Joe has to tell campus protesters it's OK to disagree with him—and that they can hold him to account. But if they want to keep the ability to protest, they can't let the knuckle-dragging troglodyte back into power. Plus, pressuring Cornel West, white people are losing their damn minds, again—and is Gen Z really the catastrophic generation? Eddie Glaude joins Tim Miller.
show notes:
Eddie's latest book, "We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For."
Eddie's "Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul."
What a fantastic Podcast. We need more of this honest talk. It made me make a bit more sense of what all this is about. Do we believe in government of,by and for the people? All citizens? Or do we believe in a government for the land and landowners? That’s been the fight throughout our history. Still fighting. We’ll always have to fight until everyone is valued.
And I LOVE that quote from VP Harris. More of that!
This was an awesome conversation, Tim & Prof Glaude! Thank you!
I am not sure how to elevate this idea, so I will start with some of the comment boards. First: thank you for everything the Bulwark does. I'm proud to support you. Now, my idea is this:
There will be a several day Democratic National Convention, as well as a several day Republican National Convention. There will be broadcasted debates. Could there be an event or a series of events that I can only describe at the moment as nonpartisan rallies for democracy? Could the itineraries for these include speakers from all reasonable sides of the political spectrum, interleaved with celebrities (singers/performances/comics)? Could these be hosted in important locations, such as battleground states? Could they somehow be nationally televised & tick tocked (I'm old)? Could they touch on important democratic ideas, such as the facts 1) that no candidate will ever be perfect and solve all of our problems, 2) it's our responsibility as citizens to choose better leaders (a nod to some of Eddie Glaude's commends toward the end of the discussion), 3) Americans are not enemies, 4) compromise is our historic strength?
Again, thank you for what you do, and if you think this idea is worth pursuing, what I should do or who I should contact next?
I LOVE this idea !!
Thank you, Tim. I recall you saying once that your mom was born in the 1960s, and I loved what you said to the professor about those of us, Gen X really, or Gen Jones(per Jonathan Pontell), growing up surrounded by disturbing events. Amen to that! And you did not call us baby boomers, (hallelujah!) for this, I am ever so grateful! We did experience the fallout of the boomers for sure, but we were always an afterthought, tucked neatly in with a generation we could not relate to, and our voices have never really mattered. Yes, we grew up with corruption and violence as the air we breathed in childhood.
(I got in trouble once for standing on a garbage can in my neighborhood yelling, “Politics! Violence! Politics! Violence!…” I didn’t know what the words meant but someone said they were bad words.)
What differs our time as youth distinctly from the young people of today, is that we never expected anyone to listen to us. No one paid much attention to us. We weren’t the baby boomers afterall. And obviously, because we are a rather forgotten, displaced generation, many still feel unheard and as if they don’t matter.
So, sorry for the rant, but I appreciate you calling it out!
I was deeply irritated by Glaude describing the backlash against DEI and affirmative action as a matter of white people ("the Christopher Rufos of the world") taking something away from black and brown students. The fact is that merit-based admission, including the use of standardized testing, has greatly helped minority students gain access to higher education, and especially to the most selective schools. There is absolutely no quicker way to alienate the Asian community, of which I am a member of, than to continue promoting DEI and racial quotas as a basis for admissions. If a certain minority group can't compete on test scores, the answer is to give them every bit of help they need - tutoring, test prep, financial assistance to afford this things - rather than just let them in by giving them a lower bar to clear. Every Asian family in our orbit is feeling some version of "this woke stuff has gone too far" and is very open to voting for Republicans, especially at the state and local level. If the Republican nominee was someone other than Trump, many Asian voters would be joining the black and Hispanic voters switching sides. Indeed, some are doing it anyway in spite of Trump. Glaude framed DEI, equity, and merit-free affirmative action as intrinsic goods and was highly presumptuous that the Bulwark audience would be in his camp. Tim disappointingly didn't challenge him during that part of the podcast. I didn't bother listening to the last 10 or so minutes, Glaude simply lost me.
Why did you hear merit free? I didn’t.
I think we all have to be a bit more honest anout this. He didn’t say anything about quotas at all. All who are not whote males just want an equal shot. They are not the standard that we all have to match. I don’t want to be anywhere that people are the same - whether I am one of the sames or the only one different. I don’t want special treatment and he didn’t say he did either. He just wants to be there if he deserves it. That’s what I heard. But in order to fully understand I’ll have to read the book.
Honestly, it is one of the few episodes where I left early too. I did not feel the professor was open to different thought. Even about my aforementioned comment, he minimized.
I had a lot of trouble with his deep sympathy for the anti-Israel protests (like, it's totally normal that they want Israel wiped off the map and 7 million Jews ethnically cleansed... after all, Israel has had a RIGHT WING government for much of their lives! What else are they supposed to think?!), contrasted with his analysis of Trump voters ("white folks have gone crazy again").
I'm a Bulwark subscriber; of course my sympathy for Trump voters is limited. But Dr. Glaude's wildly different standards for understanding others is pretty hypocritical, and I don't think we're going to defeat Trump by writing off his voters as morons who can't possibly be understood in other terms. This is probably my deepest disagreement with the turn the Bulwark has taken recently.
My big complaint with Prof. Glaude is his take on just how hard this generation has it. Harder than anyone. Oh my, those poor students who were suffering without food for a few hours after they took Hamilton Hall. I contrast that with my mother and grandmother’s stories of having to take their rations cards to buy the everyday staples of life during WWll and had to go without many times. Or the fear of young Jews, the ages of these students, living in Europe and being round up for extermination. I mean is he for real on that subject of todays student’s sufferings?
Agree, I don’t want to minimize the pandemic, but it’s hard not to feel like kids might feel better if they just put their phone down. Beaming a curated feed of nonsense and disasters into your face 24/7 can’t be good for you. There’s also such an emphasis on a sort of pop psychology online, especially around trauma, that you wonder if people are allowing themselves to be defined by perceived harm instead of learning to manage it.
And with that I have some hope again. Work to do. But hope.
This may be my favorite podcast episode. So many words of wisdom. I am ordering the book
I cannot lie, I had a moment of near panic during this one. No, not when Tim casually mentioned coming to terms with a Trump victory (vomits into my mouth), but when Eddie started listing off top-tier schools and tossed Amherst into the list after the typical Ivys! "What, no Williams" I screamed to no one in particular during my morning run. But fortunately, Williams was then promptly mentioned and all was right with the world for this Purple Cow and Ephperson. #amherstwasmysafetyschool
You touched upon one of my minor pet peeves. For most high school seniors wanting to go to college, the alternatives aren't ivy league or community college. For most, it's which 4 year state university/college or nearby private school.
Yes, I was confused and dismayed about the idea that some Biden voter is upset because they think their kid can't get into an Ivy League because of affirmative action. Where I come from most students are excited to be able to get into the best state university.
It's mainly the Eastern elites who worry about college admission not your average voter.
Enjoyed the show—thanks :)
Dr. Glaude is an engaging speaker and I enjoyed listening to him. I wish I'd heard him somewhere else. We're trying to hold a coalition together here to save the Republic in six months, and it suddenly had already become a lot harder with the anti-Israel protests, which have driven splits between us faster than I would have believed possible. The comments here show that Dr. Glaude is not very helpful with that, in fact the opposite.
Listening to a Black man with a PhD from Princeton tell us that no, there really HASN'T been any progress for Black people in this country during the past seventy years was a little like being visited from a much worse alternate reality. Tim, to his credit, did try to push back, some. What it reminded me of was Clarence Thomas's take on his Yale experience: the two extremes of the horseshoe are so close that they crush reality between them.
Dr. Glaude thinks that Bernie Sanders represented how American politics should be remade. He, and a tiny percentage of the voting public who don't like the United States very much. He wanted to "break the back of Clintonism". His opinion, but I think that Clintonism was what made the Democrats competitive again after Reagan. He offers excuses for people who choose not to vote because the choices on offer don't meet their standards. Tim did push back well on that one, but the guest just wasn't buying it: when people decline to be good citizens, in his view, it's somebody else's fault. The legitimizing of the Israel-as-a-Colonial-Project tropes were ahistorical and outrageous, as they always are. Poison delivered with a spoonful of sugar and a sunny smile is still poison.
Dr. Glaude IS an engaging speaker, and I really would enjoy hearing you two contrast your analyses of neoconservatism. Please do bring him back for that, Tim -- and please follow your impulse to do it AFTER the election.
One point on which I appreciated Glaude's critique of The Bulwark was his argument that the binary-choice framework is patronizing. Whenever I hear it, there's a part of me that wants to vote third party just to give the middle finger to those attempting to trap me in their binary-choice prison.
If the only choice were between, say, Elizabeth Warren and Gavin Newsom, or between Jim Jordan and Tucker Carlson, I would consider either of those to be a real "binary-choice prison" and would sit the election out.
The choice between Biden or Trump for President is binary, but it's no prison. Almost nine years after Trump came down that garish elevator, I think that a lot of what comes across as "patronizing" is actually tightly controlled frustration at people who prefer blaming the messenger to accepting that (our current) reality is real, that the difference between the two is one of kind and not degree, and that the election of only one will lead to a disaster that may be unrecoverable.
You seem to accept our current milieu as a force of nature for which no one can be held responsible - a constraint that we just have to accept and react to. I refuse to accept those rules of the game as a given. I know too much game theory to allow myself to get stuck in one model.
But this is also a matter of my personality. Whenever anyone tries to coerce or manipulate me, my top priority becomes making them regret it.
Not a force of nature, but one of a limited universe of available fact sets among which we can choose. We exercise our agency by choosing the fact set in which we're going to participate, but we have very little power as individuals to modify the conditions of the set itself, so the question of "who's responsible" is only a distraction, at least in the short term.
I exited this particular fact set in 2017 by becoming a permanent expat, so I enjoy these discussions as an intellectual and social exercise rather than as a real participant. While I certainly have family and some financial connections to the US, I don't in fact have a dog in the fight, so if I seem detached and perhaps a little blasé, that's probably why.
My personality is not dissimilar, except that whenever anyone tries to coerce or manipulate me, unless they do something malicious to actually harm me, my top priority is only to neutralize any power they may have over me. After that, their regrets are not my concern.
Can't agree. Speaking civilly, among friends, about disagreements is how you keep the coalition together.
I've thought so for a long time, but I'm no longer so sure. The Hamas-sympathetic demonstrations and civil disobedience have been like acid poured over our coalition and political culture, eating away in days and weeks alliances that took months and years to build, and damaging and disfiguring everything that they don't destroy outright. I really don't see how we completely recover from this, especially in only six months. And if we fail in November, none of it will matter anyway. The fact that then these deluded individuals will probably see what REAL geocide looks like under a second Trump presidency is, of course, no comfort at all.
That started well before this on the liberal side of this coalition. I voted in 2020 to save democracy and only to save Democracy because candidate Biden offered literally nothing else for me. This coalition then proceeded to do nothing but vote in Biden and pursue business as usual as if the trajectory of the Republican party, politics in general, and the underlying drivers of both would change on their own. That useless strategy not only betrayed their promise to attempt to save Democracy it also lost them the house in 2022 so they couldn't even try in the last two years. Trust was gone after that: trust in the strategy, trust in the institutions, and trust in the people of the coalition itself.
I am working very, VERY hard to find some miniscule scrap of faith that enough of this coalition has learned something and now has the will and ability to actually do anything about any of those problems if it is voted into power despite the fact that the same key players are making the same empty promises and platitudes *AGAIN* after either intentionally reneging on their promises the first time or at the least failing utterly and completely to act on them. Posts on this site make it damn near impossible to find that faith because they show exactly how much contempt much of this coalition has for a decisive chunk of people in the coalition who are having the same struggles I am.
But that is why I hang around here, to get a more accurate read on how worth saving this country is. It does provide that.
Yes, it feels like a bait and switch: the Democrats ran on democracy, but the only thing they actually did to save democracy was to not be Trump. It's almost as if they wanted to preserve the threat of Trump in order to force us to vote for Democrats again.
I'm sorry for your frustration and I'm sure that it's genuine. However, I really don't think that the Infrastructure Act or the misnamed -- but not misdirected -- Inflation Reduction Act were "business as usual" or "the trajectory of the Republican Party"; I thought that they were good, widely popular, Center-Left constructive legislation. And the 2022 losses were far lower than the usual midterm losses for the party in power. I'm also not sure what you include in the "any of those problems" that you want whoever wins in November to "do anything about", but I hope that we have a President who will try to build consensus on some of them.
I want them to save our Democracy. That means doing something to actually *fix* it so it can operate reliably. I cannot be done without at the very least removing the filibuster and finding ways to render gerrymandering of the house ineffective through electoral reform. That is a bare minimum. Something to start to get us closer to one person one vote as opposed to tyranny of the minority. There is much more that should be done on this issue alone imo so I'm already giving away most of it and any consideration of any other issues. What more do I have to give up to not be considered entitled and radical I wonder? It is mind boggling to me that tightening up the loopholes Trump exploited during his attempted legislative coup is *ALL* the Dems did on the sole issue that unites this coalition.
You don't sound either entitled or radical to me, at not least so far. The easiest and most effective thing that could be done to fix the House AND the Electoral College would be to repeal the Reapportionment Act of 1929, take the artificial cap off the House of Representatives, and stop the under-representation of the most populous states. It only takes an Act of Congress, not an amendment, and it really frustrates me that Pelosi's leadership team apparently had no interest in it during the last Congress. I hope that changes next year if the Democrats win.
I totally agree on the filibuster, but the dirty little secret is that both parties denounce it when they're in the majority but never get around to abolishing it, because they think that they'll need it when they're in the minority. It gets a lot of mileage for something that came into existence as an oversight and everybody in the Senate claims to hate. As for gerrymandering, that's another thing that both parties hate -- but only when the other one does it. Neither the courts or the Congress are going to do anything about it; it's going to have to be the people ourselves, state by state.
"You don't sound either entitled or radical to me, at not least so far."
You are one of few who would say so. When the Dems actually had the ability attempt to remove the filibuster making repairs to the ship was deemed too dangerous and radical. It would scare the moderates. I still remember the pic of Manchin the saint in Tim's article on this site after he protected the filibuster and thus scuttled any chance of democratic reforms (which in turn led to internecine strife since all that was left was to argue over typical policy matters). Maybe the moderates have started to come around but neither Biden nor this site which is my only source of non-MAGA conservative thought says anything about such things so I doubt that. Neither do the moderate liberal sources for that matter.
Agreed on the Reapportionment Act and the filibuster. I thought that would have been one of the first things on the docket after Jan 6th but I was as naive about the Dems or the democracy coalition or whatever political entity this is now in 2020 as I was about Republicans in 2016. All the talk of principles is bullshit. When the time came to act on them they both balked as usual and I don't know how the stakes could get higher while still being in peacetime in a nominally functional society than covid and a coup. I trust neither. Voting in 2024, at the moment, is like buying a lottery ticket as my retirement plan. Is there a chance it pays out? ...sure but the chance is so small is it even worth wasting the effort?
I was very disappointed with Manchin over the filibuster, and over the Inflation Reduction Act, too. The next person who holds that chair will be a lot worse, though.
I was a "Liberal Republican" while there still was such a thing, and call myself "Center-Right" now. I've never called myself a "conservative", and especially won't now that the word is meaningless. I just want the government to work the way that I think the Founders intended: preserving and extending individual liberty, no filibuster, the House and the Electoral College growing to keep pace with the growth and distribution of the population, the debt limit respected and not gamed, strong federal action against racial discrimination and to dismantle structural racism (the Civil War Amendments are as much part of the Constitution as Articles I-VII!), the states and the federal government respecting each others' authority, including NOT incorporating the Second Amendment against the states, and levels of progressive taxation adequate to support the level of public services that the people decide, through their representatives, that they want to have and pay for. I keep hoping that that isn't asking too much.
"I was very disappointed with Manchin over the filibuster, and over the Inflation Reduction Act, too. The next person who holds that chair will be a lot worse, though."
This is where I don't understand the moderate argument. Neither Manchin nor the person who will be worse will allow the necessary reforms to get us out of this situation. Where is the hope to be found then? We are damned if we do and damned if we don't.
"I just want the government to work the way that I think the Founders intended [...]. I keep hoping that that isn't asking too much."
We are generally the same at that level of abstraction but the real world doesn't operate at that level so it is kind of meaningless. I say that not to be flippant and insulting but to communicate how cynical I am of that level of connection. Still, I understand and respect the sentiment.
Manchin was the best we were ever going to get out of West Virginia, and he WAS willing to work with Biden on a wide range of changes; if Jim Justice will be willing to work with him on anything, I'll be more than pleasantly surprised, I'll be flabbergasted. Anyone who doubts that that there's a big difference between the two is going to see next year.
Good discussion -- thanks. Politics and baseball will always break our hearts; the best we can do with politics is to try to keep it moving more or less in the right direction most of the time. Baseball is already the perfect blend of tragedy and hope, so we should probably stick to reforming politics.
Tim, I would like to continue to thank you for having such an interesting variety of guests. As someone that leans further left than the typical Bulwark contributor (and reader!), it is refreshing to hear you actually engage with further left folks in the pro-democracy coalition. As you have acknowledged there’s a few topics in where there’s a pretty narrow range of opinions at the Bulwark, often in foreign policy, where it’s nice to hear you all engage with people that are in the coalition you have reluctantly (and perhaps temporarily!) joined.
Anyway, that’s all to say that while I enjoyed Charlie’s version of the podcast, especially when he leaned into being a Wisconsinite as I was also born and raised, I find your approach to be so much more enjoyable and valuable to what I think the Bulwark is really hoping to accomplish. We can all learn continue to learn from each other, and a closed off center to center right group is no less susceptible to group think if they’re only hearing opinions in their narrow group than people that only consume newsmax.
I found Eddie Glaude’s comments on the campus protests and Israel uninformed, nonsensical and apologist. I also noticed that you did not push back on most of what he said yet again. Please stop asking your guests about Israel if you aren’t prepared to push back on their comments. I’m all for hearing contrary opinions, but I felt sick to my stomach listening to this man go unchallenged as he spouted nonsense on your show today. It was the first time I thought about canceling my Bulwark subscription in 5 years.
If I, a left-wing social democrat can deal with Sarah, Tim, and JVL all whining about student loans daily and pay them money, you can deal with somebody who is more friendly to the arguments of pro-Palestine folks.
You are comparing about having to hear about a policy preference you disagree with and hearing about unchecked antisemitism. You’ve demonstrated that you don’t get it.
Eddie Glaude makes we white folks think deeply. Should we so choose. And I do. And he is right.
The world is broken. Blame the Jews.
He's bringing up 1948? The Jewish state of Israel is not going away. Sorry, Prof.
Gazans, please quit cosplaying refugee and build your own state in Gaza. You hsve my support.
Did we watch/listen to the same podcast? When did either one of them blame Jews?
In his entire discussion about us.
His answer to Tim's question about campus protests against Israel starting at 14:30
It was amazing to listen to and then not hear Tim push back on any of it again.
I don't think Tim wanted to get stuck there. It's our job to push back.
This was an outstanding show. I really appreciate your willingness to explore many topics so vital to us all today. Love ya. Donna in Las Vegas
Just a note to say...
I would give virtually anything to be able to attend one of Professor Glaude's classes.
He makes me think. He challenges me. We need more intellectuals like him, but at the same time, he is in a class by himself.
Thank you for having him on the Pod, Tim. Please have him back again.
Absolutely agree!
One of the most moving interviews I've heard on here, it gave me a lot of things to think about.
Gosh I love Eddie Glaude. Every time he speaks I learn something. That Baldwin quote at the end- wowza!
What book did Tim just read? Couldn’t catch the title.
The souls of black folk
Tim: Amazing show. Great interview. (Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees)
Thank you!
I missed the title too so. Tim, please post the name of the title.
In turning their backs on the Southern segregationists in the '60s, the Dems were clearly on the side of right. However, they seem to have hung on to this to the point that they need to speak out loudly at every injustice to every marginalized group. And if the group isn't terribly marginalized, the Dems will try to make it so.
Was George Floyd's death horrible and should it have been addressed? Yes. Does generational poverty still exist and should it be addressed? Yes. But I think the majority of Blacks have more in common with the white middle class than they have with the deeply marginalized. The same can be said for Hispanics who have a similar history of injustice. I'm pretty sure that the middle class Blacks and Hispanics would prefer having their middle class issues addressed rather than being lumped in with the marginalized.
A good example of how the Dems misdirect their energy is with the trans people. As crude and simplistic as it may sound, the vast majority of the country thinks that checking inside your pants settles the issue and that pronouns are a passing fad. Yet unfairly or not, Dems have been branded with prioritizing the issue over the folks in the industrial Midwest who have seen their communities destroyed by changing economics. So when the Dems send out the cavalry to a misdirected pronoun and the cavalry zooms past Palestine, Ohio, what will the results be?
How much money has flowed into those communities between Obama and Biden stimulus spending and the infrastructure bill?
Also, "The illegals are coming" is easy to say. It's much harder to explain the cost benefits of a manufacturing plant that happen gradually over time.
Lots and progress has definitely been made. But unfortunately, the Dems can't outshout the GOP.
I have 2 grandchildren who I hope can live & work outside the US when they're adults
The actual problems w/ Israel/Palestine is Rashid Tilab & Mike Johnson could actually work out a deal over Israel & Palestine - but nobody in Israel & Palestine can make that same deal. I think people do underestimate how on both sides, there's nobody even on the pretty pro-Palestine and pro-Israel sides of things.
Like, somebody like Jared Moskowitz a Jewish Democratic Congressperson from Florida whose been quite openly Zionist and disdainful of the protests would be seen as too left-leaning and pro-Israel by the median Israeli and vice versa for Tilab in Palestine.
The gap within America on the issue is far less than on the issue in either Israel or Palestine.
The problem is that Palestinians will not give up their desire to eliminate Israel. River to the sea.
That's a non-starter.
They are very much like Israel in that respect.
Literally the pla gave this up 35 years ago. Hamas wants to destroy Israel. That is not the Palestinians. Or are you saying that Israel can’t be trusted because the settlers?
The Palestinians need to sort out their leadership. Is it Hamas or the PLA? It's still Hamas in Gaza.
If they continue to play into the hands of the Israeli right with armed resistance and right of return, things are not going to end well for them
I’m honestly not sure how to respond to this.
Hamas is a shitshow. It is a terrorist/authoritarian regime-ish organization. Not sure how to describe them because they aren’t a state but they govern and are a terrorist organization. Talk about confusion.
But the PLA has been a non genocidal organization that has assisted with Israel’s security for 20 years. Literally 20 years. They have been an asset of the idf and Israeli government. They are corrupt as hell because (1) they work with Israel and get the boons from that and (2) the public is so pissed that they work with the IDf yet NOTHING that leads to progress with statehood.
During these 20 years the Israeli government has defunded them, discriminated against them, denigrated them, never made any effort towards peace and even spent time and money to make Hamas more successful. During this entire time they have massively expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank to further erode the pla in front of their people.
Israel doesn’t want a 2 state solution. That is just a fact. Bibi sent requests to Trump to make sure that the treasury wouldn’t sanction Qatar for supporting Hamas. He has publicly said he supports Hamas to stop the 2 state solution (bibi). Literally the settlers run the police and the national defense today. Today. The head of defense has been convicted of terrorism by Israelis.
They will not change without a drastic push. All of our allies. All of them except Germany and the UK are against what Israeli has been doing. Another 5 European countries have announced they will recognize a Palestinian state since October. The only country that Israel gives 2 shits about is the US because we give them weapons (which is absurd. They are a developed country. They should buy it if they want but we shouldn’t fund it). I don’t think we will change our stance for a lot of good and bad reasons. The bad is all about US politics.
The issue of peace isn’t just a Palestinian issue. It’s also an Israeli issue. Both sides would have to make dramatic sacrifices. I have no good ideas but just blaming Palestinians isn’t right
This is getting bogged down in details. Dump a fucking state in their lap and let them figure it out. I'm not seeing the downside.
I hear you but the problem is the details. That’s always been the problem. The definition of a state to Palestine is very different than the definition of a state for Israel.
I do actually think if say, in 2005, Israel fully pulled out of the West Bank & Gaza, outside of the biggest settlements, and unilaterally recognized Palestine, we'd be better off, because Palestine could be treated like an actual sovereign state, for good and ill.
I think you are giving our congressional legislators far too much credit here. There is zero chance they can come to any agreement. We can barely agree to not default on the debt.
That's my point - as terrible as US politics are, I/P relations are even worse.
Ahhh gotcha. We have a 1% chance. They have 0. I gotcha
And I’d rather have Moskowitz decide literally ANYTHING rather than Tlaib.
Such a fascinating convo. Well done tim.
I guess I just don’t understand what fighting harder means. He tried to pass voting rights, policing reforms, and more aggressive gun bills. He doesn’t have the votes. Also I just don’t think he realizes that even if he “fought harder” how exactly does that message get conveyed to people? It’s not like our media will cover it
The point is on the GOP side - people who disagree with the party eventually get ground down and either tossed out or replaced, while the Democratic party has members who seem to openly hate other members of their own coalition than they do Republican's and get to openly basically flip off the President, and get tons of money for doing so.
I also think you make the media cover it, and create your own media. Not a center-left org like MSNBC that still has Republican's anchoring their morning hour.
But, like a lot of stuff people like Rush Limbaugh said in 1980 actually was beyond the pale in polite society, until thousands of hours of radio being beamed into millions of people's heads made it not so.
Hell, the same thing happened with social stuff - like, the cons are sort of right is we made people comfortable with gay people by having lots of normal gay people on TV and movies. Because that had Hollywood behind it.
Notice how the GOP has a message they repeat, repeat, repeat, no matter what the question is. It's ugly, it sucks, but it works.
Imagine if every Democrat, from Joe Manchin to AOC, when mentioning Trump, said "Donald Trump, who's a lying rapist who tried to overturn the election," and so did every host on this new liberal channel, and so on, and so forth, and that effects how CNN & The New York Times covers things.
Because that's the true genius of the online crazies -> Brietbart -> FOX -> Wall Street Journal -> CNN channel is crazy stuff can become something that needs to be talked about on CNN as reasonable the way we can't pull off.
I think this is all slightly overstated by my fellow lefties, but I do think it does cause issues at the edges, and the edges are where things change.
Hmm I agree with everything here but…so what? The Democratic coalition and media ecosystem is drastically different than the gop. I’m not sure we can learn from any of it.
There are plenty of “liberal/democratic” media that are fully partisan. Take pod save America. The difference is they will never be a mouth piece for the party. Those guys criticize Biden all the time.
The issue is fundamentally the audience. The democratic coalition is so DIVERSE not only on race but opinion. There is literally no overlap. Things you would say to the liberal whites would turnoff most black and Hispanic voters.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to find a way to “even the odds.” I just don’t see how? Look around the developed world: Israel, Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. have the same exact issues that we do. “Conservatives” have become mostly far right parties and the center left has collapsed and the left is lost. No idea what to do but it’s not just a US problem
Dr. Glaude has it wrong. The reason that young people don’t understand the significance of Israel for the Jews is not because of fresh and informed analysis, it’s because of a lack of education in history.
If you are in college now your view of Israel is very very different from when I grew up.
People need to stop papering over what the Israeli government has become. This is not to say that Israel shouldn’t exist or antisemitism should ever accepted at protests.
The facts on the ground have drastically changed over the last 25 years. It was slowly changing but it has accelerated. It will have long term effects on our politics towards Israel unfortunately. This has been true for a longtime (since Obama…you just can’t have prime ministers openly condemning democrats and rooting for republicans and not expect a bipartisan issue to stay bipartisan)
I'm a Boomer and my view is that the situation of Palestinians in Israel pre 10/7 had long been unjust and unsustainable. I was proven right.
My current position is that as soon as Hamas leadership is dealt with, Palestinians should be dragged into their own state, kicking and screaming if necessary. They cannot keep playing refugees.
No idea what this means. The issue has never been with the pla. Gaza its own issue.
Israel doesn’t want a 2 state solution. The pla does but it is so ineffective now because (1) corruption and (2) they have been so ineffectual in getting a 2 state solution they are also viewed as part of the occupying force because they support the idf but get nothing in return.
No idea how to change this but 40 years of constant new settlements hasn’t been well received. There are an additional 750k Israeli’s on the Palestinians territory now. They aren’t leaving
I agree -- but both the Palestinians and the Israelis should be "dragged" into a viable two-state solution, which has to include a rollback of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and an arrangement for Jerusalem that neither side would choose on their own.
Any deal that gives them a state is a worthwhile deal for the Palestinians. There are elements in Israel that will do anything they can to prevent it. They have zero leverage. Getting bogged down in negotiatons would be a mistake. They should be more concerned about roll forward than roll back. Once they prove they can govern themselves peacefully anything is possible
Arafat should have taken the Clinton deal. They would be so much better off today.
I agree re: Arafat. He sacrificed the future of the Palestinian people for the sake of maintaining his own dominance and the wealth that flowed from it. He was a lot like Putin.
They will not be allowed to have a state. Israel, even the most reasonable parts, won’t allow it. They will not be allowed to have borders. They will not be allowed to police their own people. They will not be allowed to stop the idf from raiding homes. You have to see this right?
I see it, which is why I say that a solution must be imposed, and it has to start with rolling back the settlements.
Brett F. is right: Arafat should have taken the Clinton deal. But he didn't, so we need to deal with the current reality.
This has nothing to do with Arafat. Once again, THAT WASNT A STATE EITHER. you can’t impose shit on either Israel or Palestine. That’s the fundamental problem
The failure of the Israeli offer that Clinton brokered had EVERYTHING to do with Arafat and his refusal to accept it. He would have had a state if he had been anything like a statesman.
As for imposing a solution, of course we can, if the United States and its allies are willing to impose steadily increasing pressure on the Israelis and the more powerful Arab states are willing to do the same on the Palestinians. We can't make them LIKE each other, or even cooperate with each other, but we CAN create a situation where two sovereign states live side by side without being able to attack each other, as East and West Germany did from 1949 to the end of the Cold War, and North and South Korea have done since the Korean Armistice in 1953. My ambitions, certainly for my lifetime and quite possibly for yours, too, don't go any farther than that.
Al that wasn’t a state unless your definition is different than every other state in the world. Once again, they wouldn’t be allowed to police their own people. They wouldn’t be allowed to stop the IDF raids on their people’s homes. Maybe that’s what they end up with but no one would call that a “state.”
To your second part. True but there is no political will to do any of what you propose. The US, Europe and the gulf states will never send their soldiers to police the Palestinians. That’s a non starter.
If you are going to use Korea or Germany as examples. Ok when will the US send 100k troops to Israel? That was how we made peace. There is no chance we will ever do that in Israel.
I think that the plan Arafat rejected would have been a start, but it doesn't matter what either of us think about it now: he rejected it, it's dead, and it's not recoverable.
I think that once Hamas is eliminated, there may be political will to force the sides to a two-state solution. From everything I've read, any frustration we feel with the Israelis is as nothing compared to the frustration that the Arab states feel with the Palestinians. Any such plan would require massive investments from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to stand Palestine up so that it can succeed economically. Once the Palestinians have jobs and a lifestyle that they can enjoy, they might have second -- and third, and fourth -- thoughts about throwing it all away.
Palestine would have to be demilitarized, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't have an effective police force and defensive weapons, just nothing that they could throw over the border. In that, they would be no different from Costa Rica or Iceland, which also have no military. They could have defense guarantees from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but probably wouldn't need them: if most Israelis could just forget that the Palestinians were there, I think that they'd be content to live back to back, walled off from each other with both open to the rest of the world. Transit between Gaza and the West Bank could be handled the way that transit between West Germany and West Berlin was handled from 1949 to the end of the Cold War.
At any rate, once Hamas is eliminated, the Israelis must be forced to roll back the West Bank settlements, which were illegal from the jump and never should have been permitted in the first place, someone besides the Israelis should be responsible for keeping Gaza and the West Bank peaceful, and as I've said, the Gulf should take the lead in rebuilding the West Bank and Gaza and making them economically viable.
Many people don't grow up near any Jews, survivors or others. Their only knowledge of Jews comes in a strict this is a religion sense that is devoid of history. You know the "there are 3 Abrahamic religions that originated in the Middle East". That's about it.
History of a people is simply not covered in most general history courses whether in high school or collegiate level. WWII happened. A bunch of Jews and Roma and gays and other people were rounded up into camps and were worked to death or simply put to death. That's the end of the teaching.
No one reads Leon Uris' Exodus or has seen the movie. No one has seen that the Holocaust miniseries. The cultural memory that once existed is gone.
Except there were anti-Zionists even among people whom survived the Holocaust.
Also, you can believe in the existence of Israel and disagree with the current right-wing reactionary government and populace of Israel as currently constructed.
I’m not sure you know what a “Zionist” is but any survivors who were anti-Zionist would not have moved to Israel, because supporting Israel as a Jewish homeland is Zionism.
I’m certain that deciding whether the populace should continue to exist as “currently constructed” would have horrific consequences. Call me paranoid.
My friends’ parents had numbers. Everybody had lost people.
You and I can understand and sympathize with the colonial soldiers in the Revolutionary War and the North in the Civil War. We don’t know anybody who survived those.
People who don’t “agree” with the fragile miracle of Jewish survival don’t want to. The information is available.
Instead they mouth slogans they don’t understand. What river? What sea? They could check out the Second Intifada.
But those challenge their antisemitic chanting and groupthink.
I…I just have such a hard time with needing total purity in their choices. I’m sorry that Biden doesn’t give people goosebumps when he speaks but the alternative is so much worse they aren’t even on the same scale.
Yet again, Tim kills it with his outro music. Blood Orange. The best.
Last time I checked a fair amount of young black men were on board with Trump and his burn-it-all-down ethos. It seems young people now generally feel either indifferent or unmoored from what progressives or the Democrats have to offer. I'm sure from Glaude's perspective something is being taken or withheld by the rise of Trump, but younger people are clearly divided on the subject and many of them are helping keep Trump ahead in the polls.
Hasn't that been what Biden is doing? Roughly sympathizing with the protesters regarding the Palestinians but drawing a line at lawlessness.
"The idea of it being Jewish ran smack up against it being Democratic..." "... those things collide".
Yes! Thank you! I've been saying that for a long time! The willingness of people to accept ethnonationalism when it is Jewish ethnonationalism is deeply distrubing, and undermines attempts to defeat white ethnonationalism and christian nationalism at home.
England is a Christian State. Does that mean they are not a Democracy? What about Germany? Are all Christian countries not Democracies?
Christians in England can get married by a non-Jewish judge if they wish, unlike in Israel, where they can only be married in a religious ceremony, by an Orthodox rabbi under the authority of the Chief Rabbinate and so on for Muslims, etc.
You just make this stuff up. Orthodox Jews get married under the rabbinate. Everybody else gets married by their own religious leaders, including Muslims. All marriages performed outside of Israel are recognized and registered, including interfaith marriages.
News flash: American Orthodox jump through an equal number of hoops to get married. Chasids make the Modern Orthodox look like Catholics.
It’s also a monarchy…and also a democracy. This is a meaningless statement.
Does England use the Bible to decide what laws to make? Their prime minister is Hindu. They are by most standards a secular liberal democracy. How are they currently a Christian nation in any meaningful way? The Church of England is an atavistic leftover from a heinous past full of atrocities, much like the monarchy and the house of lords, it should no longer have a place in governance.
I'll give you that they were once a Christian nation. During that period they persecuted a lot of religious minorities, including Jews and other Christians. Not really a great example for a modern state to emulate.
The head of state is also the head of the national church in England but I agree with you that England is more tied up trying to define who is English right now than whether they’re all Christians.
Sunak is on his way out, though. Who knows what happens when he’s gone. It could be the Crusades.
Kim this isn’t true. The king, who has nothing to do with t)3 government, is the head of the church
The King opens Parliament and is visited weekly by the PM, who delivers a status report. England has an unwritten constitution so both of those things are holdovers, but you’re right, royalty doesn’t actually legislate.
The Head of State in GB and the Commonwealth is the monarch, though.
Come on Kim. This is just being argumentative. The king has no role in government. None. In fact he is not allowed to really comment on anything to do with governing
Ok. I don’t know what the argument is. I said England wasn’t a Christian country. Go far enough back and it didn’t start out one, either.
The comparison was England to Israel. There is nothing remotely similar between the two countries now. There is no country like Israel. It’s unique because it is (1) a ethnostate and (2) is a democracy. To some extent EVERY country has been thinning you look historically. It is closer to South Africa in 80s and the US before the civil war. That’s why it breaks everyone’s brains.
Most countries in Europe were exactly this as well in the 1600s - 1800s. They solved it the same way we did. Wars and ethnic cleansing.
Oh, sorry. I was just responding to the discussion of whether England was a Christian state. My responses on Israel are higher up in another thread.
Yes. The Church of England is integrated into their parliament.
The Church of England is headed by the KING. he has nothing to do with governing. This is factually incorrect
So I take it from your position that you would be totally fine with the US becoming an officially "Christian nation"? With all that entails.
Not at all. I’m an atheist. I accept that there are many religions in the world and it is important to them. There are many Christian nations, Muslim nations, etc. I have no problem with Jewish people having a Jewish nation. I have lived in other countries and enjoyed it but I prefer it here in the states where I do not have to pay a “church” tax.
But that's my point. Why should a certain religion get more control over the people than the people themselves?
(let's set aside for now the fact that in the case of Israel it's not just religious but ethnic as well, which means certain types of Jews aren't included)
These religious states are leftovers from an older, objectively worse world. We shouldn't want them to be our future. The people of Israel deserve freedom and equality, regardless of their religion or ethnicity.
Israel is unique in that it is majority Jewish and people of other religions want to kill them. This is why there are only about 15 million Jewish people on the planet. There are more Muslims in Russia than there are Jews in Israel. I think progressives are being a little too idealistic in thinking they can create a Democratic Palestine and everyone (Christian, Muslims and Jews) will be one free big happy family. In reality, we would just watch another Jewish Holocaust for this century.
Yep. I’m not sure that would trouble as many folks as we think.
Israel is a Jewish democracy. Judaism is embedded in democracy because it is ethical monotheism and our rabbis are not only teachers but lawyers.
And Judaism is far more than a religion.
I know. I never said it was anything otherwise. That's why I compared it to white nationalism.
You cannot maintain ethno-centric control and democracy long term without creating second class citizens and oppressing minority groups.
You clearly believe otherwise, so what's your proposal to make sure Israel is always governed by a Jewish majority until the end of time?
Israeli citizenship is automatic to Jews. It is a homeland for us.
Jewish academic, literary, scientific and artistic accomplishment means that left alone Israel will always be governed by Jews. Everybody is sick to death of Bibi. He’s on his way out. He never gets a majority. Because Israel is a democracy, the voters will get him out. He tried to rig the system through the courts and the population stopped him. His downfall is in abeyance because of the war but it’s not eternally vacated.
Contrary to Glaude’s throwaway statement, the Likud doesn’t represent Israel any more than MAGA represents the US. It’s just a significant and dangerous minority.
The real threats to Israel, unlike here, are from the outside. Israel is surrounded by enemies on every side. But, even some of those enemies want to do business with Israel. Many of them would be fine with Israeli Jews being dead, but since they’re not dead, they’ll work with them. They also share the hatred of Iran.
All of that being true means that the Jews will run their homeland for a long, long time. We were ethnically cleansed; the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis means that there are fewer Jews now than there were in 1940. That’s what those words mean.
Israel is a vital US ally. It’s the single source of valuable intel from the Mideast. Absent mass murder it’s not going anywhere.
There are Israeli Arabs. They have a political party and the right to ask for citizenship. They aren’t conscripted, however, although they may volunteer. The Bedouins always volunteer. In my opinion that means the Bedouins should be able to walk into citizenship and assimilate completely if they like, or not.
Can you not understand why Jews don’t want someone else to run their country? No one is forced to live in Israel. The Arabs who live there chose to live there from the mandate forward.
The US is an enormous, rapidly evolving population with hundreds of religions, cultures, and races. Israel is a tiny community with a total of about five religions and exists as a haven for people nobody else wanted. The idea of someone else running it is anathema. Nobody wanted the place. It was a waterless wasteland. When the Jews came home they turned it into a verdant, productive country.
Sorry to run on, truly. That’s my plan, though.
Bibi has been in power for how long? The Israeli public is responsible for electing a corrupt and incompetent leader who discriminates against Palestinians in the occupied territories. The result is a loss of support for Israel by a large portion of the American public.
Biden’s support for Israel may contribute to the American public electing a corrupt and incompetent authoritarian leader like Bibi. The whole situation is so sad.
Was the American public responsible for electing Trump? Bibi doesn’t win majorities either.
I’m reasonably confident that a nation like Israel isn’t worried about winning a popularity contest. It’s worried about whether it continues to exist.
Most of America doesn’t oppose the war and only for a tiny minority will it affect their vote. In Della Volpe’s Harvard Youth Poll (a gold standard) voters 18-29 identified it as 13th in importance to their vote. Thirteenth.
Israel has a repulsive right wing, steeped in religious nonsense. Sound familiar? Either it saves itself or it doesn’t, but your suggestion that it stop defending its right to exist because it elected someone who is scrambling to stay out of prison is a tiny bit antisemitic. And since it is the only democracy and the only source of Mideast intel in allyship with the US, we have a vital role in helping it survive.
It feels a bit rich to me that whether Israel doesn’t trust Palestinians is more bewildering or surprising than why a single Arab nation won’t take them in. Why do you suppose Egypt built a wall to keep them out? Or Jordan? Food for thought.
Where did I suggest that Israel stop defending it’s right to exist?
When you suggested Israel should be more concerned about the Palestinians than the Palestinians’ own (elected) government is.
You don’t see Arab nations lining up to protest on behalf of the Palestinians. Don’t you wonder why that is? Nations like Jordan flew defense for Israel when Iran attacked.
Support for Hamas was 40-50% amongst the Palestinian people before the war. The Arab nations (except Iran, which isn’t Arab but gets lumped in all of the time) are going to scapegoat Gaza for this.
Israel’s duty is to defend Israel and that means neutralizing Hamas. The UN has now determined that Hamas vastly overinflated the number of dead, and that 14K of the actual dead were Hamas fighters.
That sounds pretty surgical to me.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that does not care at all about their citizens. I expect everybody to care more about the Palestinians than Hamas does. Half the Palestinian population is under 18, those under 30 were under 12 when Hamas was elected. The majority of the current population did not elect Hamas.
Israel absolutely has a right to defend its right to exist. But if the Israeli government is going to prop up Hamas at the expense of the PA then it has responsibility not to kill so many children, starve the population and withhold medicine and thereby cause so much suffering. Netanyahu arranged for Qatar to fund Hamas with the permission of the Trump administration. The Israeli government ignored intelligence about the terrorist attack on its own citizens while its military protected settlers terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel does not have a long term plan for Gaza that promotes peace in the region. Maybe you are right and it will turn out to be surgical when all the evidence is in but it does not look that way so far.
You seem to suggest that all Palestinians are evil so no Arab nations want to take them in. I think that Palestinians are just like Americans and Israelis, mostly good, although Palestinians have harder lives.
All polling shows the Israel populace basically agreeing with the right-wing view on what the military and government should treat Palestinians.
I imagine so. They were attacked.
As I said, Bibi’s comeuppance is on hold, not cancelled.
How many Palestinian civilians would you say is too many, even if it means Hamas stays a threat? 25k? 50k? 100k? 500k?
I don’t think about it. Civilians die in wars that arise from attacks. I don’t run Israel’s military, I simply support it.
It would be great if ANY Arab nation would welcome in the Gazans, though.
Not think about it, seriously? It would be great if either Egypt or Jordan would take a more active role in facilitating aid to Gaza but why should they take in refugees w/o any agreement with a reliable Israeli government about rights to return to that limited space? In light of events of past 10-15 years in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that have left non-Israeli citizens essentially stateless, how are we as Americans supposed to be expected to trust the Israeli populace?
You missed my sarcasm. No Arab nation will assist them or have them. And there are excellent reasons for that which are unrelated to a “right of return.”
How did you move so easily from the Israeli government to the Israeli “populace?” If that’s the rule, I suppose it’s fair to equate the Palestinian populace with its government.
This is a war for the existence of a nation which is home to people determined to make sure the existence continues. Hamas shouldn’t have attacked it, a fact which is sadly unimportant to too many people.
So, the killing of 1,000 Israeli's is a horrible crime (which is true) that proves protestors are all evil anti-Zionists but the killing of thousands of civilians in Gaza is a shrug.
I'm not surprised you think the Gazans should just leave and let West Bank become part of Greater Israel. Which is y'know, the reasons Gazans don't leave - because they know that's what Israeli's want. An excuse not to let them back to the West Bank.
I graduated from high school in 1976. I’m a Boomer at 66, not GenX.
Every generation thinks their problems are worse than the last generations. They also think they can throw away elections without guilt.
Thank you! I was 5 in 1979 and am solidly gen-x. And I wasn’t in college. 😆
Clearly an underachiever!😉
Hahaha
Yeah I knew that was wrong when it came outta my mouth
Eddie Glaud didn’t vote for Hillary he’s part of the problem-I don’t care what he has to say
I welcome converts but “I want to break the back of Clintonism…” Odd take. I hope he was happy.
I might have voted for Hillary if I believed she represented the "Clintonism" of her husband. But I didn't perceive that much continuity between them. During the campaign she largely kept Bill out of view.
Yes happy at the expense of so many people-personally I’m “thrilled” that a 150 year old law to control women is being bandied about by the SCOTUS. Glad I didn’t listen I’m running out of things to break.
He has the privilege of an Ivy League professor.