha. The Ten Commandments are a very early attempt to take a stand for the rule of law as a means of resolving conflict.

After millennia of this struggle, the advocates for the rule of law are starting to win. World War II was an example of several nations - Germany, Italy, and Japan - trying to achieve their goals through the use of violence and overwhelming force. That attempt, thankfully, failed, and the nations guided by the rule of law, the Allies, prevailed. As a result, most of the countries involved, including, notably, the vanquished ones, committed themselves even more powerfully to the rule of law and the use of negotiation and compromise as tools for the resolution of conflict. The United Nations and the European Union are the most prominent results of those efforts.

The exception was Russia. The USSR and the Warsaw Pact were simply a manifestation of Russia as empire, held together by the threat and sometimes actual use of force.

In retrospect, it’s possible to argue that Americans did not learn the lessons about the limits of the use of force as thoroughly as the Europeans did. This could be attributed to the fact that Americans did not suffer from the violence of the war as directly as Europeans did. And America, after the war, ended up with a vastly greater ability to use violence through its military than any other country had ever known.

With the election of Obama, an erudite, highly educated lawyer, a professor of constitutional law, it seemed like the debate was over. Those who believed in the rule of law as a better way of resolving conflict, of using strategy and critical thinking to solve the problems of society, had triumphed. This is somewhat overselling Obama’s impact - he was a good president, not a savior, but he did think deeply and thoroughly about how to get things done. Obama’s Iran deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action) was a great example of how effective Obama’s approach was. It took years and lots of behind the scenes negotiations, but it worked.

So how did Trump, the antithesis of Obama in just about every possible way, get elected twice? Part of the answer may lie in the fact that Americans have not experienced the failure of a leader who tries to accomplish his goals through the use of violence the way some other countries, particularly Europeans, have. As a country, we have had both failures - Vietnam - and successes - Desert Storm, in 1991 - using our military. There are still a fair number of men in our society who have not yet absorbed the lessons of thousands of years of the evolution of civilization - mature, responsible men are those who have learned to channel their ability to use force into healthy, productive activities, rather than using violence as a means of getting things done.

One of the great virtues of the rule of law is that it demands accountability, and accountability rewards learning and adaptability. Pete Hegseth, the incompetent clown currently serving as Secretary of Defense, constantly talks about “warrior ethos,” by which he seems to mean tough men beating people up and firing high-powered weapons. He doesn’t seem to understand that all of those high-tech weapons are developed not only by warriors, but also by geeks and nerds, engineers and scientists working in labs and sitting at computers while collaborating with soldiers in the real world. The US military runs on a superb combination of both brains and brawn, and yet our current SecDef seems oblivious to the brains part. At some point there will be a reckoning of the failure of Trump’s war with Iran, and I expect Hegseth to be one of the people who will pay the price. At least that’s my hope.

More importantly, how do we respond to Trump in the here and now? There’s an old saying in politics that when your opponent is shooting themselves in the foot, don’t get in the way. One of the key differences between those who believe in the rule of law and those who believe in the rule of violence is that those who believe in the rule of law are, by definition, operating according to how they think, rather than how they can use their muscles. So people who believe in the rule of law are more capable of recognizing their mistakes, learning from them, and adapting accordingly. This is what we are currently witnessing in Ukraine. The Ukrainians, products of a democratic society, are culturally more capable of learning and adapting than the Russians, who are part of a dictatorship, which rewards loyalty to the state, rather than independent thinking.

Trump is the quintessential example of someone whose tendency to confuse machismo with competence also means that he refuses to learn from his mistakes. Trump is wily enough of a con man that he has managed to avoid being held accountable for his crimes and scams, to say nothing of the damage he has done to this country and our economy, for all of his life up until now. His failures to learn, however, combined with his narcissism and hubris, are starting to catch up to him.

So one of the best strategies for responding to Trump is to remember that those of us in the opposition, who naturally believe in the rule of law, are also better at learning and adapting than Trump and his goons.

I think it will be helpful to remember, particularly as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, how thoroughly the traditions of democracy and the rule of law pervade our society. We are all members of organizations, from our governmental groups - cities, counties, states, the federal government - to our places of employment, our schools, and all of our civic and religious organizations. Clubs, churches, yoga studios, baseball teams - they all run on democratic principles. And Trump has had no effect on any of those. Or at least almost none.

Because we are so thoroughly immersed in democratic traditions and norms, we are extraordinarily well-prepared to defend those norms. One problem that I can see is that because we are so thoroughly immersed in democratic traditions and norms, we sometimes forget that they are there. We forget how completely the rule of law pervades our society and determines our interactions. As we drive down roads, everything we do is determined by a law - how fast we drive, when and where to stop, which lanes we drive in, etc. Every commercial interaction is governed by a complex web of financial regulations. The buildings that we live and work in are built according to building codes defined by governments.

As democracy rewards learning and adaptability, those who responsibly participate develop their own competencies, their own abilities to get things done, to resolve conflicts, to listen, to negotiate, to compromise. So many of us have left behind the need to feel macho, to think of ourselves as users of violence, we forget that there are still many people who thrive on their own sense of channeled aggression. What we must not forget is that, although thoughtful competence, disciplined curiosity, and strategic foresight are not always as glamorous or as showy in the short-term as screaming, pounded fists, and psychopathic malfeasance, the former are, in the long term, far more effective.

Trump and his minions, his goons, his wannabe dictators took most Americans, those so used to the rule of law we forget what a glorious gift it is, by surprise with their slash-and-burn tactics, their assaults on our institutions. Like the Ukrainians, however, Americans learn fast and adapt well, because we have all learned not to confuse machismo with competence.

Outside my apartment window, it’s the night of the 4th of July, when Americans celebrate our independence. I’m hearing booms, crackles, hissing, all the normal sounds of fireworks on this day. I’m seeing explosions of colorful light, twinkling and spiraling, and then disappearing. Fireworks are barely controlled chemical reactions that result in something beautiful. A metaphor, I suppose, not just for Americans, but for humans as we evolve: we are constantly learning how to control and channel dynamic chemical reactions, those impulses within ourselves, for the ultimate purpose of creating something that everyone watching can enjoy and find meaningful.

Subscribe now

But now Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, makes the Bush Iraq fiasco look like an enlightened and progressive decision. Invading and capturing another country’s president on this flimsiest of pretenses isn’t just wrong, both politically and morally. It’s criminally insane. Bush at least went through the pretense of making the argument that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that argument at least had the potential of being right. Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction in the past, and he did have a history of invading other countries. Whatever one thinks of Maduro, he hasn’t invaded another country.

Trump has ranted about drugs coming from Venezuela and has attacked and destroyed boats in the Caribbean that he claims have been smuggling drugs. That’s been criticized as illegal, unjustified, and unconstitutional. Although as president he is the commander in chief of the armed forces, using the military to destroy boats and kill people with almost no justification is a violation of the separation of powers, because only Congress has the power to declare war, and Trump is effectively declaring war without the approval of Congress.

Some takeaways:

• This is just the most extreme example of the failure of the rest of the Republican party, particularly those in Congress, to stand up to Trump. Trump has been on a slippery slope, challenging the norms of American democracy and the rule of law for a while now. Democrats, liberals, and some disaffected Republicans have been arguing that Trump is an unhinged dictator who will go off the rails if he is not contained. Capturing another country’s president eliminates any doubt about whether or not Trump will go off the rails. He just did.

• I don’t like Maduro; I agree that he’s an illegitimate dictator. By kidnapping him, however, Trump has made him a victim and a martyr. It’s like Trump has no idea how spectacularly unproductive a move like this can be.

• A bizarre outcome might be also brutally ironic: as it’s clear Trump has gone off the rails, it may finally become clear to more and more people that Trump is criminally insane. It should be obvious to everyone, but somehow isn’t, that Trump is a criminal who is only interested in accumulating his own wealth and power. It should also be obvious to everyone, but somehow isn’t, that he is losing it mentally, that his judgment, never strongly tethered to reality, has now been released from whatever was keeping him grounded in reality and tied to earth.

• We have to keep in mind that this won’t solve the problems of drugs coming into the United States, and won’t solve the problems of Americans using and being addicted to drugs. Trump will claim that that’s why he did this, but, as others have already pointed out, why did he pardon the former president of Honduras, who had been convicted of facilitating the importation of hundreds of tons of cocaine into this country?

• We are less than a year into Trump’s presidency. What else is he capable of? At this point we should be worried about what else he can and might do with the very formidable power of the most powerful military the world has ever known. Could he threaten another country’s elected leader? He wants to take over Greenland. When I first heard about that, I dismissed it as laughable and ridiculous. I think we’re at the point with Trump that nothing is laughable or ridiculous.

• The latest - and this is still Saturday morning, just after this all took place - is that Trump says the US will “run” Venezuela. In an episode that has already stretched the boundaries of sanity, this goes a step further. How are we going to “run” a country hostile to us? I know there are a lot of Venezuelans who are strongly opposed to Maduro, and maybe we can insist on new and free and fair elections. Anything is possible. But I can’t imagine that Trump has a plan in place to actually “run” Venezuela. Maybe the opposition will step up and take over, and there will be a peaceful transfer of power. Doubtful, but, again, anything is possible. If I were not already questioning Trump’s grip on reality, the idea that the US can “run” a foreign country deeply hostile to us would convince me he has truly lost it.

• If there was any doubt that this is about oil, Trump erased that with this morning’s press conference. Again, Trump is using the power of the presidency to take something away from someone else. Oil companies have a very unfortunate history of being involved with efforts to change governments that they don’t like - just ask the Iranians. Trump has shredded America’s reputation as a reliable ally and an enforcer of the rule of law in international relations. Now he’s confirming our old reputation as a country willing to use force to steal from other countries.

• We haven’t experienced blowback from the attacks on boats in the Caribbean or this fiasco, but we can certainly expect a strong reaction and quite possibly violent reaction.

There’s an old Russian saying that we thought we had hit rock bottom, then we heard scraping from beneath the floor. Many times many people, including me, had thought we had experienced the worst of Trump. We thought he couldn’t get worse, couldn’t engage in a more egregious violation of norms and law than what he had already done. And we have always been proven wrong. One strange glimmer of hope is that at least Maduro and his wife are still alive, and that they have been brought to the US to stand trial. So in that sense, at least, Trump is abiding by the rule of law. That is a truly weird glimmer of hope, but at this point I’ll take any indication that Trump is abiding by the rule of law, even if he’s otherwise engaged in a wholesale violation of it.

I’ve written before that Trump is one man, that American democracy is stronger than him, and that American democracy will survive his presidency. I still believe that. I still think there are guardrails to contain him. But those guardrails really need to start kicking in. Republicans in Congress, this is now on you. Whatever spine you have left, it’s time to use it. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is now - yet another bizarre twist - emerging as a principled voice of reasoned opposition to Trump, strongly opposed this. Here’s hoping that the rest of the GOP starts taking their cues from someone liberals used to think was on the lunatic fringe of the right.

I’m despertate for rays of hope, so if I have to see Marjorie Taylor Greene as an ally, even if she’s about to leave Congress, I’ll take it. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Subscribe now

The deep concern of many progressive and enlightened citizens - and more than a few conservative and enlightened citizens (I am a fan of The Bulwark) - is entirely legitimate. Trump seems to be getting away with his plot to gut the institutions that define American democracy, like the rule of law, free and fair elections, the peaceful transfer of power. Lots of Democrats are demanding that their elected leaders - from Chuck Schumer, minority leader of the Senate (full disclosure - I volunteered on his first campaign for the Senate) on down fight back against Trump. I completely sympathize; it’s frustrating that Democrats have very little leverage.

But I have long believed one fundamental truth: American democracy cannot be destroyed, because it is designed to contain the maximum damage that can be inflicted on it, by enemies outside or within.

American democracy is not a static, unchanging thing that has a binary existence, either living or dead. It’s a combination of institutions, traditions, rules, and norms. It is the laws that govern our society; it’s the legislatures that pass those laws, the executive branches (federal, state, and local) that enforce those laws, and it’s the courts that uphold those laws.

Most importantly, and fundamentally, however, American democracy is the commitments Americans make to each other, and the beliefs that define those commitments. The most important belief, and most important commitment, is that we are all equal under the law, and we all deserve equal opportunity to live our lives as we choose, as long as doing so does not cause harm to others. The practice has never come close to matching the ideal, but without the ideal, we would have little reason to try to constantly improve the practice.

I once read an anecdote about Bill Clinton that illustrates this. In law school, he took a class on corporate law, blew it off for the entire semester, walked into the final and aced it. When the professor asked him how he had done it, Clinton responded: “I may not know much about corporations, but I understand politics, and everybody has to get something.”

“Everybody has to get something.” Clinton rose from poverty and obscurity in Arkansas to be president because he understood and practiced this idea on a world-class level. When he was president, his critics charged that Clinton tried too hard to be all things to all people, to the extent that he compromised the principles of himself and his party. But Clinton was ultimately a successful president who contained the greatest threat to American democracy at the time, the rise of Newt Gingrich and his burn-it-all-down approach to politics.

Trump’s categorical refusal to even entertain the idea that everyone has to get something is, I believe, his greatest weakness and will lead to his ultimate downfall. We are already seeing examples of this. A prominent one is the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco. Brendan Carr, the Trump toady who is chair of the FCC, made a not-so-veiled threat about what he and others in the Trump administration wanted to do about late night talk show hosts like Kimmel who are critical of Trump. He made this threat because he was interested in serving the interests of one man: Donald Trump. Carr had no interest in serving the broader interests of the American people, which, as a high-level federal government employee, is what he should be doing. Disney, owner of ABC and Kimmel’s employer, canceled him, for the same reason: they wanted to please Donald Trump, because, as president, he can make decisions that either benefit or harm their larger corporate interests, and he has made it clear that he will do so if he wants to.

As we all know, the backlash was intense and immediate. Many people canceled Disney subscriptions. Lots of people, including a number of prominent celebrities, voiced strong support for Kimmel. Opposition was motivated by a simple belief: that by canceling Kimmel, Disney, and by implication Trump, was threatening a core principle of American democracy, the right to freedom of expression, the right to say what you want without government interference. There was nothing transactional about these protests; few if any who spoke out had a financial interest in doing so. Canceling Kimmel was, however, both transactional and temporary. Once it was done, it was done. But for the people who protested, the threat to freedom of expression represented a threat to something fundamental to their lives, a core belief that defines their entire lives as Americans. That exists in that realm known as “priceless.” There is literally no price, no explicit economic value, on that essential part of what it means to be a free citizen in America. Trump, Disney, and their affiliate groups, Sinclair and Nexstar, spectacularly underestimated the importance that Americans would place on this blatant attack on freedom of expression and, although Kimmel is not a journalist, freedom of the press.

Trump, his minions, and corporations trying to curry favor with him, acted as if the only person whose interests mattered was Trump’s. The problem was not that they were acting in Trump’s best interests. The problem was that doing so was contrary to the interests of many other people who believed that acting in Trump’s best interest was a threat to democracy. Trump and his minions lost, and those who believe in democracy won.

There are many other examples of Trump putting his interests ahead of American democracy: his destruction of the East Wing of the White House; his tariff policies; his abuse of the pardon power to free people like the January 6th rioters and George Santos. The Santos case is a particularly telling example: freeing him benefited absolutely no one besides Santos himself. He has no constituency, he is hated by many Republicans, and he doesn’t even have money to donate to Trump. I’m not sure anyone - even Trump himself - knows why he pardoned someone so execrable as George Santos. Maybe he just likes exercising power in a way that pisses off other people. Maybe he just likes exercising power just for the thrill.

Another absurd example of exercising power just for his personal whims was threatening new tariffs on Canada because he didn’t like an ad from Ontario that quoted Reagan. This wasn’t just an example of Trump doing something out of sheer spite and pettiness: it was directly contrary to the interests of many American businesses, and to the benefit of no one in the US.

There’s an old saying that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Translated into governing terms, it means that the rule of law is stronger than the use of force. Using the tools of the rule of law - negotiation, diplomacy, the use of evidence within a court system, debating legislation within society before passing laws - is more powerful using force to resolve conflicts. The rule of law is more powerful than the use of force because the rule of law allows for mistakes to be avoided, and for lessons to be learned, both from mistakes and successes. When the military blows up boats it claims are carrying drugs, there’s no way to know whether or not that was a mistake, and there is no way to learn from that, even if it was a success.

There are people who work with Trump, because they agree with him ideologically (insofar as he has an ideology, which he barely does), because they like his style, and because they see themselves as benefiting from working with him. Lots of people voted for him because they believe that they would benefit from him being president.

But Trump’s great weakness is that, because he’s so impulsive, erratic and chaotic, he will eventually make mistakes that hurt his supporters. Imposing tariffs on China prompted China to stop buying American soybeans, which has been devastating for American soybean farmers. Trump pretends to care, but he really doesn’t. He only cares about himself and his own ability to accumulate wealth and power. His utter lack of empathy compounds his lack of thoughtfulness. Because he doesn’t care about anyone else, he’s not going to take anyone else’s needs into consideration when he makes decisions. He’ll pretend to, to get elected, but he’ll ultimately ignore or even screw over people who supported him if their interests get in the way of him doing whatever he wants.

At this point, it looks like Trump is winning because he is moving fast and breaking things. The New York Times has a great editorial explaining how he has moved towards being an autocrat. The threat is real. But because the threat is real and transcends the traditional boundaries of American politics, the response is equally real and also transcends the traditional boundaries of American politics.

There is one key fundamental difference between Trump and his minions and the opposition: Trump & Co. have one goal, which is to do what it takes to benefit Trump and his minions. Breaking the rules seems to confer an advantage; Trump is getting away with things no other president has even dreamed of. The unity of desire, however, has several drawbacks, starting with the alienation of allies, both domestic and foreign. Centrality of Trump’s persona also means that there is a paucity of resources, because many responsible professionals are avoiding him. We see this in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Trump had to call in an utterly unqualified attorney, Lindsey Halligan, to be the US Attorney to carry out his desire to prosecute his enemies when none of the qualified and experienced prosecutors would do his illegal bidding. He buys loyalty at the price of competence.

This is what Trump ultimately does not understand: because in a democracy everybody gets something, in a democracy everybody has an incentive to contribute something. The only people willing to work for Trump are people who see their interests aligned with his, which will be an increasingly small number of people, who will only contribute to that specific goal, and probably won’t do so with a high degree of competence. The people willing to work against him includes many people, who will all contribute to the resistance in their own way.

Trump demands loyalty, but doesn’t always reward it. He also chooses people to work with him on the basis of loyalty, not necessarily on the basis of competence, or knowledge, or experience, or expertise. People opposing Trump are not chosen by a central authority; they choose themselves. They do not choose the form of their resistance based on the whim of an autocrat, but on their own needs, desires, experience, knowledge, and expertise. Trump’s approach to politics is singularly focused on what he wants, from which he derives the ability to act decisively. Because he doesn’t feel the need to consult with anyone else, he can move quickly. Because the opposition is diffuse and multidimensional, it moves much more slowly. It takes time to build coalitions and alliances. Discussion of the best course of action among many people rarely leads to getting things done in a hurry. But the diffuse nature of the opposition to Trump is also its great and profound strength, because it comes from many, many places and takes many forms. We are seeing resistance to Trump from some prominent universities. Presidents of those schools have broad constituencies: students, professors, alumni, donors, vendors, other schools. Those presidents answer to all of those constituents, and the vast, vast majority of those constituents are opposed to Trump.

Network theory provides a good source of explanation: Trump is a singular node in a network. People who work for him have a strong connection to him. They also have connections to each other, but their connections to each other are largely defined by their allegiance to Trump. People who are opposed to Trump do not have as strong of a connection to any central leader. But they have strong connections to many other nodes in complex networks. Information, advice, resources, and even compassion flow through those networks, strengthening each node and each connection. Every person in the network of opposition to Trump is constantly learning, adapting, and changing how they respond. That ability to learn and adapt takes time to manifest, but is ultimately much stronger than Trump’s alliance, because every person in the network is constantly growing stronger and is doing so by listening to and working with other people. Trump, of course, is almost totally incapable of learning or adapting. He’s even less capable of learning and adapting in ways that will benefit other people. So the network of opposition is continually improving, growing stronger, while Trump’s network will, in the end, atrophy and wither.

Trump is one man. He thinks that he commands an army of followers and supporters. And, as the commander-in-chief, he literally does command an army. He thinks that being president makes him powerful and gives him the ability to do whatever he wants. What he fails to understand is freedom in America doesn’t just mean being able to do what you want. Freedom in America is not bestowed on us from above. We earn the right to be able to do what we want by learning how to work with other people. We earn the right to be free when we earn the respect of other people. Learning how to work with other people is not always easy, because it usually involves failing, learning a lesson from failure, and occasionally apologizing. Learning the best way to work with other people requires that we understand what we individually are best at, what are the best ways we can do what we do in cooperation with others.

Freedom requires our collective ability to learn from our mistakes. Trump becoming president - twice - represents a massive mistake. It also represents an opportunity to learn what we did wrong on a large scale. That will take time and much effort. Discussions of what went so wrong that Trump was elected will take years to percolate through all of our networks. Those lessons are, in many ways, going to be painful. But they will be learned. And we will be stronger for it.

Trump understands none of this. He convinced many people that voting for him to be president would be in their best interests. Some people will always believe that. What Trump does not understand, cannot and will never understand, is that freedom and power are not there to feed the egos of narcissistic maniacs, but are earned every day by how we as individual Americans interact with each other. America is not just a country, a set of laws, a collection of states and cities. It is the idea that what defines us is how we treat ourselves and each other, and the world.

Everybody has to get something. Trump acts only in his own best interests. What Americans understand is that what is in our own best interests is not necessarily what benefits each of us individually, but what benefits us collectively. Ideals and compassion are stronger than greed and vengeance. What is in our collective best interest is creating a society where each of us can flourish, each according to their ability and their dreams.

Subscribe now

There's part of me that wants to ignore it, that doesn’t want to get my hands dirty, that doesn’t want to pay attention to the very disturbing details of this hideous story. There’s part of me that doesn’t want to spend the emotional energy on something so nasty and unresolved. As much as I want to feel empathy for the victims, I’m running the real risk of compassion fatigue.

But the issue isn’t going away just because of the horrible nature of the crimes, or because they were so extensive, and involved so many high-profile individuals. The larger issue is what I call the Assholes and Idiots Theory.

The Assholes and Idiots Theory (which I made up) says that, in any sufficiently large political organization, like, say, a national political party, there will always be a certain number of people who are assholes and idiots, and who have the potential to inflict damage on the organization if they are not contained, and the job of the leadership of that organization, particularly the head of it, is to contain the assholes and idiots. This is true, by the way, of organizations across the ideological spectrum, from left to right.

Assholes and idiots in a political organization do not, of course, think of themselves that way. They think of themselves as passionate and committed activists. Sometimes they bring needed energy and fresh ideas. What they also bring, however, are usually attitudes of self-righteousness, absolute certainty, and a tendency to be judgmental and dismissive of others.

Successful presidents develop their own strategies for containing the assholes and idiots. Sometimes those strategies only work up to a point. Reagan had immense credibility as a leader of the conservative movement, and used that to keep the more radical elements of the conservative movement in line. For example, he seemed to genuinely believe he could work with Gorbachev to achieve peace, disappointing some more hawkish GOP types. Then Iran-Contra happened. Turns out there were some real assholes and idiots in that administration after all! Bill Clinton used his world-class political and oratorical skills to put together a coalition that won Democrats the White House after 12 years. Clinton was also blessed with the best of enemies when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House. But Clinton was his own idiot when he couldn’t keep his pants on. Obama used his moral authority as the first black president to keep his coalition together and was, like Clinton, blessed with great political opponents. Obama is also that rare leader who never really had to deal with out-of-control assholes or idiots within his own party.

Trump has turned all of this on its head and inside out. Trump doesn’t try to contain the assholes and idiots; instead, he uses them, he inspires them, and he puts them in positions of power. The reason for this should be obvious: Trump is the chief asshole and idiot himself.

During Trump’s first term, when he didn’t really know what he was doing and didn’t know what he wanted, he was mostly surrounded by standard, responsible, professional conservatives and Republicans. People like John Kelly, one of the White House chiefs of staff, and Jim Mattis, secretary of defense, both four-star Marine generals.

This time, Trump has a much clearer idea of what he wants, which is to accumulate as much power as possible to himself. If that sounds like a polite way of saying that he wants to be a dictator, it is. And this time, instead of a team of responsible, reasonable professionals who want to serve their country, he has surrounded himself with a team of people who want to help him accumulate that power in the Oval Office. He has surrounded himself with human wrecking balls like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and radicals who want to dismantle the government like, well, there are too many to list.

In other words, Trump has employed, empowered, and planted throughout his administration a team of assholes and idiots. For most previous administrations, the assholes and idiots were usually people who were well-intentioned but deluded and misguided, like academic Marxists who read The Communist Manifesto and actually believed it. Or they were people who saw problems in society, didn’t think the government was solving those problems fast enough, and either ranted in obscure publications, wrote punk rock songs, or performed hopeless acts of activist desperation. Lots of times they preached to self-selected choirs, so containing their anger and bitterness meant just ignoring them. They tended to be on the margins, so they generally had little or no influence anyway. Many are academic social critics, the kind of who people who lock themselves alone in a room so they can write long, boring essays blaming society for the fact that they are lonely. It’s almost trivially easy to dismiss people who are elitist, annoying, and who use language that ends up being bizarrely obfuscatory. Ignoring self-righteous and judgmental assholes and idiots is a skill that I personally have spent decades developing. Under Trump, however, the assholes and idiots aren’t just people who studied Critical Theory and took it seriously (I studied Critical Theory and decided it was worthless nonsense).

Under Trump, the assholes and idiots are the opposite of deluded and frustrated over-educated idealists; they’re greedy, selfish, power-hungry maniacs who want to advance their own causes or enrich themselves, the rest of the country be damned. I’ve known many conservatives who I disagreed with, but who I trusted and respected as responsible and compassionate people of conscience. There were even a few of those in the first Trump administration (see Kelly and Mattis, mentioned above). Even John Bolton, who I long regarded as an arrogant warmonger, now seems like a pillar of diplomacy and statesmanship compared to the current crew.

Which brings me back to Epstein. Every political organization/movement has different factions, people with different ideas and agendas. A good, strong, principled leader knows how to manage those differences, how to negotiate compromises between the factions, how to make sure that everyone feels heard and respected, even if they don’t ultimately get what they want.

Trump, of course, is neither good, strong, nor principled, and he’s only a leader because he channels his anger so effectively that everyone around him is terrified of crossing him.

Trump’s affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein, so thoroughly documented already, even without the release of whatever constitutes the “Epstein files,” represents the greatest challenge to keeping this inherently fractious coalition together. There are some people who are so enamored with Trump’s ideas (whatever those are) and his ability to “own the libs” that they will stick with him whatever his transgressions. Same with people who, like Stephen Miller, have chained themselves to Trump because they share his disdain for democratic norms, his appetite for institutional chaos, and his power-mad greed.

Not all of the millions who voted for Trump, however, are psychotic nutjobs. Most of them are normal people who didn’t want to vote for a Democrat. Most of them didn’t buy the warnings about Trump’s threat to democracy, the rule of law, or economic stability. Many of them are still not taking Trump’s threats to centuries of American norms and institutions seriously.

But Epstein is the ultimate asshole. And Trump is an idiot for thinking that, like previous scandals, he can bluff and bluster his way through this one. He’s managed to trivialize, ignore, or deny charges of infidelity, bankruptcy, mismanagement, incompetence, vindictiveness, and even cruelty. In all of those cases, the other parties were adults, presumably consenting (although not always), and Trump could claim that whatever happened, the other parties bore some responsibility, if only because they had initially agreed to be in whatever relationship with him that they were in.

Sex with underage girls, however, crosses a line. The corruption of innocence, the violation of bodily integrity, the degradation of purity, is purely cruel and wrong. To have masterminded such a scheme for years is unimaginably depraved.

We don’t know the extent of Trump’s association with Epstein, but just the fact that they were associated at all is despicable. Epstein needed collaborators to make his scheme work, but collaboration based on deceit and lies about unconscionable behavior is not sustainable, because at some point the interests of the people in that collaboration are going to clash.

Trump’s MAGA coalition is similarly built on deceit, lies, naked self-interest, greed, and, for some people, oppression, vengeance, and cruelty. Such a coalition is not sustainable in the long term because invariably the interests of the different factions will clash, there will be no leader to smooth over the differences, to broker compromises, and to make every party feel heard and respected. The trust necessary to hold a coalition together will shatter when different parties realize others in the coalition, including their leader, lied to them. Businesses who rely on stable regulatory schemes and who depend on the government to provide reliable data are going to be increasingly frustrated with a president who imposes tariffs on a whim, who rips up contracts he doesn’t like, and who savages the staff of long-established and previously dependable agencies providing information on things like employment, inflation, and even the weather.

The assholes and idiots in the Trump administration are not just the wannabe fascists in the White House; they’re also the bullies wearing masks and ICE uniforms acting as if the rule of law is a trivial inconvenience that they can ignore as they snatch people off the street. Trump’s assholes and idiots aren’t just a threat to the rule of law in an abstract sense as they pressure large and powerful institutions, like Harvard and Intel, to bend to their demands. They’re a threat to the rule of law that is so powerful, yet so omnipresent in American life that it is all but invisible; the laws and norms that we don’t even notice because we have lived with them for so long. Now that this aspect of the rule of law is being threatened, however, many Americans are waking up to the fact that there really are a lot of assholes and idiots in this Administration, and their interests clash very badly with those of the average American citizen.

Trump has not just utterly failed to contain the assholes and idiots in his administration; he has unleashed them. In this tragic and unprecedented situation, the best tool we have for containing the assholes and idiots is American democracy itself. And I believe, in the core of my being, that American democracy, although it can be unwieldy and slow, is ultimately far more powerful than any coalition of assholes and idiots.

Subscribe now

Trump operates on a perverse version of this: he doesn’t believe that everyone has to get something, but he knows that his base has to get something, he knows what that is, and he delivers it. I don’t approve of what he delivers to his base, but I respect the fact that he knows what they want and how to deliver it. They want to “own the libs,” they want to feel like Trump is fighting for them and their values, etc. They are willing to overlook an absolutely insane amount of morally reprehensible and corrupt behavior because he is so good at delivering the goods to them.

Elon does not have this gift. He has given many people what they want: electric cars, rockets, space-based Internet service, a dysfunctional social media platform. He believed that he and his army of tech bros could deliver what he thought the American people wanted: a streamlined, more efficient federal government. He was, we now know, wrong on a colossal scale.

This also makes me nostalgic, bizarrely, for Reagan, William F. Buckley, and an old-fashioned, basic principle of conservative/Republican ideology: belief in free markets. Corruption and grift, apart from being illegal and morally wrong, are antithetical to the operation of the free markets because they distort the markets. In an ideal free market, decisions are made by the market, not the government. Thus the term “free markets.” This used to be a hill conservatives/Republicans were willing to die on. Belief in the superiority of the free markets was a defining difference between the West and our Communist adversaries.

Musk claimed that the goal of the Department of Governmental Efficiency was to make the federal government more efficient. I have heard it said many times that government should be run “like a business.” I understand that sentiment, because businesses seem to be generally more efficient than the government, but I’ve also long believed that the functions of business and government are so fundamentally different that government cannot, and should not, function like a business. One essential difference is that commercial transactions can be temporary, one-dimensional and immediate, or long-term, multidimensional and substantial, but relations between a government and its citizens are permanent, substantial, and multidimensional.

If I buy gas at a gas station, it may be a one-time thing; I may never buy gas there again. All of us, however, are in a long-term relationship with the government. If I buy gas, I’m doing one thing: buying gas. That’s the totality of my relationship with the company selling it to me. Our relationships with the government, however, cover many aspects of our lives, even if we don’t feel that immediately. When I turn on a light switch, I’m using power generated by a utility that is subject to many government regulations. Same thing when I drive my car, or use any aspect of the financial system.

Musk seems to be one of those people who mistake their abilities to succeed in one area with an ability to succeed in almost any other area. But he’s also mistaken his ability to manage a corporation with his ability to make change in the government. He’s also deeply confused about the role of competition in the government versus the role of competition in politics. In the corporate world, companies compete against each other, and the market, ideally, makes decisions about which product is best, which company is doing the best job of serving its customers.

In the government, the competition is between different parties and ideologies, rather than companies. The mechanisms for deciding which ideas win is different. Instead of companies making products for consumers, politicians develop programs and policies for their constituents. But the basic idea is the same. Someone proposes an idea, discusses it with other people, and eventually it becomes a proposal. Arguments ensue, sometimes among a small group of experts, sometimes among the population at large. Eventually legislation is proposed, laws are passed, and more debate ensues about whether or not the legislation is working the way it was intended. The process is slow and inefficient.

But - and this is something Elon Musk does not understand, and probably never will - the process is also usually thorough. Ideas that become legislation are debated in many arenas - among the affected constituents, among academics, lobbyists, think tanks, the media, and finally the legislature itself. Lots of people, and lots of groups, have a chance to weigh in on legislation before it passes. The ideal would be a thoroughly transparent process in which every relevant constituent has an equal chance to engage in the debate. The actual process is far from the ideal; different constituents have different degrees of influence, and those with the most money often have the most influence. But at least decisions are not made by one person or by one party, as they are in a dictatorship. Legislation is subject to review by the courts, but ultimate judgment on legislation comes from the court of public opinion. Obamacare, for example, was strongly opposed by Republicans when it passed, and they have made attempts to repeal it, but it works, and enough people benefit from it that there is now a large constituency that opposes repeal. Same with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Musk and DOGE bypassed all of this. They made decisions about what programs to cut, which employees to fire, without consulting any of the relevant constituents. Musk was like a frat boy who somehow took over his college and decided that the English, Anthropology, and Art History departments were irrelevant, and do we really need a medical school? What the frat boy didn’t realize is that the students, their parents, the professors, the alumni, and the governing board all have a say in how the college functions. More important, they all have relations with each other.

Every member of Congress has multiple relations: with other members of Congress, with their constituents, with governmental agencies they oversee, with businesses they regulate, even with other governments. Every member of Congress is constantly responding to these groups and balancing their requests and interests.

Trump understands that, as president, he is the biggest and most important person members of Congress are responding to, but that he’s not the only one.

Musk ignored this reality. He paid no attention to relationships with Congress. More importantly, he paid no attention to the relationships all of the relationships members of Congress have with everyone else. The Onion, exaggerating only slightly, put it well: “Rift Widens Between Elon Musk, Anyone Who Ever Met Him.”

“Musk’s staunch refusal to engage in self-reflection or address his many off-putting personal tics had so far estranged him from the White House, his business partners, his neighbors, the mothers of his children, the children themselves, interviewers, investors, restaurant waitstaff, and all others who had directly interacted with him in any manner for any length of time.”

Trump is a bully, but he’s a bully who understands where his power comes from. Musk is a bully who thought his power came from his money. He completely failed to understand that, in Washington, money is only part of the power equation. Power comes from how well you deliver results for the groups you are connected to. Power also comes from your ability to work with other people. The more people you can work with, the more powerful you are. Your ability to work with other people depends on whether or not they think it is in their best interest to work with you. There are two questions people in politics will ask to determine whether or not they will work with you: are your interests aligned with theirs? Can they trust you, once they have decided to work with you, that you will do what you promised?

Another thing Musk does not understand is that, while the process of developing policies and passing laws is slow and inefficient, it is only inefficient in the short term. The process is actually highly efficient in the long term, because by the time policies are developed and laws are passed, they are usually so thoroughly debated, examined, and discussed, they often end up working well. If they don’t, adjustments can be made, but are generally made only after significant experience, experimentation, and analysis. Musk is famous for believing in the Silicon Valley ethos of “move fast and break things.” Memo to Mr. Musk: sometimes disruption is bad. Sometimes being slow and careful is a better approach. In the world of politics, that’s also usually the only available approach.

Trump and Musk are both engaged in obscene amounts of grift and corruption. But, again, Musk failed to understand a couple of things: Republicans in Congress tolerate Trump’s corruption - selling cryptocurrencies, real estate deals with foreign countries, his social media platform Truth Social - because 1) there isn’t really anything they can do about it, short of impeaching him, 2) his base is so slavishly devoted to him, if any Republicans criticized Trump for his deals, they would be roasted by his base, and 3) they don’t really care about how much money Trump makes while in office, because it doesn’t directly affect them or their constituents.

Musk’s biggest mistake, which started off this whole blow-up with Trump, was attacking the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the House. Musk objects to the fact that it increases the debt by trillions of dollars. For once, I agree with Musk: this much deficit spending is bad.

What Musk doesn’t get about this bill is that paying for tax cuts for the rich with deficit spending is the ultimate Republican grift. This has been the case since Reagan. Republicans tell themselves that cutting taxes frees up money for investment, which drives economic growth, which generates enough economic activity to increase taxes enough to pay for the tax cuts. I think this is hogwash, and I’ve never seen any evidence to convince me otherwise. We’ve been living with this nonsense since the Kemp-Roth bill in the beginning of Reagan’s presidency. That’s 44 years. That’s enough time to evaluate the idea that tax cuts pay for themselves. If they did, we wouldn’t have the massive debt load that we do. How do we know that cutting taxes never generates enough income to pay for the cuts? Because it never has.

Musk thought that DOGE could cut enough government spending to justify cutting taxes without any more deficit spending. His accomplishments in the markets fed his absurdly over-inflated ego, and his arrogance translated into an unprecedented reign of incompetence and failure. I doubt anyone in history has so thoroughly trashed their own reputation so quickly among so many people. He makes the Enron folks look like small-time crooks. As his reputation crumbled, his power began to evaporate, and with that disappearing, the willingness of people in Washington to tolerate his personality quirks - his highly alienating personality quirks - began to vanish as well. Trump, who has extraordinary powers of observation (even if they are ill-used), saw this happening in real time, and acted accordingly.

To paraphrase Churchill, rarely has one person been so wrong about so much so fast.

To recap: Before the 2024 election, both Trump and Musk faced significant legal challenges: Trump had been convicted of 34 felony counts in New York, there were investigations into the January 6th riots, and the federal government was investigating Musk’s businesses on a number of fronts. After Trump was elected, all of those problems went away. In that respect, Trump’s and Musk’s interests were aligned. Musk set his DOGE bros (and they seem to be mostly bros) loose in the federal government, looking to cut costs. Trump doesn’t have a problem with people wreaking havoc and causing chaos, as long as it doesn’t make him uncomfortable; again, their interests are aligned. But then DOGE fails to deliver savings significant enough to justify tax cuts, and pisses lots of people off in the process. The bromance starts to cool, although they both pretend it’s fine (Trump gave Musk a key to the White House a week before the blowup).

Musk seemed to actually believe that he could achieve enough savings through DOGE to reduce spending enough to justify tax cuts for the rich, and still come close to a balanced budget, or at least not add trillions to the deficit. When he realized that Republicans were willing to go ahead and cut taxes for the rich WITHOUT enough spending cuts, he went ballistic, on the Republicans in the House, and then on Trump, lashing out at him, attacking him on X, the social media platform he seems to have bought just for this purpose. Trump, of course, being just about the only person on the planet with an equal capacity to throw out rapid-fire insults on a social media platform he owns, responded in kind. And political junkies around the country and around the world watched in utter fascination a drama far surpassing what any soap opera could ever deliver.

Musk violated two cardinal rules of GOP politics: first, he made them seem incompetent and heartless, and second, he opposed a bill that would facilitate the transfer of massive amounts of wealth to the rich. The heartless part they are used to; being accused of incompetence on a government-wide scale is new. Republicans are supposed to be the party of businesspeople, while Democrats are the party of artists and academics. Republicans are supposed to be good at getting things done. Whoops! So much for that. DOGE did a number on that idea. Then he opposed Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” I don’t think he opposed the tax cuts part, but just opposing it pissed off the wrong people. The bill was the product of long hours, painful compromises, and lots of arm twisting. Opposing it after it passed the House was more than a little counterproductive.

It’s been a couple of days since the friendship between these two narcissists went cold as ice. So far Trump doesn’t seem to have any interest in patching things up with his once-biggest donor. Too bad, so sad! Of course Trump, whose emotional stability begs comparison to a weather vane in a hurricane, may change his mind and decide that Musk is OK. But they both have millions of followers, and those people now have their own disillusionment to deal with. Which billionaire blowhard will they side with?

About the only good thing to come from all of these shenanigans, which require multiple uses of the term “clusterfuck,” is that the reputation of both idiots has been severely damaged. The free markets and politics in a democracy have something in common: sometimes it can be extraordinarily difficult to hold someone accountable for their mistakes, but sometimes, when that happens, when accountability does arrive, it does so with a vengeance.

Subscribe now

It's exactly what you expect, but in the best possible way. You can expect that watching two old friends with decades-long careers in comedy will have lots of funny moments, and you'd be right. They have lots of famous, funny friends, but most of those only make short cameos, which is actually kind of refreshing. The lack of star power grounds it a bit more.

Ferrell provides a calming and centering presence, but does so almost accidentally. He provides this sense of a calm presence for the audience, but does so as a secondary effect. First and foremost, he's a calming and centering presence for Harper. You have the feeling that, as a man or woman, Harper is a somewhat anxious person, but also fairly adventurous. Having transitioned, a big chunk of that anxiety is gone. She’s now more comfortable with herself than she has ever been, and a lifetime of wondering what is wrong with her, and how to fix what had seemed unfixable, is over. Part of that anxiety stemmed from not really knowing where she fit in, and trying to make herself fit in in places where men are supposed to be comfortable, like sports arenas and steakhouses. So her sense of adventure takes over.

That anxiety, however, has now been replaced by a feeling of not knowing where, as a trans woman, she will be accepted, and where she will be comfortable. Ferrell is the perfect companion for this journey, both literal and metaphorical/psychological/spiritual, because he’s both a famous Hollywood movie star, and the quintessential Everyman. He’s a famous movie star because he comes across, mostly, as an average Joe. He’s not an action star, he’s not a lady’s man, he’s not the kind of actor known for appearing in challenging period dramas. But he’s also a great actor; the same man who played a boring IRS agent in Stranger Than Fiction (one of my all-time favorite movies) also went way over the top in one of the ultimate fish-out-of-water stories, Elf. (more full disclosure: he went to USC, as I did, which almost automatically means he’s a good and well-rounded filmmaker) (even more full disclosure: we have the same first and middle names, John William)

He also seems comfortable with being famous, which turns out to be a great trait to have on this trip. He seems to genuinely enjoy spontaneously standing courtside at an Indiana Pacers basketball game and riling up the crowd. He seems equally comfortable, at the same event, talking to the governor of Indiana. There’s no mention of this in the film, but it probably doesn’t hurt that he’s 6’3”.

Harper enjoys all of this, takes full advantage of it, and enjoys, just as much, the therapeutic effect it has on her. She even likes talking about the therapeutic effect it has on her. She even appreciates it when the therapy is not funny, but brings up old trauma. Because she’s at a place in her life, brought here by her own bravery, where she can deal with that old trauma.

Will Ferrell is the Everyman here because, like most of us, he wants to be supportive of trans people, but he’s also confused by a lot of trans issues, and he doesn’t really know how to ask the questions that he has. A lot of those questions are deeply personal, and unless you have a very strong personal connection with a trans person, they’re just too uncomfortable to ask.

Will and Harper have a very strong personal connection, and they use that connection to set up a situation in which Will can ask those very personal questions, and can even do so in front of a camera.

So he asks those questions. He doesn’t just ask them of Harper; he asks them of at least one other trans woman, of Harper’s sister, of random strangers they meet along the way. Those other people answer the questions. Sometimes the questions and answers are funny; sometimes they are painful. They are always illuminating.

In terms of the movement to advance trans rights, this documentary is both a large step forward and a small step forward. It’s a large step because it’s a comprehensive look at being trans, and it has a very broad appeal. It takes a common-sense, largely uncontroversial approach to a delicate, awkward, often politically polarizing subject. It’s a fun documentary about a subject that doesn’t always present a lot of opportunities for humor. It’s a small step not because of any failure of the filmmaking, but only because there’s only so much one movie can say about such a large and confusing topic. There’s no direct mention of this in the film, but it’s a very powerful statement of what it means for one person to really experience the freedom to be herself.

They don’t address the debates around trans women playing on women’s sports teams; they don’t address whether or not trans women should be admitted to domestic violence shelters or women’s prisons. It would have been a lesser movie if they had addressed those and other issues. They stay in their lane, where they are both comfortable enough to explore areas where Will, at least, is a little uncomfortable, but where he can provide comfort - much needed comfort - to his old friend. And to the audience. And to the world.

Subscribe now

At first, I was torn on this issue. I was disappointed as well; I had expected better of Biden, and I don’t appreciate the slippage from the high ground. On the other hand, I saw commentary from former US Attorneys (i.e., federal prosecutors) who argued that, given the charges brought against Hunter Biden, they would not have charged him. They were confirming Joe Biden’s claim that Hunter had been prosecuted because of his last name. Some people forgave Biden out of sympathy: this is a man who buried his first wife and baby daughter, and whose other son died of brain cancer. He has suffered profound loss; he can be excused for wanting to spare his son, his family, and himself any more grief.

My take is ultimately different from any of these analyses. I don’t think Biden compromised his or Democrats’ long-standing commitment to the rule of law. I don’t think there is any loss of moral authority here, because what he did is entirely within the rule of law, because he exercised an authority that is granted to him by the Constitution. There is nothing in the law which prohibits the president from granting pardons to family members. As for putting his own interests ahead of the rule of law - I don’t think he put his own interests ahead of the rule of law, because he does not materially benefit from this pardon. He may benefit emotionally, but there is no indication that he has or will benefit materially from granting his son this pardon. Many children support their parents in old age. Does keeping Hunter out of jail mean that he’ll be in a better position to support Joe as he gets older? Maybe, but as a former POTUS Joe will not be lacking in support, emotional and material.

There’s no question that he pardoned his son because he is his son. Was it fair? Not really. Are there other people who have been similarly subject to unfair prosecutions, who deserve to be pardoned, but didn’t get one from Biden, and will probably never get one? Absolutely. As a long-time anti-death penalty activist, I’ve seen a number of demands from other activists asking Biden to commute the sentences of people on the federal death row, before Trump can carry out any more executions. I’m still hoping that Biden will commute those sentences, but I’m also prepared to be disappointed.

Speaking of our future president, there isn’t much question that Biden pardoned Hunter in part to protect him from being unfairly targeted and prosecuted by Trump’s goons. Considering how vindictive and aggressive Trump can be, I think that’s a perfectly reasonable justification for Biden to pardon his son. If I were president, I would presumably want to protect my family from being harassed by the likes of Trump and his henchmen (and henchwomen).

But the very idea of a president being able to grant pardons, without constraint or limitations imposed by either of the other branches of government, is inherently unfair. It gives the president the power to circumvent the judgments of the justice system. It allows the president to make decisions about people who have violated laws passed by Congress - to forgive those crimes, thereby bypassing, in effect, the intent of the legislators who determined that those laws were worth becoming part of our system of justice.

We recognize that sometimes mistakes were made, both in the application of laws and the passing of them, and the ability of the president to grant pardons and commutations is one mechanism in our system that can be used to right those wrongs. There will always be examples of presidents who use this power either for personal or political purposes. As long as this power resides in the executive, there will be the potential for scandal and abuse. It is an imperfect solution to address the imperfections in an imperfect system.

Politically, I agree that it wasn’t a great decision by Biden, and I wish he hadn’t made it. Democrats have been forced to defend a decision they don’t want to defend, and Republicans are doing their best to pretend to be outraged. But the spectacle of members of the GOP - people who almost universally support the most morally deficient and ethically depraved person ever to hold the office of president, a man who makes Nixon seem almost honest - claiming any kind of moral high ground on this is just laughable. Trump routinely flouts laws, regulations, norms and standards in pursuit of his own self-interest. Trump probably makes more ethically-challenged decisions every day before lunch than Biden has made in his lifetime.

Apart from the abstract political and ethical considerations, let’s take a look at the real-world implications of this decision. Was national security in any way compromised by pardoning Hunter Biden? No. Was anyone harmed in any way, shape or form? No. Did anyone lose any money? Not that I am aware of. Is there any danger that Hunter Biden will hurt or steal from anyone in the future? There are no guarantees, but the possibility seems remote.

This is the kind of thing that will fade from the national conversation in a week, if not sooner. In a year it will be a historical footnote, if that. I’ve been aware of Joe Biden for several decades. I have reasons to respect him, I have reasons I’m disappointed in him, and this decision won’t have much impact on my overall opinion of him. As for the rule of law? It is vastly, vastly stronger than something like this. The rule of law and American democracy will be facing multiple and significant challenges in the immediate future. But not because Joe Biden was a good father and made a decision to show some compassion for his troubled son.

Subscribe now

I loved it. 

Johnson has the gift of knowing how just seriously to present himself. In this case, his character, Callum Drift takes his role as the leader of ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) very seriously. He’s Santa’s bodyguard, a job he’s had for 542 years. Just writing “542 years” makes me laugh, because it’s just so absurd. There’s no explanation for why he’s been doing it for this long, or even what he is, apart from the fact that he’s not a mortal human. We never really find out what he is - we’re just supposed to accept it. Which I did, because Johnson does a great job of convincing me that I’m going to have a good time if I suspend disbelief and don’t ask questions. He’s not an elf, that’s for sure! But he’s had enough - he’s retiring, because he just can’t see the kids in the adults any more. If you don’t get any joy out of working for Santa Claus, you probably shouldn’t be working for Santa Claus. He and Santa have a nice exchange about this, which ends up being about the meaning of Christmas. It’s just sentimental enough to give a little bit of depth to what would otherwise be a featherweight of a movie in terms of meaning. It’s a small fraction of the heartwarming moments found in a Hallmark or Lifetime movie, but just enough for this.

Santa is kidnapped just before Christmas Eve. Zoe (Lucy Liu), director of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), and Johnson’s boss, hires Jack “The Wolf” O’Malley (Evans) to track him down, because he’s the best tracker in the world. Problem is, Mr. O’Malley’s ethics and scruples are not really compatible with those of the North Pole Complex. Because people in the North Pole Complex HAVE ethics and scruples, and you get the feeling that Jack considers those professionally and personally contingent, at best. You know that old saying, “stealing candy from a baby?” The kind of thing only low-life scum would even consider? Guess what Jack does, just for fun. He sees the rules of society not as guidelines to be followed, but challenges to be bent, broken, or twisted. And he seems to be very good at it. How good? At the North Pole he learns - from a 10 foot tall polar bear named Garcia - that he is an NL4 - a Level 4 Naughty Lister. Yes, he’s on THAT LIST. Boy, has Santa been watching him! I don’t know how many levels are on the Naughty List, but Level 4 is clearly very bad. It’s almost surprising that there isn’t a subplot of him getting coal in his stocking. He can be a responsible adult, as long as it's in his best interest to be so. He just doesn’t think that happens very often. Don Corleone had higher ethical standards than Jack.

Callum and Jack, being complete opposites in terms of the degree of honesty and integrity each has, as well as their general outlook on life, are naturally forced to work together. Buddy Comedy 101: they start out hating each other. Also Buddy Comedy 101: they’re going to end up trusting and respecting each other. This is so standard I am giving nothing away. Also, non-spoiler alert #2: the good guys win in the end. I’m telling you this in case you were worrying about whether or not the good guys do, in fact, win in the end, because you shouldn’t. That would mean taking this movie seriously, which, again, you shouldn’t.

At one point Callum and Jack have to break into the house of Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), sort of a Christmas demon (Krampus is actually part of Christmas lore in some European countries). It’s guarded by hellhounds. Callum pulls something out of his pocket, and does something to it with a magical gauntlet on his forearm that animates things. It becomes a chicken. He says to the chicken, “Ellen, we need you to distract them,” whereupon Ellen the chicken dutifully runs around screaming and distracting the hellhounds. An intelligent chicken named Ellen distracting hellhounds is not part of any Christmas story I know of. This is what I mean by wandering the line between deliciously absurd and deeply stupid. Where this and other scenes land with respect to that line may depend on the individual tastes of the viewer. I like to think that my degree in philosophy gives me license to appreciate finely calibrated stupidity. That’s an important life skill. 

A cynic with a heart of gold hidden underneath a scarred exterior who has an epiphany and a change of heart after being exposed to the Christmas spirit, and maybe something magical, is a story as old as Dickens. Maybe as old as St. Nick himself. This version updates the story with lots of CGI, jokes about contemporary dietary fads (Santa eats cookies because he has to “carb up” - he burns 430 million calories delivering all those presents), and Gryla, an evil witch (Kiernan Shipka) who - of course - has an evil plan for world domination. It also provides us with a fight scene involving apparently indestructible evil snowmen who use snowflakes as deadly weapons. This is a nice touch - I have never seen apparently indestructible evil snowmen before. It takes place on a beach in Aruba. Why there? So they can show women in bikinis (and some well-sculpted guys in board shorts). This was so transparently an attempt to appeal to people like me (you know, straight guys) that I had to laugh. The silliness is a good counter to the objectification.

I didn’t take it very seriously, because how can you? But I took it just seriously enough to let myself believe in a little Christmas magic. Callum uses toy store storerooms to travel around the world, because apparently they’re portals to some kind of North Pole transportation system. I worked in a toy store, and I didn’t know this! I could have used our storeroom to go on vacation to someplace exotic and exciting! Or maybe I could have used it to go home and avoid paying airfare! And I worked in a small indie toy store in Washington, DC, called The Red Balloon. It was a very cool toy store, exactly the kind that would have had a secret portal in its storeroom just for Santa’s helpers. But I wasn’t part of Santa’s super-secret organization, which explains why I didn’t have access to this portal system. 

If I’m finding myself fantasizing about what it would be like to be part of this movie’s world, it’s working for me.

Subscribe now

One thing I’m not going to do in these posts is lay any blame at the feet of the candidate herself, or her campaign. I’m perfectly capable of critiquing losing Democrat candidates for president - I know well what mistakes Hillary Clinton and her campaign made, and I think they were serious. Kamala Harris, on the other hand, ran an excellent campaign, but under terrible circumstances. One thing about her that I think is underappreciated is that she seems to be a very fast learner. She had to start a presidential campaign - one of the most complex and demanding enterprises human beings do on a regular basis - literally on a moment’s notice. The groundwork for those campaigns is laid over months or years - hers got off the ground basically in an afternoon. There were a few things that she might have done differently, but looking at the things that were in her control: consolidating support within the party, choosing staff, hitting the campaign trail, debating Trump, giving interviews, giving speeches, raising money, and, most importantly, rallying the troops, I think she did an amazing job. But, as I said, the circumstances were terrible. And they were terrible mostly because of one bad decision made by her boss.

A consensus seems to have developed that Biden made a mistake by deciding to run for reelection. If he had declined, that would have opened up the race, and the Democrats would have had a real primary. Kamala would have been the frontrunner, but it’s entirely possible that other strong contenders, like Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom would have joined the race. Governors tend to have an advantage running for POTUS, because they’ve already had executive experience - Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush II were all governors. A primary would have had many benefits, not least of all for Kamala. In a primary, candidates make mistakes, but they have time to recover from them. Dems would have had a decent debate about Biden’s legacy. As VP, Harris was both blessed and cursed with the track record of the Biden presidency. I think Biden did a good job, but lots of people don’t agree with me. In a primary, other candidates would presumably have highlighted what the Biden administration did well, but also made clear what they would do differently. In that context, Harris would have had an easier time distinguishing herself from her mentor and boss.

About Biden’s popularity: I don’t think the problem was that Biden’s policies were unpopular. There were some that were controversial, or at least that didn’t receive universal acclaim: the withdrawal from Afghanistan, immigration, student loan forgiveness. Many voters were unhappy with the economy, particularly inflation, but by most measures, the economy is doing well: unemployment is low, the economy is growing, the stock market is up. I understand why most people haven’t felt like their lives were improving, so I get the frustration. But there have been many times when the economy was in much worse shape than it is today. 

I don’t think the problem was so much that Biden’s policies were unpopular, as that he himself was. Many people were sensing, even if they couldn’t articulate it until very late, that he really was getting to be too old to be running the country, and that he really was too old to be running for reelection. Biden is a good public speaker, but not a great one. Most Democrats, however, remember Obama and Clinton, both of whom were world-class orators. Compared to them, Biden’s oratorical skills, and just his general presence, are not that inspiring. He doesn’t come across as too serious, or even morose, like some Democratic figures (Carter, Mondale, Dukakis), but his age-related health issues exacerbated his weaknesses. Late-night talk show hosts joked about his age, and the American people were vaguely aware of it, but his debate performance against Trump clearly crystallized those concerns. 

Kamala had to somehow finesse staying loyal to her boss, but also presenting herself as an agent of change; that was tough in and of itself. Trying to distance herself from a man whose ability to just run the country was in question made the already difficult job of defining herself as different from him effectively impossible.

A question naturally arises: why did Biden decide to run for reelection? I don’t know the inner workings of the White House, but I suspect that Biden had surrounded himself with people who were not willing to challenge him, at least not on such an important issue. He had wanted to be president for most of his life. I suppose laying down a dream held for that long was too tough. 

Biden also seems to have believed his own hype. I’ve heard him described as a “great” president. History will judge, of course, and I’m generally a fan of him, but I’m not sure “great” is the adjective I would choose. He’s been a very good president, and he’s made a strong effort to change the direction of the economy towards empowering the middle class, instead of rewarding the wealthy and successful, but I can’t think of any signal achievements on the order of Obamacare. I’m more aware than most of what he’s done to improve our infrastructure (partially because I follow Pete Buttigieg on X), but my understanding of the importance of infrastructure in political terms changed when I read a New York Times  interview with Ruben Gallego, senator-elect from New Mexico. He had a very blunt comment on the importance of infrastructure:

“Nobody gives a [expletive] about infrastructure. Sorry.”

Reading that, I realized that infrastructure is like cleaning your house or apartment: it’s a good idea, and it’s a sign that you’re responsible, but you don’t really score any points for it. Biden got a lot of bridges built and tunnels repaired - but they were supposed to be built and repaired anyways. There’s also the time lag issue - most of those projects won’t be finished until after Biden is out of office.

It wasn’t just that Biden believed his own hype - I think a lot of Democrats did, too. I’ve had some disagreements with Biden, but I haven’t been particularly critical of him. Living in Los Angeles, I’m not just in a bubble - I’m in a very well-insulated bubble. A friend recently commented that she realizes she lives in a bubble, and, honestly, she’s fine with that. Believing the hype about Biden’s performance as president meant that most Democrats didn’t do the soul-searching that would have been necessary to understand why he wasn’t connecting with the American people. 

There is one issue on which I disagree with Biden, and which I think, if handled differently, might have made a difference in the election, and that is Ukraine. Biden has tried to “manage” the war, and has been very leery of Russian threats of escalation. I’m not a military expert, but my guess is that one of the best ways to avoid Russian escalation would have been to give the Ukrainians the weapons and equipment to defeat Russia. Biden hesitated giving the Ukrainians weapons like tanks and F-16s, and on allowing them to use American missiles on targets within Russia. I recently watched an interview with Philip Ingram, a British military analyst, on Times Radio, in which he pointed out that this war will not be won at the tactical level, i.e. on the battlefield. He noted that in Vietnam, the US never lost a battle - but they lost the war. Ukraine is holding its own against Russia - the war has lasted far longer than Putin expected, and Ukraine has imposed far, far greater losses than Putin could have imagined. Ukraine, however, has the backing and support of the Western allies, which are vastly wealthier than Russia. If Biden had supplied Ukraine with the weapons that they have now in the beginning of the war, Ukraine may have been able to push Russia harder, and farther. We will never know whether greater and earlier Western support would have led to an earlier victory for Ukraine - but if it had, if Biden had been able to claim a victory in this war, the questions about whether or not we should have been involved would have been decisively answered in the affirmative, Biden himself would have been much more popular, and the implications for the election would have been very different. We will never know.

So that’s my first take on why Kamala Harris lost: she ran a very good campaign, but did so under very unfortunate circumstances. It wasn’t just Biden that was a burden for her: the Democratic party also had some issues that hindered her. That’s next.

Subscribe now

• Because the future of education isn’t necessarily in expensive, four-year universities; it’s in places where people can explore their passions one class (or two or three) at a time. Places like community colleges. And places like Hipcooks.

• Because I am a big believer that everybody - even people with highly abstract educations in things like philosophy - should develop some kind of practical skill.

• Because food is a universal language. 

• Because learning how to cook prepares you to take care of yourself and others.

• Because Hipcooks is a small business founded by a woman with a dream and passion, exactly the kind of small business Kamala Harris will support.

• Because I like inviting my friends on adventures.

• Because SOMEBODY has to bring creativity and innovation to food and political fundraisers, and it might as well be me. 

• Because I discovered Hipcooks during Brewery ArtWalk, and I want other people to discover this great community of artists in the Brewery Arts District.

• Because Kamala Harris is passionate about cooking, a quality I admire in anyone, particularly a candidate for president of the United States, so this fundraiser makes perfect sense.

And that is why, on Saturday, October 26, at 11:30, I am hosting a fundraiser for the Harris Walz campaign that is an Indian cooking class/lunch at Hipcooks. Suggested donations are $50. To learn more about the class, click here.

To buy tickets, click here. You can also click on that link just to make a donation!

All proceeds go to the Harris/Walz campaign.

Thanks for your support!

Subscribe now

I have long argued that anger is like cocaine: it’s addictive and it makes you paranoid. In personal relationships, it’s hard to maintain anger because it’s (ideally) tempered by other people’s reactions, and you get tired of it. If you’re angry at someone that you know well, you have an incentive to listen to them, to calm down, to come to terms with them, and resume your normal relationship with them. That is, if you’re generally emotionally healthy.

In politics, however, when you are arguing with someone at a distance, someone with whom you don’t have a personal relationship, you have less incentive to calm down and listen to them. This is when the adrenaline rush of anger becomes problematic. Being driven by adrenaline is fun; you get things done, you feel more alive. If the adrenaline rush comes from being angry, you have the most unfortunate phenomenon of feeling good because you are angry.

We have a deep problem with addiction to anger in American politics right now. On both the left and right are people who are addicted to anger. Our worst problem is not that there are people addicted to anger screaming at people on the other side (or occasionally at people on their own side). Our worst problem is that there are people who are feeding this addiction. 

People who feed other people’s addiction to anger are usually on the margins. They’re the cranks with the crazy conspiracy theories, those who spread rumors and don’t care about whether or not they’re telling the truth. Sometimes they believe their own lies and crazy ideas; sometimes they just say whatever they find useful. On the left, it’s Marxists who believe capitalism is evil, and society needs to be restructured. On the right, it’s right-wingers who believe Marxists are evil, and they need to be kicked out of society.

Today, in 2024, we have one candidate for president of the United States who is spreading lies, rumors, and crazy conspiracy theories to feed many people’s addiction to anger. It’s not the candidate I support, Kamala Harris. I long ago recognized the danger of being addicted to anger, and I have, for most of my adult life, tried to support candidates and causes that don’t feed this addiction.

People are most likely to feel angry when they are scared, when they are uncomfortable, uncertain about how society is evolving, unclear about where they fit in the world, confused about how rules and traditions they used to understand are being challenged and changed. It’s a cliche to claim that the world is going to hell these days, that the world was better when things were simpler, when the rules were clear, when everything worked the way it was supposed to. It’s a cliche, but sometimes it’s such a powerful cliche that people believe it, act on it, and try to convince other people of its truth. 

Trump has become an expert at evoking this nostalgia as he bemoans all of the changes American society has seen over the last 40, 50, 60 years. He is incredibly good at convincing his followers that he alone can restore the sense of balance and order they feel is missing from their lives and this country. And then he channels all of that into anger at his opponents. 

This toxic concoction of fear, nostalgia, and anger has spread so far and so deep he is, despite manifest faults far beyond what has defined any other candidate for president, a legitimate contender for president.

I support Kamala Harris because I think she has a multifaceted approach that can and is effectively answering Trump’s toxicity. 

First, she manages to keep the people on the left who have anger management issues at a safe distance. As a woman, and a woman of color, who has spent her entire career within the system, she embodies the idea that the system works for people who, like her, come from traditionally underrepresented and marginalized communities. No one can lecture her on how the system in America can be unfair, unequal and oppressive; she’s experienced that first hand, and has thrived despite all of the inequities within the system.

Second, she keeps the disgruntled left at arms’ length because she focused on solving problems, not complaining about them. Being able to get things done - and having the confidence that you can solve world-level problems, is a great antidote to anyone else’s whining. 

That includes whining from her opponent. Donald Trump’s campaign is essentially one long bitch-fest. He feeds the addiction to anger at every possible opportunity; at his rallies, on his social media platform, Truth Social, and in interviews. He doesn’t just complain and demonize his opponents; he invents problems, claims that they are the result of his opponents’ policies and actions, and then criticizes them for their inadequate response to the fever dreams he pretends are real-world crises. His bizarre, idiotic claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating pets stands out as a particularly egregious example.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, focuses on actual solutions to real-world problems. She’s demonstrated a willingness to engage and criticize Trump, but she doesn’t demonize Republicans or spew delusional propaganda. In the deluge of absurdity that can be our sources of news and information, it can be hard for sensible and practical policies to get through, but she’s doing everything she can in the compressed timeframe of this election.

Harris calls herself a “joyful warrior,” and this self-description may be one of her most effective tools against the addiction to anger. It diffuses the anger on the left, which, hopefully, will have the effect of reducing the anger on the right.

The addiction to anger is a dialectical phenomenon; anger on the left and right feed each other. On the left are people angry about sexism, racism, homophobia, inequality, environmental issues, particularly climate change, and, since October 7 of 2023, the conflicts around Israel. All of these issues are legitimate, and all of them are being addressed by various governments, nonprofits, and others, but few on the left or among Democrats feel enough progress is being made. That frustration very often ends up being directed at their (our) ideological opponents on the right, who end up feeling judged, dismissed, and condescended to by elites who they feel don’t understand them. 

In 2016, I was stunned by the election of Trump at first, but I ultimately understood it. I’m a bicoastal, well-educated liberal, but I’m also a product of the Midwest (born and mostly raised in Detroit), so I agree with the agenda of progressives, but I understand why people from the “heartland” feel like people from the coasts look down on them. That’s because they do. The condescension directed at “flyover country” from people in places like New York and California is real. I’ve felt it. It’s obnoxious and frustrating. So while I can’t stand Trump, his channeling of anger at the “elites” makes sense to me. Feeling disrespected is a powerful motivation to vote against someone.

Joe Biden, as a white guy from a middle-class background, could make a legitimate claim that he wasn’t part of the “elites,” even though he had been a senator for most of his life, and vice president. He straddled both worlds. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton did the same - Clinton was educated at elite institutions, but he was from Arkansas, and had been governor there. Obama was similarly the product of elite colleges, but as a Black man, he had not inherited his privilege, but earned it.

Kamala Harris does the same walking between worlds. Her parents were immigrants, but ended up as professors at prestigious universities. She’s from the Bay Area, but started out as a prosecutor, which does not pay a high salary. At any time in her career, she could have gone into private practice and made a lot of money (full disclosure: the firm I work for, Quinn Emanuel, would very probably have made her a very generous offer if she had been interested). But she stayed in the public sector.

The dialectic of anger continues as long as the participants focus on answering the derision and disrespect, the dismissal and delusions, of the other side, instead of working together to solve problems. I believe Kamala Harris has a great chance to break our mutual addiction to anger because, like Biden, Obama, and Clinton before her, she’s focused on getting things done. There are some progressives who are addicted to anger, and always will be, but there are far more Democrats who crave solutions, who want legislation passed that will make a real difference in the lives of themselves, their neighbors, and people around the world. Tim Walz - a guy who has a reputation for literally getting his hands dirty when he does things like fix cars or, you know, serve in the military, was a great choice for VP because he is the antithesis of the condescending coastal elites - he’s the ultimate Midwestern white guy. He doesn’t just not feed the addiction to anger - it’s almost impossible not to like him. It’s also almost impossible to hate him. Or to be angry at him. This was one of Kamala Harris’s best moves to diffuse the addiction to anger - choosing a running mate whose very presence on the ticket helps to do just that - diffuse the addiction to anger.

I don’t know whether the cooling of passions on the left will result in a similar calming down on the right. It has taken a long time for the addiction to anger to build; breaking the addiction will not happen overnight. 

But an essential first stop is cutting off the supply, which means delegitimizing the primary dealer who feeds the addiction to anger, which means stopping Donald Trump from becoming president of the United States. 

Subscribe now

I was ecstatic when Biden dropped out, and she became the nominee. I think she’s going to have a major impact. I’ve worked on lots of campaigns and done lots of things - GOTV, phone banks, knocking on doors. This time around, I’m trying something different.

I’m hosting a fundraiser that is a combination Indian cooking class/dinner. It’s at Hipcooks, a cooking school in the Brewery Arts District. It’s at 5:00 pm, Friday, September 27.

Here’s how the class/dinner works. There are about 12 students in the class. Everyone prepares food as part of the class. When you’re done, everyone eats dinner together. It’s really fun.

I originally priced the tickets for this event at $200, because I figured the combination of a cooking class, dinner, and a contribution to a great presidential candidate would be worth that much. I haven’t gotten as much interest as I was expecting, so, at this point, that price is highly negotiable. Make a contribution that works for you, and I’ll count you in. On this fundraising page, just click “Other” instead of “$200,” and enter an amount you are comfortable with.

Thanks in advance for your support, and for supporting the next president of the United States!

Subscribe now

During that three week period between Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and his decision to withdraw from the race - a period that already seems like ancient history - a number of pundits suggested that the Democrats engage in some kind of competition to see who the replacement candidate might be. Some commentators floated names other than Kamala Harris as possible Democratic candidates, while others insisted that ignoring a woman of color would be political suicide for Democrats, since Black women have been the Dems’ most loyal constituency for decades. 

Within hours of Biden’s announcement, those arguments and discussions became irrelevant. Democratic politicians, starting with Biden himself, immediately started endorsing her. Delegates to the Democratic convention, i.e. the people who would actually be casting the ballots to decide the nominee, immediately started endorsing Harris en masse. She ultimately secured the nomination with 99% of the vote. 

The arguments and discussions among the punditocracy disappeared like a puff of smoke on a windy day. As someone writing a blog, I’m not really in a position to criticize people who write about politics professionally, but it seems like a big story was missed. Almost 4,000 delegates ended up voting in the process of nominating Harris. That many people taking decision action on an issue of national importance don’t do so spontaneously. That support for Harris coalesced so quickly could not have been a spur-of-the-moment thing. There had to have been discussions among the delegates, between leaders in the state parties, well in advance of Biden dropping out. Maybe I was paying too much attention to the pundits myself, and hindsight is 20/20, but in retrospect, it feels like pundits were maybe too busy talking to each other to notice what was going on with the people who were actually going to be voting.

Debates about the process of choosing Biden’s successor were only one area where Harris made commentators look silly. Her approval rating as VP had never been very high, staying well below 50%, as Biden’s had for most of his presidency. There seemed to be a general consensus that this meant that she wasn’t popular, and that this was a reason to consider other, possibly stronger candidates. But as soon as Biden dropped, her popularity soared, and suddenly there was a gusher of enthusiasm for her. No one had apparently anticipated the relief so many Democrats would feel at Biden dropping out. Nor had anyone anticipated the thirst for a new candidate, a woman with a real shot at the presidency, and a person brimming with energy and enthusiasm. 

I also heard concerns about her political skill, often referencing the fact that she dropped out of the 2020 race before the primaries started. Questions were raised about her basic competence and her speaking style. Supposedly she had trouble keeping and managing her staff, and some of her quotes, where she didn’t explain herself as well as she could have, were described as “word salad.” Andrew Sullivan described her as the “wokest and weakest” of the potential Democratic candidates. I’ve been reading Sullivan, a self-described conservative, for years, and I’m used to disagreeing with him. But I’m also used to him usually being at least somewhat reasonable. This time, it seemed like he was in a cocoon - and refused to leave it. 

Questions about Harris’s political abilities, management skills, and oratorical skills again seemed to vanish almost overnight. She handled herself brilliantly during that ungodly uncomfortable period when Biden was becoming increasingly obstinate while coming under increasing pressure to resign as candidate. Coming across as the perfectly loyal subordinate must have been quite the challenge, but there was not an iota of a suggestion that she was anything but supportive of the man who had chosen her to be VP. But when he made the decision and the announcement, she pivoted very quickly and gracefully, simultaneously lining up support and taking control of the campaign. Presidential campaigns are massive organizations, with field offices across the country, hundreds, if not thousands, of paid staff, and many, many more volunteers. Watching the campaign transition from an old and experienced but exhausted white guy to a woman of color who had only been in national politics for eight years was like watching a pickup truck perform like a ballerina. 

One day Joe Biden was the candidate, and uncertainty and anxiety gripped the Democrats. The next day, Kamala Harris was the candidate, everything was smiles and sunshine, and hardly a beat was missed.  

No one was more flummoxed by the change than Donald Trump. Democrats around the country were thrilled to see Trump be confused and discombobulated. 

I’m old enough to remember Clinton winning in ‘92 and Obama winning in ‘08. After 12 years of Reagan and Bush, Clinton brought with him the hopes and dreams of the Baby Boomers. More than a few felt that the ideas about social change, etc. that they had started articulating and fighting for in the ‘60’s were finally going to have a chance to be implemented. But then Newt Gingrich staged a coup of his own, and in 1994 Republicans took over the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. I think many of Clinton’s accomplishments are unacknowledged, both by the general public and many liberals, but he wasn’t the truly transformative figure that it appeared he might be in November 1992.

Obama WAS a more transformative figure than Clinton, and not just because of his race. I think of Clinton as the last great machine politician to be president. By “machine politician,” I mean the kind of politician who is a master of trading favors, making deals, forging alliances, and becoming friends with people from as many different places as possible. All politicians are at least somewhat adept at knowing how to work with their friends and enemies, but Clinton was simply world-class. Just about his only equal still serving is Nancy Pelosi.

I think of Obama as the first great professional president. By that I mean Obama treated the jobs of running for president and actually being president as professions, with success determined by intellectual discipline and rigor as well as hustle, oratory, and alliances. This is not to say that Clinton was not intellectually disciplined - he was and is. But Obama had newer tools for applying that intellectual discipline, particularly on the campaign trail. Liberals and Democrats (who are usually, but not always, the same thing) have applied intellectual discipline and rigor to their development of policy for decades. They have sometimes made the mistake of thinking that those policies should be the determining factor in elections - if we just explain our ideas to people, they will vote for us. Obama, like Clinton, understood that elections are about emotions and vision more than specific policies. But Obama also understood that new technologies could be used to harness, channel, and focus those emotions and that vision. The Republicans who ran against Obama thot of Democrats as still being rebellious, countercultural types - as if their role models were old hippies, sitting around smoking pot and listening to Joni Mitchell. What McCain, Romney, and their friends didn’t appreciate is that the role models for the people on the Obama campaign - and some of the people actually on the campaign - were venture capitalists, management consultants, and computer nerds. They were joined, of course, by activists and political junkies who knew how to think like and work with VC’s, consultants, and geeks. Alliances and deals weren’t made in smoke-filled rooms; they were made over coffee and by email, and voters were targeted, reached out to, and then targeted and reached out to again. And it worked.

Kamala benefits a great deal from Obama’s legacy of running his campaigns like a leading-edge geek/venture capitalist. In Clinton’s day, GOTV was done by printing out lists of voters on pieces of paper and making phone calls on landlines in union halls. GOTV was also something that was only done by experienced political operatives. I volunteered on the Obama campaign and watched them develop and implement new technology on the fly. Now it’s standard procedure for Democratic campaigns to use apps in conjunction with sophisticated databases to target voters - and for volunteers at all levels to use those tools. I volunteered for a Democratic congressional campaign in California in 2018. I was there for one day to do GOTV. There were several hundred other volunteers. Several HUNDRED. And all of them were given something to do, and they all went out and did it. In one day.

This is a big reason why the Harris campaign was able to motivate and engage so many people so quickly. I have no way of knowing anything like a precise figure, but I am comfortable guessing that there are tens of thousands of people who have had some kind of campaign volunteering experience since Obama ‘08. Heck, there may be ten of thousands of people who fit that description in California.

I have an aunt, a gloriously unreconstructed Baby Boomer liberal, who holds office in rural Michigan. She’s the kind of person who probably still has her original Bob Dylan and Carole King vinyl albums, and who has probably spent many hours defending Gloria Steinem. She didn’t run for office until she was retired and a grandmother (I’m not going to use the term that JD Vance uses to describe women of her age, because I don’t want to quote JD Vance). She’s part of a generation who spent their lifetimes thinking and plotting and wondering about how to change the world. The Boomers could not have guessed that their peace and love, flowers and tie-dyes, would someday lead to people organizing for environmental justice and every other cause through computers they could hold in their hands. But here we are. 

One thing presidents do that is unappreciated is that they appoint many, many people. Some are high profile: Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices. Most aren’t; they’re the Deputy Assistant Secretaries no one has ever heard of. Some of those people serve for many years, even for the rest of their lives (Federal judges). Of the rest, most leave the Federal government and go do something to make the world a better place somewhere else. Some are elected to office; I know someone from Obama ‘08 who serves in the California legislature. All of them have personal networks. When you combine these folks with Democrats who serve in state and local offices, and people who have volunteered on Democratic campaigns, you get a vast network of personal connections, rather dramatically empowered by literal networks - specifically, that network of networks, the Internet.

So many people plugged into Harris’s campaign immediately because they were already plugged in. They were plugged in personally and technologically. Tens of thousands of people jumped on Zoom calls organized in hours and days because they could. Millions of dollars were raised because many people could respond to one of the blizzard of constant fundraising requests Democrats are constantly sending out (the blizzard part I am not a big fan of). 

Enthusiasm for her campaign didn’t spread like wildfire - it spread much, much faster. She was giving Democrats something they didn’t even know they wanted, or were afraid to admit they wanted: joy, excitement, and someone who confused the living daylights out of Donald Trump. It was like Barbie - who knew the world needed a movie about a decades-old doll? Turns out that Margot Robbie did. Who knew Democrats needed a big jolt of enthusiasm and joy? Turns out Kamala Harris did.

It wasn’t just infectious joy, it wasn’t just cool, hip technology that made all of this happen so quickly. There was also a sense of - dare I use such an old-fashioned concept when talking about politics? - trust. Clinton, for all his personal flaws, and some policies that disappointed liberals, delivered some good liberal results, and he kept Republicans from passing much worse laws than they did. Obama did the same, and did it without the personal flaws, and without any real scandals. Biden did the same, and, just like Obama, without any personal flaws or scandals, until the inescapable flaw of being old caught up to him. Democrats were ready to plug into the Harris/Walz campaign because they trusted her, and then they trusted the guy who had been a soldier and a football coach. Democrats trusted Kamala Harris because Democrats - however imperfectly - have actually delivered results. The results are rarely as glamorous or profound or dramatic as we would like them to be. At least, the results aren’t as profound as we would like them to be in the short term. In the long term, sometimes the results are far more profound than we expect. If you had told Democrats in 1992 that the next Democrat to be elected president would be a Black guy with a Muslim name, absolutely no one would have believed you. I doubt Barack Obama would have believed you.

Clinton, Obama, Biden and Harris all have one thing in common: at an early age, they decided to work within the system. For some people, that’s a controversial or difficult decision. I’m familiar with the variants of these arguments - can the system be changed from within, or is it so corrupt and ineffective that it can only be challenged from outside? For some, the latter option will always be the answer - there will never cease to be people profoundly on the wrong side of disillusioned. For many others, however, Kamala Harris’s emergence as Democratic nominee answered an age-old question definitively in the affirmative. Everyone knows it would have been easy for a white guy like Biden to work within the corridors of power - there would never be any question of whether or not he belonged. Hillary’s loss in 2016 left many people wondering when it would be a woman’s chance, and many, many people were tired of waiting. 

This, then, is how Kamala Harris has already changed the game. If she wins, and I am optimistic that she will, she will have answered the question once and for all - yes, the system can be changed from within. 

There are two more things pundits didn’t appreciate about her, but her fans did, even if they didn’t know it: Kamala Harris was being underestimated, and one reason she was being underestimated is that she is a very fast learner. There are not thousands, but millions of women (and a fair number of men), who can identify with that. This is why Kamala Harris is answering the question of whether or not the system can be changed from within. Yes, it can, but it takes hard work, perseverance, and a willingness to suffer fools and disappointments. Untold legions of people went that route, and thought that they didn’t change the system - or didn’t change it the way they wanted to. Everyone who has tried, however, changes the system even just a little tiny bit. Eventually, all those little tiny bits end up in one hell of a party happening this week in Chicago as the first women of color accepts the nomination of a major American political party, and begins a sprint to November 5, 2024, a date that - to use an overworked but, in this case totally appropriate phrase - should be a date with destiny.

Subscribe now

The “rope-a-dope” is a boxing maneuver used most famously by Muhammad Ali in his “Rumble In The Jungle” fight against George Foreman. When Foreman hit him, Ali let himself fall against the ropes. Foreman thought this meant that he was hitting Ali hard, but Ali was actually letting the ropes absorb some of the energy of Foreman’s hits. Ali let Foreman think he was winning, when Ali was really letting Foreman tire himself out. Ali knocked out Foreman in the 8th round and won the championship. So a “rope-a-dope” refers to letting your opponent think they’re winning, lulling them into a false sense of security, and then coming back and delivering a knockout punch. It’s risky in any context, but if it works, there’s a huge payoff.

For me, the best example of the rope-a-dope being used in modern political history is Obama changing his mind on gay marriage during the 2012 presidential campaign. In the 2008 election, Obama was opposed to it. In 2012, he hadn’t changed his mind at the beginning of the campaign. Republicans, hoping to use gay marriage as a wedge issue between religiously observant Black people and white liberals, put an anti-gay marriage measure on the North Carolina primary ballot in May. Because Obama was running unopposed, Dems didn’t have much reason to vote in the primary; therefore just about guaranteeing that more Republicans would vote, ensuring that the anti-gay marriage measure would pass. Which it did. 

On the Saturday before that vote, Biden, who was VP, had publicly mentioned that he supported gay marriage. Rumors spread and questions were asked: was Biden going rogue on this issue? The administration insisted he wasn’t. Then the primary happened, the anti-gay marriage measure passed, and Democrats seemed to be depressed and in disarray on this issue. Republicans seemed to have the momentum on this key culture-war issue. That was the situation on Tuesday, the night of the primary.

The next day, Wednesday, May 9, Robin Roberts, an ABC News correspondent, interviewed Obama at the White House in the morning. During this interview, he announced that his views on gay marriage had evolved, and that he now believed that gay people should be able to get married. That Obama had changed his mind dominated the news cycles for the next couple of days at least. Democrats went from seeming to be divided and depressed to being united and ecstatic. 

Obama won the debate on gay marriage in a matter of a few seconds on national television. He landed his knockout punch just as Republicans thought they had him on the ropes. His timing was impeccable, because he addressed the issue exactly at the moment when it was foremost in the public’s mind. 

I’m writing this during the Republican convention. Trump was almost assassinated a few days ago, which makes him look a bit like a martyr, and, at the very least, generates some sympathy for him. He just announced that J.D. Vance, the freshman senator from Ohio, as his running mate. For me, Vance is marginally more qualified than Sarah Palin was, but only just. I think of Vance as an asshole’s asshole, so he’s perfect for Trump.

Biden, in other words, seems to be on the ropes. Democrats are unexpectedly divided on an issue far more important than gay marriage, and very late in the game, i.e. whether or not Biden should stay in the race or step aside. The GOP convention will end on Thursday. So Friday, right after the Republican convention ends, would be a perfect time for Biden to throw the ultimate curveball, the greatest Hail Mary ever (to mix sports metaphors), and announce, after Trump’s latest excitement has died down, that he is stepping aside, and that Kamala Harris is going to be the nominee. 

Biden has said that if a doctor recommends against him running, he will step aside. He currently has Covid. Obama, who arguably has more influence on Biden than anyone other than Jill Biden, is apparently concerned that Biden’s path to victory is narrowing. 

I think Biden has been a great president who has done a lot of good for the country and the world. He’s been exactly what we needed for the last four years - a steady, experienced hand to handle some very difficult situations.

But he’s also a great politician, and great politicians are really good at reading the tea leaves. There are several equally great politicians who he has known for years, decades in some cases, who are just as adept at reading tea leaves - Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer. They all know how to talk to him in a way that is both respectful, caring, and yet challenging. They can deliver tough messages in a loving, compassionate tone. 

One of the best decisions Obama made was choosing Biden to be his vice president. That, of course, ultimately led to Biden becoming president. One of the best decisions Biden made was choosing Kamala Harris to be his vice president. It is said that nothing can prepare someone to be president - it’s just that tough of a job. But if anything can prepare someone to step up to that challenge, it’s being vice president. As vice president, Kamala Harris has had the best possible training to be president. 

Muhammad Ali used the rope-a-dope to win the championship. Biden should do the same, and help Democrats beat Trump by surprising everyone. Stepping aside and letting Kamala Harris run for president might just be the knockout punch Democrats need.

Subscribe now

As to the debate about whether or not he should drop out: I would vote for Joe Biden under almost any circumstances. He could be on death’s door and I would vote for him. But I’m highly partisan, and there are no circumstances under which I would vote for Trump. Even if I were suffering from a profound mental illness, I wouldn’t vote for Trump. If I had multiple personality disorder, none of my alternate personalities would vote for Trump.

I’ve seen many posts and commentaries arguing that we should vote for Biden regardless of his mental state, whatever his health, particularly because Trump represents an existential threat to democracy.

Here’s the problem: although I agree with that sentiment, it’s not inspiring. It’s a very far cry from Bill Clinton’s “bridge to the 21st century” or Obama’s message of change that came from his very being. The argument that we should vote for Biden whether or not he’s capable of actually doing the job carries a whiff of desperation. If a voter is undecided, or hesitant about voting for Biden, “Vote for him or else,” even if its accompanying depiction of gloom is accurate, doesn’t do much to close the deal. Many voters ask the simple question: what has this person done for me, and what will they do for me in the future? People who ask that question generally want a positive, specific, focused, optimistic answer. “The other guy will wreak havoc on the system” isn’t any of those. Biden’s poll numbers are slipping, and way too many people now think he’s too old to be president. This is going to be a tight election. Biden can’t afford to lose too many voters. Honestly, he can’t really afford to lose ANY voters.

A big part of the problem for Biden is that many people, if not most, know someone his age. Most of us have seen the kind of mental and physical decline that hits at that age. Three of my grandparents lived into their 90’s, and they all had issues: not just with basic cognitive ability, but with hearing, sight, and general mobility. 

It’s not just a question of what Biden’s abilities are now, but of what they will be in four years. He’ll be 86 at the end of his second term, if he’s elected to one. I recently heard someone say “85 is not the new anything.” Even I, dedicated partisan that I am, don’t have a lot of confidence that he’ll be able to do the job at that point. There is a very real possibility that he won’t make it to the end of his second term. It’s not just a very real possibility - if we’re being honest, it’s fairly likely. 

Which brings us to the question of succession, and therefore to Kamala Harris. I’m a fan of our VP; I worked on her presidential campaign back in 2020. In retrospect, it looks like she wasn’t quite ready to campaign for president at that point. Which raises the question: is she now? Given the unique requirements of the job, it’s impossible to answer that definitively. She didn’t have any foreign policy experience to speak of, and her only executive experience was being Attorney General of California. AG of such a large state is a good stepping stone to higher office. Which it was for her. She has now stepped on that stone, and she now has the relevant experience to be president that she didn’t have in 2020.

Being VP seems like the best possible training for the top job. I’ve seen complaints that she hasn’t been visible, but she’s also caught in a Catch-22: being VP comes with almost no definite responsibilities, other than presiding over the Senate, which does not get one onto the evening news on a regular basis. But as the first woman, first Asian American, and first African American to hold the office, she’s been expected to be visible. Hence, the Catch-22: she’s expected to be highly visible, but has about as many opportunities to be so as others who have been VP. So even if she does a better job than, say, Al Gore, she won’t get the credit, given the higher expectations for visibility, if nothing else.

A couple of things I’ve noticed about her: she rises quickly to a challenge, and she has always, throughout her career, taken on the biggest challenge. It would have been absurdly easy for her, coming out of law school, to take a well-paying job at a prestigious law firm (full disclosure: I work at such a firm). But she decided to become a prosecutor. Apparently her parents, longtime civil rights activists, didn’t approve of her joining the establishment on the side of law enforcement, but she did anyway. At any point, she could’ve sold out and joined a Big Law firm. If she had gone into private practice after being Attorney General, she could’ve written her own ticket - a firm like mine would’ve made her partner and paid her millions of dollars a year. 

Personally, I admire her career-long dedication to public service, but I suppose I’m a social justice romantic in that respect. 

The upshot is that I think she’s up to doing the job. I think she’s smart enough, has the right ideas and principles and has good judgment. She clearly has the energy to do the job. One key factor for me is that she seems to be comfortable making complicated, difficult decisions, particularly under pressure, and that is absolutely key. I’m comfortable with her answering the proverbial red phone at 3:00 am. 

The next three questions are political, legalistic/pragmatic, and then political again. 

First, a political question: should Biden step aside and let someone else run? I find myself very reluctantly, and with a heavy heart, answering in the affirmative. I’ve known about Joe Biden at least since his campaign for president in ‘88. I admire him, and I think he’s done a good job, but I think too many voters are going to decide that he just doesn’t have it. Biden’s competence and decency have always stood him in good stead, and were a welcome contrast to Trump’s rancid soul in 2020. But Biden has never been particularly charismatic, and his debate performance was, apparently, the opposite of inspiring. We need the base to turn out, and the base, particularly young people, need to be inspired. People who grew up with politicians like Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are looking for something beyond comfort food in their choices.

The second question is legalistic/pragmatic: what to do if Biden does step aside? The primaries are over. Although it may seem as if they barely even happened, they did, and Biden accumulated enough delegates to secure the nomination. I’m sure the DNC has rules for what happens in a situation where the candidate doesn’t make it, for whatever reason, to the convention, but I have no idea what those are. I’ve heard that it would be impossible for Biden to transfer his campaign’s cash to another candidate, and I’m going to assume that’s true. So, for legal and pragmatic reasons, it looks like Kamala would be the presumptive nominee if Biden steps aside. I’ve seen suggestions that the Democrats open up the process between now and the convention, holding a series of town halls and debates. I can see the appeal of an open debate, but I also think it might be too confusing, with too many opportunities for miscommunication and misunderstanding. So I’m going with the nomination goes straight to the VP. 

The third question, again, is political: can Kamala Harris win against Trump? Downside: she doesn’t have Biden’s decades of experience in elected office. Upside: she has more years elected to national office than Carter, Clinton, or Obama when they were elected. Or Reagan, George W. Bush, or Trump. The only Democrat elected president recently who had more experience was Biden himself. Downside: some people will not vote for a woman, particularly a woman of color. But anyone who won’t vote for a candidate because she’s a woman probably won’t vote for a Democrat anyway. Upside: she’ll do a lot to excite the base. Downside: she isn’t a great orator, i.e. she’s no Obama. Upside: no one is Obama, but she spent years thinking and talking on her feet as a prosecutor in courtrooms. Also, even on her worst day, she is far more articulate than Trump ever has been or ever will be.

On the policy front, we can assume that Kamala will take basically the same positions and advocate for the same policies as Biden, with one notable difference. On abortion, Biden has lately been a strong pro-choice advocate, but that hasn’t always been the case. As a devout Catholic, he’s not entirely comfortable with abortion. Harris, OTOH, has been a very strong, forceful voice in favor of reproductive freedom. On this issue, she’s been very visible. This is another way in which she has been inspiring the base, and would be in even a better position to do so if she were the nominee for president.

I’ve heard rumors that some African Americans have been asking lately, what has Biden done for us? Kamala Harris can answer with one definitive issue: she has been very passionate about the disparities Black women face in maternal care. Black women as a group have worse experiences being pregnant and giving birth, including higher levels of maternal mortality. Even if you’re a single Black man with no kids and no plans on getting married, this is something that affects the community at large. 

So can Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump? Her approval ratings have never been very high, but those have come when she had the unenviable task of staying in the background while being expected to be as visible as someone in the foreground. We don’t know what her approval ratings will be if she’s the nominee. What we do know is that Black women are by far the most loyal demographic of the Democratic party, and there are strong concentrations of them in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Also, she presents a strong contrast with Donald in terms of just basic personality: he lies about everything, she’s a straight shooter. Most important, he runs on fear and anger; he paints a doomsday portrait of America in decline. Harris calls herself a “joyful warrior,” and her natural optimism comes across really well: she’s very upbeat about the future of this country, despite the challenges we face. As a Black woman, she can claim personal knowledge of how bad things can get in America. But as a nominee for president, like Obama, she’s living proof of how far we have come and the American dream is alive and well.

So, I write this with a very heart, after some deep soul-searching, and with great reluctance: I think it’s time for Joe Biden to step aside and let the new generation of leaders start to take over, starting with his VP, Kamala Harris.

Subscribe now