Dear Weekend Jolter,
For the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton's generational anthem "What Happened" is as relevant today as it was after 2016. The answers are manifold with respect to 2024 — but, as the votes are finalized and the picture becomes clearer, California's outcomes tell an important part of the story.
Not only did Donald Trump narrow the gap with the Democratic nominee there compared with 2020 and 2016, but progressive candidates and positions were rebuked in local contests up and down the state's coast. For all the pundits sticking with the explanation that America itself is the problem and resisting internal calls for soul-searching, the California example should drive home how the Democratic Party is losing touch with its own traditional voters.
As NR's editorial notes with tact and subtlety in accounting for Democrats' poor performance: "It's leftism, stupid."
California proves the premise, at least where leftism intersects with urban misgovernance. In Los Angeles, progressive prosecutor George Gascón was ousted in favor of a more moderate DA candidate; voters' verdict wasn't even close. In San Francisco, notorious poster city for the havoc that doctrinaire permissiveness can unleash, Mayor London Breed was voted out despite a belated turn in favor of more law enforcement. Oakland's far-left mayor and DA were both ejected amid crime concerns. Here's Ryan Mills on the environment in Oakland, in a piece written just before the vote:
Restaurant chains like In-N-Out and Denny's closed their Oakland locations this year, specifically mentioning "ongoing issues with crime" and the "safety and well-being" of their customers and employees. Other chains have closed their dining rooms, because "some people sometimes make trouble," a Taco Bell employee told a KRON4 reporter in March.
Major employers, including Clorox and Kaiser Permanente, hired additional security guards to protect their workers and urged employees not to venture out for lunch.
Rental-car companies warned customers against refueling near the airport, lest they risk being robbed by thieves who target tourists. Earlier this year, a construction crew refused to finish filling potholes because of safety concerns. In at least one instance, the city replaced broken traffic lights at an intersection with stop signs because homeless people kept stealing the copper wires and tampering with an electrical box.
No one can say real progressivism has never been tried. Farther south, one representative letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times, from a self-described former Gascón voter, complained that the city's now-outgoing DA was too "radical" and didn't seem to grasp the local outrage over "mass robberies," stolen cars, and "human tragedy in plain sight" on the streets. Gascón's successor, Nathan Hochman, used his victory speech to make a pledge to police: "Your hands aren't tied anymore." The room erupted in cheers. Again, this is Southern California, people.
Ballot measures told a similar story. As James Lynch reported, "More than two-thirds of Californians voted in favor of Proposition 36 to impose harsher penalties for repeat shoplifters and large-scale drug dealers," reversing course a decade after the state passed a ballot initiative to lower penalties for such crimes.
Collectively, these were clarion rebukes to the pullback on policing and prosecution that has hurt the Democratic brand in cities across the country — and, to draw a fairly obvious conclusion from Election Day, at the national level too. As Dan McLaughlin observes, "Law and order is back, and if Democrats don't get with the program as they did in the 1990s, the electoral beatings will continue."
Criminal-justice policies are far from the only component of the modern progressive project overdue for an overhaul. But the backlash on the law-and-order front could hardly be as thoroughgoing as it was on the West Coast. The losses in San Francisco and Los Angeles "place an exclamation point on the wave of anti-progressive electoral results that have drowned the post–George Floyd 'Defund the police' movement," Ian Tuttle writes. If these priorities no longer play in California, they sure won't play outside of it.
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On an entirely separate matter, and before we get to the linkage, I just want to thank everyone who has contributed so far to our ongoing fall fundraiser — and ask others to consider a donation, of any amount, if you can spare it. These contributions add up, and they are a huge help to our operation. We are always humbled by your outpouring of support.
Read on.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On a truly terrible choice: The Senate Should Reject Matt Gaetz
Trump shouldn't be demanding this, and the Senate shouldn't comply: Donald Trump Doesn't Need Recess Appointments
But here's something Trump and the new Congress should agree on: Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act
Democrats shouldn't overlook the obvious reason for their disappointing Election Day: It's Leftism, Stupid
ARTICLES
Rich Lowry: Trans Moralism Is Killing the Democrats
James Lynch & Audrey Fahlberg: Senate Republicans Elect John Thune Majority Leader
John Noonan: Pete Hegseth Is a Disruptive Choice for Secretary of Defense. That's a Good Thing
Michael Brendan Dougherty: Make FLOTUS Great Again
Dan McLaughlin: J. D. Vance Is Walking a Historically Unusual Path
Andrew McCarthy: Trump Faces Catch-22 in Manhattan Case
Andrew McCarthy: On Trump's Foolish, Futile Matt Gaetz AG Nomination
Noah Rothman: Trump Might Not Lead a U.S. Retreat from the World Stage After All
Philip Klein: Pro-Abortion RFK Jr. Is a Disastrous HHS Pick
Ian Tuttle: The Insider Election
Dominic Pino: Read the National Archivist's Statement on the Sentencing of the Vandals Who Dumped Paint on the Constitution and Declaration
Jack Butler: The Bush Era Is Over
Ryan Mills: Three Activists Charged with Burning-Cross KKK Hoax to Benefit Black Mayoral Candidate
Abigail Anthony: University of Michigan Student Government Impeaches Anti-Israel Leaders
CAPITAL MATTERS
Alexander William Salter looks at what a second Trump term could mean for the cost of living: Trumping Inflation?
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White calls out an "overload of seasonal gimmicks" in service of formulaic moviemaking: Red One's Instant Bamboozle
DON'T. STOP. THINKIN' ABOUT THE EXCERPTS
John Noonan weighs in on the controversial pick of Pete Hegseth for SecDef, and finds wisdom in it:
Pete is an unconventional pick. He has spent his last few years as one of the co-hosts of Fox & Friends. As we speak, newsrooms across the country are preparing snide commentary that will highlight his time at the network rather than his time in uniform.
That is a mistake. Pete is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard and a combat veteran. Despite his Ivy League pedigree (the Ivies commission a pathetic number of military officers and for years banned ROTC), Pete saw the 9/11 attacks and responded by volunteering for the infantry. Anyone who knows him understands the guy has a deep and abiding love for America and her military, in particular the young men and women with steel in their hands and sand under their boots who put themselves in harm's way in defense of the Constitution.
The secretary of defense role is a political appointment, and it is political in nature. To be successful is to understand politics and all the strange little levers and pulleys and gears that make Washington spin. He understands politics and has keen political instincts.
At 44, Pete will no doubt be accused of being too young for the role. But plenty of Americans have served well in the prime of their careers. One of our most effective service secretaries in history, John F. Lehman Jr., was only 38 when he was sworn in as secretary of the Navy under President Reagan. He went on to outfox much of the Pentagon bureaucracy who opposed him and is rightly lauded for being the architect of the 600-ship Navy.
There is a rot in the Pentagon that is deeply entrenched. It requires an unconventional pick, youthful energy, and a keen understanding of Congress and Washington to refocus itself back to the national defense of the United States.
On the other hand, here's Andy McCarthy on the Gaetz pick for AG, not so convinced:
Gaetz was among the leading proponents of the effort to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election, which means he took the constitutional-law position that the vice president had the authority to invalidate electoral votes that had been certified by the relevant state governments — or, at least, to remand the votes back to the states, despite their certification, for further proceedings aimed at getting state legislatures to reverse the result of the popular election. No one who took such a position is qualified to be attorney general of the United States — the federal government's chief law-enforcement official (other than the president) among whose most important jobs is to defend the Constitution. Case closed.
Of course, that's not the end of the case. Gaetz also dabbled in conspiracy theories that the Capitol riot had been led by left-wing radicals rather than Trump supporters, and that it may have been an inside job choreographed by the FBI. In this, Gaetz was either incredibly cynical or utterly incapable of grasping reality and applying basic criminal-law principles (no one gets entrapped into crimes of violence). In either event, he's not AG material.
Matt Gaetz has a lot of political talent, and a lot of lawyer talent (which is why I intuit that cynicism more than idiocy explains his escapades). Watching him question witnesses at hearings, I often, in spite of myself, admire his preparation and delivery. He seems like a five-alarm jerk to me, but his constituents in Florida apparently like him (he's been winning elections there for over a dozen years, helped by his father, Don Gaetz, an influential former president of the state senate). Gaetz is a deeply unpopular figure on Capitol Hill, but as a sycophantic Trump loyalist, he is popular where it counts these days. I am sure, then, that there are many White House staff positions — posts that do not require Senate confirmation — that he could fill with ease and perhaps do a good job. And I don't doubt that he has a future in Florida electoral politics.
But AG? No . . . and why are we even talking about this, since Gaetz is unconfirmable? (The cockamamie recess-appointment scheme that has been floated is a nonstarter, for the reasons laid out in our editorial — and can you imagine trying to get an attorney general in place through an illegal recess appointment?)
The Justice Department has huge problems that have to be addressed. Much of what has to be done will require legislation, which means there would have to be some Democratic buy-in. Trump needs a strong, experienced hand who is widely respected for his or her legal acumen and bureaucratic know-how — specifically in the Justice Department, which is certain to chew up and spit out an outsider who doesn't know how the place works and how veteran adversaries can sabotage a novice.
It's not a job for Matt Gaetz.
The case for repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, from NR's editorial:
Democrats passed the IRA without a single Republican vote through budget reconciliation. Republicans can repeal it without a single Democratic vote through budget reconciliation.
The law never had anything to do with inflation. Immediately after Congress passed it, the media called it what it always was: a climate and health-care law. Joe Biden himself has said more than once that the law wasn't about reducing inflation.
Democrats gleefully enriched the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees, with $80 billion in additional IRS funding, and the NTEU has been sure to send them a thank-you note each year since, along with the normal 95+ percent of its PAC donations. Extra revenue raised from tax enforcement is nowhere near what was promised, but for Democrats it's about the spending, not the results. . . .
The Biden administration has interpreted the IRA in such a way that many of its energy tax credits are more expansive than what the Congressional Budget Office scored when the law was being debated. Because some of the provisions don't have time limits, the law's cost is theoretically infinite, but if it is allowed to continue, it will likely cost more than three times what the American people were told when it became law.
The good news is that most of that spending is still in the future. Democrats have run into the paradox that comes with being the party of government, which is that their big ideas about the role of government are implemented at the speed of government.
Remember all the hype about how Biden had reinvigorated manufacturing investment? Two out of every five of those government-backed projects have been delayed or paused.
Rich Lowry writes on how it appears that no lessons have been learned regarding the need for an open and honest debate on the trans issue:
The progressive answer to the humiliating rebuke that the Left suffered last week is still, "You can't say that."
The side that has believed it can bully its way to victory on cultural issues by policing the debate in its favor continues to act as if that's so, even after getting soundly beaten last Tuesday.
The Left's game has been to insist that everyone adopt its tendentious vocabulary, to call opponents bigots, and to use moral blackmail — and the threat of punishment — to keep any left-of-center doubters in line.
This model, which has been quite successful over the years, has a flaw, though. If a given cause is exotic and unpopular enough, and if it becomes subject to a political debate where the broader public can weigh in, the attempt to define common sense as a thought crime is doomed to fail.
This is what happened on trans issues in the election. Donald Trump's "she's for they/them" attack ad was the most effective and consequential political spot of this century.
How is the Left taking it? By clinging to the old rules.
In an exchange on CNN the other night that's gotten attention, the Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton said a lot of families don't think that boys should play girls' sports, eliciting an outraged reaction from progressive panelist Jay Michaelson, author of the book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality.
Interrupting, Michaelson said heatedly that he wasn't going to listen to such "transphobia" and maintained with great vehemence that it is "a slur" to describe "trans girls" as "boys." Talking over Singleton, he insisted, "They are not boys. They are not boys."
Notably, the anchor Abby Phillip — the moderator on what is supposed to be a straight-down-the-line news network — intervened, not to say that Singleton was free to use whatever term he thinks is most appropriate but to rebuke him and ask him "to try to talk about this in a way that is respectful."
Singleton hadn't interrupted anyone, raised his voice, or done anything that would ordinarily be considered inappropriate in the context of a cable TV debate — he'd simply called biological males "boys," and that was ruled out of bounds.
CODA
Okay, let's slow things down, Odelay style.
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