Musa al-Gharbi On Elites And Wokeness

His empirical findings are fascinating.

Musa is a sociologist and writer. He’s an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His first book is We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. He also has a great substack, Symbolic Capital(ism).

For two clips of our convo (recorded on October 9) — how “elite overproduction” fuels wokeness, and the myth of Trump’s support from white voters — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: raised in a military family; a twin brother who died in Afghanistan; wanting to be priest; his stint as an atheist; converting to Islam; how constraints can fuel freedom; liquid modernity; going to community college before his PhD at Columbia; becoming an expert on the Middle East; getting canceled as a professor because of Fox News; his non-embittered response to it; engaging his critics on the right; my firing from NY Mag; the meaning of “symbolic capitalism”; how “white privilege” justifies the belittling of poor whites; deaths of despair; the dilution of terms like “patriarchy” and “transphobe”; suicide scare tactics; fairness in sports; books on wokeness by Rufo, Kaufmann, Caldwell, and Hanania — and how Musa’s is different; Prohibition and moralism; Orwell’s take on cancel culture; the careerism of cancelers; the bureaucratic bloat of DEI; “defund the police”; crime spiking after June 2020; the belief that minorities are inherently more moral; victim culture; imposter syndrome and affirmative action; Jay Caspian Kang’s The Loneliest Americans; Coates and Dokoupil; Hispanic and black males becoming anti-woke; Thomas Sowell; and the biggest multi-racial coalition for the GOP since Nixon.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Damon Linker on the election results, Anderson Cooper on grief, David Greenberg on his new bio of John Lewis, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and Mary Matalin on anything but politics. Sadly Peggy Noonan can’t make it on the pod this year after all. We tried! And a listener asks:

Is Van Jones still coming on the show? You said he was going to, and now his upcoming interview hasn’t been spoken about for the last few episodes.

He said he would but his PR team put the kibosh on it. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Our episode with Sam Harris last week was a smash hit, driving more new subs than any other guest in a while. A fan writes:

I always really like your conversations with Sam Harris. You always seem to bring out the best in each other.

A listener dissents:

On your episode with Sam Harris — besides the fact that it was an “interview” of you, not him — your insistence that Harris and Biden haven’t done anything about immigration needs more investigation. For example, see this new piece in the NYT:

The Opinion video above tells the little-known story of how Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris worked behind the scenes to get the border crisis under control. I found that they acted strategically, out of the spotlight, since the earliest days of the administration. They even bucked their own party and fulfilled Republican wishes, though they’ve gotten little credit for it. Their hard work finally paid off when illegal crossings dropped significantly this year.

Sam said toward the end of the episode, “I hope we haven’t broken the Ming vase here. … We both want a Harris presidency. … It’s the least bad option.” I listen to Kamala all the time, and your rants against her are warranted and should be done, but honestly, the two of you have done more to smash the bloody vase than carry it!

I tried to make it through that NYT op-ed video. It’s an absurdist piece of administration spin. There was nothing to stop Biden enforcing his 2024 executive order in 2021. He didn’t because his core policy is expediting mass migration, not controlling it. As for Harris, it’s not my job to be her campaign spokesman. I know a lot of legacy journalists seem to think it’s their job to push her over the finishing line. But that has never been my thinking. I’d like both Trump and Harris to lose. But if I had to pick one, it would be Trump. The idea of four years of Harris is soul-sucking.

Sam is also putting the episode on his own podcast, so the conversation was intended to be a two-way “interview” — though the Dishcast in general is always meant to be a conversation. On the following clip, a listener writes:

You’re absolutely right. But this is so obvious, and the fact that Harris can’t articulate what would clearly be advantageous to her indicates she is incapable of clearly articulating positions. She’s turned out to be the same horrid candidate she was in 2019. Unfortunately.

Another writes about that clip, “As a prosecutor she makes a great case against voting for Trump, but she doesn’t have the defense attorney skills needed to make the case for herself.” This next listener has an idea for a Sister Souljah moment:

Sam asked you what Harris could do in the final stretch, and you both agreed that she needed to show some independence from Biden and also distance herself from the craziness of the woke left. I want to point you to my latest Substack post, which points out an opportunity she currently has to do both in one press conference.

In the past couple of weeks, the Biden Justice Department has sued the Maryland State Police, the Durham Fire Department, and the South Bend Police Department over “racially disparate”  employment tests. They are testing skills such as literacy, basic math, and the ability to communicate, all in the context of doing the actual job. The DOJ is calling it discrimination because black people do worse on the test than white people. There is also a physical test where you have to prove you have the minimum level of fitness to do the job, and the DOJ calls that sexist because fewer women are able to pass.

This is obviously complete insanity. Anyone but the wokest of the left understand that these jobs require standards, and that implementing any objective standards is likely to have a disproportionate impact on race and gender.

While Maryland and Durham quickly settled the suits and signed consent decrees, South Bend is fighting it. South Bend is, of course, the hometown of former mayor Pete Buttigieg. Harris could schedule a campaign event in South Bend with Mayor Pete where she defends the South Bend police and pledges that a Harris administration will drop this suit and not prosecute any similar cases. This could be a “Sister Souljah moment,” as Sam called for. It would also show independence from Biden, since his DOJ has been filing these suits. It could bring the last few undecideds over to her side.

Dream on, I’m afraid. This kind of race discrimination and abandonment of objective standards in hiring is at the heart of Harris’ leftism. She hasn’t renounced it. Au contraire.

Here’s another clip from the Sam pod:

Another listener writes:

I happen to subscribe to both the Dishcast and Sam’s podcast, so I know you both well. I’m so surprised that you two can’t understand the appeal of Trump to one half of the country. Let’s be honest and clear: Trump voters care LESS about preserving the system as-is (the peaceful transfer of power) than about RESCUING the nation from the cancer of woke. It is almost completely cultural.

Trump supporters despise the anti-white, anti-male, anti-Christian hatred that has been so deeply ingrained into our daily lives. We all live in terror for wrong thought and wrong speech. We feel disgust for being called racist, misogynist, xenophobic — with the knowledge that woke progressives control the apparatus of power in our media, corporations, entertainment, and education. It is cancer when our entire body politic has been so thoroughly invaded by this malignant force.

We are sick of this cancer. Sick. Sick. Sick. Kamala is a shill of this force. Her tepid disavowals (and convenient pivot to the center) are not genuine. We know who she is. She protects and metastasizes this cancer into every touchpoint of our lives. Sam says she is “no woke Manchurian candidate,” but he is wrong. Even if he IS right, why should we trust her when she so clearly made her wokeness clear in 2019? We shouldn’t.

The left is cancer. Trump is radiation. No one wants cancer and no one wants the radiation, but that’s where we are.

I feel you. I do. It’s what makes this election so painful for me.

Another listener comments on “the subject of why the Democrats and Harris can’t say what the majority of Americans want to hear on issue after issue”:

Isn’t the fundamental problem very simply that the Overton window of the Democratic Party doesn’t allow it? Harris may know that Americans want to hear a defense of fracking, but can a Dem really speak in favor of fracking at a San Francisco dinner party and expect to be invited back? Can a Dem really speak against the trans activist position? Against DEI? Against abuse of asylum rules at the Southern border? Of course not. Those are not acceptable positions in Dem activist and donor circles. Contra what Michelle Goldberg tried to say when she was on your podcast, or what Rahm Emanuel told Sam Harris, the activist position sets the limits of acceptable discourse among Democrats.

All of us who live in NPR-listening land know this. I would never say what I actually think about gender revolutionaries at a social gathering in my left-liberal community, because it’d be the last social event I’d ever attend. It might be safe to talk about the need for some actual policing these days — that issue might get a few cautious nods — but everyone in the room would be nervous, because who knows if one of these guests we’ve never met before who works at a nonprofit is going to turn out to be a social justice activist and trot out “systemic racism” and the carceral state and all the rest of it.

Maybe Rahm and Michelle are right that most Democrats don’t actually buy most of far-left activist thinking, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to disagree. And remember, most Democrats are riddled with guilt about everything: climate change, systemic racism, patriarchy, theft of land from Indigenous peoples … it’s all our fault, isn’t it? So we need to be humble, check our privilege, and listen to the activists and their moral truths.

By the way, I listened to your podcast with Sam only a week after finishing Tom Holland’s Dynasty — about Caesar Augustus and his heirs through Nero. I know comparisons between America and ancient Rome can get tiring, but holy shit: an elite appealing to the masses not as one of them, but as their tribune? Check. Entertainment value winning the day every time over serious speeches by humorless patrician elites? Check. Amusing the plebs by publicly humiliating the most esteemed senators, reducing them to flattery and groveling? Check.

I’m not saying Trump is knowledgeable enough to copy a Caesar’s playbook intentionally, but he seems to have stumbled on a remarkably similar (and similarly effective) approach.

I have explored the Roman parallels myself. One more listener on the episode:

The conversation with Sam Harris was really what we need right now: insightful and often humorous in light of the grave situation we face. It’s not Trump I’m afraid of; it’s everyone else. If Trump does not win, I fear there will be violence — and he won’t even have to call for it this time. Whether it’s business or politics, the leader sets the tone, and Trump’s tone is angry and permissive of trampling perceived enemies. I don’t think it’s a stretch to predict self-formed Trump militias springing up as a pretense to defend election integrity, hunt down illegal migrants, or generally “keep order” where another organization has failed to do so. I pray that I’m wrong.

Another thing to consider is that if Trump loses, we won’t be rid of him. He’s controlled the Republican Party and influenced the culture wars for the last four years, and we won’t see that end

Sam brought up Nixon, and it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the Trump years. Watergate — the foolish break-in itself — was nothing compared to what Trump has said and done since 2016, but the scandal took down the president because the public perceived that the president’s behavior was reprehensible to the office. Nixon KNEW he lied and had enough integrity to actually resign over it. I was a kid then and can remember how appalled people were by Watergate and thought of Nixon as a disgrace. How things have changed in 50 years.

I’m also worried about leftist violence if Trump wins. Another writes, “I thought your episode with Tina Brown was tremendous”:

She’s an exceptionally astute and admirable woman. I immediately took out a full year to her new substack. It was touching to listen to the account of her model marriage to Harold Evans (I think the Sunday Times was at its greatest when he was the editor). And the description of her autistic son and their time together shows her to be a beautiful, loving mother, as well as a towering intellect.

I particularly appreciated the comparison you both made of US to UK politicians:

Like you, Andrew, I studied at Oxford in the mid-1980s and always felt that institutions like the Oxford Union (where I saw you, Boris, and Micheal Gove perform, amongst others), and later Prime Minister’s Question Time, toughened up UK politicians to a degree that is unheard of in the US. I actually had the pleasure of witnessing Question Time live when Thatcher was PM. What struck me was not only the substantive issues raised during those sessions, but also the sheer brilliance of the repartee. Thatcher gave as good as she got, and she made mincemeat of the Labour opposition.

Question Time compared to the deliberations of the fatuous Congress is like comparing Picasso’s work to that of a 5-year-old finger painter. It doesn’t even bear thinking about how Biden would cope in an environment like that, let alone Trump. Both you and Tina come from that glorious UK debating tradition, and it shines through consistently throughout the episode.

My massive disappointment when I first watched the US House and Senate was related to this. So unutterably tedious. Another on the Tina pod:

If not too late, perhaps this will offer some help to Tina Brown, as your other listeners have suggested communities for adults with special needs: Marbridge in Austin, TX. Our daughter is only 12 and she has a rare genetic condition that basically means she will not be able to fully integrate into society. We are in the process of learning about opportunities for her to have some level of independence as she ages, if she so desires.

Here’s a suggestion for a future guest:

I’m glad you are gaining new subscribers, but I think it may be time to cull the herd and have on someone who will make the smugs’ blood boil. The brilliant and caustic Heather Mac Donald — one of a few prominent conservatives to excoriate Trump for January 6th — is scrupulously honest yet merciless in attacking left-wing hypocrisies on topics ranging from race and policing to the DEI takeover of classical music.

She sure is. Amy Wax anyone? Another rec:

I know you have quit Twitter somewhat, so I am not sure if you know who Brianna Wu is, but I strongly suggest looking her up. Bari Weiss just interviewed her:

I think you and Wu would be absolutely fantastic, and I think you would really like her — as would Dishheads.

Yep, great rec — we’re already planning to reach out to Wu. Another plug for a trans guest:

In case you didn’t see it, here’s an interesting interview with a trans man, Kinnon MacKinnon, who researches detransition. I found it refreshing to hear someone speak about detransition from an empirical perspective. It’s a real phenomenon that to date has either been denied by trans activists or turned into red meat for the right-wing. A fact of logic so often forgotten is that two things can be true at the same time. Thus, adults who are truly trans should be allowed to live the lives they want; AND society should protect children against fervent trans activists who would rush them into radical “gender-affirming care.” The reality of sex (as opposed to gender) needs to be more firmly established in the public’s understanding.

In short, we need more honest brokers in the discussion about trans issues if we are ever going to find the proper balance between allowing adults to make their own life decisions and respecting biological females on issues where sex (not gender) should be the overriding variable on which to make public policy and healthcare decisions. I don’t know if Kinnon MacKinnon is truly an honest broker, but he seems to have potential. Perhaps you could consider him for a Dishcast.

I passionately defend the right of trans adults to do whatever they need to make their lives as fruitful as possible. It’s children — and children alone — I’m concerned with. On the topic of sex-changes for kids, a frequent dissenter writes:

When confronted with evidence that only a minuscule percentage of kids in the US are being prescribed puberty blockers and hormones in the late 2010s, it’s an artless dodge to try to reframe the discussion around the experiences of 124 kids who presented at a UK gender clinic in the 1990s, the vast majority of whom never transitioned at all. You cannot use that data to imply that the majority of kids being prescribed puberty blockers in America today are actually gay kids destined for detransition and regret. You are distorting the facts to fit your narrative.

Time and time again, the evidence shows that there is no epidemic of “transing” gay youth.

There’s plenty of data showing that millions of kids in America identify as LGBTQ. Maybe a couple hundred thousand of those identify as trans. And yet, somehow, barely a few thousand each year start puberty blockers or hormone replacement. Why? Because the system is largely working as intended!

You’re right! The majority of kids who feel uncomfortable in their gender roles grow up to identify as gay, or maybe straight but gender non-conforming. So who cares if they go through a trans-identifying phase? That’s part of being a kid. It’s not like kids who are in the process of exploring their gender identity instantly get access to prescription drugs. As if the UK numbers weren’t enough to make that clear, numbers from the US continue to show that the vast majority of kids — gender-questioning or otherwise — do not exhibit dysphoria to such an extreme extent that they (with their parents’ informed consent) are prescribed puberty blockers or hormone replacement.

Of course there are going to be a few people who, convinced that medical treatment was the only hope, tried it and then found that it didn’t work out for them. Of those who stopped treatment, there are many who simply move on with their lives. But there are certainly some that go on to suffer significant mental distress over what they now see to be physical disfigurement or medical malpractice.

That is unquestionably a regrettable outcome, and it’s entirely uncontroversial to feel sympathy for these people. We already know from “leaks” that healthcare professionals feel this way, and I’m sure most trans people feel the same too (even when a minority of truly embittered detransitioners go on podcasts to denigrate us). We feel sympathy because we literally went through the same fraught feelings of dysphoria or dysmorphia that they did and maybe still do. We get it! It sucks! Why would we wish that on anyone? But just because some people were hurt by a voluntary medical procedure that was intended to help them does not invalidate that procedure for everybody else.

And please don’t go back to “but the majority are gay” line. Remember that the vast majority of gay kids never identified as trans at all and — even if they felt the label fit at some point in their lives — never started medical treatment for it. By elevating the lives of a very small minority of gay kids above the lives of all trans kids, you are making a value judgement that trans people are somehow less important or less worthy of care than gay people, and that sucks.

I’m grateful for my reader accepting the premise that there is a threat to gay kids. We simply don’t know how many, but we know it has happened many, many times. In my view, once is enough. Because there is no evidence that pre-puberty transition has any benefit at all, the sane position is to stop the experiments, conduct a clinical trial, and monitor the long-term impact.

Instead you want to keep “affirmation-only” policies which cut short mental-health exploration, shut down any exploration of homosexuality, and rush kids Ito irreversible changes. And yes, rush. Check out this new piece by Benjamin Ryan: “Top Gender Clinic Assesses Children for Gender-Altering Medical Treatments in Just 2 Hours, Lawsuit Lays Bare.” Because their waiting lists were so long, Boston Children’s Hospital will begin puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones after just a couple of hours. Any worries are deemed transphobic.

Another dissenter quotes me responding to a reader last week:

“And on the parents’ consent argument, on what grounds would you make female genital mutilation illegal for minors? It has no less data behind it than ‘gender-affirming care.’”

I WOULDN’T make it illegal if the girl herself wanted it. Hell, we still allow male circumcision WITHOUT the child’s consent. If teens were being FORCED to have gender-affirming care against their will, this would warrant your outrage. But I’m libertarian enough to believe that people should be allowed to decide for themselves, even if they’re making poor decisions — even if they are minors, as long as they have parental consent.

Likewise, I would support homosexual conversion therapy for teens who wanted it for themselves, even though I believe it to be bullshit and harmful, so long as it was voluntary. It’s called living in a free society. And parents are making terrible decisions for their kids all the time WITHOUT their consent. So WITH their consent, it should have nothing to do with government policy.

Feel free to fight what you believe to be a healthcare racket in the arena of ideas. Push for it not to be covered by insurance. But trying to outlaw it seems anathema to a free society and bodily autonomy.

I’m not sure that we live in a free society if young girls can have their potential sexual pleasure permanently removed as minors. Another reader looks to UK politics:

I have watched with horror at what’s been happening under Starmer. The jailing of people for speech and protest, sometimes for years, since the murders of those three little girls, has shocked me even as we’re getting far too used to Western democracies taking political prisoners. The latest news — that the three murders were committed by a young man with a terrorist handbook and a dangerous bioweapon — has prompted me to write you. It is beyond the pale that Starmer’s government not only lied about it, but sent people to jail and urged harsh penalties for working-class people whose lives will be ruined for the “crime” of protesting and posting on Facebook.

You had spoken of Starmer admiringly before his election, so I would really appreciate it if you would address this. It seems such a dire prediction of what could happen here. I know we have the First Amendment, but it’s only powerful if we have the checks and balances in place to defend it.

My defense of Keir has always been personal. I oppose his politics — especially, demonizing legitimate concerns about mass migration. Another reader shifts to the Middle East:

I don’t follow your reasoning in thinking Israel’s killing of top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders somehow offsets the moral responsibility for Israel’s mass killing of civilians. Killing Sinwar may have been luck, but the others were highly skilled assassinations for which the Israelis are known. High-level Iranian scientists were killed in targeted operations that didn’t kill hundreds of bystanders.

Spielberg’s movie Munich showed a confident, patient Israel letting a global dragnet ripen with no stone unturned in serial assassinations of the terrorists who stormed the 1972 Olympics. The recent pager operation certainly resulted in less collateral damage than carpet bombing Gaza and southern Lebanon. To me, this places an even greater moral burden on the IDF for broadening the target to the whole of Gaza instead of the employing more limited, but highly effective, operations against its enemy, Hamas.

Back to politics stateside, a reader sends a supercut of the MSG rally, adding, “I’ll never understand how people can watch this absolute crap and STILL support the Trump movement”:

A reader responds to one from last week — “the commenter who invoked the ‘F your feelings’ crowd”:

As an “educated urban liberal,” or however else you’d choose to describe it, I am getting pretty freaking tired of MAGA types telling me that I’m categorically a snobby condescending prig who looks down his nose at the working class. Do I know people like that? Yes. But guess what? All my other politically engaged Democrat friends have a moratorium on talking politics with those folks because they are so tiresome. I feel smeared by a stereotype, and my frustration is building and building.

(By the way, have we somehow forgotten that left-wing politics are traditionally pro-labor? Wokeism has been a departure, but most people I know who vote Democrat do so because they feel affiliation with the working and middle classes.)

To add something that is both cringe and true: Nearly everyone I know read Hillbilly Elegy in 2017, in an attempt to improve their compassion and figure out what they were missing. Did MAGA types engage in a regimen of intellectual self-improvement remotely like this in the wake of 2020? Maybe some did, but the predominant reaction seems to have been denial, rage, and psychosis. I barely need to invoke Jan 6th to get the point across.

I feel caught in a double standard. Apparently I am supposed to develop more empathy for the rural proletariat in the hollowed-out places like the Rust Belt. Except I already do have empathy for those people, which I expressed by voting for Joe Biden (Biden the candidate, if perhaps not Biden the president). I didn’t vote for the candidate who tried to take away their ACA coverage. And meanwhile, I get to see tweets and posts every single day that call people like me “pussy libtard cucks” and read screeds about how liberals are necessarily clueless and irredeemable child molesters whose day of judgement is coming.

Maybe after 8+ years of trying to understand the Trump voters who hate us, people like me will eventually channel our resentment into nominating a “Democrat Trump” figure who will use all the same populist tricks to destroy their movement from the left. Though I do crave a return to “normal” politics, I sincerely doubt that, as a society, we are headed for any sort of reconciliation.

A little self-examination among the Trump enthusiasts would indeed be as welcome as it is improbable. I take your point. As a normie gay man besieged by queerness and trans madness, part of me wants to send a message to them by voting for Trump. But I won’t.

Here’s another dissent:

You wrote, “Voting for Harris means this will continue. I’m doing so because the broader stakes — our democracy, the rule of law, the integrity of our election system — take precedent.” I’m no Trump fan, but I can’t agree with you about the Dems preserving our democracy and our election system. Look at it this way: Trump won a crowded primary. No one gave him a free ride, and no one blackballed his opponents. Dean Phillips was blackballed this year. Harris dropped out of the 2020 primaries before a single ballot was cast, didn’t run against Biden in 2024, and yet she was anointed because of the (in)actions of what you call a corrupt clique. How is any of this preserving our democracy or our elections? I see no integrity here whatsoever.

A free subscriber has had enough of the Dish:

I simply can’t take another snarky, nasty, and, frankly BITTER piece from you about Biden and Harris in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Yes, Biden should have announced he wasn’t running for reelection after the 2022 midterms. But his decision not to do so does not erase the noble and heroic effort he had to undertake to move us past the pandemic, right the economy, and pass significant legislation in the face of the most deceitful and fascistic opposition party in our history.

Fast-forward to three months ago when when Biden dropped out and this enormous, nearly unimaginable burden landed on Harris’ head. On the whole, with some notable exceptions, she has hit every key milestone with poise, grace, humor and humanity. She had to secure the nomination, plan and execute a convention three weeks away, give the speech of a lifetime, and debate the most nasty creature in the history of American politics. She hit the ball out of the ballpark on all three.

Yes, there are word salad moments. But she has systematically pushed almost every issue metric in her direction — and is nearly tied with Trump on the economy (so, of course, he has to play the trans card because his economic message has fizzled).  She is vague and vacuous? Compared to who? Obama’s “change you can believe in” and his super inspiring but mostly content-free speeches (which I loved)? Or Reagan’s “morning in America” (talk about gauzy, feel-good advertising)?

You don’t assemble a coalition from Cheney to AOC, from urban gays to suburban soccer moms, from center independents to repentant conservatives, with potentially divisive details of controversial plans. Do you remember Obama’s very specific and programmatic position on marriage equality in 2008? No, you don’t, because he dodged it. I could go on.

You have become the Eeyore of the 2024 election, with a permanent cloud hanging over your bitter head. At least for now, your columns go to my spam folder.

Gloomy Eeyore or nervous Piglet. Another is agonized:

I was going to vote Harris. But after seeing the Anderson Cooper interview, I cannot get myself to:

And isn’t it fascinating how Trump simply lies confidently through interviews? Kamala cannot even do that confidently. But I guess I just have to vote for her, to try to keep Trump out. He is evil and insane, while she is merely unprepared and without any principles.

Another reader offers “a couple of points about the Biden/Harris relationship”:

First, I know you and many other thought leaders in the press have lambasted Harris and the Democrats for keeping Biden’s mental decline a secret, and rightly so. From the beginning, I was on board. Then I saw an interview with Mike Murphy in which he theorized that had the Democrats revealed the nature of Biden’s decline, or if Biden himself had declared he would only serve one term, his presidency would have been effectively over. I’m not saying it’s right, or that it was planned that way, but it makes sense.

Secondly, why did he choose her? I think Biden wanted to stick it to Obama after Obama dissuaded him from running against Clinton in 2016. I think Biden thought Obama did him dirty, twice, and wanted to teach him, at least in part, what it means to be loyal. (Although, in Obama’s defense, I think he was in a tough spot.) While it was never an established fact that he made a deal with Clinton after the 2008 primary split the Dem primary in half, it certainly came off that way. It may also explain why Harris won’t denounce Biden or his policies; she has remained loyal to him. And trust me, as a former candidate for office, I can tell you that loyalty is the only currency you can count on in today’s petty politics and exceedingly hard to find.

One more reader for the week:

Great job covering this awful election! But I wanted to point out a concern about Trump that no one is talking about: if he wins, he’s limited to one term by the two-term limit set by the 22nd Amendment. I think if he wins, he will make a run around that prohibition with the support of his Supreme Court — following the playbook of a fellow New Yorker, Mayor Bloomberg, not to mention the sham that Putin pulled to stay in power.

If Trump wins, no matter how slim the margin, he will claim a landslide victory and a mandate to repeal the 22nd. Any resistance will be painted as “lawfare” against him, rallying his supporters. With their support and demonizing the opposition, Trump will move to cancel the 2028 election to stay in power indefinitely. It’s a scary scenario where civil unrest may be required to restore democracy, if possible at all. I hope we preempt this peril on Election Day, but I have my doubts.

Breathe. The Constitution is almost impossible to amend. And Trump’s SCOTUS is not going to nullify the 22nd Amendment, even if it could.

See you next Friday. If the republic is still hanging in.

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