Goldfish Memories

"The abstract third party candidate is not there, there is no person who scratches all those itches."

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Frazzled and under-caffeinated, Jonah jogs through some sundry punditry, from the state of The Federalist Society to beltway media’s bipartisan fixation with pounces.

Show Notes:
—This week’s Dispatch Podcast roundtable discussion
—Advisory Opinions episode on the Federalist Society
—Advisory Opinions episode on federal judges visiting Israel
—Gregg T. Nunziata’s piece for The Dispatch
—Nigel Tufnel via The Simpson‘s fan Wiki
—Michael Weiss on Dispatch Live
—J. D. Vance’s tweet on Havana Syndrome report
—Jonah’s G-File on blowhards
—Chef José Andrés reaction to World Central Kitchen deaths. —No Labels reporting from The Dispatch

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Comments (38)
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  1. Christopher Beach

    Dear Jonah,

    After meeting you in Bridgewater and admitting to your face I wasn’t a paid subscriber, I decided to sign up. Turns out guilt really helps push readership!

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  2. Austin from Atlanta

    Jonah, I’m completely with you on opposing Trump. However, do you think the “bad within normal parameters” thing with Biden is kind of like the bigotry of low expectations? When I consider the knowing & intentional violations of his oath of office with the rent moratorium and the student loan forgiveness alongside debacles like the pull out from Afghanistan, it feels beyond the scope of what any Americans should ever consider reelectable in a President.

    If Biden is just a normal kind of bad, it feels like a standard in which the things progressives do to break norms and defy the rule of law are just “progressives being progressive” so maybe we should just take it in stride. I offer no defenses of Trump & don’t intend to vote for him. But I don’t think that therefore places Biden at the low-end of “still acceptable.” He is not.

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    George.Skinner

    There's a circular logic to the criticism of Israel: critics start from the assumption that Israel is a genocidal colonial power. When something like the strike on the aid convoy occurs, that means it's interpreted as a genocidal act. The fact that they see evidence of these genocidal acts reinforces their conclusion that Israel is a genocidal colonial power. The circularity goes unquestioned because the critics are comfortable with their moral intuitions and don't want to challenge them.

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  4. R. James

    Jonah can spike the football on the failure of No Labels to nominate a candidate all he wants; but if he is sincere in his statement that he wants a conservative third party to replace one of the existing parties, then sooner or later the effort to build a viable conservative party to challenge for the position as a major party needs to start. Arguably, it should have started already. Trumpism has captured the Republican Party. It's not coming back. The 2020 election showed that even a defeat in the general election will not cure the party of the MAGA disease. It is counterproductive to the furtherance of conservative principles in our society to hold out hope that the party will cure itself over time.

    The effort to build a viable conservative party needs to start NOW. It will not start by traditional conservative candidates being too afraid to ask the two-thirds of American voters who do not like Trump or Biden for their vote. It will not start by traditional conservative pundits theoretically supporting a conservative third party but crapping from a great height on any practical attempt at achieving it. And it certainly will not start by convincing ourselves that anyone of these candidates of the "geriatocracy" represents conservative values, is fit for office or deserves our vote. So, I will be writing in someone who truly represents conservative values and is fit for office.

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    Ben Connelly

    If Megan McArdle came to the Dispatch that would be awesome! You need another free market fundamentalist to keep Scott company.

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  6. Jstevenson85

    Can someone explain to me why Jon Huntsman would be terrible. Is it lack of name recognition? Lack of charisma? Not enough partisanship? Mandarin fluency?

    He’s always struck me as particularly qualified for the presidency, am I wrong about that?

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      Ben Connelly

      Lack of charisma I think. He’s a little boring as a politician which you and I might like but which many voters don’t warm to.

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    Michael Berkowitz

    Congratulations, CynthiaW, on the shout-out.

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      CynthiaW

      Thank you.

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  8. Jpliving

    It is not true that if the Biden administration thought that an increase in inflation was possible that they wouldn't have done the stimulus that they did. It is conventional wisdom on the center-left that the response to the 2008 financial crash by the government was insufficient--that if we had more stimulus we would have had a faster recovery. In particular, it is claimed that the Obama administration asked for a $800M in the ARRA with the idea that they could come back to Congress later if they needed more. But, because of the Tea Party, etc., Republicans in Congress were not willing to do more, and so we had a slower recovery than we would have otherwise had.

    Thus, in 2021, center-left policy-makers with this view argued that the experience of 2008 showed that the danger of doing too little stimulus was greater than that of doing too much. They claimed that the unemployment that could result from too little (as we saw in the early 2010s) would be much worse for Americans than increased inflation that resulted from too much stimulus. Thus, they were okay with an overshoot of the amount needed in order to make sure that there was enough (in part because they didn't think they would get a second bite--one of the costs of highly polarized politics).

    However, this is _not_ a matter of the Biden administration thinking that inflation wasn't possible or buying into the MMT magical thinking. Rather, this was a balancing of the potential dangers they thought might result from a stimulus package. Here is a Vox article from the time that is fairly representative. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22268787/larry-summers-op-ed-biden-stimulus

    That being said, I think the Biden administration _was_ surprised by how much political cost resulted from high inflation. That is, I do think there was a forgetting of how much voters disliked inflation. I'm not sure that more awareness of this would have affected the policy calculus, but if they were aware of how much high inflation might affect Biden's popularity, then their political calculus might have been different at the time.

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      George.Skinner

      The Democrats also committed a fundamental error regarding the source of the struggling economy. In 2008, it was the demand side of the economy that was weak and that's why fiscal stimulus could've helped. In 2021, the source of economic trouble was the supply side, and fiscal stimulus only exacerbated the mismatch on the demand side.

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    2. R. James

      The Biden Administration's economic policy aides were openly embracing Modern Monetary Theory right up until the raise in the inflation rate. When the inflation rate started to rise, the Biden Administration first denied that it was happening, then called it transitory, then blamed it on Putin, then admitted it was occurring because of supply chain issues but continued to encourage large government spending bills that made inflation worse. Even today, the Biden Administration's fiscal policy is working against the FED's monetary policy. The recent rise in inflation rate over the past couple months is noteworthy.

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    3. Sai Ayila

      Yes trusting likes of Larry summers was a big mistake in 2008. They paid their price in 2010. Inflation is not just a US issue it's an international issue and it is bound to happen regardless the stimulus package is passed or not. So Dems learned their lesson and overshot their package instead and it got plenty of bipartisan support outside of congress. Jim justice (wv gov and current Senate candidate) is the biggest supporter of the package https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/pittsburgh/news/republican-west-virginia-governor-jim-justice-says-go-big-or-go-home-on-stimulus/ Also this package is "moderate" by going by bernie sanders standards because it doesn't even have any of the progressive wish list like $15 min wage or corporate tax hikes which trump unfairly cut by 16% or so. There is now evidence to suggest that inflation would not have happened if they didn't pass the massive. package or passed little package like Romney suggest. Either way people have decided to blame Biden either way even before the package was passed so why not pass a bigger package, it was the right decision imo because Dems may not get another opportunity like that.

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    Bpsmith

    “If we were gonna launch a Remnant Party, [Liz Cheney] might be our first nominee.”

    Mitch Daniels erasure.

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      CynthiaW

      Too old.

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  10. Philebus

    Just bumped my head against the fishbowl - but I forgot.

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