On MSNBC, a very unusual choice of words!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2024

Plus, a gloomy assessment from Edsall: We'll start with the gloomy assessment by Edsall, which appears in the New York Times.

Edsall is assessing the state of the Democratic Party in the wake of November's election. We're sorry to say that he and his sources see the apparent state of play in some of the same ways we do.

As usual, Edsall has spoken to quite a few sources. Here's how his assessment begins:

Democrats Don’t Have an Easy Way Out

The weakened condition of the Democratic Party leaves it ill prepared to defend itself against a Republican Party determined to eviscerate liberalism and the left.

Evidence of the fraught state of the party can be found everywhere...

Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a leading candidate to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged this erosion of political clout in a memo to party leaders:

"For the first time in modern history, the perception that Americans have of the two major political parties switched. The majority of Americans now believes that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and that the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites. It’s a damning indictment on our party brand."

Polling suggests that Trump is ideologically closer to the median voter than Kamala Harris. Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, conducted a post-election survey asking voters to place themselves, Harris and Trump on a scale ranging from zero (very liberal) to 10 (very conservative). The mean response for Harris was 2.45, for Trump 7.78 and for all voters 5.63.

Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, voiced serious doubts by email about the ability of the Democratic Party to compete successfully with the Republican Party.

"A party whose base consists of culturally liberal, largely well-educated white Americans and a shrinking share of voters of color is almost by definition going to find it impossible to defend American democracy. Every Democratic president from Franklin Roosevelt to Joe Biden won the White House by voicing the fears and defending the interests of the working and middle classes. Democrats cannot credibly claim to represent the ideals of American democracy and peel support away from Trump’s anti-elite, populist G.O.P. without reimagining what it stands for and who is in its coalition.

"The Democratic Party is perhaps more rudderless than at any time since Bill Clinton’s presidency. Its leadership is aging. The party seems culturally out of touch to many Americans. Its brand is associated with championing niche interests, and the party—despite some crucial electoral victories—has ultimately failed its overarching mission since 2015 of defeating and defanging the MAGA movement."

In addition, Dallek went on to say, the centrality of anti-establishment themes in the MAGA movement makes opposition to it all the more difficult.

"The Democratic Party faces a heavy burden: it has to defend democratic institutions in a time when these institutions are reviled by a large majority of the American electorate. Its message to the public that it is a bulwark of democracy failed to resonate with voters in November. In order to defend democracy, then, it must find ways to appeal to a majority of the American people on the bread-and-butter issues foremost in people’s lives."

The essay becomes even gloomier as it continues, and it continues at length. That said:

Concerning the Democratic Party's "culturally liberal, largely well-educated" base, consider a peculiar choice of words Alex Wagner made last night.

Wagner is a good, decent person. She spoke on her MSNBC program, Alex Wagner Tonight. Midway through the hour-long show, she teased an upcoming segment in the manner shown:

WAGNER (12/10/24): Coming up, two very public New York City murders are dividing the nation and leading some of the public to expressions of sympathy for the killers. We will discuss this particular American moment when I am joined by New York City's Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams.

"Two very public New York City murders?" Which "murders" could she mean?

Sure enough! When she spoke with Williams, Wagner was soon asking this question:

WAGNER: Do you think anything changes—I mean, do you think, anecdotally, or just as a human being who thinks about these things, and the public, and what best serves the public—do you think anything comes of either one of these things? I mean, just the brutality of Jordan Neely's murder? Does that change anything about the way the city manages and treats its homeless population?

A bit later on, she said it again:

WAGNER: I think the other thing that is so disturbing is the desensitization towards death, right? Murder! That murder is the recourse here. Murder the homeless guy!

"The brutality of Jordan Neely's murder?" By normal journalistic standards, that was a very unusual choice of words.

Full disclosure! On Monday, rightly or wrongly, a New York City jury acquitted Daniel Penny of the one remaining criminal charge in the death of Jordan Neely. Penny was found not guilty by a unanimous Gotham jury.

Penny was found not guilty, but he'd never been charged with murder. Instead, the jury had ruled that he was not guilty of a charge of criminally negligent homicide. Last Friday, a separate charge of second-degree manslaughter had been dismissed by the judge in the case.

This case had never been charged as a murder. The defendant had been acquitted—had been found not guilty—of the charges which had been brought. 

It's very unusual journalistic behavior to keep describing a death as a "murder" in some such circumstance. On a political basis, we'd suggest that this kind of presentation almost looks like one of the ways in which some of our tribunes in Blue America have almost seemed to be "earning our way out."

It wasn't alleged to have been a murder. A unanimous jury had then ruled "not guilty" with respect to the charge which was brought.

It remained a "murder" on Blue America's screens. Obviously, Wagner is entitled to her own assessments, but is this possibly one of the ways our "culturally liberal, largely well-educated elites" has been hard at work earning our tribe's way out?  

REASON(S): Trump's win tracks back to 1965!

 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2024

We were there at the start: Like President-elect Abraham Lincoln, we've accepted "a task greater than that which rested upon [General or President] Washington."

Lincoln was headed off to D.C. in order to save the Union. As for us, we've accepted the challenge of convincing Blue America that we ourselves may have "earned our way out" over the past sixty years.

We Blues! Could our own behavior help explain the remarkable vote totals shown below? We've accepted the task of trying to make that case:

Nationwide popular vote, 2016
Hillary Clinton (D): 65,853,514 (48.2%)
Donald J. Trump (R): 62,984,828 (46.1%)

Nationwide popular vote, 2020
Joe Biden (D): 81,283,501 (51.3%)
Donald J. Trump (R): 74,223,975 (46.8%)

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024 
Donald J. Trump (R): 77,300,739 (49.8%)
Kamala Harris (D): 75,014,534 (48.3%)

In 2016, 136.7 million people cast votes for president. That was already a lot of votes—but along the way, the number of people casting votes has become substantially larger. 

How many people voted each year? We'll throw in 2012:

Nationwide total vote, presidential elections
2012: 129,085,410
2016: 136,669,276
2020: 158,429,631
2024: 155,203,911 (and counting)

The total number of votes will be slightly down this year. That said, turnout jumped from 58.6% in 2012 to 66.6% in 2020. Turnout this year will probably be something like 65%. 

Now we report the kicker:

Candidate Trump was the Republican nominee in each of these elections. This year, in his third time around, Candidate Trump didn't scrape by in the electoral college. This time, the highly unusual Republican candidate actually won the nationwide popular vote! 

This leaves our own Blue America facing a difficult challenge. How do we explain the fact that a person like Candidate Trump has somehow actually won the nationwide popular vote?

More to the point, we also find ourselves struggling to answer this question:

How do we explain the fact that a candidate like Trump ever got any votes at all? How do we explain the fact that he even got 63 million votes way back in 2016, in the first time around?

Why would anyone vote for Trump? Over here in Blue America, many of us are inclined to fall back on explanations which may make us feel most secure.

We deny that there could be any imaginable way a decent person could possibly have made that decision. Alo, we reject the unpleasant claim which we've put forward at this site:

We reject the idea that we ourselves—those of us in Blue America—could possibly have earned our way out, even in some small way. 

We tend to reject the strange idea that we ourselves may have contributed to this (potentially disastrous) defeat. We may find ourselves leaning toward explanations which sound more like this

HARTMANN (11/17/24): Well, I think what that reflects is the deep racism that is still extant among white people in America, you know. And certainly, the Trump presidency, and even his successful campaign in 2016, frankly shocked me.

[...]

I don't have an explanation beyond for this very clear racial division which has existed since 1964, beyond just the shocking reality that at least half of America, and arguably a little more than that, is just deeply racist.

Arguably, "a little more than half of America" is just deeply racist! Sometimes, we find ourselves saying things which sound a great deal like that.

At this site, it seems blindingly obvious to us that we Blues, however well intentioned, have in fact contributed to this year's election defeat. It seems to us that we've done so in a wide array of ways, dating back to an event in 1965.

We were physically present at that event, which may in fact have taken place in the spring of 1966. But that's where Candidate Trump's election win actually got its start. It was on that day that those of us in Blue America began to earn our way out.

For the record, what President Clinton recently said is also probably true. We recorded what he said in yesterday's hurried report:

Bill Clinton on the Election, D.E.I. and One of His Regrets

A month after losing the presidential election, Democrats are still unpacking what went wrong. Speaking at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton blamed a lack of time.

When President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, he said, “nobody had a plan because nobody knew what was going to happen.” He added that a primary “would have been total chaos.”

Ultimately, he said, Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t able to adequately introduce herself as a presidential candidate. “What happened was Kamala Harris was a stranger to them,” he said of voters.

That's quite possibly part of it too! We'll assume that Candidate Harris may well have been able to garner more votes if she'd only had "world enough and [a bit more] time."

Provisionally, we'll agree that Harris lost votes due to her late entry into the race. On the other hand, we also think that former president Donald J. Trump made at least one accurate statement when he spoke at length with Kristen Welker for this past Sunday's Meet the Press.

As is his wont, the former candidate made one disordered remark after another. Faced with the usual onslaught, Welker did her best with the difficult task of trying to keep up.

As usual, he made one bogus claim after another—but we think he got this right:

TRUMP (12/8/24): I'm looking to make our country great. I'm looking to get—bring prices down. Because, you know, I won on two things, the border and—more than immigration. 

You know, they like to say immigration, I break it down more to the border, but I won on the border, and I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost—you know, who uses the word? I started using the word—the groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. 

This time around, he even won the nationwide popular vote. This time, 77.3 million people (and counting) did in fact vote for Candidate Trump. 

Did he, at least in large part, "win on the border" but also "on groceries?"

We'd have to say that he pretty much did! And we're forced to restate our previous claim, unpleasant though it might be:

He also won "on President Biden"—on his policies at the border, on his failure to explain those policies.

On his failure even to try to explain those policies. On his remarkable silence concerning such matters—a silence which may have been caused by an apparent condition we Blues kept trying to wish away.

It seems to us that Candidate Trump also may have won President Biden's failure to explain the sources of the rise in the cost of those groceries. On his repeated failure to speak to the nation regarding the challenges every western nation faced as we emerged from the dislocations of the Covid years.

On the way Vice President Harris herself said the border was secure. On the way Vice President Harris, and quite a few others, said that President Biden was still sharp as a tack.

We'd have to say that Candidate Trump probably gained votes—votes which Candidate Harris lost—in other ways as well.

He may have gained votes because of the specific ways our tribunes kept trying to get him locked up. He may have gained votes in the way we Blues kept calling the Others names. (In some precincts, it's one of our favorite pastimes.)

Nor dos the story end there! He may have gained votes—votes which Candidate Harris lost—thanks to some of the policy stances and policy ventures which came to carry the moniker "Woke." 

That includes policy views stated by Candidate Harris herself back in 2019. It also involves policy stances adopted by the public figures and interest groups who are an unmistakable part of our imperfect Blue America.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our own tribe, like all human tribes, hasn't always been stupendously sharp and has sometimes perhaps been unwise. We've sometimes said and done things which helped show our candidates the door—but in the face of our own defeats, we keep denying that fact.

On Blue America's cable channel, our highly educated Blue elites kept trying to get the other guy locked up. As our Ahabs pursued that goal, they tried to disappear events at the southern border. 

Those events were highly visible somewhere else, on a competing "cable news" channel which reaches a much larger audience.

They disappeared the videotape from the southern border. Until northern mayors began to scream, they disappeared the concomitant data.

Our tribe ignored the rise in prices and the rise in costs. We made almost no attempt to explain where those rises came from.

As we engaged in these behaviors, we insisted on calling the Others names. We seemed to have no idea about the way we look to such people.

Beyond all that, a tragedy:

Our nominee for re-election seemed to perhaps be undergoing some sort of cognitive decline. We kept disappearing the videotapes which were shown on Red America's cable news channel—the videotapes which may have seemed to indicate some such decline.

We denied it until June 26. After that, denial came much harder.

We earned our way out a million different ways. But the whole thing started back in 1965, or possibly in the spring of 1966.

We happened to be there at the time! Tomorrow, we'll describe what we saw on that occasion, back when it all began.

This year's (narrow) defeat could quite possibly turn into a deeply tragic disaster. As a result of a narrow election, Blue America has largely been shorn of the power to stop the actions which may emerge from the other guy's playroom of broken toys.

Things may turn out extremely poorly. We Blues can possibly make matters worse if we insist on maintaining our preferred forms of tribal denial.

We saw some of that on cable last night! Or at least, we thought we did.

Tomorrow: It started in '65

REASON(S): Why would anyone have voted for Trump?

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2024

He cites two obvious reasons: Why would anyone on the face of the earth have voted for Candidate Trump? Those of us in Blue America sometimes seem to be baffled by that question.

Thom Hartmann is a good, decent person. He's also a substantial progressive thought leader—and he has been for twenty years.

That said, why would any decent person have decided to vote for Trump? Could there possibly be any imaginable reason?

Two weeks ago, Hartmann went on C-Span's Washington Journal and seemed to say, "Sadly, no." For better or worse, this is where some of us in Blue America seem to have alighted:

MODERATOR (11/17/24): I'll go back to something you mentioned earlier. You mentioned that, since the 1960s, the Democrats have been the party that supports racial minorities, according to your assessment. But also, I want to look at this chart here about the distribution of white voters in particular. 

The Democrats have not won the vote among white Americans since 1964. Overwhelmingly over the years, white voters have voted Republican, and Democrats have lost support among white voters even since Barack Obama in 2008. And what do you think that means for the future of the party and the party's dynamics?

HARTMANN: Well, I think what that reflects is the deep racism that is still extant among white people in America, you know. And certainly, the Trump presidency, and even his successful campaign in 2016, frankly shocked me.

[...]

I don't have an explanation beyond for this very clear racial division which has existed since 1964, beyond just the shocking reality that at least half of America, and arguably a little more than that, is just deeply racist.

So declared Brother Hartman. To view the tape of the fuller exchange, you can just click here.

As Hartmann puzzled out the larger picture, it sounded like everyone who voted for Candidate Trump just had to be racist. 

Actually, it sounded like they had to be deeply racist. Hartmann used that term two separate times.

Question! Could there possibly be some other reason why people may have voted for Trump? 

We voted for Candidate Harris ourselves. We never considered the possibility of voting for Candidate Trump. That said:

In our view, there are roughly a million reasons why someone might have voted for Candidate Trump—might have decided to vote against our own favored candidate. In our view, the fact that we Blues are routinely blind to this possibility says something quite dire about Us as a political entity.

Why might people have voted for Trump? Let's give Bill Clinton a chance to answer. He recently spoke with Andrew Ross Sorkin—and he himself won two White House elections, first by 5.6 and then by 8.5 points. 

Why did the Red team win this time? According to the New York Times, he offered this observation:

Bill Clinton on the Election, D.E.I. and One of His Regrets

A month after losing the presidential election, Democrats are still unpacking what went wrong. Speaking at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton blamed a lack of time.

When President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, he said, “nobody had a plan because nobody knew what was going to happen.” He added that a primary “would have been total chaos.”

Ultimately, he said, Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t able to adequately introduce herself as a presidential candidate. “What happened was Kamala Harris was a stranger to them,” he said of voters.

Did Candidate Harris lose some votes because she got into the race so late? We'll guess that she probably did.

As of this very day, the number of people who voted this year stands at 115.2 million and counting. Could Harris have won some people over if she'd only had more time to campaign?

Almost surely, she probably could have! Still, how could someone have voted for a person like Trump without being "deeply racist?" 

In our view, the possible reasons go on and on, then on and on and on. The fact that we Blues can't grasp that fact says something quite grim about Us.

Why was Trump able to nose past Harris in the nationwide popular vote? He beat her by less than 1.5 points—but how did a person like Donald J. Trump ever get any votes at all?

On Sunday's Meet the Press, Candidate Trump—he's now president-elect—told Kristen Welker that we won the election two different ways.

Below, we'll show you what he said. First, let's note these points:

In our view, the interview established two basic facts. The former candidate—the president-elect—remains a stunningly disordered person. Also, Welker doesn't approach certain very basic questions in the most helpful way.

Can anyone here play this game? As broadcast in the edited interview, this is the way one exchange started:

WELKER (12/8/24): And sir, I don't have to tell you this, because you've talked about it. It comes at a time when the country is deeply divided, and now you're going to be leading this country for the next four years. For the sake of unifying this country, will you concede the 2020 election and turn the page on that chapter?

TRUMP: No. No, why would I do that?

Indeed! On the one hand, a person could say that Welker made the former candidate go on the record. In the absence of any serious attempt to offer evidence for his assertion, he still asserts that the 2020 election was stolen!

On the other hand, we have no idea why Welker thought the former candidate might suddenly reverse himself on this foundational claim. But she went ahead and framed her question that way, failing to ask why he's never offered some sort of "white paper" laying out a justification for this deeply inflammatory assertion.

For our money, Welker's approach to this topic involved the usual swing and miss. The former candidate simply blustered ahead with what seem to be a set of implausible fantasies about the last two elections:

TRUMP: No. No, why would I do that?

WELKER: Sir, Democrats have control of the White House now. They didn't in 2020. If they are going around stealing elections, why didn't they do it this time—

TRUMP: When you say Democrats have control now—

WELKER: Of the White House! So why didn't they steal this election? Since they have more power now?

TRUMP: Because I think it was too big to rig.

WELKER: So you won't—

TRUMP: It was too big to rig.

According to the incoming president, the Democrats tried to steal this year's election. But it was "too big to rig!" 

Question! Does that mean that this year's vote count is fraudulent and phony too, just like the vote count from 2020? Did the Democrats alter the vote count to some extent but just not enough?

Also, in what way did the Democrats try to steal this election? That's a deeply inflammatory assertion. What was Trump talking about? Also, why wasn't the gentleman asked?

What was the gentleman talking about? Perhaps because she was caught by surprise, Welker didn't ask!  As a result, the gentleman simply plowed ahead with his unsupported assertions, as he's largely been allowed to do for the past thirteen years.

(We're dating back to his arrival on the Fox News Channel as mother of all birthers, with Greta van Susteren assigned by Fox to serve as his prime enabler.)

Is "something wrong" with Donald J. Trump? Over here in Blue America, our tribunes have agreed that they must never ask! 

That said, with regard to the former candidate's apparent disorder, it got even worse than that.  In Sunday's edited broadcast, the visibly angry former candidate was even shown saying this:

WELKER (on voiceover): I also asked the president-elect about NBC News's reporting that President Biden is considering preemptive pardons for some of the people who have clashed with Mr. Trump, including Senator-elect Adam Schiff, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. As part of his response, Mr. Trump lashed out at the January 6th committee, accusing it of unfairly targeting him and even of destroying its records, which the committee denies.

[Videotape begins]

TRUMP: Cheney was behind it. And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee.

WELKER: We’re going to—

TRUMP: For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.

WELKER: So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail?

TRUMP: For what they did—

WELKER: Everyone on the committee you think—

TRUMP: I think everybody—

WELKER: —should go to jail? 

TRUMP: Anybody that voted in favor—

Near the end of that exchange, Welker interrupted former candidate in mid-statement two times. This kept him from completing his thought about who exactly should be headed to jail.

Who exactly should go to jail in the mind of this angry person? Is it "everybody on the" January 6 committee? Is it "anybody who voted in favor" of that committee's report? 

Is it "anybody who voted in favor" of conviction during his second impeachment trial? Due to the interruptions, it was never exactly clear who this angry fellow meant.

That said, he angrily asserted that everyone from Cheney on down should be going to jail for something—for whatever it is that he alleges that they unlawfully did. 

(And what exactly were their crimes? Welker didn't ask!)

We can't necessarily blame Welker for failing to nail this angry man down on these angry assertions. But these angry assertions continue to survive the kinds of questions typically directed at Trump and at his supporters.

Trump wants them all to go to jail! Beyond that, he's now telling his supporters that the Democrats (somehow) tried to steal this election too!

In these ways, this angry person's unsupported claims continue to rocket through the culture. For ourselves, we always vote for the Democrat anyway. But it never would have crossed our mind to vote for a person like this.

That said, could there possibly be some defensible reason why other people might have? It seems to us that the possible reasons go on and on and on.

At one point in this interview, Trump actually named his top two reasons. Why did so many people vote for this guy? Here's what the fellow said:

TRUMP: We have a country now that's overridden with crime, that has millions of people that shouldn't be here, that should be in prisons in other countries, that should be in mental institutions. We have drug lords being dropped into our country and told never go back to their country. I'm looking to make our country great. I'm looking to get—bring prices down. Because, you know, I won on two things, the border and—more than immigration. 

You know, they like to say immigration, I break it down more to the border, but I won on the border, and I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost—you know, who uses the word? I started using the word—the groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. 

That oration is larded with the standard array of claims which are either plainly false or are simply unsupported. But the gentleman said that he won on the border and that he won on groceries.

For some of us Blues, it hurts to say this, but he also won on President Biden. For the record, President Biden is the reason Harris got in so late.

The angry man says he won on the border. He says he won on the groceries. 

He also won on President Biden! Tomorrow, we'll start with those three points, with many miles—along with many additional reasons—to go before we sleep.

Tomorrow: The border and the groceries oh my! But also, President Biden.

BREAKING: It's another one of those "Traveling Tuesdays!"

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10

We'll be posting this afternoon: As you can see by the clock on the wall, it's another one of those Alternate Week Traveling Tuesdays.

For that reason, we won't be posting until early this afternoon. Our topic today will be this:

Why would anyone have voted for Candidate Trump? On Sunday's Meet the Press, he gave Welker two principal reasons.

(Also, though, what Bill Clinton said—and the latest on the incoming president's "showroom of broken toys.")

"We're in a crazy moment," she said!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024

Things may be somewhat worse: In their new Conversation at the New York Times, Bret Stephens (center right) and Gail Collins (center left) start out debating the pardon of Hunter Biden. 

There's more! As they continue, they debate the wisdom of prospective pardons for possible targets of the incoming administration. Here's the way part of that goes:

Pardon You

[...]

Gail: The idea is to protect people who’ve angered the Trump camp with righteous behavior—like Liz Cheney and all the other members (and former members) of Congress who investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riots.

Given the fact that Trump has been saying, as recently as Sunday, that he thinks they ought to go to jail, I can understand the concern. But pre-pardoning seems to suggest they’re actually guilty of something.

Bret: If I were Cheney, I’d pre-empt the pre-emption by refusing the pardon. If Trump wants to go after her or anyone else on some kind of enemies list, they should have faith in the justice system to do the right thing. The alternative is turning the pardon power, which was intended as a vehicle for personal mercy or for resolving emergencies of state, into just another all-purpose political weapon.

And so on from there. 

All in all, the fact that this possibility has to be considered shows the mess we now seem to be in. As Stephens and Collins continue, their discussion moves to a second unusual idea. 

Should President Biden use the bully pulpit in support of incoming President Trump? We'll focus on the highlighted remark by Collins:

(Continuing directly): On the other hand, what would you say to the idea of Biden publicly urging that the cases against Trump in New York and Georgia be dropped in the name of giving the incoming administration a clean start?

Gail: I would say, Say what?

Bret: Srsly, as the kids say. It would be a way of calling it even in the Trump-Biden feud. It would do something to erase the stain of self-dealing that came with Hunter’s pardon and it would look magnanimous, restoring some of the luster Biden lost.

Gail: Yeah, I guess you could say that the public voted not to send Trump to jail. But don’t put me down as a super enthusiast.

We’re in such a crazy moment, Bret. I’d say Trump critics were being paranoid, if it weren’t for his deeply terrifying pick for F.B.I. head, Kash Patel—who vowed to go after “the people in the media” and federal employee “conspirators” who he thinks led the public astray with attacks on Trump and his presidential campaign.

"We're in such a crazy moment?" We'll come back to that remark.

Eventually, the pair attempt to say which current Trump nominee seems to be the worst. That debate starts like this:

Gail: I think Patel is possibly Trump’s most troubling cabinet choice. But gee, there are so many. Who’s the one that scares you the most?

Bret: Tulsi Gabbard is my gold medalist. Nominating an apologist for former Syrian dictator and current Russia resident Bashar al-Assad as director of national intelligence means that if confirmed in the job, we’d need to rename her job title “director of national idiocy.”

As for the silver and bronze medals in this competition, I’m awarding them to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth. Help me decide who’s worse.

Within the warrens of Red America, opinions are likely to differ. On programs on the Fox News Channel, all the contributors seem to agree, at this particular point in time, that all the picks are top-notch.

With that, let's return to that comment by Collins. "We’re in such a crazy moment," she says. 

We don't offer this as a criticism of Collins; her comment strikes us as a bit of a throwaway line. That said, it seems to us that a certain blindness may be involved in such a sanguine assessment. 

Are we merely "in a moment" at the present time? Or has the so-called "democratization of media," mixed with the corporate strategy known as "segregation by viewpoint," combined to create a Babel effect? Are we locked inside an American Babel which may be hard to exit?

In Camus' allegorical novel, La Peste, the people of Oran are slow to see that they're caught in the midst of a plague. (Last Monday, we posted an excerpt.) Reading that remark by Collins, we flashed on Camus' famous novel again. 

We're "in a crazy moment," she said. Might our real situation perhaps be more challenging—worse?

REASON(S): American madness, American Babel!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024

The winner gets something right: Our American madness was on display on yesterday's Meet the Press.

In our view, the post-"democratization" madness was general over the hour-long program. In this morning's New York Times, the highly astute Peter Baker describes one part of the mess:

Trump Signals an Aggressive Opening, Threatening ‘Jail’ for Cheney and Others

[...]

Asked if he would consider pardoning “everyone” who attacked the Capitol, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah. But I’m going to be acting very quickly.” Pressed, he added, “First day.”

He did say “there may be some exceptions,” those who were “radical, crazy.” But asked about those convicted of assaulting police officers, he defended them. “Because they had no choice,” he said. And he suggested those convicted were being mistreated. “They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” he said.

In fact, only a handful of Capitol riot inmates are left in the Washington jail and most of those are serving significant sentences for violent crimes...

Full disclosure! Much of the quoted exchange wasn't included in the edited TV interview. The full interview was substantially longer.

(Tape of the full interview can be seen here. As far we know, the full interview hasn't been transcribed.)

In that part of his report, Baker is quoting statements by Trump which didn't make it to air. Some of the statements can't be found in the official Meet the Press transcript.

In full fairness, we'd have to say this:

Baker's account may misstate what the winning candidate meant when he said, "They had no choice."

All in all, possible errors like that may emerge—will almost surely continue to emerge—from our rapidly growing American Babel, in which different tribes tell vastly different stories about the era's key events.

It's possible that Baker, who's quite astute, misread that one remark by Trump. Then again, yesterday's madness included this:

As for birthright citizenship, Mr. Trump said that he would try to reverse the constitutional guarantee that anyone born in the United States is a citizen regardless of the status of their parents. Most legal scholars have said the president has no power to overturn the right to citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born” in the United States “are citizens of the United States.”

[...] 

“We’re going to have to get it changed,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it.”

He repeatedly said falsely that “we’re the only country that has it.” In fact, the World Population Review lists 34 other countries and territories that also have unrestricted birthright citizenship, including Canada and Mexico.

Is that really possible? Is it really possible that a former and incoming president could be so flatly wrong about such a basic factual claim? 

We'd have to say that it is possible, and we'll also add this:

If the winning candidate really was wrong, citizens of Red America will never hear a word about it on their nation's "cable news" programs. 

Over here, in Blue America, his error will be reported and discussed. So it goes, this very morning, in Baker's report in the Times. (This link is offered in support of Baker's assertion, for those few inclined to click.)

Blue Americans will hear about the winner's howler. Red Americans won't. 

In our view, the madness was general over the (unedited) length of the winning candidate's remarks. But then, the madness has been general for quite a while as our American Babel keeps growing.

Why would anyone have voted for Trump in last month's election? Many of us in Blue America are still trying to puzzle that out. Last Tuesday morning, one of our major tribunes made a basic factual error as he reviewed the scene.

Speaking with the Washington Post's Gene Robinson, that major tribune said this:

There is a lot of talk about the Democratic Party has to re-examine everything they've done. And I've talked about massive gains in Texas, in Florida, in middle America—that is true. But there is another side of that...When everyone talks about the rise of the far right and everything else, Donald Trump got less votes in 2024 than he got in 2020. 

That was Joe Scarborough, speaking to Gene Robinson on the December 3 Morning Joe. Robinson never corrected the factual error. Can anyone here play this game?

Nationwide popular vote, Candidate Trump
2020: 74,223,975 votes
2024: 77,289,122 votes (and counting)

Sad! Even as votes keep trickling in, Candidate Trump has gained more than three million votes over his previous total. (He has received fourteen million more votes than he got in 2016.)

By way of contrast, Candidate Harris has received roughly six million fewer votes than Candidate Biden did in the 2020 election. Those are the kinds of basic facts we Blues might want to explain.

That said, can anyone play this game? Trump was already 2.9 million votes ahead of his previous total when Scarborough made his misstatement. On the most highly paid ends of the game, does anyone try to get clear on the most elementary facts before they start delivering their pronouncements?

Everyone makes mistakes at some point. Does Scarborough's latest factual error really make any difference? 

We'll answer your question with a gloomier question. Does anything really make any difference at this late stage of the game?

We're all inside a Babel now—a modern American Babel. We're living inside the comically awful, shattered remains of a formerly very large nation.

On this morning's Morning Joe, Vandehei and Allen described their most recent column at Axios. In it,  they describe the basic reality of this new American Babel. Their description starts like this:

Shards of glass: Inside media's 12 splintering realities

You can't understand November's election—or America itself—without reckoning with how our media attention has shattered into a bunch of misshapen pieces.

Think of it as the shards of glass phenomenon. Not long ago, we all saw news and information through a few common windows—TV, newspapers, cable. Now we find it in scattered chunks that match our age, habits, politics and passions.

Why it matters: Traditional media, at least as a center of dominant power, is dead. Social media, as its replacement for news in the internet era, is declining in dominance.

What comes next: America is splintering into more than a dozen news bubbles based on ideology, wealth, jobs, age and location.

This means where you get your news, the voices you trust, and even the topics and cultural figures you follow could be wholly different from the person sitting next to you.

That last sentence doesn't quite scan—but then again, so what? The reality they're describing is discernible, and it's extremely basic:

"So instead of Red America and Blue America, we'll have a dozen or more Americas—and realities," the gentlemen say as they continue. "This will make understanding public opinion, and finding common agreement, even more complex and elusive."

For today, and for the rest of the week, we'll stick with the two Americas, Red and Blue, and with their "cable news" realities. We'll spend the week trying to answer a question which has been prevalent across the Blue American landscape:

How could anyone have voted for Candidate Trump? Could there be any understandable reason for casting such a strange vote?

Why would anyone have voted for Trump? When we Blues can't even imagine an answer to that basic question, that suggests that we ourselves are part of the madness—that the madness is also in us.

To the extent that we bother to watch, we Blues are able to see the madness as it appears on the Fox News Channel. Are we able to see the madness as it surfaces within us?

Why might someone have voted for Trump? Why might someone have voted against our own Candidate Harris?

In our view, the possible answers are legion, and they're blindingly obvious. That said, for one of Blue America's thought leaders, the only possible answer was this:

It must be that at least half of America is "just deeply racist."

In our view, it doesn't help when we ourselves, we Blue Americans, let the madness rise within us. In full fairness to the winning candidate, we're therefore forced to say this:

In the Meet the Press interview, as it aired, the winning candidate in this year's race named two major reasons why he won.

We think his statement made obvious sense—though we can, and we will, cite other possible reasons. It seems to us that there are quite a few reasons which may explain, or may help explain, why he got all those votes. 

He made a lot of nutty statements as he spoke to Kristen Welker. Many of his nuttier statements were edited out of the interview as it was shown on the air.

That said, we think he was probably right about the two reasons why he won. Tomorrow, we'll start with the two reasons he named, and then we'll move on from there.

Tomorrow: The winner cites two reasons