The Weekend After

Let it be.

By

Trapped in the urban prison popularly referred to as Manhattan, Jonah surrenders to the call of rank punditry and discusses the midterm results on today’s Ruminant. How did the Republicans squander such an obviously winnable election, and what role did Trump play in the disaster? Furthermore, could Biden really win again in 2024? Have Jonah’s views on Ron DeSantis shifted? And should these results inspire hope that conservatism can right itself?

Show Notes:

– The Remnant with Ken Pollack

– Wednesday’s “news”letter

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  1. Francislyo

    Lots of good insight, Jonah!

    However, I strenuously disagree with the push for the Republican Congress to investigate Hunter Biden (or Merrick Garland and Anthony Fauci as MTG has promised). You said that an investigation of Hunter Biden’s finances and also a hypothetical investigation by a Democratic Congress of Trump’s family for financial improprieties would be legitimate. Let’s not go there! Neither Party should target the finances of a person merely because they are child of a President or Vice President from the other party. Republicans, just please govern and get things done!

    I agree with you that Jan 6th is indefensible. How will it look when the Republican Congress disbands the Jan 6th investigation, then launches all these grievance investigations?

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    Ondrarenee

    Jonah,

    I hope you and MBD will get together and talk soon. You guys have an awesome "my dad is the wisest dad" vibe. You could totally do a Stuff We Think About podcast.

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      Ondrarenee

      The art could just be your beards in black and white lol

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  3. T.C

    Jonah,
    October 1987, I switched jobs and walked away from a analytics position at First Boston to a trading job at Chemical Bank. My very first day of trading was crash day in 1987. That was a shock.

    That evening I went for my every 3 week haircut to Joe the barber, Delta Barber shop, Lexington and 72nd. Joe told me he was retiring. That was also a shock. I'd been going to Joe for 10 years.

    But Joe told me that when I came in in another 3 weeks I should ask for Peter.
    So Peter gave me my haircuts for 30 something years, until this last August, when he told me he was retiring (as in the entire barber shop was closing).

    So I'm looking for a new barber shop. Went to a couple of places that seemed to be either hipster doofus places staffed by guys with fully oiled beards looking like the people on the Smith Brothers cough drop box, or places that thought serving me drinks while I was getting a haircut was more important than the actual haircut. ... So those places are out.
    But, the place you mentioned sounds like it might be a fit (not that I'm looking for manicures).

    So where is this Barber shop of which you speak? I don't know if the dispatch website has an ability to DM me. If the website doesn't have a DM feature, and you feel uncomfortable mentioning the name of the joint in the comment section, have one of your technical boffins look up my email from the subscriber list and email me directly.

    thanks for taking the time, & best regards,
    Tony

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    C C Writer

    Jonah, I really appreciated your point about straight-line thinking. So many people are rushing to declare that the 2024 election is already over, never mind the primaries. I just consider what their motives might be to try to convince others not to even bother looking at other scenarios (it's not always driven just by people's own pessimism), and remember that in every election cycle the "early favorite" tends to fall off the edge of the world.

    This ties back into a theme I have begun detecting in all the political dysfunction, and one can sum it up in one word: 𝐋𝐚𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. (And please, please feel free to address this in your writings and podcasts.)

    If I could send one message to the political and pundit class (not to mention rank-and-file types who are trying to figure it all out) it's "do the work." Shortcuts will come back to bite you in the long run. And if I could send a second message, it's "be patient." Things happen when it's time for them to happen.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    For my money, the best single-volume explanation of Donald Trump's success, such as it has been, in both business and in politics, doesn't even mention his name. And it's not about politics, or business.

    It's Maria Konnikova's "The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It ... Every Time" (published on January 12, 2016). Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WDP836S/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

    It explains so very, very much about Trump, who I think has no close competition for "Most Successful Conman in Human History." And it provides many, many examples of the tenacity with which marks will continue to defend their grifters even after they've been exposed — no matter what the evidence of guilt, and even after their grifters have been sent to prison. (We could perhaps call these the "Fifth Avenue Murder-Acquittal Jurors," a group which corresponds closely to those who thought January 6th was no big deal.)

    Mr. Goldberg, you should secure, and prepare an appropriate webcam page for, the internet domain mccarthyvsheadoflettuce.com.

    Finally, my regard for Pippa prompts me to repeat here a comment I left earlier today elsewhere, in hopes that it might help her and her humans:

    Ask your vet whether instead of the cone of shame, she can instead wear a nice knickers & vest suit — which connect together with velcro to make a single washable garment, easy to don & doff, that covers the dog's entire torso (including entire abdomen) — from this company: https://medipaw.com/product/dog-suit/

    My Husky pup, Tux, wore one of these while recovering from her spaying surgery in September, and it was entirely adequate to keep her from licking her incision site and for keeping it reasonably clean. Photo: https://www.beldar.org/2022/20220923_114803.jpg (bow tie optional).

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  6. Austin Hunt

    Jonah, please have Rod Dreher on the podcast. Your comments about him on this podcast (I.e, Orban fanboy in subsidized Hungarian exile) were unfair, and you similarly took one of his recent posts as a criticism of you.

    I think both you and Rod have interesting things to say about politics/culture, and I wish you could talk them out instead of taking these thinly veiled shots. You talk a lot about your dislike of “popular front” thinking, and having a dialogue with a “Nat Con” like Rod could be a great way for you to show that. I follow you both and don’t think your politics are that far apart, though you do have different emphases. Anyway, please consider it. I respect both of you and would love the chance to hear you two discuss ideas.

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  7. Clarity

    What can the Republicans do with Former President Trump? My suggestion: Promote him to the pantheon of heroes like George Patton, who were great fighters and charismatic, flamboyant leaders of men, but too flawed to be left in charge.

    According to Martin Blumenson's biography cited in Wikipedia, Patton "personified the offensive spirit, the ruthless drive, and the will for victory in battle... As the outstanding exponent of combat effectiveness, particularly with respect to the employment of armored forces ... Patton brought the blitzkrieg concept to perfection." Trump likewise "personified the offensive spirit, the ruthless drive, and the will for victory in battle" against political enemies and for working class Americans ignored by the elite. And he pioneered the use of social media to negate the liberal's advantage in the MSM and turned them into FAKE NEWS.

    Patton infamously didn't want to de-Nazify Germany, because he saw them as allies in a coming war against the USSR. Patton was correct about the coming conflict with the USSR, but it was a Cold War where democracy and European allies would prove critical and Nazi allies would have been disastrous. Likewise, Trump has similar blind spots about the value of democracy (in foreign affairs), our European allies and Putin (the ally of our biggest enemies, China, Iran and North Korea). Putting Trump in charge of US foreign policy again in 2025 would be as absurd as leaving Patton in charge after WWII.

    Patton frequently showed more respect for our German enemies than our British allies. The objectives of his campaign in Sicily revolved around his desire to beat Montgomery to Messina. Likewise, Trump often pays more attention to crushing rivals in the Republican party (Loser McCain, Lyin' Ted, McConnell, and now Ron DeSanctimonious).

    Patton thought the invasion of Europe should take the most direct route to Germany through the Pas de Calais, even though the German's strongest forces stood in that direction. With every beach protected at least as well as Omaha and supporter by the Panzers that Hitler failed to send to Normandy, an invasion at the Pas de Calais would likely have been a disaster. Likewise, Trump's strategy of supporting loyalists who backed his attempts to steal the 2020 election has proven to be a disaster for the Republican party, because the independents who are key to winning purple states have no tolerance for what happened in 2020 and might happen in 2024. Now Trump want to take out DeSantis, the party's biggest winner in the midterms. While tactically brilliant in the short-term, neither Patton nor Trump have the strategic vision and leadership to direct the Republican party to victory in the long run - as we have seen in 2018, 2020, and 2022 and could see in 2024. In both 2016 and 2022, Trump received an average of 3% fewer votes than the average Republican candidate appearing on the same ballot with him. He lost the popular vote in 2020 by more than Romney (3.9% vs 4.6%).

    Finally, Patton was a mystic who seriously believed he was a reincarnated soldier who had fought wars back to Rome and Carthage. Trump is likewise entrapped in a web of conspiracy theories and sycophants who are out of touch with [what I hope is] the real world.

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    Nate Dunlevy

    Why can't 3 or 4 normals hold McCarthy hostage just as easily as the Maga-wackos can?

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    1. GregS

      Because the twin phenomena of gerrymandering and Zombie partisans mean that only the primary matters.
      Normals will be afraid of being primaried by MAGA voters.
      The MAGA wackos think that MAGA voters will ensure they don't get primaried, and that Zombie Republican voters will make sure they don't lose the general election.

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  9. Michael.Mcchesney

    I was thinking over the mommy and daddy parties analogy and my first thought was that the GOP had become the “divorced dad” party in recent years. In other words, if the Democrats were the touchy feely parent giving the kids what they want party and the GOP was the more stern, disciplinarian, instill fiscal responsibility party, the GOP had become like the divorced Dad trying to buy his kids love when he had visitations by buying them Playstations and X Boxes and taking them on vacations to Disney World. But then I realized they had become like a divorced dad long before Trump came down that escalator. To a large extent they stopped being the fiscally responsible party once George W. Bush was elected president. They were still far more fiscally responsible than the Democrats, at least until Trump won the White House. But it has been clear for a long time that the GOP only seems to care about deficits when they are in the minority.

    Unlike Jonah, I still consider myself a Republican. I've always thought calling me a RINO was ridiculous. Perhaps not as ridiculous as the time a student called me an “N Word” when I was a high school teacher, but still ridiculous. One of my friends had the best response to that. She said, “Mike I didn't know you were Black Irish.” The really crazy thing was the kid that called me that wasn't even Black, he was of Arab descent. In 2004, when I first started teaching I refused to tell my students whether I was a Democrat or a Republican. But just before the election I relented and told them that in 3 of the 4 presidential elections in which I had voted, I voted for the guy named George Bush. Many of my students were amazed, as though I was the first real life Republican they had ever known. Maybe I was. The next year the school grapevine informed my new students of my party persuasion without me saying a thing. One of those students was a very large girl with a deep gravelly voice. Perhaps I should have said woman instead of girl because, even though she was a 9th grader, she was 18-years-old. At the start of one of my classes the kids were milling around, not quite ready find their seats. I hear the student call out “He's a what?” The next thing I know she is standing in front of my desk saying “Yo Mr. McChesney, are you a Republican? I HATE f*cking Republicans!!!” I replied that I was, thanked her for sharing her feelings and asked her to take a seat.

    My sister left the Republican Party because of Trump. I considered doing that myself. But while I had all kinds of emotional reasons, I couldn't think of any rational reasons for doing so. If I changed my party registration I could become a Democrat, a member of a minor party like the Right to Life Party or the Libertarian Party, or just be an independent. NY has lots of minor parties because NY State law allows candidates to be on the ballot under multiple party lines. For example, George W. Bush appeared in three places on the 2004 NY ballot as the nominee of the Republican Party, the Conservative Party and the Right to Life Party. When running for mayor, Rudy Giuliani was the nominee of the GOP and the Liberal Party. While explaining the NY system to my law school Supreme Court Practice class (there was a challenge to a MN law forbidding cross endorsements in front of the Court that term) I said that the Liberal Party endorsement was probably necessary for Giuliani's victory because there were almost certainly people in NYC that believed their arm would fall off if they ever tried to pull the lever for a Republican. Remember when Giuliani was tough on crime but socially liberal?

    Anyway I didn't see any advantage in joining a minor party. Nor do I see a reason for becoming an Independent. The only practical difference between that and remaining a Republican was that I wouldn't be able to vote in any primary. That left the Democratic Party. I seriously considered joining them. In 2019, I was looking to buy an apartment somewhere in the Bronx. I had decided that if I found myself in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 14th Congressional District, I would register as a Donkey just to vote against her in Democratic primaries. Luckily for her, I found my new home in
    Adriano Espaillat 13th district instead. So I am still a member (in good standing?) of the Grand Old Party. At least this way I can vote against any giant Cheetoh's that decide to run for president.

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      Ericjbutcher

      I can understand your reasoning for remaining in the GOP given your states laws on the matter. In Wisconsin there is no party registration but you do have to decide weather you are going to vote in the GOP or Dem primary so moving to independent, which really is just a personal choice unless you actually want to formally join the party which I have on occasion, was a easy choice. I can vote in either primary during election cycles and decide which one based on the candidates running. This year it was the GOP in 2020 it was the democratic one. Where ever I feel my vote will make the most impact.

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    Christopher Jenkins

    It seems others having the same problem, too, but this didn't show up in my Apple podcasts feed until this morning (Monday). It says in the feed that it came out on Friday, though.

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