Some of my friends are feeling way too cocky about the upcoming November election. They see that tens of thousands of people have died and that the economy is in trouble, and they think Trump cannot survive. What’s more, Trump has clearly screwed this up and more recently he seems like he’s losing his mind.

It does seem like a slam dunk. But both Obama and Bush Jr had low approval ratings at this point and they went on to win re-election. And the opposite is also true. A year out, Bush Sr had almost a 70% approval rating and he lost badly. I have little doubt that if the election were today, Trump would lose in a landslide. In six months? I don’t know.

Two Scenarios

Roughly speaking, there are two ways this can go. Things could stay bad. The cases could keep mounting and the deaths could continue to climb. The economy could struggle along but more or less stay where it is right now.

If that happens, not only is Trump going down big, so is the entire Republican Party. We could see Mitch McConnell lose his seat in Kentucky. And as much as I do not want to see this happen for my own sake and that of everyone else in the nation, such a defeat would be a silver lining. (But don’t kid yourself: after the Democrats began to heal the economy, the Republicans would come roaring back.)

The other possibility is that things slowly start to get better. In two months, new cases come to a trickle. In 4 months, most people are back at work. And in six months, sports return but with limited seating.

If that happens, people will likely re-elect Trump. They will only see that things are improving; it won’t matter at all that he is the guy responsible for making things so bad. I know: it’s crazy! But this is how people vote.

(I know a lot of my leftist friends are learning this painful lesson. I’ve seen people complaining that most Biden voters are more in agreement with Sanders’ policies. Welcome to the party! Politics really isn’t about policy; it’s about relationships. And if we are ever going to get the kind of power necessary to make systemic change, we need to embrace this.)

The Lynn Vavreck Election

Probably the best scenario is that things do return to normal quickly but we get an election like Lynn Vavreck laid out in The Message Matters. According to her research, an out-party (the Democrats in this case) can beat an incumbent despite strong economic growth if they can make the campaign about something other than the economy.

In general, it’s hard to do this. People care about the economy above all else. Think of it in the most blunt terms: people want to be sure they will have food and a safe place to live. That’s what a strong economy means to them.

I’ve often noted that had Howard Dean won the Democratic primary in 2004, he probably would have won the general election. That’s because he would have made the election about the Iraq War, which was unpopular by then. Instead, the Democrats nominated Kerry, who couldn’t make that case well because he had essentially voted for the war.

Can Biden Vavreck Trump?

If Biden is smart, he will make this election all about corruption. He could also make it about norms and civility. These are things where Trump is extremely vulnerable. Trump can counter, “Hunter Biden,” but I don’t think that plays outside the people who are guaranteed to vote for him.

One of the problems for Hillary Clinton in 2016 was this weird narrative that had been going on since the early 1990s about her being untrustworthy. Vince Foster killed himself just a few months after Bill Clinton took office and already there were claims that Hillary Clinton had him murdered!

Yes, that was all in the right-wing fever swamps, but it was something that accreted so much garbage over the years that mainstream journalist started thinking there must be something there. Either that or that they simply had to cover such nonsense as though it were real. (Also: it’s pure sexism — the idea that women are duplicitous and can’t be trusted.)

Biden doesn’t have that problem. And I think that whatever happens, Uncle Joe will come out like he did in the 2012 vice-presidential debate. You may remember that Paul Ryan was going on about how Obama was stealing money from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. And Biden came back with, “Look, folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this?”

I was blown away with that because it accepts the way people think. You don’t have to look at the numbers. You might not like Obama and Biden for a lot of reasons, but you know that they would protect Medicare better than Romney and Ryan would.

Help Joe Biden Win

So I think as long as Biden does not talk about the economy, he stands a good chance of winning. I can’t say more than that because, as Vavreck showed in her book, when this approach works, it leads to extremely close elections.

Of course, there is another possibility. It could be that our current situation is so unusual that none of the political science based on elections after World War II matter. In that case, we don’t know what will happen.

In that case, we need to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And that means doing what we can to defeat Donald Trump in November. Sign up to make phone calls or send texts, help people get registered to vote and to vote when the time comes, talk to persuadable people, whatever it takes.

Most of all: don’t assume November is in the bag. We really don’t know.

Trump image cropped from Donald Trump Official White House Portrait by Shealah Craighead in the public domain. Biden image cropped from Joe Biden by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

I’m not a huge fan of the Beatles. Or rather, I’m kind of bored of the Beatles. You see, my first significant girlfriend was a huge Beatles fan. So I listened to them excessively and read about them almost as much.

Today, however, we’re going to listen to “Blackbird” off The Beatles (traditionally called “The White Album”).

I remember reading that Paul McCartney had said the song was written for the Civil Rights movement in the US. In truth, he’s said a number of things. That’s to be expected. When you work on something long enough, you will think of it in different ways.

Regardless, I don’t much care. I prefer my political songs to be more explicit. But it is a beautiful song. And it makes me think of my crows who are more black than most blackbirds. And they’re just better — no matter what Alfred Hitchcock might tell you.

The Beatles White Album by Beat 768, own work, in the Public Domain.

Tara Reade, a former Joe Biden staffer, says that he sexually assaulted her. This story has been spinning around Twitter for a while. I didn’t give it much credence, but more recent reporting has me concerned. Regardless what the truth is here, it’s very sad.

Reade worked for Biden when she was in her 20s. When she first discussed the matter publicly, she described the kind of stuff we’ve come to expect from Biden. She said he would “put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck.” But more recently, she has expanded the story — and the crime. She now alleges that Biden penetrated her with his finger. Legally, I think this would qualify as rape.

As I mentioned, I didn’t think much about Reade’s claims because it seemed like nothing more than yet another pointless battle in the Biden-Sanders war. But when I looked into it, the allegations seemed credible. That’s not to say that she’s telling the truth. I really have no idea. But there are things that tend to make me believe her.

In particular, she told her brother and friend at the time that this happened. But it hasn’t been thoroughly reported. In Ryan Grimm’s article, he reports, that she told them “about the incident.” Is this the inappropriate touching or the penetration? I tend to think it is the latter because he mentions “sexual assault.” (Grimm never calls it rape.)

Biden has unequivocally denied the allegation. Clearly, it is a story that needs more reporting.

The Two Sides

Meanwhile, the battle rages on among the Biden and Sanders supporters. As usual, I find them both wanting.

The Biden Camp

On the Biden side, people dismiss Tara Reade because of a now-deleted Medium article she wrote where she gushed about Vladimir Putin. She has defended herself by saying that her opinion has changed and that she was then writing a novel set in Russia.

I can see why people find this suspect. Just the same, I can so see myself doing the same thing. When I’m researching something new, I often get very excited about it. So I don’t have a problem believing her explanation.

On the other hand, maybe she is a Russian asset. Like I said: I don’t know.

The Sanders Camp

I understand Sanders supporters who think that Biden is a less than stellar candidate to go up against Trump. I agree although I blame the the Sanders campaign and its poor performance as much as anyone.

In the case of Tara Reade, the Sanders side is reacting the way they have to every other thing that’s come up to attack Biden. I don’t see any more thought given to it than to the ridiculous “Biden has dementia” claims.

And it’s sad because a lot of Sanders supporters don’t seem to realize how important Reade’s claims are. For many, this is just another stick to hit Biden with. But if what she says is true, this will change the primary, but not in the way that they think.

Sanders is not going to be the Democratic nominee. It is not really possible for Sanders to catch Biden. So even if Biden drops out, the nomination is going to be thrown to the party. And they will pick a unity candidate — almost certainly a woman. (And no; I’m not thinking of Warren.)

A Sad Story

So all the glee I hear coming from Sanders supporters is ill-advised. This is important stuff. If Reade is deluded, I feel for her. If she isn’t, Biden is a monster — or at least was at that time.

I’m not sure what happens if it is shown that he is guilty. But most likely, what will happen is that the allegation will remain but no other women will come forward and we will never know.

And we will be left with the uncertain and sad world we’ve always had.

Update (1 April 2020)

I’ve read more about this and I’m as confused as ever. But I’m at least more secure about what both sides are saying in this fight.

Brian & Eddie Krassenstein wrote Evidence Casts Doubt on Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Allegations of Joe Biden. They deliver on that title but nothing they report is rock solid. It literally does cast doubt but doesn’t destroy her claim.

The one thing I found most interesting was how positive Reade had been toward Biden in the past. Human psychology is weird though. The article is worth a read.

More important, Emily Alford wrote at Jezebel Tara Reade’s Allegations Deserve More Care. It gets to the heart of what’s so troubling about the reporting on this: that there is none. There are tons of people and documents that need to be checked that simply have not been. And as Alford notes, this all should have been done before Reade’s allegations were pushed into public.

And this is just the most basic reporting that needs to be done. The most troubling thing about the allegations is that I’ve never heard whispers that Biden was a sexual predator. Generally, guys don’t do this kind of thing just once. What normally makes allegations of this type stick is that there is an existing narrative that simply isn’t well-known outside a particular group — like was the case with Harvey Weinstein.

The lack of all these pieces does a disservice to both Reade and Biden. And sadly, I suspect that we will continue on like this with both sides convinced they are right and no one in a position to do the reporting caring enough about getting to the truth.

Image cropped from Joe Biden by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Every time I introduce someone to Madeleine Peyroux, they say the same thing. “Oh, I like Billie Holiday!” That is the first thing you notice about her. The timbre of her voice is very similar. But that’s about where it ends. She very much does not have Holiday’s phrasing. For that, turn to Frank Sinatra, whose whole career was based on her phrasing.

When she first began performing, she focused on acoustic jazz. She had started performing while living in Paris, and you could definitely hear the French influence on her music. Peyroux gradually developed her own style. I get the same feeling from her work that I do from Leon Redbone, although I find her more interesting.

In 2018, she released Anthem. The title refers to her cover of the Leonard Cohen song. But almost all of the songs were written by her and her band. This short set includes songs from the album.

Image of Anthem from Amazon via Fair Use.

On the weekend before Super Tuesday, I was out canvassing for Warren. On Saturday, I had a partner and on Sunday, I was alone. It’s more fun with a partner but more productive alone. Of course, I wasn’t really doing it to be productive. I knew that Warren was out of the race and that Super Tuesday would likely be her last race in the Democratic primary. To be honest, I don’t know why I did it except maybe to show some solidarity with other Warren supporters.

But what I got out of it was different. The places I canvassed were not Warren areas. There were a lot of Sanders supporters. And it retrospect, that makes sense because one day I was in a Latino neighborhood and Sanders did really well with Latinos in California. But I met a lot of Biden supporters too. This was, after all, at a point in the race where there were really only two candidates.

Bad Experiences

As I feared, there were a couple of unpleasant encounters. The worst was with a Bloomberg supporter. He seemed angry and annoyed. But he was clearly busy. He wouldn’t even shut his vacuum off. So I give him a pass.

And the other one was with a Sanders supporter. It wasn’t really that bad. He was just telling me some things I’ve heard online that, while untrue, were hard to counter without making things ugly. They were sexist, but I thought it best to simply extricate myself as quickly as possible. He had made up his mind and I had plenty of other homes to visit. But that interaction was more annoying than unpleasant.

The Glue That Binds: Donald Trump

Other than this, all the experiences were positive. They were also, to a shocking degree, predictable. Democratic voters hate Donald Trump! They weren’t emotional about it. They spoke of him the way you would a broken sewage pipe that was draining into your drinking water. There was a problem and it needed to be fixed as soon as possible.

Other than the two men I discussed above (and of course they were men), everyone was bound together and ready for the general election. Most people had their favorites but ultimately didn’t care. (There were a few who, like me, bristled at the idea that Michael Bloomberg might be the nominee.) I even spoke at some length to some of them about the nonsense conflict online between Sanders and Warren supporters.

My takeaway from canvassing is that the internecine fighting I see online is mostly absent offline. And sure: maybe that’s just because it’s a lot harder to yell at someone standing in front of you. But that just illustrates the point. It’s easy to vilify abstract people. It’s much harder to say that four more years of Trump is better than allowing Sanders/Biden to be president when you are talking to someone whose healthcare would be on the line because of it.

Thank You for Your Service

There was another kind of reaction that I got a lot — especially from people who had already voted. They were glad to see people out canvassing. I got this vibe of, “Thank you for your service!” And there’s probably a lot to that because many of them also seemed vaguely ashamed because they were not out doing it.

And there is a feeling of pride doing it. If we are going to keep what is left of our democracy, this is the kind of thing we need to do. (But it isn’t nearly enough as I plan to discuss later.)

United Left

Overall, canvassing made me feel a lot better about the state of the Democratic Party. It made me think that we are all a lot more united than it appears. And that was also my takeaway from Sunday’s debate between Sanders and Biden — contentious as it was.

But it’s made me a lot less tolerant of what I read on Twitter every day. It’s coming from both sides. And it’s all nonsense — or a more coarse synonym.

PA AFL-CIO President Bill George by Molly Theobald for the AFL-CIO America’s Unions, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

After Saturday’s caucus in Nevada, I was shocked to see people get so worked up. Of particular note was Chris Matthews. But all I could think was, have these people been living in a cave?

The Real Clear Politics average going into the caucus had Sanders with twice the support of his nearest rival, Joe Biden.

So how did the first vote compare to the polling average? Shockingly well:

In other words, everyone did just about as well as they were supposed to. I understand that most people don’t pay attention to this. But political commentators? I guess they were living in a dream world.

But okay: a bunch of people freaked out. Luckily, a lot of people stepped up. In particular, I was impressed with Paul Krugman who wrote a short twitter thread, Bernie Sanders Isn’t the Left’s Trump. Sadly, the initial reaction was not good.

Most people got hung up on one thing that Krugman said, “Bernie Sanders is now the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination.” How dare he say that?! The same people who were freaking out because Nevada supposedly made Sanders inevitable were now freaking out that a gentle call for perspective included the fact that Sanders was the frontrunner.

The Sun Came Out

And then something changed. I can’t quantify it. There are still a lot of people who hate the idea that Sanders will likely be the nominee. But it’s different. There’s a certain resignation and acceptance that maybe he isn’t that bad — and certainly, he’s nowhere near as bad as President Donald J Trump.

I should point out, however, that the people who are against Sanders are not, in general, against him because they think he is horrible and will be successful in stealing the Democratic Party. Mostly, they are concerned that he will lose.

This is a reasonable concern. My biggest concern about Sanders was always that a large fraction of powerful Democrats would sleepwalk their way to the general election. But I no longer believe that.

It seems that the anti-Sanders forces are pragmatic (Who would have guessed?!) and understand that Trump poses an existential threat to this republic. And the last couple of days have shown that the process has begun for everyone to get behind whoever wins the nomination.

(To be honest, I don’t know about the other side of this battle. Sanders supporters seem to be younger and more volatile. I see a lot more “I will never vote for…” from them than I do from the other side. If Sanders starts to lose, I’ll face that then.)

Just Like the Democrats

I was thinking recently that Sanders getting the nomination is the most normal outcome for the Democrats as one could imagine. We tend to like justice. In 2016, we nominated the second-place finisher in 2008. And in 2020, we are heading to nominate the second-place finisher in 2016.

I think we can all take some solace in that. Krugman also wrote, “America under a Sanders presidency would still be America, both because Sanders is an infinitely better man than Trump and because the Democratic Party wouldn’t enable abuse of power the way Republicans have.” Sanders is no radical.

And if Sanders gets the nomination and loses the general election, that’s too bad. We have a system. It isn’t perfect. Nor is it clear that any Democrat will beat Trump in November. So yes, I think I am reversing on Bernie Sanders Won’t Unify the Democratic Party.

Regardless, we persist.

Bernie Sanders by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Dental hygiene among Paleolithic people was, all things considered, pretty good. This came as a surprise to the first archaeologists who studied it. But it soon became clear that the issue was that our teeth had evolved for the kind of diet we had. With the rise of agriculture and especially more recently with processed foods and refined sugar, we reached a point that we were doing things to our teeth that they just weren’t designed for.

I think we are seeing this with our media diet. Fox News is a particularly good example because they have managed to refine their product better than anyone else. I’m very interested in the way that it is able to finetune the worst aspects of tribalism.

There are important and good aspects of our tribal nature. But a little tribalism goes a long way. And it’s hardly necessary for Americans to subdivide themselves — especially when many claim that they are the only “true Americans.”

Our Interests

For a long time, I’ve pushed back on the idea that many white Americans “vote against their interests.” My (and many others’) argument is that we shouldn’t define a person’s interest in selfish economic terms. By such terms, I vote against my own interests all the time.

I now see this as a limited argument, however. Far too many people are made to be confused about their interests. Yes, I fully admit that for insecure white men, the rising status of women and people of color can be seen as catastrophic.

But is it? In a more hopeful world, would their feelings of worth really be determined by Marvel only publishing comic books with white male superheroes — all other characters relegated to villains and bystanders?

I’m constantly shocked at the insecurity of those around me who are ostensively powerful but who require constant reassurance. I’ve noticed this about patriotic displays at sports events and the hysterical anger at the use of “Happy Holidays.” If you are secure in your patriotism, why the need for others to demonstrate it? If you know Jesus is the savior, why the need for Target clerks to reinforce it?

But outlets like Fox News have found that it isn’t profitable to tell these people they are doing fine (which is true). Instead, they stoke resentment and fear.

Trump Is Always Right

One of the most remarkable things during the Trump presidency is how nothing bad about him ever makes its way to his supporters except as an example of the “fake news” that is being unfairly reported by radical leftists at The Washington Post. And when talking to Trump supporters, you hear a never-ending stream of Fox News-approved talking points.

There is certainly some of this on the left. But it is limited by the fact that liberals and leftists still exists in the fact-based world. It’s really amazing that online conservatives like Jordan Peterson spend so much time complaining about the left’s “postmodernism” and “relativism,” yet it is the right in this country that has completely abandoned the concept of absolute reality.

And I don’t think this would be the case without Fox News and related media. Most people think that there is something like absolute reality. Even the Fox News viewers who act like cultists believe in it outside of politics. And why? Because that is the default belief. It is only the constant assault of propaganda that allows them to abandon it in politics.

Problems on the Left

Where this manifests most profoundly on the left is in internecine conflicts. What I have in mind is the Democratic primary. I’ve seen a lot of people who only get information about candidates they don’t support from supporters of the candidate they do.

I first noticed this with myself regarding Kamala Harris. I kept hearing the same three talking points about her. They weren’t good, but they always weren’t terrible. Eventually, I started to think that if these were the worst things about her, she probably wasn’t that bad. So I did some research and I learned that they were largely true. There was more nuance to issues. But while I still found them negatives, they weren’t disqualifying.

This comes most from Bernie Sanders supporters, but only because they are more organized. I sometimes think if Sanders got a hangnail, his supporters would get #BernieNailCare trending. The problem is with everyone.

On the other side, people are hysterical in their hatred of Sanders. I’m not keen on some things that Sanders has done. But again, are they disqualifying? No. I never thought so little of Hillary Clinton as when she wouldn’t commit to supporting Sanders if he were the nominee.

Narratives and Facts

And it’s all the same thing. The only information that gets through to Sanders haters are things that make him look bad. And I am tired of hearing people tell me they get the full picture but these bad things just really matter. That’s just having a particular narrative and dismissing everything that runs counter to it as “unimportant.”

I first saw this tendency among Clinton supporters against Sanders in 2016. Then I saw it from Sanders supporters against Clinton in 2016. Most recently, I’ve seen it from Sanders and Harris supporters against Warren.

How do I know this is happening? Because these people only ever talk about these opponents when they have something bad to share. I’m constantly surprised to hear of a little-reported Warren gaff in a Twitter thread. But don’t worry: they know all about Warren; it’s just that only the bad things matter.

It’s as though each campaign has its own negative press secretary for the other campaigns. And their supporters think this constant stream of negativity represents who the other candidates are. And why not? It supports their narrative.

Refined Tribalism

Humans are not designed to deal with modern media that is designed to solidify tribes. Just as our teeth are harmed by the refined sugar in our food, our society is harmed by the refined tribalism of Fox News and social media.

And in this way, conservatives have the advantage. While the Democrats are fracturing, increasingly looking at a billionaire from New York to save us, the Republicans are as committed to Trump as ever.

But as long as [fill in your most hated Democratic opponent] doesn’t win, it’s all fine. Amiright?!

Twitter Image by David Ferreira; licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Fox News by Johnny Silvercloud. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

It doesn’t matter where you go in the world there will always be people complaining about this or that endeavor being political. I recently saw a video by Jose on ComicsGate.

In that case, people were upset at the increase in diversity that was taking place in comic books. Many saw this as politicizing comics. They did not, however, see the facts the comics had always been overwhelmingly white and male as being a political statement.

Colin Kaepernick’s Crime Against the Status Quo

Another example of this is Colin Kaepernick. Now let’s be honest here. People hated him because he was protesting the status quo. The fact that he was black just made it worse. (Note how conservatives love people of color as long as they are telling other people of color they should sit down, shut up, and be happy they aren’t currently on fire.)

It was not because he was somehow disrespecting the American flag. But let’s assume that really was the issue for a moment.

If it were the case that his kneeling during the national anthem was politicizing the event then what was the national anthem itself? Clearly these people think there is nothing political about everyone standing and putting their hands on their chest and listening to the national anthem and watching the military flyovers.

Equating Status Quo With Natural

For these people, the constant jingoistic patriotism and the fetishization of the military is given. But it’s not. As Matt Soniak has explained, it wasn’t until World War I that the national anthem became part of professional baseball. And it didn’t become standard for sporting events until World War II.

It was all supposedly part of the war effort. But just nationalistic nonsense only accretes. When the wars end, these things stayed on. But that doesn’t make them natural.

In fact, I consider the whole thing disreputable. Why do professional sports wrap themselves in the flag? That’s especially true as sports become more international. What is the point of all this? It makes no sense to me. It goes against the things that I always thought America stood for like, for example, individualism.

Status Quo Destroys Freedom

Another thing conservatives love to go on about is freedom of speech and the supposed virtue signaling of SJWs. But ask yourself what would happen if you were an able-bodied person and you refuse to rise during the national anthem at a football game? You would certainly get a lot of angry comments. You might well be beaten up and even killed. Where’s the freedom of speech there? That’s fascist-level intolerance if you ask me.

But apparently as long as it is in the service of something that people think of as normal, it’s fine. But none of these things are normal. These things are the result of history. There is nothing fundamental about them. And you don’t have to be against the national anthem at sporting events to realize that.

I’d think proud patriots would rather that standing for the national anthem be voluntary. After all, what better way to signal that they are chauvinists than to stand proudly while people like me sit and chat with friends?

But it’s like with the War on Christmas: it isn’t enough to believe; everyone around them must also believe. If you ask me, this just means they don’t have a strong belief.

Social Convention

Everyone should admit that this is a social convention. It’s the way we do things. But it’s not the way we always did them. And it will not always be the way that we do them. So it’s open to discussion. And those who claim that it shouldn’t be open to discussion are villains.

“Civilians With Hitler Salute When Germans Marched In — Occupation of the Sudeten Area” by German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv). It is in the public domain.

If the fact-checking industry were honest, there would be roughly two kinds of conclusions.

• Republican said X, but X is not true.
• Democrat said Y, but the issue is more complicated than that.

We see this all the time but fact-checkers try to hide it. They complain endlessly that liberals have distorted the truth while giving conservatives the benefit of the doubt because they are so much more likely to spout complete nonsense.

Reporting to Fact-Checking: False Equivalence Always

What ends up happening is that a false equivalence is created. A liberal over-generalization is equivalent to a conservative lie.

Note: this wasn’t always the case. There is a long tradition of conservative intellectuals.[1] Fact-checkers in 1970 probably would have caught equal lies. But American conservatism has been off the rails for a long time.

Eric Alterman has noticed that the same tendency of regular reporters to equate liberals and conservatives applies to fact-checkers. He provided a great example. During the 2008 DNC, The Washington Post fact-checker, Glenn Kessler complained that Obama’s statement about John McCain’s voting record didn’t have enough nuance. Four years later, it was very different when it came to the Republican Party:

During the 2012 Republican National Convention, for example, Kessler defended the falsehoods told in a speech by Representative Paul Ryan, then the party’s vice-presidential nominee. Why? According to the headline above Kessler’s column, “The truth? C’mon, this is a political convention.”

Balance always, truth not so much.

Two Fundamental Problems With Fact-Checkers

I remember when these outlets and sub-outlets first appeared, there were two criticisms of them:

1. Fact-checking should be a regular part of reporting. To make it a special journalistic endeavor was going to make reporting worse.
2. Fact-checking would have the same problems of regular reporting with claims of bias and so on.

The first criticism didn’t really matter because mainstream “objective” journalism had long before given up on doing anything as contentious as fact-checking what politicians did — especially conservative politicians!

The Same Old Problems

The second criticism played out as expected in a number of ways. The first is that conservatives don’t even pay attention to fact-checkers. Even “reasonable” outlets like RealClearPolitics dismiss them as nothing more than opinion journalism.

Although I don’t think that’s true when it comes to their analysis of conservative claims, it’s hard not to see that when it comes to liberal claims. A great example of this happened after Bernie Sanders said that millions of people work two or three jobs. It turns out that 8 million people do this.

But our good friend uber-fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave the claim 3 Pinocchios (out of a possible 4) because, well, I really don’t know. Apparently, Kessler thought Sanders meant 100 million? Who can say?

What we can say is that Kessler never would have nit-picked a conservative in this way for two reasons. First, he wouldn’t need to because they lie so much more. Second, he wouldn’t need to because he doesn’t need to invent conservative falsehoods to even things out.

It was always understood that if it turned out that the fact-checkers found a lot more conservative lies than liberal lies, the conservatives would just dismiss it as bias. And despite the efforts of fact-checkers to avoid this, they still find that conservatives lie a lot more.

Of course, it doesn’t matter. If fact-checkers found exactly the same number of falsehoods from Democrats and Republicans, conservatives would call foul. And this is understandable because there is a lot to complain about.

Skewed Samples

One of the things that skew results is also used to create false equivalence: the facts that are checked. Why do fact-checkers pick a particular claim to look at? Many of them are silly.

PolitiFact, for example, fact-checked the Facebook claim that all Fox News women are blond. That’s pretty amazing given that everyone understood that the claim was hyperbolic. What’s more, given that the vast majority of people have dark hair, the fact that most Fox News women have blond hair goes along with the point being made.

Fact-checkers go out of their way to seem balanced. That trumps any effort they have to find the truth. For example, Trump lies constantly. PolitiFact looked at 102 of his claims in 2019. It could have been a thousand. Or one.

I now refuse to reference fact-checkers. There is a tendency among people to disregard fact-checkers when we disagree with them but to hold them up as authoritative when we don’t. What’s the point of that?

They are useless. And they should be treated as such — especially by those of us on the left who are most abused by them.

[1] Note that these intellectuals were still wrong and mostly just as bigotted as modern Trump supporters. But they did care about the same intellectual niceties that I do. And they could be shamed. In other words, they were like Max Boot.

Matt Yglesias wrote a surprisingly good article over at Vox, Bernie Sanders Can Unify Democrats and Beat Trump in 2020. It glides over how easy it would be for Sanders to be a unity candidate, however. I’ll come back to that.

First, I want to discuss something it points out about Sanders that is very good: despite what people on both sides of the Sanders War claim: he’s shown himself to be highly pragmatic. I really like this, but this fact has made listening to Sanders supporters on Twitter very annoying.

Almost all of the complaints about the other candidates from Sanders supporters are that he is Good and Pure and they are all Compromised. But the record shows this isn’t the case. It’s all motivated reasoning: when Sanders was not pure, it was justified because he was getting something important.

Great! I agree. But why does this only applied to Sanders? Why is he always given the benefit of the doubt and otherwise held up as impeccable? This kind of thinking is at least a bit cultish.

Nathan J Robinson

Similarly, I saw that Nathan J Robinson produced an hour-long video, Why Warren Supporters Should SWITCH to Bernie.

However, Robinson evidences a lack of understanding about how presidential primaries work. He thinks Warren should drop out if she doesn’t do well in Iowa and New Hampshire. Let’s leave aside the fact that Robinson will suddenly abandon this argument should Warren do well and Sanders poorly. Presidential primaries just don’t work this way.

Major candidates normally run through the vast majority of the race as long as their funding doesn’t collapse. (Contra Robinson, $21.2 million in the 4th quarter is not a sign Warren is having trouble fundraising.) And it now looks like the 4 top candidates will do this. Thinking that one candidate will drop out for the good of some vague notion of “the movement” is just not reasonable.

He also seems to think that if Warren weren’t in the race, Sanders would get most of her votes. But in fact, he would get maybe half her votes. It’s become clear to me if this race were between Sanders and Biden, Sanders would lose with about the same percentage of the vote he got in 2016.

There seems to be the idea that Sanders is destined to be the nominee and it is just these pesky candidates standing in the way. And this is, again, a little cultish.

I don’t want to rag on Robinson because he is at least trying very hard to make a positive case for Sanders rather than complaining about Warren — which has been the default for as long as Warren has been a threat in this race (something Robinson himself has done).

However, the argument he makes is not that compelling. But I’ll admit: I’m biased in terms of my orientation. I like concrete arguments. I want to hear that the candidate is doing well with black voters and so they will do well in South Carolina and so on. I don’t find it compelling to make gauzy appeals to what a politician actually believes and so forth.

What’s more, these arguments are too finessed. You can see that they are designed post hoc to place Sanders inside the set of Candidates Who Are Good and Warren outside.

Where Presidents Can Make a Difference

Where Sanders most shines — and where I support him more than Warren — is on foreign policy. However, this is an area that is most easy to demagogue. And the Republicans will do so.

Additionally, because this is an area that a President Sanders would have the most power, it is also an area where the next Republican president would have the most power. Is 4 or 8 years of better foreign policy worth the cost of the next Republican demagogue cheered on by over half the nation insisting that America be “strong” once again?

It’s also worth noting that Warren’s ability to better manage the regulatory state is something that is simply ignored by her detractors. I’m not sure why this is so. People spend a lot of time making the (correct) case that Sanders is best on foreign policy and would have great power in enacting it. Why not conceded the same thing about Warren?

I believe a focus on domestic affairs will allow for better long-term foreign policy. Sanders seems too focused on Medicare for All, and I have a hard time seeing it pass.

Is Sanders a Unity Candidate?

My main concern about Sanders is that I believe it will do the opposite of what Yglesias says: it will divide the party. Many of the people we need working to elect him will be standing around: nominally supportive but not very helpful.

And this is not going to be made up for by the enthusiasm of young people. I don’t have hard data for this. It’s just that I’ve heard this for decades — including about Sanders himself — and it has never panned out.

The Case Against Elizabeth Warren

None of this is to say that Elizabeth Warren is a great candidate. There are a number of things that I worry about with regard to her. The first is a personal reason: I don’t like her foreign policy positions. That isn’t a deal-breaker for me because I don’t see the American empire torn down under Sanders either. But there’s no doubt that things would be marginally better under Sanders.

I also worry about the politics of a Warren vs Trump fight. Warren is great. She’s positive and authentic. But I have a very low opinion of the American general election voter. Sanders and Biden look the part. There are doubtless a lot of people who would vote for either of these men but wouldn’t vote for Warren.

In fact, data from FiveThirtyEight shows that almost as many Sanders supporters have Biden as their second-choice as Warren. I tend to think that is sexism — if not that of the voter themselves than of how they perceive other voters.

(It’s also possible that this is the case because for a lot of Sanders supporters, defeating Warren is the most important thing. Reading YouTube comments and Twitter threads, you don’t see nearly the bile directed at Biden or Buttigieg as you do Warren. There’s a real People’s Front of Judea aspect of it. “The only person we hate more than Donald Trump is Elizabeth Warren!”)

One good thing about Warren is that, without the hysteria coming from Sanders supporters, she is a unity candidate. She bridges the divide between the left and the right of the Democratic Party. But the Sanders supporters have been very all-or-nothing and I suspect that means they are going to get nothing. And that takes away one of her main advantages. Good job people!

I Don’t Know

But the truth is that I can argue against any of the candidates. I just don’t know. I do know that Sanders isn’t going to bring the Democratic Party together. Just the same, anyone but Sanders may make a notable section of his supporters turn away — even from Warren, a candidate they would have loved 4 years ago. Now she’s just an impediment to Sanders taking his rightful place. Cultish? You decide.

Any Democrat will be good. There really is no comparison between them and Donald Trump. Trump is a negative force in the world. The Democrats will all be a mixed bag but generally positive. That’s even true of Joe Biden, who will almost certainly be the nominee.

Bernie Sanders by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Elizabeth Warren by ElizabethForMA licensed under CC BY 2.0.