- Thomas L. Friedman asks Trump and Vance: What is wrong with you people?
- Republican attacks against Kamala Harris as being childless reveal base tribal motivations for how society ought to be run;
- And who’s brainwashing whom?
- Do children ‘belong’ to their parents? Or to society?
- Meanwhile, in reality, the economy is doing quite well: three items, one of which claims “The US economy is pulling off something historic”
Conservatives, who have very firm ideas about the Way Things Ought To Be, have a new Person They Disapprove Of. Never mind evidence or competence or policies, about which further down.
Let’s begin with this. This is about the Republican response to Biden stepping down.
Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times, 25 Jul 2024: Just One Question for Trump and Vance: What Is Wrong With You People?
Ever since President Biden’s Sunday announcement that he would not seek re-election, clearly because of age, I keep thinking about Donald Trump’s and JD Vance’s contemptuous reactions to one of the most difficult personal decisions a president has ever made, and what it says about their character.
“The Democrats pick a candidate, Crooked Joe Biden, he loses the Debate badly, then panics, and makes mistake after mistake, is told he can’t win, and decide they will pick another candidate, probably Harris,” Trump wrote on social media on Monday. He later added: “It’s not over! Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!”
Not to be out-lowballed by his boss, Vance wrote on social media: “Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way.”
All they had to say was: “President Biden served his country for five decades and at this moment we thank him for that service. Tomorrow our campaign begins against his replacement. Bring her on.”
Concluding,
[T]here is one difference with Joe Biden that I observed over the years: It’s how much he authentically enjoyed it, how much he enjoyed talking to people outside his bubble and giving them a chance to say, “I got to meet the president. He talked to me!”
That sort of kindness came naturally to him. It brought him joy. And I have no doubt that Trump’s and Vance’s venomous first reactions to Biden’s resignation came naturally to them too.
I’m sure it brought them joy. But it sure left me wondering: What is wrong with you people?
This gets to my observation: have conservatives and Republicans always been like this? Or are we only seeing it now through the omnipresence of social media?
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More along the same lines.
Slate, Jill Filipovic, 24 Jul 2024: Let Me Make Sure I Understand: Kamala Harris Is Too Hot and Childless to Be President?, subtitled “Right-wing commenters are saying some pretty stupid—and disgusting—things.”
Just a few days after Kamala Harris entered the race for the presidency, the conservative attacks on her are already taking shape. They’re both dark and predictable: She’s a slut. She’s childless. She’s too liberal. She’s too sexy. She laughs. Not in the right way.
It’s the 2016 anti-Hillary playbook all over again. But it’s 2024. And if Republicans lean too far into chauvinism and misogyny, they may find that this time around, they’ll have a lot more pissed-off women to contend with—and they may wind up ushering the first female president right into the White House.
Some of the accusations lobbed at Harris are true, insofar as she is indeed a beautiful woman who laughs and does not have biological children, although she is a stepmother to two: Cole Emhoff, who works in film, and Ella Emhoff, an artist, both of whom affectionately call Harris “Momala.” Harris has also racked up a series of professional accomplishments, working her way up in the California district attorney’s office before becoming the attorney general of the state and then a U.S. senator before ascending to the vice presidency.
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Washington Post, via JMG, 25 Jul 2024: Vance once advocated that children get votes that parents could cast, subtitled “Trump’s running mate floated the idea in 2021 as he encouraged Americans to have more children.”
And
JMG/Arizona Republic, 25 July 2024: Masters: “Leaders Should Be Married With Children”
Who says? The tribal elders? Not the Constitution, which conservatives supposedly venerate. There’s nothing in the Constitution requiring marriage or children. So where do conservatives like Vance and Masters get to dictate the rules of politics and families?
Their rationale is that without children you have no ‘stake in the game,’ no reason to care about the future (of the country). This reveals their extremely tight circle of concern and empathy that conservatives identify, as if only immediate family matters, not even the ‘tribe.’ They do not seem to comprehend that many of us, including many of us without children, do care deeply about the extended family of humanity, about the species and the ideas it’s acquired, that it’s not about our tribe vs. the world. One could even argue that without the overhead of raising children, childless adults have more time to devote to issues that help the entire tribe, or community, or nation, or species.
And
One more, from JMG/Breitbart, 25 Jul 2024: Vance: Childless Dems Want To Brainwash Your Kids
Two points. First — hello?? — it’s conservatives like Vance who want to brainwash everyone’s kids by injecting Christianity into the public schools.
Second, think about this for a moment.
Parents get to raise their children. Families get to raise their children, not the state, not the leaders of the left.
Philosophically, now: do children belong entirely to their parents? Or let’s ask more pragmatically: has ever in human history only a child’s parents had influence in a child’s upbringing? Philosophically, no, on the grounds that we all depend on each other in a complex global society. No one exists in a bubble, even if they think they do. It does take a village to raise a child. Pragmatically: through history, especially the early tribal history, it always took a village to raise a child. It’s only among pioneers, or contrarians intent on living “off the grid,” who raise children all on their own. And whose children are therefore less likely to integrate with the rest of society, when they become adults.
Also:
CNN, 24 July 2024: Hear Buttigieg’s response to Vance’s criticism of childless Democrats (video)
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NY Times, Jessica Grose, 23 July 2024: Attacking Kamala Harris for Not Having Kids Will Backfire
Worth quoting:
On Sunday, almost immediately after prominent Democrats started endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president, attacks from the political right started pouring in. Will Chamberlain, a conservative lawyer who worked on Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, posted on X that Harris “shouldn’t be President” because she doesn’t have biological children; “becoming a step-parent to older teenagers doesn’t count,” he wrote, adding that “The concerns of parents and families will always be abstract to her” because she doesn’t have “skin in the game, a stake in the future, and the lived experience of raising children.”
First, let’s note the obvious: If elected, Harris wouldn’t be the first American president with no biological children. There were five others: George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Polk and James Buchanan. (Warren Harding had a child out of wedlock and publicly denied paternity; that he was the father was confirmed by DNA testing almost a century later.)
But more to the point, if you think that the concerns of parents and families will always be “abstract” to someone who doesn’t have children, you’re telling on yourself. It’s not simply that, by all accounts, Harris has a close, loving relationship with her stepkids. It’s that it’s possible for people who have basic empathy to understand the needs, aspirations and concerns of fellow citizens who aren’t exactly like them — and to commit to their well-being.
It actually should be a requirement for presidential candidates to have compassion for people they’ll never meet. And it strikes me as anti-American to argue that a politician is any less invested in families or our country’s future because of his or her own parental status. It should go without saying, but: Having children doesn’t necessarily make you a better person.
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And since Kamala Harris is black and female, well, obviously she’s unqualified, a DEI pick. Only white male Christians with families are qualified to lead, think the (American) tribal conservatives.
Some relatively rational Republicans are trying to tone down this rhetoric.
AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 24 Jul 2024: ‘Intellectually bottom of the barrel’: GOP ignores Johnson’s plea as reps attack ‘DEI hire’ Harris
right-wing pundit Larry Kudlow — during an appearance on Fox Business — said of Harris, “Her whole history is DEI: diversity, exclusion and equity.”
DEI stands for “diversity, equity and exclusion.” And Kudlow’s critics are calling out that attack as a racist and sexist dog whistle.
On X, formerly Twitter, journalist Aaron Rupar commented, “That’s code for she’s a black woman.”
Remember, proper politicians are white, male, Christian, heterosexual fathers. So say the self-appointed tribal elders.
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Reality.
The economy is doing quite well, actually.
NY Times, guest essay by Steven Rattner, 24 Jul 2024: Don’t Take Trump’s Word for It. Check the Data.
With lots of graphs. Of course, conservatives do not see sites that provide evidence like this.
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NY Times, Ben Casselman, 25 Jul 2024: U.S. Economic Growth Accelerates, Outpacing Forecasts, subtitled “Gross domestic product rose at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the second quarter, new evidence of the economy’s resilience despite high interest rates.”
With graphs.
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CNN, Bryan Mena, 25 Jul 2024: The US economy is pulling off something historic
The US economy is on the verge of an extremely rare achievement.
Economic growth in the first half of the year was solid, with the economy expanding a robust 2.8% annualized rate in the second quarter, according to fresh Commerce Department figures released Thursday, which are adjusted for inflation and seasonal swings.
Stocks surged in the morning after the economy’s powerful show of resilience, but later lost steam and closed the day mixed. The Dow rose 81 points, or 0.2%, after jumping more than 500 points earlier in the session. The S&P 500 fell 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.9%. That comes after the benchmark index and tech-heavy Nasdaq on Wednesday logged their worst day since 2022.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, was much stronger in the second quarter than economists had predicted. The GDP report showed that businesses are continuing to invest and that consumers are still opening their wallets. That’s key, because consumer spending is America’s economic engine, accounting for about two-thirds of US economic output.
As the economy continued to expand from April through June, inflation resumed a downward trend and seems to be on track to slowing further toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
America’s economy is about to stick what’s called a “soft landing,” which is when inflation returns to the Fed’s target without a recession — a feat that’s only happened once, during the 1990s, according to some economists.
I’ll let this speak for itself.
