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J. Andres Hannah-Suarez's avatar

It's interesting to see how many Republican talking points the Bulwark is repeating for a number of reasons. Insider inevitability talk being one reason, humour being a second.

Let's start with the insider-inevitability type of thinking:

This newsletter says that Biden has, "a number of vulnerabilities, including inflation, the border, crime, etc. Some bad stuff (Afghanistan) has happened on his watch. There has been a lot of spending."

I know that the intended tenor of reciting those "vulnerabilities" is short-hand for "things that Republicans could attack Biden on, whether they are true or not". So let's go through them all:

1) Inflation: As I've noted in previous posts there is literally ZERO correlation on an international level between stimulus spending during COVID, and the country's rate of inflation (e.g. Mexico provided less than 1% of it's GDP in stimulus payments and has the same inflation rate as the United States, while Japan provided more than 100% of it's GDP in stimulus payments but has lower inflation than the U.S.. These are NOT isolated examples, there is literally no correlation at play). Why is the Bulwark caving to this counterfactual talking point?

2) Border: Biden has mostly kept in place and extended the border policies of the Trump administration. Again, why is the Bulwark conceding this talking point?

3) Crime: It's a statistical fact that blue state have lower crime rates than red states. And whereas no mainstream Dem is actually calling for "defunding the police" the leaders of the Republican party are now openly calling for defunding federal police forces. Why is the Bulwark also conceding this talking point?

4) "There has been a lot of spending" Compared to Trump's freebie tax cuts that accomplished nothing? Yet again, why is the Bulwark also conceding this talking point?

There's a self-fulfilling prophesy when political commentators that don't even believe the "arguments" of the other side cede ground from the start and go with the narrative. The Bulwark contributors don't believe the above noted nonsense (with the exception of the inflation thing that seems to be a cancer in their brain despite a complete lack of evidence linking spending to inflation).

Then we turn to humour:

Dudes, why are you adopting Trump's childish insults of his candidates, such as referring to DeSantis as "meatball"? You realize that you're repeating an attack that is meant to hurt DeSantis to benefit Trump, so you're ultimately helping Trump.

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