By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

2020

“First thoughts on Elizabeth Warren’s prospects in Iowa” [Bleeding Heartland]. • Worth reading in full for a look at Warren on the trail, and the first of a series at Bleeding Heartland. This caught my eye: “The second half of Warren’s Des Moines event consisted of Q&A for about 25 minutes, followed by the last portion of her speech. The questioners were not pre-screened. Rather, numbered tickets were drawn out of a bucket to determine who would get a turn. Warren explained that they use this system to give everyone an equal chance to be heard, not just the people who rush to the microphone first. The following day in Ankeny, they did random drawings again.” • That’s very good (and, as sortition, distinct from Occupy’s progressive stack). Somebody on Warren’s campaign staff is really thinking. If your read Warren carefully though, you will see a major disjunction between her structurak message (e.g., “corruption”) and her policy recommendations (e.g., “access* to health care”). This is a consistent pattern for Warren. The mountain will labor, and bring forth a mouse! NOTE * So, Warren has dropped #MedicareForAll.

“Warren demands details on Mnuchin’s December calls to bank CEOs” [American Banker]. “Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is asking Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin why he called chief executives of the six largest U.S. banks to confirm they had adequate liquidity in the midst of market turmoil in December. ‘The public announcement of these calls was a rare step for a Treasury Secretary to take,’ Warren said in her letter to Mnuchin dated Jan. 18. ‘Moreover, your calls sought to assuage a concern — the liquidity of banks — that neither banking regulators nor executives had publicly indicated was a problem.’…. ‘Given the outsized role of liquidity problems in the 2008 financial crisis, we would like to better understand the nature of the call you had with Secretary Mnuchin regarding risks to the U.S. banking system,’ Warren said.”

Harris (1):

How to lose to Donald Trump, Part II. pic.twitter.com/OimrETKl7d

— Amir (@AmirAminiMD) January 21, 2019

As Mark Blyth says: The Hamptons are not a defensible position.

Harris (2):

I slept on a sofa in a driveway for three months. I lived in an RV on a driveway for one month. I actively fought to keep people’s houses from being stolen from banks. We were fighting AGAINST #KamalaHarris to save homes. YES I WILL actively do everything I can to expose her!

— PMbeers (@PMbeers) January 22, 2019

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Some clever campaign operative or elected on the left needs to find people who fought foreclosure and fought Harris, and make a video compilation.

UPDATE “Dehumanization by Deification: On Kamala Harris and ‘Black Women Will Save Us'” [Verso]. “[T]here is a duly irresponsible and unacceptable idea that an individual’s politics are beyond reproach because they possess a marginalized identity (or multiple ones)… This superficial politics of representation (i.e. the idea that elevating minorities to positions of power is an unquestioned social good regardless of their politics) and a weird fetishization, rather than actual respect, for non-white womanhood.” • Yes, it certainly is odd that Harris’ campaign site has no mention of policy…. In 2017, we didn’t have a name for devotees of this “irresponsible and unacceptable idea,.” Now we do: identitarians.

2019

Very true:

Seems like way too many D's seem to have forgotten just how horrendously awful each day of Bush-Cheney-GOP Congress was, how there was ALSO a shocking story of corruption & callous incompetence & malevolence EVERY day

— El Çid (@EnBuenora) January 18, 2019

So many #Resistance members seem to think that malevolence is a recent discovery, and discovered by them. Worth remembering what a horror show the Iraq War was. And on top of that, we had the PATRIOT Act, warrantless surveillance, torture…. You know, all the things Obama normalized and consolidated, and handed off to Trump.

Realignment and Legitimacy

If you want to be owned by class reductionists, keep doing this:

Spotted at the New York's #WomensMarch2019