I hope you get a chance to read this piece by Josh Green we published yesterday. It’s an excerpt from his new book The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics. But we’ve packaged here in a way that you can definitely read in its own right. The book is about the revival of an electoral American left in the years since the Great Financial Crisis – Warren, Sanders, AOC, etc. But this piece is about the deep back story of these events and how critical parts of our current world got their start during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. It’s not unknown history certainly. But it’s little known in our current political conversations. Definitely give it a read.
I don’t generally have much time for scene-setter pieces like this one from the Times. Not a criticism exactly, just not a form that I have much use for. But this piece from Iowa by Lisa Lerer does manage to capture a sense of foreboding that is very much part of this election cycle. And it fits particularly for Iowa Republicans, the particular flavor of darkness and pessimism. Iowa is a very old state and obviously a very rural one. But what’s interesting in this piece is that there are very few voices that are just straight up for Trump, despite the fact that Trump is completely dominating the race. That’s key.
I wanted to flag a couple issues in the background of the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.
The first is a potential deal to end the war proposed by Qatar. After I describe that potential deal, I’m going to come back to note that just today Qatar has disputed that it floated such an idea. But I’m not sure we can take that denial at face value. So let’s start by describing the proposal, as reported by numerous sources.
Here’s the proposal.
Israel would, in stages, end its campaign in Gaza and withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip. Hamas, in stages, would release all Israeli hostages. Critically, Israel would then allow the top Hamas leadership in Gaza safe passage to go into exile abroad.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh kick off 2024 by discussing oral arguments over Donald Trump’s immunity defense, eyebrow raising decision-making by Fulton County DA Fani Willis and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the upcoming early state primaries.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
A couple of days ago I wrote “that the withdrawal from Afghanistan remains one of Biden’s shining moments even though I know absolutely no one agrees with me.” Since then I’ve gotten a steady stream of emails from TPM Readers saying, “No, there’re at least two of us!” So perhaps, in the words made famous by Arrested Development, there are dozens of us. In all seriousness, it’s good to hear. And I won’t ever stop believing this. As I wrote in that post …
The United States remained in Afghanistan for ten years after anyone had any good explanation for why we were there. Obama wanted to leave. But he got rolled by the Pentagon. Biden knew that the only way to really leave was to leave. Someone had to bite the bullet. He bit that bullet and paid a big price and didn’t look back.
As I thought about this this morning, I wondered: does anyone really think today that it would be better if we still had a couple thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan? Being completely out of the country is so obviously better that barely anyone would actually say this. Thus, the standard retort — that of course it was the right decision to get out, it just wasn’t handled well — is a dodge. The idea that you were ever going to completely withdraw from a country you’d A) been policing for two decades with a nominal government that B) had little ability to maintain itself without things getting ugly was a fantasy.
It’s a classic example of continuing to invest more in a failed investment not because there is any hope of getting a return but simply to put off ever having to write down the loss.
This hot mic story-lette with Chris Christie perfectly captures the current GOP: anguished maneuvering and contretemps all amounting to more or less nothing, Trump eagerly feasting on his rivals’ clumsy mistakes, all of it hilarious and yet leading to a very dark place.
If you didn’t see this yet, just before announcing the end of his campaign — kinda/sorta to clear the way for Nikki Haley — this happened …
Mr. Christie caused a stir before his remarks when he was caught on a hot microphone candidly discussing two rivals, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, before making the announcement.
“She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it,” Mr. Christie could be heard saying of Ms. Haley. “She’s not up to this.” He added of Mr. DeSantis: “DeSantis called me, petrified.”
There’s no shortage of stories these days about conflicts, suspensions or resignations of journalists or editors over the Israel-Hamas war. But this one has a twist that made it interesting to me. The topline story is that Kevin Merida, executive editor of the LA Times, is stepping down from his post after only three years. His departure is reportedly based on a dispute with the family of Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong over his decision to restrict the coverage of several reporters who signed an open letter condemning Israel’s response to the October 7th massacres and calling on publications to use terms like “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” to describe it.
A friend in Michigan sends me this opinion column that ran last week in a Michigan paper. In it, Mark Plawecki, a long-serving judge in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, claims that the Jews torpedoed his efforts to get the Democratic nomination for the state Supreme Court back in 2016. And yes, I use the phrase advisedly. The point man for the alleged effort, he claims, was Mark J. Bernstein, who Plawecki identifies as “a significant Benjamin Netanyahu waterboy vis-a-vis the Michigan Democratic Party.”
“The last thing the right-wing Israeli government wants,” writes Plawecki, “is a statewide elected official (in any state) who has a not only more than cursory understanding (sic) of its terrorist origins, but is willing to state publicly the truth about Israel’s more than 75 years of political and economic chicanery.”
Axios sent out an email yesterday headlined “Biden’s Stubborn Loyalty.” I went back to it this afternoon and realized I’d remembered it having a more negative spin than it really did. That headline above is followed by “1 Big Thing: Biden’s Teflon Cabinet.” The gist is that Biden sticks by his people. Got a criticism of one of his people? Who cares? Biden doesn’t want to hear it. What spurred this write-up is the controversy about Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Will Biden fire Austin? Will he resign? No, says the White House. Indeed, Biden won’t let him resign. Done and done.
Axios writes this: “Politico reports Biden would not accept a resignation from Austin even if he offered, and chatter from the pundit class is likely to reflexively harden the president’s view.”
Kate and Josh kick off 2024 by discussing oral arguments over Donald Trump’s immunity defense, eyebrow raising decision-making by Fulton County DA Fani Willis and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the upcoming early state primaries.
Donald Trump has said that he would be a “dictator” on his first day in office.
And a review of his campaign’s plans and messaging shows part of what that may mean: a sweeping range of day-one executive orders aimed at remaking the Constitution and the federal government as we know it.
Member Newsletter
