Trump wins voters who don't read The New York Times or listen to The Bulwark Podcast, and elite opposition may not be enough to defeat him. Ross Douthat joins Tim Miller for a spirited debate about what the conservative movement gave away in sacrifice to Trump on world leadership, abortion, and democracy.
I have to wonder how sincere Douthat is about ranking W worse than Obama and Trump. I'm certainly no fan of George W. Bush - I voted against his reelection in 2004. His combination of tax cuts and spending increases set us on the path of ever-growing deficits that imperils our country's future. But Obama further accelerated the deficit growth, even as he acknowledged the problem; and Trump accelerated the deficit growth even more, while completely ignoring the problem. On foreign policy, Bush bit off more than he could chew and often executed it badly. But Obama began the abdication of America's international role, which Trump then continued. Obama was strong on trade policy, but otherwise I don't see anything for a conservative to like. Trump was horrible on trade policy.
So, I have to wonder whether Douthat's ranking of W as the worst is just a pose, or if he's not really a conservative at all.
After reading many of the comments, it seems that the real questions is how we define "Never Trump". It could mean that a person does not him/herself vote for Trump. That seems easy to me, as a "Never Trump" person form the beginning. However, is the question whether I personally don't want to vote for Trump (my personal morals, etc.), OR is my goal to make sure Trump NEVER becomes president again? For me, the strategic question is who I have to vote for to keep Trump from winning. Biden is a moderate Democrat, and we understand that he is more palatable to the moderate Republicans and Independents. That is why so many more liberal Democrats have sacrificed their preferences to vote for Biden, and to support him for another 4 years. The goal is to beat Trump, and Biden is a coalition candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump. So the question is, are you a "Never Trumper" personally, or a "Never Trumper" strategically? I guess I am both.
If Trump gets back into office, we will all suffer. He has already destroyed trust, ravaged the rule of law, has incited violence as an answer to disagreements, has glorified bullying and revenge - making them 'norms', has inspired White Christian Supremacy, has provoked hatred of minority groups, and has nearly annihilated the concept of truth. There will be nothing left of the the country we knew that embraced freedom and encouraged civil disagreement. We may never be able to re-build what he has destroyed. The goal is to keep him out of office and I greatly admire those who will vote for Biden to save this country, even when they don't like him or his policies or his Vice President.
Ross Douthat says that voters are not wrong to blame Biden for the wars that happened on his watch. Using that metric the two worst Presidents in American history were Abraham Lincoln and FDR. The two worst wars in American history happened on their watch AND their policies were far more responsible for the Civil War and for America's involvement in WWII than Joe Biden was for Hamas's attack on Israel or Putin's attack on Ukraine.
As a Never Trumper, I disagree with your definition. "Never Trumper" means I will never vote for Trump. It does not mean I will vote for anyone else. I have choices. Some of those choices are to vote for a third-party, to write-in a candidate or to not vote for any candidate for president. I guess you could say I am politically pro-choice.
Sorry, but the ick, as in annoyed, factor Ross gave me was distressing. Bill Ciao’s comment about Ross’s “word salad” is spot on. I usually appreciate your debates with folks of differing opinions, but not this one. Sorry, but I have to give Ross a “what a weenie” award…
Nah, I am not emotional about this at all. I listen to the Bulwark to be informed. Alas, most pieces are too liberal to persuade me to vote for Biden-Harris again. I don't think Biden will last another 5 years and Harris is unacceptable.
Hearing today that the Trump trial jurors are fearing for their safety and lives and some therefore leaving the jury makes me furious. Thanks to Trump, we are living in THUG WORLD, Ross. Your mealy-mouthed pathetic quibbling is sick and pathetic. Grow a spine and endorse Biden. It isn't enough that you meow "I've told you a don't like Trump." Coward.
I love me some Tim Miller, but I have to say it got my ire up a bit to hear two men discuss protecting unborn children and never once mentioning the women responsible to make that happen or the medical challenges they face in doing so. I appreciate the discussion on providing better support for women and families, but you two men are not really qualified to discuss women's health issues.
Ross channeling Nikki Haley and paraphrased: what do you want me to say?
Like even when someone hires someone for a job, you're not trying to determine who is perfect. You are picking the best man for the job.
"Well the world is more unstable" is also a terrible defense for not picking Biden simply on the face of it because a laege portion of the instability was caused by Trump. Just gah! Gonna start these anti anti Trump episodes with a drink ha.
While Douthat can be super grating and has the most absurd idea of "the left" of anyone I listen to/read regularly, he's not wrong about elites not being the right messengers. This is why Sarah's RVAT messages are so compelling. It's why we need more one-on-one communication and neighbor-to-neighbor, friend-to-friend, parishioner-to-parishioner... We humans can make more of a difference than ad buys and nonsense from campaigns.
Not sure what he meant about driving the left off a cliff, but the Dems are busy keeping the institutions barely running and trying desperately to do government with a bunch of clowns with flamethrowers as their "partners." That cannot work, and the Left will go completely off the cliff eventually too without serious people with whom to deal.
Douthat is getting a lot of bad raps here, but I think his one point about elites scolding people who haven't rejected Trump is correct: we will never win them over that way. Evangelism works best when people want what they see, not by screaming at them that they're wrong, and right now we need to make a human case without being hateful to anyone. I know it's exhausting, and we're all done, but we must save the country and that means we have to do the work for a while longer, then it's time to grow a new party for the reasonable conservatives and probably time to rethink the way my own democratic party works too. All of that is for after the current emergency though.
Listening to Ross and others of his ilk twist themselves into pretzels in service of their shtick while the future of American democracy is at stake will never cease to both amaze and infuriate me. His intellectual dishonesty is astounding. Another very smart fool.
Tim - you are smart, you are kind, and you are a good interviewer. If I was in this interview with Douthat I would have not been able to restrain myself from saying "YOU ARE SO ANNOYING". You put the screws to him and were nice doing it. Well done. I like when you put the screws to these guys, even though theyre really annoying
Tim, you have become a first-rate interviewer. You let him speak on topics that allowed him to use his analytical chops. He's no dummy. But you also challenged him very clearly, respectfully, yet persistently. The interview revealed what Douthat is about. He has a good analytical mind. He can contribute some level-headed analysis when presented with concrete facts and situations. His view of the current Israel and Ukraine situation does not insult the intelligence. There's nuance. But he wants to be above it all. In suggesting we must sit down with Putin due to the difficulties in Ukraine, he purposely ignores, for example, how Congressional Republicans have made the Ukraine situation worse. He glosses over the fact that if they got their act together, maybe we wouldn't have to beg Russia for a solution. But he cannot bring himself to severely judge the Republican party; he views them as 'what the people want, and therefore it's pointless to criticize'. Better to hammer Biden. Because both sides. Even though he admits that he supports Biden's actual decision-making, he can't help copping out when asked to rank presidents. His 'dodge' is that he speculates how popular opinion (or some historian's opinion) will evaluate Biden's presidency in the future. He does not actually judge Biden on his merits. So he can paint it any way he wants using non-specific other people's hypothetical judgments. Then he uses THAT strawman to throw up his hands and say Trump and Biden are equally rotten. He pretends to be the voice of the 'people' by maintaining that correlation (bad things have happened in international affairs) is more important than causation. He also leans on excusing something because the belief is something the majority of very misled Republicans hold tightly. So he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the total threat of Trump as different IN KIND to whatever bad events have occurred on Biden's watch. By his reckoning, because Biden has not arrested all the 'woke' people, this is enough to make him sooooo dangerous (smh), that really, who could blame someone for voting for Trump? In the end, Ross would be rotten in a foxhole: If a dictatorship comes, Ross will be writing copy for the Dear Leader.
Why didn't Tim ask a very simple question. Would Douthat have preferred to have Trump in office during the Hamas attack and Putin's aggression, or Biden? Or is Douthat speculating that neither would have happened if Trump was sitting in the Oval? If it's the latter, he's parroting Trump's stump speech. A "Never-Trumper" with a red hat on. Full stop.
I have to wonder how sincere Douthat is about ranking W worse than Obama and Trump. I'm certainly no fan of George W. Bush - I voted against his reelection in 2004. His combination of tax cuts and spending increases set us on the path of ever-growing deficits that imperils our country's future. But Obama further accelerated the deficit growth, even as he acknowledged the problem; and Trump accelerated the deficit growth even more, while completely ignoring the problem. On foreign policy, Bush bit off more than he could chew and often executed it badly. But Obama began the abdication of America's international role, which Trump then continued. Obama was strong on trade policy, but otherwise I don't see anything for a conservative to like. Trump was horrible on trade policy.
So, I have to wonder whether Douthat's ranking of W as the worst is just a pose, or if he's not really a conservative at all.
After reading many of the comments, it seems that the real questions is how we define "Never Trump". It could mean that a person does not him/herself vote for Trump. That seems easy to me, as a "Never Trump" person form the beginning. However, is the question whether I personally don't want to vote for Trump (my personal morals, etc.), OR is my goal to make sure Trump NEVER becomes president again? For me, the strategic question is who I have to vote for to keep Trump from winning. Biden is a moderate Democrat, and we understand that he is more palatable to the moderate Republicans and Independents. That is why so many more liberal Democrats have sacrificed their preferences to vote for Biden, and to support him for another 4 years. The goal is to beat Trump, and Biden is a coalition candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump. So the question is, are you a "Never Trumper" personally, or a "Never Trumper" strategically? I guess I am both.
If Trump gets back into office, we will all suffer. He has already destroyed trust, ravaged the rule of law, has incited violence as an answer to disagreements, has glorified bullying and revenge - making them 'norms', has inspired White Christian Supremacy, has provoked hatred of minority groups, and has nearly annihilated the concept of truth. There will be nothing left of the the country we knew that embraced freedom and encouraged civil disagreement. We may never be able to re-build what he has destroyed. The goal is to keep him out of office and I greatly admire those who will vote for Biden to save this country, even when they don't like him or his policies or his Vice President.
Ross Douthat says that voters are not wrong to blame Biden for the wars that happened on his watch. Using that metric the two worst Presidents in American history were Abraham Lincoln and FDR. The two worst wars in American history happened on their watch AND their policies were far more responsible for the Civil War and for America's involvement in WWII than Joe Biden was for Hamas's attack on Israel or Putin's attack on Ukraine.
As a Never Trumper, I disagree with your definition. "Never Trumper" means I will never vote for Trump. It does not mean I will vote for anyone else. I have choices. Some of those choices are to vote for a third-party, to write-in a candidate or to not vote for any candidate for president. I guess you could say I am politically pro-choice.
Sorry, but the ick, as in annoyed, factor Ross gave me was distressing. Bill Ciao’s comment about Ross’s “word salad” is spot on. I usually appreciate your debates with folks of differing opinions, but not this one. Sorry, but I have to give Ross a “what a weenie” award…
Where can I get Ross’s recipe for word salad?
Nah, I am not emotional about this at all. I listen to the Bulwark to be informed. Alas, most pieces are too liberal to persuade me to vote for Biden-Harris again. I don't think Biden will last another 5 years and Harris is unacceptable.
The clear-eyed complacency of Douthat is so mystifying....
Hearing today that the Trump trial jurors are fearing for their safety and lives and some therefore leaving the jury makes me furious. Thanks to Trump, we are living in THUG WORLD, Ross. Your mealy-mouthed pathetic quibbling is sick and pathetic. Grow a spine and endorse Biden. It isn't enough that you meow "I've told you a don't like Trump." Coward.
I love me some Tim Miller, but I have to say it got my ire up a bit to hear two men discuss protecting unborn children and never once mentioning the women responsible to make that happen or the medical challenges they face in doing so. I appreciate the discussion on providing better support for women and families, but you two men are not really qualified to discuss women's health issues.
Tim: Rank the last four presidents.
Ross channeling Nikki Haley and paraphrased: what do you want me to say?
Like even when someone hires someone for a job, you're not trying to determine who is perfect. You are picking the best man for the job.
"Well the world is more unstable" is also a terrible defense for not picking Biden simply on the face of it because a laege portion of the instability was caused by Trump. Just gah! Gonna start these anti anti Trump episodes with a drink ha.
While Douthat can be super grating and has the most absurd idea of "the left" of anyone I listen to/read regularly, he's not wrong about elites not being the right messengers. This is why Sarah's RVAT messages are so compelling. It's why we need more one-on-one communication and neighbor-to-neighbor, friend-to-friend, parishioner-to-parishioner... We humans can make more of a difference than ad buys and nonsense from campaigns.
Not sure what he meant about driving the left off a cliff, but the Dems are busy keeping the institutions barely running and trying desperately to do government with a bunch of clowns with flamethrowers as their "partners." That cannot work, and the Left will go completely off the cliff eventually too without serious people with whom to deal.
Douthat is getting a lot of bad raps here, but I think his one point about elites scolding people who haven't rejected Trump is correct: we will never win them over that way. Evangelism works best when people want what they see, not by screaming at them that they're wrong, and right now we need to make a human case without being hateful to anyone. I know it's exhausting, and we're all done, but we must save the country and that means we have to do the work for a while longer, then it's time to grow a new party for the reasonable conservatives and probably time to rethink the way my own democratic party works too. All of that is for after the current emergency though.
Listening to Ross and others of his ilk twist themselves into pretzels in service of their shtick while the future of American democracy is at stake will never cease to both amaze and infuriate me. His intellectual dishonesty is astounding. Another very smart fool.
Tim - you are smart, you are kind, and you are a good interviewer. If I was in this interview with Douthat I would have not been able to restrain myself from saying "YOU ARE SO ANNOYING". You put the screws to him and were nice doing it. Well done. I like when you put the screws to these guys, even though theyre really annoying
Tim, you have become a first-rate interviewer. You let him speak on topics that allowed him to use his analytical chops. He's no dummy. But you also challenged him very clearly, respectfully, yet persistently. The interview revealed what Douthat is about. He has a good analytical mind. He can contribute some level-headed analysis when presented with concrete facts and situations. His view of the current Israel and Ukraine situation does not insult the intelligence. There's nuance. But he wants to be above it all. In suggesting we must sit down with Putin due to the difficulties in Ukraine, he purposely ignores, for example, how Congressional Republicans have made the Ukraine situation worse. He glosses over the fact that if they got their act together, maybe we wouldn't have to beg Russia for a solution. But he cannot bring himself to severely judge the Republican party; he views them as 'what the people want, and therefore it's pointless to criticize'. Better to hammer Biden. Because both sides. Even though he admits that he supports Biden's actual decision-making, he can't help copping out when asked to rank presidents. His 'dodge' is that he speculates how popular opinion (or some historian's opinion) will evaluate Biden's presidency in the future. He does not actually judge Biden on his merits. So he can paint it any way he wants using non-specific other people's hypothetical judgments. Then he uses THAT strawman to throw up his hands and say Trump and Biden are equally rotten. He pretends to be the voice of the 'people' by maintaining that correlation (bad things have happened in international affairs) is more important than causation. He also leans on excusing something because the belief is something the majority of very misled Republicans hold tightly. So he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the total threat of Trump as different IN KIND to whatever bad events have occurred on Biden's watch. By his reckoning, because Biden has not arrested all the 'woke' people, this is enough to make him sooooo dangerous (smh), that really, who could blame someone for voting for Trump? In the end, Ross would be rotten in a foxhole: If a dictatorship comes, Ross will be writing copy for the Dear Leader.
Why didn't Tim ask a very simple question. Would Douthat have preferred to have Trump in office during the Hamas attack and Putin's aggression, or Biden? Or is Douthat speculating that neither would have happened if Trump was sitting in the Oval? If it's the latter, he's parroting Trump's stump speech. A "Never-Trumper" with a red hat on. Full stop.