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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Will the New Special Counsel Bring Donald Trump to Justice?</strong> - The task for Merrick Garland—and now Jack Smith—is to ignore political considerations and resolve the investigations as speedily and equitably as possible. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/will-the-new-special-counsel-bring-donald-trump-to-justice">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When Election Deniers Concede</strong> - In the midterms, voters rejected Stop the Steal candidates in critical swing states. Is the democracy crisis over? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/when-election-deniers-concede">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Indian Coal Mine That Razed a Village and Shrank a Forest</strong> - A company run by Asia’s richest man, Gautam Adani, is strip-mining tribal lands for fossil fuels. Forest-dwellers are fighting back. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-indian-coal-mine-that-razed-a-village-and-shrank-a-forest">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet Is a Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Toward It</strong> - The scientists who study solar geoengineering don’t want anyone to try it. But climate inaction is making it more likely. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/dimming-the-sun-to-cool-the-planet-is-a-desperate-idea-yet-were-inching-toward-it">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How to Fix Our Remaining Election Vulnerabilities</strong> - In the midterms, election skeptics lost races in critical swing states. But an upcoming Supreme Court case and a federal reform bill could make all the difference. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-to-fix-our-remaining-election-vulnerabilities">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>The weird sorrow of losing Twitter</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="The blue bird logo of Twitter is large against a stone exterior wall, seen from the street below." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nCZCkh2ZFn9wdL33yO5lYQocGhk=/561x0:5053x3369/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71660972/1244881966.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Twitter headquarters is seen in San Francisco, California, on November 18, 2022. | Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Grieving a loss, when the loss is the hell-bird site you weren’t supposed to love.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wlmzzd">
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On the evening of November 17, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/17/twitter-musk-easing-rto-order/">news reports</a> swept across Twitter that the platform had lost so many employees it likely no longer had the people behind it to keep its most vital services running. To commemorate the occasion — not unlike violins on the Titanic — longtime internet culture reporters Katie Notopoulos and Ryan Broderick hosted a <a href="https://twitter.com/katienotopoulos/status/1593425682826149888">massive Twitter space</a> to discuss the demise of the service.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="48ZTvK">
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At publish time, Twitter had yet to splutter to a stop, and it’s not a given that it will shut down. Still, the changes made by new owner Elon Musk — both structural (like firing thousands of employees) and cultural (like breaking the verification system, reinstating banned users, and reinstating former President Donald Trump) — have contributed to a feeling that something has fundamentally changed.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Wx43Cb">
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At one point in the discussion, a speaker confessed that he was “ashamed” to feel as angry as he did toward Musk for <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23440075/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-check-mark-verification">decimating Twitter</a>. The implication was that the “cursed bird site,” as it’s so often called, was just a place for shitposting and internet drama — not a place you’re supposed to feel devastated about.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TAZYHK">
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Then again, human nature just doesn’t work that way. Yes, people loved to hate Twitter, and hated loving it, but the love was real, nonetheless. Telling ourselves it’s dumb to feel bad about Twitter belies the human impulse to build bonds and connection — which Twitter users spent years doing. We’re a species that forms <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2013/09/17/emotional-attachment-to-robots-could-affect-outcome-on-battlefield/">unhealthy levels of emotional attachments</a> to robots. Did we really think we weren’t gonna feel absolutely wrecked about the apparent abrupt destruction of a social media platform that has been a digital home to millions of people for more than a decade?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DbHEdR">
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We have a hard time grappling with internet spaces as being “real.” We think of them as less important or significant than real life. But the truth is that for many people, the connections we make online are just as significant to us as the ones we make offline. A <a href="https://news.uci.edu/2017/09/26/teens-online-friendships-just-as-meaningful-as-face-to-face-ones-uci-study-finds/">2017 study</a> found that online friendships can enhance feelings of companionship, while <a href="https://medium.com/backchannel/this-is-your-brain-on-twitter-cac0725cea2b">a 2015 study</a> of digital emotions (albeit one conducted by Twitter’s marketing team) found that reading, tweeting, and interacting with your Twitter feed can dramatically increase your emotional engagement. And that was well before the pandemic relegated many of our most precious relationships to screentime and virtual messaging, making Twitter matter more, to more people, than it had in a while.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="80U7cp">
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Even solely in terms of its content, the loss of Twitter as an archive feels overwhelming to contemplate. Jack Dorsey co-founded the site in 2006, so that’s 16 years of 200 million users churning out tweets, hashtags, gifs, memes, videos, art, stories, DMs, group chats, threads, debates, subtweets, quote-tweets, and all the other content that the Library of Congress <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/12/27/16822332/twitter-library-of-congress-archive-change-2018">briefly deemed worthy of preserving</a>. That doesn’t even touch the intangible stuff — the myriad human connections made, the professional networks cultivated, the innumerable moments of collectively experienced joy and humor and tragedy; of life, narrated in real time, for years, as it happened to each of us.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rslO4J">
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Because internet culture is steeped in irony, however, the most extremely online of us have become rigorously conditioned to couch our sincere feelings about internet community in sarcasm and condescension. After all, as Broderick noted in his <a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/its-ok-to-feel-sad-about-twitter">Twitter postmortem</a>, “the online spaces we spend time on matter to us, but are also full of dumb bull shit.” Perhaps, he argued, the appropriate expression of grief is a paradoxical one: “This era of Twitter is over and it’s ok to be sad about that, but it’s also ok to feel silly that you feel sad about that.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BkKyfn">
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Feeling silly that you feel anything at all tends to be the default, especially on the internet; in the era of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21575707/tiktok-cringe">cringe culture</a>, to be <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22837624/jeremy-strong-new-yorker-bad-art-friend-dawn-dorland">overly sincere</a> about something is to court derision and ridicule; sincere emotionality must be glanced at sidelong, especially if it’s about anything occurring online. That might mean, for example, <a href="https://twitter.com/nikitadumptruck/status/1593681959271763968">coupling</a> your Twitter feelings with a disclaimer about how you were high, or <a href="https://twitter.com/lollyrots/status/1593409151497109507">observing</a> that Twitter “wasn’t just a hell site, it was a hell home.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YesZLj">
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This is all understandable; after all, it comes inflected with more than a little <a href="https://twitter.com/alissamarie/status/1593467269304225793">gallows humor</a>. But the sarcasm can also result in a sense of <a href="https://www.vox.com/22297792/fandom-escape-grief-psychology-complicated-lynn-zubernis-interview">disenfranchised grief</a> — a psychological term for when you’ve suffered a real loss that society doesn’t recognize as a real loss. The stages of real grief and mourning remain, but without the confidence that you should be feeling sad to begin with.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7AG7nv">
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And yet, if any internet space deserves our sincere respect, it’s Twitter, which has functioned more like a “real” public square than any other social media platform. This is the platform that <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/23/16188868/hashtag-cultural-influence-twitter-demthrones-rap">gave birth to the hashtag</a>, with all its infinite and often surprising uses. It has aided the rise of countless social movements, from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22594759/tunisia-coup-president-arab-spring">#ArabSpring resistance</a> to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/29/21274844/protests-minneapolis-george-floyd-policing-racial-disparity">#BlackLivesMatter</a> to <a href="https://www.vox.com/metoo">#MeToo</a>. Not all of them have been good — see <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/20/20808875/gamergate-lessons-cultural-impact-changes-harassment-laws">Gamergate</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news">Pizzagate</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/10/9/21504910/qanon-conspiracy-theory-facebook-ban-trump">QAnon</a>, et al — but they have all, unequivocally, mattered. Twitter, with its intermingling of celebrities, verified professionals, politicians, journalists, trolls, bots, normies, alts, extremists, and everything in between, was where the hoi polloi broke bread with the blue checks. It gave us <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/6/22/21295700/k-pop-fan-activism-black-lives-matter-trump-rally-racism-cultural-appropriation-reset-podcast">K-pop stans trolling racists</a> with their own hashtags. Its transparency and networking ability lent Twitter’s Black community a profound public presence, a cultural prominence that not even the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/10/28/13439450/vine-shutdown-loss-to-black-culture">much-missed Vine</a> (another gift we owe to Twitter) could bestow. It gave us <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/31/15718940/covfefe-meaning-trump-twitter">covfefe</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/7/23/17603566/dog-rates-good-dogs-brent-brant-got-a-puppy-meme">dog rates</a> and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/24/4765836/horse-ebooks-is-a-performance-art-piece-made-by-humans">horse ebooks</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/22673528/nicki-minaj-vaccine-tweets-cousins-friend-met-gala">Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s testicles</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/30/18287007/nobel-prizes-literature-dril">dril</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wWvI39">
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There’s nothing like Twitter, nor will there ever be again.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zGXE8Y">
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That’s also why it’s difficult to know what to replace it with, if that’s even possible. Many of us who’ve been on the internet for a couple of decades have witnessed the implosions of multiple sites that at one point seemed like they were always going to be around. (AOL, Myspace, LiveJournal, Vine, Flickr, everything Yahoo ever touched, the list goes on.)
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JF6bCJ">
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Nothing on the internet is permanent, though, not even the websites that feel closest to stodgy old edifices. Building on this assumption of impermanence, community experts, including academics who study community migrations across internet platforms, <a href="https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/1453/2015">argue that the best way</a> to ensure stability is to own your own servers and make multiple backups, and to accept that your internet environment is a fragile habitat and not just a bunch of websites. When one part of your habitat gets destroyed, you have to rely on the whole ecosystem to recover, and it can take a while. But even as an experienced internet Old, I’m stymied by the thought of what would make an effective Twitter replacement. Twitter’s “public square” holds less and less appeal in an era where harassment has grown but moderation hasn’t always grown alongside it, and so users have also increasingly retreated to semi-private spaces like Discord and Telegram, private group chats and WeChat.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zhXcDL">
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These siloed spaces make it harder to find friends across platforms and interests; without Twitter’s transparency and searchability, it will be harder to stumble across people who share a cross-section of your passions or to dive deep into your highly specific interests: For example, to forcibly befriend everyone who also loves <a href="https://twitter.com/pricewalden/status/1028439495941742592">James McCardle’s leg-twitch</a> during the “Democracy in America” monologue from <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/30/17168846/angels-in-america-broadway-review"><em>Angels in America</em></a><em>,</em> leading you to create a vociferous groupchat of like-minded leg-likers, not that I speak from experience.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Iuml0n">
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Not everyone desires sustained and intimate interaction with strangers, but even among friends, replacing Twitter won’t be easy. The worst thing about Musk’s gutting of Twitter is that if it really collapses, whole communities will be uprooted and displaced. Subcultures like fandoms, kink communities, sex workers and educators, and queer and trans spaces, rely heavily on the freedom of pseudonymity on Twitter. But that also makes it harder to reunite with all your pseudonymous friends across platforms, considering the difficulty of trying to converge on a single agreed-upon substitute platform. For groups that gather across language barriers, the loss of Twitter’s easy “translate tweet” button means further separation from people who share your interests, if not your native tongue.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XrupbZ">
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So, yes, there is a reason to mourn. The reality is that this is a hard time: Even if Twitter doesn’t collapse, it is changing, and you will likely lose friends, content, and the ability to retrieve memories. It’s okay to be sad; it’s even okay to be angry and devastated — both for what we’re losing and for the fact that we even had to lose it to begin with. After all, we, the end users who are left holding this bag of weird grief and even weirder guilt about it, aren’t the ones who ever dismissed or discounted Twitter. We were right there — we still are there — doomscrolling the wretched bird app until the end.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tPQR3o">
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What else should we value on the internet if not the spaces like Twitter that have given us so much joy and frustration and slices of humanity? What else even matters in the digital landscape if not fighting for the integrity and importance of people coming together, even on platforms as broken and in need of an edit button as this one?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="opX3Rk">
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The real loss isn’t that you spent too many hours of your life scrolling this hell-bird app instead of touching grass.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RBkvbr">
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It’s that the people who destroyed it won’t consider it a loss at all.
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</p></li>
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<li><strong>How the right’s radical thinkers are coping with the midterms</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="A graphic of an elephant balancing on a red ball above “The Thinker” statue. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iARp-bJUGjwRkILP_hWnZP-RrTk=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71660866/GOP_thinkers_midterms_board_2.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Christina Animashaun/Vox
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The New Right emerged to theorize Trumpism’s rise. Can they explain its defeat?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RemqNE">
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In the heady days before the 2022 midterms, conservatives looked out at America and saw a country on the verge of inflicting a major blow in the culture war: rewarding Republicans despite the end of <em>Roe</em> and punishing Democrats for embracing allegedly radical positions on race and gender. The New Right, a loose grouping of conservative thinkers who advocate aggressively wielding state power to promote a more conservative culture, smelled blood in the water.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fXq2kq">
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“Political horse-race types are predicting a GOP blowout in today’s midterm elections, and if it comes to pass, Democrats won’t have much to blame beyond their own insanity,” Sohrab Ahmari, a leading New Right figure, <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/remember-what-the-democrats-did/">wrote in an Election Day piece</a> for The American Conservative magazine. Democrats, he argued, had alienated the mass public through the spread of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/us/drag-queen-story-hour.html">drag queen story hour</a>,” masking in schools, the accommodation of “gender ideologues,” and permissive immigration rules.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="84sjZe">
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“There is only so much of it the nation could tolerate,” Ahmari predicted.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hse3yt">
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Two days later, after the voters rendered a different verdict, Ahmari penned a piece in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/opinion/republicans-midterms-workers-populists.html">the New York Times</a> blaming the defeat on the GOP’s failure to embrace true populism: blasting the party for “ginning up outrage over ‘woke’ sensitivity trainings in the workplace” while remaining “indifferent to issues like wages and workplace power.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jovi5o">
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Ahmari’s pivot reflects the difficult spot that the New Right finds itself in the wake of the midterm results. The faction, which rose to prominence after 2016 to put meat on Trumpism’s intellectual bones, believed that the future of Republican politics rested in a vision of relentless, aggressive cultural warfare. When the voters <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/too-hyperbolic-school-board-parental-151544673.html">seemed unmoved by their cultural preoccupations in 2022</a> — and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23444732/2022-midterm-elections-results-abortion-rights-nebraska-north-carolina">clearly sided with Democrats</a> on abortion — New Right thinkers didn’t have easy answers.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Vh04Wi">
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In the weeks following the election, some incipient cleavages have started to emerge inside the New Right and its many subfactions, with the most interesting debates falling into three distinct, but interconnected, buckets.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5pbDM1">
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The first bucket is the question of how best to prosecute the culture war going forward. Some on the New Right sound surprisingly open to some tactical moderation in light of the midterm results — most notably by bracketing abortion or even softening the GOP’s position on the issue. It’s a debate that <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/toward-a-conservative-popularism">directly parallels the “popularism” conversation happening on the Democratic side</a>, and one that speaks to deep sociological divides in the post-Trump coalition.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7bUMua">
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The second bucket centers on 2024: whether Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis represents the movement’s future, and what reasons there are to prefer one over the other. Interestingly, the battle lines do not necessarily line up in the way that one might expect (DeSantis shoring up the relative moderates and Trump the radicals).
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Q7TdM">
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The third and final bucket centers on democracy. A minority of New Right thinkers responded to defeat by suggesting the electorate is too far gone for conservatives to ever triumph — and even questioning the value of democracy itself.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f7PoY6">
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“Democracy did not end slavery, and democracy will not end abortion,” <a href="https://twitter.com/ccpecknold/status/1591405113440366592">declared Chad Pecknold</a>, a self-described “postliberal” theologian at Catholic University.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2QBYDT">
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What we’re seeing, through all these arguments, are the fissures splitting the Right’s most vibrant intellectual movement — fault lines that could divide conservatism in the coming years.
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</p>
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<h3 id="d4doty">
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Cutting abortion out of the culture war?
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G9xttI">
|
||
There is no set definition of the “New Right,” no list of who belongs or strict criteria that one can use to assess whether a particular figure is a member. Sam Adler-Bell, a leftist writer who profiled the movement in <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/164408/young-intellectuals-illiberal-revolution-conservatism">The New Republic</a>, described it as being “cohered as much by temperament as ideology — and by certain fiercely held enmities.” This amorphousness can make it hard to identify who’s “New Right” and who’s just plain vanilla right.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QqsWJ1">
|
||
But broadly speaking, New Right members share a foundational belief that American institutions — including the Republican Party — are rotted, and that a certain cultural degeneracy has taken root in society writ large. They believe that the right’s traditional commitment to limited government stands in the way of waging an effective counterrevolution; the culture war can only be won by jettisoning libertarianism and using the levers of policy to roll back the left’s cultural victories. Out with tax cuts, in with bans on critical race theory in schools.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VBhYvI">
|
||
Abandoning the culture war, on this perspective, is not mere folly but national suicide. For some on the New Right, the idea that their approach to these issues might be unpopular is unthinkable. But after 2022, some on the New Right are starting to see the case for a little bit of selective moderation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w9DRfC">
|
||
Take Richard Hanania, the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology think tank. Hanania is by no means a squish; <a href="https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/saying-goodbye-to-twitter">he recently wrote</a> that “if I owned Twitter, I wouldn’t let feminists, trans activists, or socialists post.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XhAjZ8">
|
||
Yet in his election postmortem, Hanania put the blame squarely on the party’s pro-life commitments. “Abortion itself was on the ballot last night in 5 states, and the pro-choice position universally ran ahead of Democratic candidates, sometimes by a very wide margin,” <a href="https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/abortion-as-the-affirmative-action">he wrote</a>. “As with Democrats and affirmative action, Republicans have been pushed by a small group of noisy activists to take an unpopular position that isn’t even a top issue for their own voters.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gSWZPz">
|
||
An <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/toward-a-conservative-popularism">essay in City Journal</a>, a publication of the Manhattan Institute think tank, goes even further. The piece’s author, Jesse Arm, argues for what he terms “conservative popularism” — for Republicans to pick and choose their cultural battles based on what polls well. On these grounds, he argues that the party should tone it down on abortion, abandoning no-exception prohibitions in favor of 15-week bans, while going hard on crime and “anti-wokeness.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zWnC7p">
|
||
Why might some of the most ardent culture warriors consider an abortion compromise? There’s a helpful clue in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpYy7X3bbow">the post-election episode</a> of the <em>NatCon Squad</em>, a podcast that represents the so-called <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/23/20679172/amy-wax-white-national-conservatism-yoram-hazony-racism">“national conservative” subfaction of the New Right</a>. National conservatives aim to build a conservative nationalist vision of American identity, leading them to be harshly critical of immigration, multiculturalism, and untrammeled free trade. While some of its leading figures are religious, like <a href="https://www.vox.com/21355993/trump-israel-yoram-hazony-nationalism-tikvah">the Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony</a>, abortion is not one of its central ideological preoccupations.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pq2rDq">
|
||
On the podcast, host Inez Stepman argues that abortion is politically distinct from the debates over critical race theory and LGBTQ education in schools that preoccupy the national conservatives and the broader New Right:
|
||
</p>
|
||
<blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wBcYTk">
|
||
The culture is the big tent [but] I want to split abortion off from that. I think that’s a new issue reintroduced in 2022, but has more “traditional” sides in the culture war from the Moral Majority in the 1990s. But issues like the differences between male and female, indoctrination in schools, crime, immigration…those are all issues that I think can be cobbled into very successful campaigns that do reach across the aisle.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OkniaV">
|
||
The argument here is that abortion represents an older, pre-Trump generation of culture war — one that, by implication, hurt the GOP in 2022. By contrast, refocusing on newer issues like “indoctrination in schools” can appeal to moderates and even conservative Democrats, creating an emerging Republican majority.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fK9b8U">
|
||
The extent to which this last bit is true is <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1594701028100038657">open to debate</a>. The 1776 Project PAC, an outfit that spent millions around the country supporting school board candidates concerned with fighting LGBTQ education and “critical race theory,” <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/too-hyperbolic-school-board-parental-151544673.html">only won a third of its races</a> (per an AP report). But Stepman’s move speaks to something important about the New Right: It’s not as religious as the old one.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BjxVIe">
|
||
Some of the most prominent figures on the New Right, like Ahmari, are Catholic conservatives. But many are not, reflecting the fact that the New Right is a post-Trump movement — and that Trump managed to win over <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-ex-churchgoers-flocked-to-trump/">an unusual number of non-religious voters</a> in his 2016 presidential bid. It’s a point that Nate Hochman, a writer at National Review and one of the New Right’s young stars, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/opinion/republicans-religion-conservatism.html">made at length in the New York Times this summer</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RgdXhC">
|
||
“The conservative political project is no longer specifically Christian,” Hochman wrote. “That may seem strange to say at a moment when a mostly Catholic conservative majority on the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn <em>Roe v. Wade</em>. But a reversal of the landmark 1973 ruling would be more of a last gasp than a sign of strength for the religious right.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fYwmeo">
|
||
Events afterward seem to have borne out Hochman’s suggestion. Not only has abortion clearly emerged as a losing issue for the right, but at least some conservative culture warriors are willing to say that out loud.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="zQEN9z">
|
||
Trump or DeSantis?
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U7Z1Rx">
|
||
While the New Right remains committed to its secularized culture war, if not necessarily the old-school variant, there is still an open debate over who it wants to lead the charge. Like the GOP faithful more broadly, the New Right’s thinkers are increasingly divided on the question of Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FMHo6b">
|
||
The arguments among the New Right about 2024 are roughly the same as those among the right writ large: DeSantis supporters say he is a more competent and popular upgrade on the former president, while Trump supporters argue that he has a unique ability to connect with the GOP base. On balance, it seems like the DeSantis supporters <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/15/23449525/trump-desantis-2024-announcement-stakes-democracy">are more vocal and more prominent among New Right thinkers</a> — at least for now.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i3vMdd">
|
||
Christopher Rufo, the New Right’s most influential activist, is emblematic in this regard. Rufo <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/conservative-activist-grabbed-trumps-eye-on-diversity-training-11602242287">worked with Trump on his executive order</a> banning so-called “critical race theory” in federal agency trainings, and went on to advise DeSantis on some of his prominent culture war initiatives (like the STOP WOKE act targeting higher education, which was <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/17/florida-anti-woke-law-block-colleges-education-00069252">recently ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge</a>). In theory, you could imagine Rufo supporting either man in 2024.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3CdUey">
|
||
But his election postmortem, published in City Journal, is <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/how-did-ron-desantis-outperform-the-gop">practically a DeSantis press release</a>. Rufo describes DeSantis as “a master at picking and choosing his fights,” praises his “keen mind for public policy,” and claims that he “backstops his culture-war agenda with capable governance.” This is in contrast to the way that “many conservative leaders stoke the culture war to generate media attention and fundraising dollars” — a line that looks a lot like a shot at Trump, among others.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="id__kf1vj861yrb">
|
||
Rufo’s endorsement is notable not only because of his outsized prominence on the right, but because <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/11/19/22787269/conservatives-america-chris-rufo-patrick-deneen">he’s no one’s idea of a moderate</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vuU8Mk">
|
||
Last year, he <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1460711361239928835">declared his intention</a> “to clean house in America: remove the attorney general, lay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers’ unions, and overturn the school boards” (<a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1460800802302218243">all through legal means</a>, Rufo later clarified). He has <a href="https://unherd.com/thepost/is-christopher-rufo-a-right-wing-leninist/">argued</a> that “reform around the edges is not enough” to protect America from the progressive “revolution,” and that conservatives should embrace a “<a href="https://unherd.com/thepost/is-christopher-rufo-a-right-wing-leninist/">defund the left</a>” political strategy in which they “strangle new identity programs in red tape” and “accelerate the student loan Ponzi scheme [and] make universities partially responsible for defaults.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Lf2qIj">
|
||
This is a wonkish blueprint for cultural revolution, a New Right long march through America’s institutions. Rufo has thrown in with Team DeSantis not because he’s more “moderate” than Trump in any sense, but because he’s seen as a better bet to deliver on radical ends.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="urk6Qq">
|
||
Interestingly, DeSantis’s willingness to compromise on abortion — after <em>Dobbs</em>, Florida enacted a 15-week ban on abortion rather than a full prohibition — does not seem to count against him on this front. In fact, abortion goes entirely unmentioned in Rufo’s piece; it is simply not the kind of culture war at the top of his mind.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wDwJzb">
|
||
But not everyone on the New Right is ready to give up on Trump.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JjcLDi">
|
||
Shortly after the election, Ohio Senator-elect JD Vance penned a piece in <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dont-blame-trump/">The American Conservative</a> defending Trump against the allegation that his influence sunk the party. Vance, perhaps the New Right’s favorite candidate in the 2022 midterms, argues that Democrats won not because of poor endorsement choices by Trump, but because of the Democratic Party’s structural advantages (primarily its superior fundraising network). Any Republican effort to counter this advantage, he argues, depends on the party’s ability to activate Trump and his supporters: “Our party has one major asset, contra conventional wisdom, to rally these voters: President Donald Trump.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BAakdh">
|
||
It’s easy to dismiss this analysis as self-serving: Vance won Trump’s endorsement in the primary and went on to <a href="https://www.politico.com/2022-election/results/ohio/">dramatically underperform compared to</a> the more moderate Governor Mike DeWine. He is living proof that Trump may not, in fact, be picking the most electable candidates — in part because he has elevated the New Right to new political heights.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KksFa6">
|
||
In 2022, the New Right’s <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">favored candidates</a> — Vance and the defeated Blake Masters in Arizona — both won their primaries <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/03/trump-endorsement-blake-masters-arizona-senate-primary">thanks in large part to Trump’s endorsement</a>. But the midterms showed that these candidates’ radicalism turned off normie voters; their use of New Right ideas and language, like describing the American government and social system as a <a href="https://twitter.com/bgmasters/status/1536901131103637504">hostile</a> “<a href="https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1477657565353893898">regime</a>,” was part of the problem.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vGEnea">
|
||
This is a point that Stepman, the NatCon Squad podcast host, acknowledged in her analysis. “I think chaos really is unattractive,” she said. “A lot of the voters who may be persuadable on some of the cultural messaging … are really turned off by, frankly, a lot of the things that we talk about, that I talk about, that I think are really important and true about the country,”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FCidZl">
|
||
If DeSantis wants to consolidate support from the GOP establishment in his bid to topple Trump, he may need to tone down <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/10/06/desantis-hurricane-ian-fox-news-regime-media/">his own employment of New Right tropes</a> — and certainly should avoid endorsing statewide candidates like Vance and Masters who embody the party’s “candidate quality” problem.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="clgeEC">
|
||
The New Right today may soon find itself in a strange situation: Its intellectual center of gravity shifting toward DeSantis and his veneer of normalcy, while Trump’s patronage remains a better bet vaulting its people into the upper echelons of power.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="E2PwGT">
|
||
Is democracy doomed?
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YmDKHu">
|
||
But not everyone on the New Right is willing to countenance moderation, either on policy or rhetoric. Declan Leary, the managing editor of The American Conservative magazine, argued that none of the usual — abortion, Trump, or the GOP’s “candidate quality” problems — should bear the blame for defeat.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8910At">
|
||
The GOP’s problem wasn’t too little moderation, he claims; it was too much.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b06aGQ">
|
||
“The red wave didn’t fail because the GOP leaned too hard into the MAGA movement [or] because of <em>Dobbs</em>,” <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/its-still-about-the-base/">he writes</a>. “The Republican Party lost this week for the same reason it always loses: it’s soft. Up against the party of infanticide and child mutilation and carnage in Ukraine, the best attack it could muster was ‘…Inflation!’”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U9LlJM">
|
||
Leary <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/164408/young-intellectuals-illiberal-revolution-conservatism">hails</a> from a particular element of the New Right: the so-called “integralists,” Catholic arch-conservatives who believe that the United States government should be replaced with a religious Catholic state.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K0XDuI">
|
||
Integralists are a part of a broader <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/9/20750160/liberalism-trump-putin-socialism-reactionary">“postliberal” trend</a> among right-wing intellectuals that traces the cultural decay of American society back to its ruling liberal political philosophy: the doctrine that government should liberate people to pursue their own visions of the good life. Liberalism, they argue, promotes licentiousness and a corrosive individualism: It is the root cause of social ills like drug addiction, “deaths of despair,” and family breakdown.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rImHrt">
|
||
Postliberals believe that instead of protecting individual freedom, government should aim to promote the “common good” or “highest good”: to create a citizenry where people live good lives as defined by scripture and religious doctrine. This leads them to support an even more active role for the state than even the national conservatives, endorsing not only aggressive efforts to legislate morality but also expansions of the welfare state.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4aFdwj">
|
||
From this point of view, the 2022 elections are a particularly bitter pill to swallow. Abandoning pro-life absolutism is not an option for them like it is for some national conservatives. For those integralists unwilling to engage in Leary’s denialism, the dominant reaction to 2022 has been to blame the electorate — and <a href="https://twitter.com/AnthonyMariaOP/status/1590487404800282625">even democracy itself</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RR87Je">
|
||
Take this tweet from Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard and the country’s most formidable integralist intellectual. In his view, Americans are hopelessly in hock to liberal philosophical ideals; the New Right’s attempt to overthrow liberal cultural hegemony at the ballot box is essentially hopeless.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="Mj5Oji">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
It’s funny to see GOP types debating which candidates or issues would have made a difference, when the simplest hypothesis is that there is a critical mass of voters who will support left-liberalism on essentially theological grounds, regardless of the conditions it produces.
|
||
</p>
|
||
— Adrian Vermeule (<span class="citation" data-cites="Vermeullarmine">@Vermeullarmine</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/Vermeullarmine/status/1590356181104877570?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2022</a>
|
||
</blockquote></div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mORkcl">
|
||
This is the wellspring from which Pecknold’s denunciation of democracy — “democracy did not end slavery, and democracy will not end abortion” — flows.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xxDhnB">
|
||
Like most on the broader New Right, integralists and other postliberals see themselves as engaging in a countercultural project: a self-consciously elite effort to foment rebellion against the American mainstream. But their ambitions are even more revolutionary: they want to create the foundation for a wholesale moral restructuring of the American political system — an ambition that Patrick Deneen, a political theorist at Notre Dame and prominent postliberal, describes as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Regime-Change-Toward-Postliberal-Future/dp/0593086902/ref=pd_lutyp_d_rtpb_sccl_1_4/147-8826284-5078829?pd_rd_w=fB1Dm&content-id=amzn1.sym.356b6742-af77-4137-8d9e-8870729df5de&pf_rd_p=356b6742-af77-4137-8d9e-8870729df5de&pf_rd_r=RGK0M8NB1D2E4YK5F81Y&pd_rd_wg=ketwu&pd_rd_r=1ff30353-9575-413c-b57a-fb33b7880fa2&pd_rd_i=0593086902&psc=1">regime change</a>.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QPtIxa">
|
||
Accomplishing such sweeping ends through electoral politics was always a long shot, especially with a country that’s <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/10/7-facts-about-american-catholics/">not-even-close to majority Catholic</a> (and where the overwhelming majority of Catholics <a href="https://apnorc.org/projects/most-catholic-americans-disagree-with-hardline-positions-of-church-leadership/">are not themselves integralists</a>). The end of <em>Roe</em> offered some hope, but even at the time <em>Dobbs </em>was released they criticized the court for <a href="https://iusetiustitium.com/the-price-of-victory-in-kansas/">not going far enough</a>. Pat Smith, one such integralist writer, <a href="https://iusetiustitium.com/bleeding-montana/">claimed vindication</a> after the midterms — and argued, with Vermeule and Pecknold, that democracy should not stand in the way of their goals.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U12bk9">
|
||
“The common good is the common good notwithstanding the will of the people,” he writes. “And the essence of political life is to seek the common good.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cjEoM3">
|
||
But scholarly postliberals are not alone in seeing the midterms as evidence that the New Right should start thinking beyond democracy. A pair of essays on American Greatness, a pro-Trump news commentary site, come to a similar conclusion from a young radical’s perspective.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rgYF9d">
|
||
The first of these articles — ominously titled “<a href="https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/14/the-last-election/">The Last Election?</a>” — focuses on Biden’s overwhelming margins among under-30s as reason for electoral despair. The author, a young pundit named Eric Lendrum, argues that his generation is lost to the GOP — “the indoctrination these children have gone through was too persistent for too long, and it is now part of their very way of life.” As a result, “the slow march of time only pulls us further and further away from the glory of 2016, which is now starting to feel less like the ‘dawn of a new day,’ and instead appears to more closely resemble a last defiant breath.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7j7t5n">
|
||
Lendrum is a radical MAGA type — he had previously written that <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/31/of-reichstags-and-bastilles/">the right should be</a> “celebrating the events of [January 6] as our Storming of the Bastille” — but he’s not alone among the new generation of conservatives. Josiah Lippincott, a PhD student at the right-wing Hillsdale College and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpAA94VUFwU">repeat Fox News guest</a>, argued in a separate election postmortem that the system is simply too rigged against conservatives for victory to be possible.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JpLWFj">
|
||
“The Left utterly dominates every institution of American political life. We are not a republic governed by a constitution but a despotism ruled by an elite class,” <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/15/midterms-made-clear-there-is-no-return-to-pre-2020/">he writes</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XE88yn">
|
||
So what is to be done? It’s worth quoting Lippincott at length:
|
||
</p>
|
||
<blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wtQq2z">
|
||
The partisans of the Right need to lift weights, buy guns, and find comrades. The future of the fight against the latest iteration of global communism requires that young men especially take up the cause of liberty and moral righteousness. They are needed now more than ever. The Boomers, whatever their virtues and vices, do not represent the future.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4L8SUD">
|
||
The Right needs to inspire and motivate the people in ways that only Donald Trump has touched on. It needs to be able to mobilize millions. The mass rally, general strike, and paralyzing protest are the most promising political weapons of the future Right.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JM0rdY">
|
||
Lippincott concludes his piece by favorably comparing the American right to the Afghan militants who would eventually become the Taliban.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FOx45e">
|
||
“The Mujahideen fighters who brought the Soviets to their knees in Afghanistan were outmanned and outgunned. And yet they removed the godless occupiers from their land.” he writes. “The modern American Right should take the same attitude. We are not bound to the four-year election cycle. We fight on God’s time. We will fight for our country, our faith, and our children until we win. God is on our side. Glory be to God.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pSRvvS">
|
||
To be clear, such calls-to-arms are not mainstream even on the New Right, which is far more interested in culture war than actual war. Yet they should not be ignored either: They show how the sense of alienation from mainstream culture that powers the New Right’s politics more broadly can curdle into something even more sinister.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rEV0TL">
|
||
If thinking like this continues to spread on the right’s young cadres, the debates over the future of American conservatism could become even more bitter — and more grim — than they already are.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>The unradical revolution of Robert Greenstein</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="A realistic portrait illustration shows Robert Greenstein, an older white man with short gray hair and mustache, taking off a pair of black-framed glasses to look at the viewer. Behind him is a stylized depiction of clouds and wind in orange and white. The suit he wears is made up of many hands reaching upward, in shades of blue." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sueCY1_VK2aiAgPV0B50pFifvfs=/277x0:2500x1667/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71626009/Vox_November_Highlight_Story_6_Final.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Violeta Encarnacion for Vox
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Robert Greenstein isn’t a household name. But his four-decade career pushing Washington to stitch the safety net has changed the lives of millions of Americans.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3uCk3s">
|
||
When it comes to poverty in America, we have to hold two contradictory thoughts in our heads at the same time.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ozmKRT">
|
||
On the one hand, this is a country that leaves behind too many people. Our <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/701.html">child poverty rate is high</a> compared to our peer countries. Many Americans still don’t have enough to eat, a bed to sleep in, or health care for themselves or their families.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L6egag">
|
||
On the other hand, an accretion of government programs, built up over the last five decades, has created a semblance of a safety net where once there was none. Programs like the earned income tax credit, expanded greatly in the 1990s, put much-needed money in working poor people’s pockets every year. Food stamps, established in the 1960s but made more generous in later decades, have put food on the table for many families. The Affordable Care Act, though still patchy, has nonetheless provided health care for <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/29/new-reports-show-record-35-million-people-enrolled-in-coverage-related-to-the-affordable-care-act.html">the previously uninsured</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JTZGUV">
|
||
This patchwork net isn’t perfect, but it has inarguably made a difference in the lives of millions of low-income people over the decades. And while many hands contributed to that net’s creation, one man is as responsible as anyone for pushing our sclerotic, fractious government in a more humane direction.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="Q0QC0M">
|
||
<q>The odds are that you or someone you know got more services from the government because of Greenstein’s actions</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tNUZ3Q">
|
||
Robert Greenstein is not a household name. But for 40 years, he was one of the most powerful people in Washington, DC, with one of the most surprising jobs. He was the capitol’s de facto lobbyist for the poor, and he won countless fights that cumulatively directed hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars to programs for low-income people. The odds are that you or someone you know got more services from the government — health insurance, more money, food assistance — because of his actions.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y0sIPk">
|
||
In 1981, Greenstein founded the <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/">Center on Budget and Policy Priorities</a>, a think tank to provide rapid-fire analysis of tax and spending proposals, with a focus on how they affected low-income people. Over four decades, he built the Center up into one of Washington’s most influential institutions, insinuating it into the heart of the <a href="https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/">$6 trillion-plus</a> annual federal budget process. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), formerly the top Democrat on the House budget committee, told me that Greenstein and other Center staffers were in his office so much amid the 2011 budget fights it was like their “home away from home.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q0AO7D">
|
||
It has played a major role in growing tax credits for low-income people, in expanding the SNAP (a.k.a. food stamps) and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) nutrition programs, and in passing and defending Obamacare. Perhaps even more important was what it helped prevent from happening: It played a pivotal part in blocking deficit hawks’ efforts to add a balanced budget requirement to the Constitution in the mid-1990s, and in killing George W. Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security in 2005.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YlYkP9">
|
||
If you don’t know Greenstein’s name, that’s not the case in Washington. He inspires intense admiration and personal loyalty from colleagues and policymakers that’s rare in the political world. At Greenstein’s retirement party in 2021, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, “It is my privilege, on behalf of the millions of lives that we know you’ve saved, to say thank you, thank you for lifting people up, for giving them hope.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nf7sb6">
|
||
Greenstein’s impact is obvious in the millions of poor Americans whose lives have been improved by his work.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="Chart of average after-tax and transfer income for the poorest Americans grew from $19,700 in 1979 to $37,700 in 2018. Social programs did much more to raise incomes at the bottom in 2018 than they did in 1979." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sac4hii9ivMOQ_UZU0zJio3Hi70=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24165296/MtNsW_the_safety_net_raises_incomes_for_poor_americans_much_more_today_than_it_did_40_years_ago.png"/> <cite>Data from <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061" target="_blank">Congressional Budget Office</a></cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="45chVi">
|
||
For students of US politics, and anyone trying to achieve major change in the country, the success of Greenstein and the Center raises a big question: How was a relatively small think tank able to make such a big difference in the policy process?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GvGN85">
|
||
Greenstein and the Center succeeded because they did three deeply difficult things very well. They built a reputation for producing rapid but reliable data and analysis, which even their detractors grudgingly respected. They developed one of the most plugged-in lobbying operations in DC by building a reputation for integrity and discretion. And they maintained an obsession with the long-term structure of government, caring more that they were setting up a durable structure for a program than that they got every last dollar they asked for.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DTqXHR">
|
||
Greenstein didn’t practice the politics of <em>The</em> <em>West Wing</em> or cable news. His career was light on grandiose speeches and culture war blow-ups. ”He has this strange ability to be passionate but mellow,” Christopher Edley, a friend from the Carter administration, observes. His politics was the politics that happens when few people outside DC are looking: in cramped Hill offices and late-night vote-a-rama sessions, with spreadsheets rather than bullhorns.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RqylHS">
|
||
That style of politics is not particularly fashionable these days. Old establishment conservatives willing to cut a deal — people like Greenstein’s recently deceased frequent collaborators Sens. Bob Dole (R-KS) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) — have been replaced by preening insurgents. The left has gone from plying the art of the possible in the Reagan and Clinton years to maximalist demands like Medicare-for-all and a Green New Deal.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ugmh7C">
|
||
Amid that evolution, Greenstein carved out, year after year, a space for the poor in US policymaking. For all the work the US still needs to do, the last five decades have in fact seen a massive rise in government’s anti-poverty role. He was <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/press/press-releases/cbpp-announces-sharon-parrott-as-new-president">succeeded</a> as president of the Center at the end of 2020 by longtime Center analyst Sharon Parrott, and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution — as close to retired as he’ll likely ever get. His legacy is a career that shows advocates and policymakers how the inside game in DC gets played — and how it can be bent to work for the least advantaged Americans.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="WT7XC1">
|
||
The path to power
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9kdqvV">
|
||
Robert Greenstein does not seem like the kind of guy who could influence hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in government spending over the decades. He’s a quiet, unassuming man, with a soft voice and a neatly trimmed mustache. He likes seeing old French and Italian movies at local theaters (<em>Bob le Flambeur</em> is a favorite). In their spare time, he and his wife have adopted and cared for a number of feral cats from their neighborhood.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NPdWBJ">
|
||
Early in life, Greenstein wanted to change the world the way many young idealists, then and now, want to change it: through protest and organizing. He was born in 1946 in Philadelphia, to a family of “FDR/Adlai Stevenson Democrats,” and while he was involved in peace activism as a teen, he credits his political awakening to his experience in “Vietnam Summer,” a coordinated period of youth activism against the war, which took place after he graduated from Harvard in 1967. “I was working directly with people who had been deeply involved in the civil rights movement,” he recalls. “They were different from anybody I’d known.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bsJWbM">
|
||
He spent the next year at the London School of Economics, but returned for antiwar work in 1968. He briefly moved to UC Berkeley for a PhD in American history but decided academia was not for him, and worked for a summer for one of Ralph Nader’s “Nader’s Raiders” activist groups.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="iTndc4">
|
||
<q>“Greenstein’s Project on Food Assistance and Poverty stood out as one of the few antipoverty organizations that was successfully pushing back against Reagan’s policies”</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hnFHJ5">
|
||
In 1972, Greenstein landed a position at the Community Nutrition Institute, a small anti-hunger nonprofit. It was a pivotal experience, connecting him with a small community of DC hunger activists and, eventually, with a liberal Minnesota Congress member named<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/09/obituaries/bob-bergland-dies.html"> Bob Bergland</a>. When Bergland became secretary of agriculture under Jimmy Carter in 1977, Greenstein followed him into government, where he worked for a few years until Carter lost reelection in 1980.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zpHY5C">
|
||
In 1981 DC, there weren’t many organizations doing rapid-fire policy analysis. The Brookings Institution was fairly academic, publishing more books than short articles. The Urban Institute and Rand Corporation focused on consulting work for the federal government. None of them had lobbying operations, or even took institutional positions on issues.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NG62ca">
|
||
As historian Suzanne Kahn recounts in <a href="https://www.openphilanthropy.org/wp-content/uploads/Case_Study_Center_on_Budget_and_Policy_Priorities.pdf">her history of the Center</a>, the key actor in the Center’s origin was the Field Foundation, a small, now-defunct funder then run by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/us/politics/richard-boone-johnson-aide-on-poverty-dies-at-86.">Dick Boone</a>, who had been a leading figure in Lyndon Johnson’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/01/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-war-on-poverty/">War on Poverty</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="weBVdx">
|
||
Even before Greenstein left the administration, Field Board President John Kramer (an old mentor of Greenstein’s from the anti-hunger world) had reached out to ask if he would be interested if “the Field Foundation would be willing to give you a grant to start a new nonprofit to try to work to safeguard the anti-hunger programs when Reagan comes in.” Greenstein agreed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aJtLMV">
|
||
He proceeded to set up the Project on Food Assistance and Poverty. “Remarkably quickly, the Project on Food Assistance and Poverty — which consisted of only Greenstein and two staff members — had a real impact on public policy,” Kahn writes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="tyRBYs">
|
||
<q>For 40 years, he was one of the most powerful people in Washington, DC</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ncH0NM">
|
||
As Greenstein told her, when Reagan’s first budget proposal (the so-called Black Book) came down, Greenstein immediately reached out to Bob Dole, who, despite being a conservative Republican, was a strong supporter of food stamps and had been a key force in expanding them under Carter.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="edIJzl">
|
||
“Dole asked me to give him, by the next day, one-two page analyses of what I thought were the most damaging cuts for poor people in the Black Book,” Greenstein told Kahn (he confirmed this story to me as well). “I did that and Dole read them, asked a few questions, went downtown, and the next day Dole called me and told me he had met with [Reagan budget chief David] Stockman and gotten half of the cuts to food stamps contained in the Black Book removed.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7vb0Rf">
|
||
Of Boone and his aide Rob Stein at the Field Foundation, Kahn writes, “Greenstein’s Project on Food Assistance and Poverty stood out as one of the few antipoverty organizations that was successfully pushing back against Reagan’s policies. Stein and Boone believed this was because of Greenstein’s grasp of the budget process.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GwKI44">
|
||
Later in 1981, the Project evolved into the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), launched with Field money and with Greenstein as director.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="uDEXRu">
|
||
The little think tank that could
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fhvIxP">
|
||
History isn’t a randomized control trial, so I do not know exactly what the world would’ve looked like if Bob Greenstein had never worked in politics. But the alphabet soup of programs he had a hand in — SNAP (food stamps), LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program), the EITC (earned income tax credit), the CTC (child tax credit), the ACA (Affordable Care Act a.k.a. Obamacare), to name just a few — suggests an enduring impact.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="Chart shows pre-pandemic enrollment in safety net programs in the US. The most-used program is Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), with 73 million average monthly users. Head Start is at the bottom with 1 million users." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4zNyyGdYRgqLE0u6k-3y3TFstlI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24165293/u7Pu4_us_safety_net_programs_provide_assistance_to_tens_of_millions_of_people.png"/> <cite>Data from <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-social-insurance-system-in-the-u-s-policies-to-protect-workers-and-families/" target="_blank">The Hamilton Project</a></cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gadB5r">
|
||
That impact was the fruit of Greenstein’s and the CBPP’s hard-earned reputation for quickly delivering reliable data and analysis.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SvTKMI">
|
||
“We all were admirers of Bob Greenstein — the president, the first lady,” recalled Melanne Verveer, a top aide to first lady Hillary Clinton from 1993 to 2000 who worked with Greenstein at the Center’s inception. “He could take this formidable amount of data and boil it down in a way that created the most compelling fact sheets.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W1t5iw">
|
||
That reputation proved pivotal in one of the most consequential policy fights of the 1990s. During his campaign, then-candidate Bill Clinton <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/My_Life/PVmJqiW4mpMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA36&printsec=frontcover">repeated a pledge</a> at his campaign stops: “No one with children who works full-time should live in poverty.” The tool to make that pledge reality was an increase in the EITC, a provision supplementing earnings for the working poor <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44825.pdf">first introduced in 1975</a> and gradually expanded in 1986 and 1990.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="uoWs58">
|
||
<q>“He could take this formidable amount of data and boil it down in a way that created the most compelling fact sheets”</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UOErpz">
|
||
Once Clinton took office, fights between Gene Sperling, an economic adviser pushing for a big EITC increase, and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, a moderate former Texas senator advocating for less, flared up. Bentsen’s team came up with an expanded EITC proposal — but Sperling, armed with analysis from the CBPP, argued vociferously that their plan fell short of the campaign pledge.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7U4GmV">
|
||
“Bentsen says, ‘Says who?’” Sperling told me. “I said, ‘Well, says Bob Greenstein!’ And another person at the table says, ‘I wasn’t aware Senator Greenstein had a vote on the Finance Committee.’”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NfuNiM">
|
||
“Well, maybe,” Sperling responded. “But he is the person everybody is going to go to to determine whether we met [the promise].”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7fKNER">
|
||
Crucially, President Clinton agreed with Sperling. “The president kind of gets serious and he says, ‘Well, he’s right. Bob Greenstein is the single most respected person on this. He will be considered the referee on whether we’ve met the goal or not.’”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="chKy4B">
|
||
The process led to several more weeks of arguments and analyses (many by longtime Center analyst Isaac Shapiro), culminating in a hard-hitting CBPP paper that prompted the White House to redesign its proposal. “I messengered [the paper] to Melanne Verveer, who I’d known for years,” Greenstein told me. “And I put a note on it, in which I said, ‘I will be releasing this later this week to the press. My preference would be for you to withdraw your proposal and redo it.’”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2TglDk">
|
||
The White House withdrew the proposal; Greenstein and team were at the White House the next day to help design a new one.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="iebgWH">
|
||
<q>The change in the EITC reduced the poverty rate among less-educated single mothers by 7 percentage points</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4k0wGn">
|
||
Their plan was enacted. By 1996, when their expanded EITC was fully phased in, the maximum tax benefit for families with two or more kids had <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/eitc-parameters">more than doubled</a>. Subsequent research found the change <a href="https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/Hoynes-Patel-EITC-Income-11-30-16.pdf">reduced the poverty rate among less-educated single mothers</a> by 7 percentage points, a significant fall from the 30.8 percent poverty rate in that group in 1993, and <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20120179">substantially improved infant health</a> in poor families.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3WqIAP">
|
||
A decade later, another Democratic White House leaned heavily on Greenstein and his team.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xPFzHD">
|
||
In 2008, Jason Furman (himself a former CBPP staffer) was Barack Obama’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-obama-economy/obama-taps-former-clinton-aide-for-economy-team-idUSN0927204620080609">top campaign adviser on economic issues</a>. The campaign began preparing a stimulus package to deal with the economic collapse, which threatened to send poverty soaring as unemployment neared double-digits and millions faced foreclosure or eviction.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SdJl8I">
|
||
From the beginning, Greenstein and the Center were a major part of that process. playing a key role in designing the antipoverty provisions of the 2009 stimulus, Furman told me. The stimulus included expanded support for Medicaid, additional unemployment and SNAP benefits, and expansions to the earned income and child tax credits.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vIVkPC">
|
||
Jack Lew, who was also working on the transition and would later become Treasury Secretary under Obama, told me that the team internalized Greenstein’s lesson to treat programs like SNAP as stimulus. “If you could increase the amount of money on a SNAP card, you knew that money was going to get into the economy,” he recalled.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="2sxBsE">
|
||
<q>Greenstein possessed a knack for knowing who might support what, and who might yield to persuasion</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b0rAfs">
|
||
“In November or December, I called Bob Greenstein and said, what should we put in it for low-income [people]?” Furman recalled. “He’s like, ‘Let me get back to you in a day or two.’ He and the key people inside CBPP came out with a recommendation for us. I told him, ‘We’re actually thinking of a much larger package. You need to come back to me with something bigger.’ And he then came back and doubled or tripled the size. And that is almost exactly what we did” in the ultimate bill.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eZUs6p">
|
||
One theme kept coming up in my conversations with policymakers about Greenstein. It wasn’t always mentioned explicitly, but it was apparent that Greenstein and his team weren’t mere number crunchers; they also possessed an uncanny knack for knowing who the different players are, who might support what, who might yield to persuasion.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nxyf5k">
|
||
In other words, they were some of DC’s best lobbyists.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6hdk5L">
|
||
“When I was in the White House, I would get called by Ellen [Nissenbaum, CBPP’s chief lobbyist, who’d say], ‘This senator is going to do this on the EITC or that on SNAP,’” Furman told me. “And then I checked with our leg[islative] affairs team and they’d be like, ‘I didn’t know that.’ And then a few hours later I hear from my leg affairs team, ‘Oh yeah, it’s true.’”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZL1zfk">
|
||
That kind of extreme situational awareness enabled the Center to modulate how hard to push, and for what.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2mcvGj">
|
||
Greenstein recalls a disagreement in 2001 between him and other antipoverty advocates about the first Bush tax cuts bill. At the time, the child tax credit was largely what’s called nonrefundable: You could claim it if you owed income tax, but not if you earned too little money to owe income taxes. Given that in 2000 some 28 percent of households didn’t owe income tax (per <a href="http://davidsplinter.com/Splinter-NoTaxAndProgressivity.xlsx">economist David Splinter’s data</a>), that was a severe limitation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cYakMj">
|
||
Maximalist advocates in 2001 thought that they could <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20010513071604/http://cdfactioncouncil.org/refundable_child_tax_credit.htm">push the Bush tax cut bill to make the credit fully refundable</a>: Every child would get the $1,000 credit, even if their family was too poor to owe income taxes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="yWJj9o">
|
||
<q>This kind of incrementalism has frustrated critics of CBPP from the left</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hyxc5p">
|
||
Officials at the Center thought this was overly optimistic because Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. “If I remember right, it wasn’t even under discussion among key policymakers,” Nissenbaum told me.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fGUtwN">
|
||
But moderate Republican senators like Jim Jeffords and Olympia Snowe were telling the Center that they thought they could achieve partial refundability. Sure enough, that’s what the 2001 bill ultimately included: The credit became partially refundable, with a complex phase-in starting for families earning at least $10,000 in income. It wasn’t perfect, but it was what Nissenbaum’s intelligence was telling the Center was possible.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QL8WOB">
|
||
That kind of incrementalism has frustrated critics of CBPP from the left, who see it as a myopic approach to policymaking. But Greenstein and team do have the long view in mind; it just manifests in a different approach to policymaking.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bYZHtS">
|
||
Greenstein spent much of his time at the Center fighting over numbers: how many billions will go to food stamps, housing aid, or tax credit expansions. But he views his work trying to alter the structure of government spending as even more important.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tAehmn">
|
||
Take the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act of 1985. That bill, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowsher_v._Synar">swiftly declared unconstitutional</a> by the Supreme Court and largely forgotten now, sought to guarantee balanced budgets by threatening automatic across-the-board budget cuts if Congress did not restrain spending and/or raise taxes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dlYdO0">
|
||
But the Act included extensive carve-outs exempting most programs for low-income people from the sequestration. Lew, then working for House Speaker Tip O’Neill, and Wendell Primus, then working on the House Ways and Means Committee, both credit Greenstein and the Center for formulating those exceptions, protecting the poor from the budget ax.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VjWhYg">
|
||
The legacy of that work became apparent later on. In 2011, the Congress again adopted a plan for automatic sequestration cuts, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/02/20/the-sequester-absolutely-everything-you-could-possibly-need-to-know-in-one-faq/">which took effect in 2013</a>. But because of the precedent set in 1985, the spending cuts again left low-income programs untouched — a reminder that structures tend to endure even as spending levels change.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="OK4RpI">
|
||
The limits and promise of the inside game
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0RUAHr">
|
||
If you ever need a pick-me-up, I highly recommend calling up people in DC and asking them about Bob Greenstein. Just about everyone he’s worked with, on either side of the aisle, responds with enthusiastic acclaim and respect, and stories of times when his work made a difference.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7xCPpy">
|
||
Former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told me that Bob and the Center’s arguments were pivotal in persuading him to vote against the Balanced Budget Amendment in the 1990s — which is notable given that the amendment failed to pass the Senate by a single vote.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pvK9sb">
|
||
Chuck Blahous, who was the George W. Bush administration’s top aide in its Social Security reform push in 2005, told me, “Seemingly every time we put something out, Bob, Jason [Furman], and the CBPP team were ready with rapidly composed and influential attacks.” He didn’t even seem mad about it, just spoke with resigned awe.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zlaVn3">
|
||
“I don’t think there was anybody who was as difficult to try to make an effective case against, or make an effective case to support some conservative issue to, as Bob,” Ron Haskins, who was a top staffer on welfare issues in the House from 1986 to 2000, told me.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZEqXmr">
|
||
Chris Edley, now an influential legal scholar and interim dean of UC Berkeley’s education school, worked with Greenstein to design the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) in the Carter administration. He began our phone call by abruptly declaring, “Bob Greenstein is a great American!”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="D4JTSz">
|
||
<q>To his critics on the left, he was an accommodator, not a warrior</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uDlctp">
|
||
But you don’t swing billions in federal spending without earning at least a few critics.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="POhMis">
|
||
Greenstein founded the Center at a pivotal moment in American political history. The “liberal consensus” that had defined national politics since FDR was coming apart at its seams. Where previous presidents like Eisenhower and Nixon had actually fought for more spending programs — as in the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/01/eisenhower-approves-expanded-social-security-coverage-sept-1-1954-799178">former’s massive Social Security expansion</a> and the latter’s <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691177977/the-failed-welfare-revolution">unsuccessful push for a guaranteed income</a> — the Reagan administration was a different animal.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KyD9f8">
|
||
In his first year, Reagan signed into law a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Budget_Reconciliation_Act_of_1981">spending bill</a> featuring a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1540-5850.00549">22.2 percent overall cut</a> in welfare program budgets. Where Nixon and Eisenhower were basically indifferent to tax cuts, Reagan <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/starving-beast">slashed rates across the board</a>, bringing the rate for top earners from 70 to 50 percent.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2qvzgV">
|
||
America had taken a hard rightward turn on economic issues, and most distressing of all to the left, the turn appeared to be <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/abs/popular-origins-of-neoliberalism-in-the-reagan-tax-cut-of-1981/33007D77CF60888719A6A4BE31FAA167">broadly popular with voters</a>. Reagan was reelected by a crushing 18-point margin. His vice president easily won the race to succeed him. Democrats only became a viable national party again after following public opinion rightward under Bill Clinton, who pledged on the campaign trail to “end welfare as we know it” and<a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/6/20/11789988/clintons-welfare-reform"> followed through in office</a>. (Greenstein pushed for Clinton to veto; that battle he lost.)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qFMYZW">
|
||
Greenstein spent most of his career carving out incremental but significant wins for America’s poorest people in an extremely unfavorable environment. To his sympathizers, among whom I count myself, he made the best he could out of an incredibly difficult situation. Things could have been much worse without him.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="Chart of child poverty, measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure, fell from 20.7 percent in 1967 to 12.8 percent in 2019. Government programs did much more to reduce the poverty rate in 2019 than 1967." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zw1I-a1rHns1JZhDU3yxBj7xXQk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24165301/GzIZN_the_safety_net_barely_reduced_child_poverty_in_1967_but_reduced_it_drastically_in_2019.png"/> <cite>Data from <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/historical-spm-data" target="_blank">Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy</a></cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jYFQHk">
|
||
Just days before final congressional passage of the 1996 welfare bill, for instance, the bill was written such that it would not merely throw millions off cash welfare, but also take away many of those people’s Medicaid coverage at the same time. An intervention from the Center helped strip that provision, so most people losing welfare could at least retain their Medicaid coverage. Those wins matter.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GiO5YK">
|
||
To his critics on the left though, he symbolized a willingness to accommodate America’s rightward shift rather than attempt to undo it. He was an accommodator, they argue, not a warrior.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="owQ137">
|
||
“Providing technical assistance so lawmakers can do what they are already wanting to do is fine of course,” Matt Bruenig, the founder of the People’s Policy Project and a prominent critic of Greenstein from the socialist left, told me. “But lots of people can do that. So the question is what independent effect did Bob have on the trajectory of the US welfare state? It seems like the answer is very little precisely because of the timidity of his approach.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UnNf2S">
|
||
This claim strikes me as overly cynical. It’s not actually true that lots of people can provide rapid-fire technical assistance to lawmakers, and it certainly was not true in the era before government spending data was all available online. Policymakers have cited numerous instances to me when the intervention of Bob and the Center did have an independent effect and meaningfully changed the safety net. I’m inclined to believe them.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="33v9le">
|
||
<q>Ours is a future where transformative change may not be in the offing</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cYRbi9">
|
||
But it’s true that the US welfare state did not come to equal that of our European peers during Greenstein’s tenure. I have my doubts that any political strategy could have transformed America into Denmark over the last 40 years, but some critics argue the Center should have done more to try.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lmN7LI">
|
||
Shawn Fremstad, director of law and political economy and senior adviser at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a veteran staffer at CBPP in the 1990s and 2000s, has a lot of personal respect for Greenstein and the organization. But he argues that from a left perspective, the group’s tactical efforts needed to at the very least be supplemented by a more aggressive push for a broader, Scandinavian-style safety net.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B0ARzt">
|
||
“We needed more than really good number crunching and rapid response,” Fremstad told me. “We needed groups that were able to stand back and look at the big-picture narrative.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yS10BH">
|
||
It’s a debate about how change happens that’s as old as politics. Ron Pollack, founder of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) and the health care group Families USA, has known Greenstein since the early 1970s. Pollack was once a lawyer for the National Welfare Rights Organization, a group trying to organize mostly low-income Black women to fight for more benefits. By the late 2000s, he was helping broker meetings between health advocates, the health insurance lobby, and the pharmaceutical lobby for what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4qhpTK">
|
||
He views all these as part of the same fight to expand government aid to people in need, and in Greenstein sees someone who made a similar calculation (though Greenstein has largely eschewed working with corporate lobbies). “Bob and I countless times would talk about this and we would lament our good friends who wanted to go for the whole enchilada on different bills,” Pollack told me. “And it meant you’d not get the whole enchilada. You wouldn’t get a morsel.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FSysLZ">
|
||
Greenstein is a pretty calm guy. The most passionate I’ve seen him get is in response to the critique that he hasn’t pushed enough.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uiQXpX">
|
||
“I have a strong moral view,” Greenstein told me, as though delivering a sermon. “Mine is, if you have the ability to win advances that make the lives of millions of poor people and poor children better, then it’s verboten to leave them on the table, unless leaving them on the table means that in not-too-long order you come back and get something bigger.“
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F0n97C">
|
||
This is, in many ways, the core of the Greenstein ethos. Notching incremental advances is not a moral failing, it’s what moral seriousness looks like. What’s morally unserious is demanding a full loaf, being offered half, and rejecting it in favor of nothing.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uz04qv">
|
||
Of course that has to exist alongside a longer-term vision. You need both the activist and the accountant, both the person picketing and the person crunching numbers. But without the latter, you miss out on really important gains and open yourself up to potentially devastating losses.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5a87TE">
|
||
In 2019, when those on the Democratic Party’s left were letting themselves get carried away with the idea of passing Medicare-for-all and a Green New Deal, it was <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/04/10/wendell-primus-the-most-powerful-staffer-in-congress-represents-a-generational-divide-on-the-left/">easy to see figures like Greenstein as the enemy</a>, as cautious foes of transformative change. After the last two years, however, that pre-pandemic moment of wide-eyed optimism on the left seems more like a fever dream.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qNLyo7">
|
||
Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema set the limits on what Democrats could do in power, and soon the average member of Congress will be more conservative than either of them. Forget Medicare-for-all; progressives will be lucky if <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/3/23435346/supreme-court-medicaid-health-hospital-corporation-indiana-talevski">Medicare as it exists</a> avoids cuts next year.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LK9M7B">
|
||
Ours is a future where transformative change may not be in the offing. The uncompromising idealist will be spoiling for the fight. But the incrementalist may be who we need to eke out some wins for the vulnerable.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mJPuI7">
|
||
<em><strong>Correction, November 16, 10:20 am:</strong></em><em> A previous version misstated the role of Isaac Shapiro in CBPP work. Much of the analysis in the Center’s EITC proposal was done by him.</em>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<aside id="781p9b">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<div id="f811lZ">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
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|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kosovo-Serbia flare-up fears over car number plate row</strong> - Kosovo agrees to delay issuing fines for Serbian licence plates, but there is no sign of a deal.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>World Cup 2022: Virgil van Dijk hits back at criticism over OneLove armband row</strong> - Netherlands captain Virgil van Dijk hits back at criticism of European teams for deciding not to wear the OneLove armband at the World Cup.</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nintendo goes after fan-made custom Steam “icons” with DMCA takedowns</strong> - SteamGridDB images for five Switch games could “lead to consumer confusion.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899399">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Meta cracks down on teen “sextortion” on Facebook, Instagram</strong> - Teens will finally have a way to proactively stop the spread of intimate images. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899386">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Calling all space nerds: New documentary Good Night Oppy will give you all the feels</strong> - Ars chats with director Ryan White about recreating Mars from rover’s perspective, and more. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899171">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pfizer CEO claims 400% price hike on COVID vaccines will be “free”</strong> - Insurance companies will pay more, potentially leading to higher premiums. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899355">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year</strong> - Layoffs reportedly hit the Alexa team hard as the company’s biggest money loser. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899259">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<ul>
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||
<li><strong>What do you think is history’s SHORTEST joke? My submission is Miss Piggy’s 2 worder :</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Pretentious? …<em>MOI ?”</em>
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/uglypaperhaver"> /u/uglypaperhaver </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z1igmq/what_do_you_think_is_historys_shortest_joke_my/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z1igmq/what_do_you_think_is_historys_shortest_joke_my/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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||
<li><strong>A Sexy Girl in a Party Asked a Retired Army Colonel:When did you last have sex ?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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||
<div class="md">
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||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Colonel:1955.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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She Said: That Was So Long Ago ! Wanna Have Some Now ?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The Colonel Looked at His Watch: Sure, Why Not Its Only 2130 !!!
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/rest_in_war"> /u/rest_in_war </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z1ix88/a_sexy_girl_in_a_party_asked_a_retired_army/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z1ix88/a_sexy_girl_in_a_party_asked_a_retired_army/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>How do you tell the difference between an English major, a Math major, and a programmer?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Ask them what “!” is
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/da_dragon_guy"> /u/da_dragon_guy </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z1d36a/how_do_you_tell_the_difference_between_an_english/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z1d36a/how_do_you_tell_the_difference_between_an_english/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>On her deathbed, Morton’s wife had one last wish.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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||
<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Dearest Morton, when I’m gone I want you to go on and live your life to the fullest and meet someone new. I want you to give her my jewellry, my wedding ring, and my Parisian dresses.”
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||
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“I can’t do that..” says Morton. His wife insists, “Oh, but you must! You must!”
|
||
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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He replies, “No, I really can’t - You’re a size 17 and she wears a size 10.”
|
||
</p>
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||
</div>
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||
<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/KeckyOK"> /u/KeckyOK </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z12nkw/on_her_deathbed_mortons_wife_had_one_last_wish/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z12nkw/on_her_deathbed_mortons_wife_had_one_last_wish/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>An old man calls his son and says, “Listen, your mother and I are getting divorced. Forty-five years of misery is enough.”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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||
“Dad, what are you talking about?” the son screams.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,” he says. “I’m sick of her face, and I’m sick of talking about this, so call your sister and tell her,” and he hangs up.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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||
Now, the son is worried. He calls his sister. She says, “Like hell they’re getting divorced!” She calls their father immediately. “You’re not getting divorced! Don’t do another thing. The two of us are flying home tomorrow to talk about this. Until then, don’t call a lawyer, don’t file a paper. DO YOU HEAR ME?” She hangs up the phone.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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||
The old man turns to his wife and says, "Okay, they’re both coming for Christmas and paying their own airfares.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/OrdosDeluxe"> /u/OrdosDeluxe </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z0v1ow/an_old_man_calls_his_son_and_says_listen_your/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/z0v1ow/an_old_man_calls_his_son_and_says_listen_your/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
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