Huss Banai

@hbanai.bsky.social

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Associate professor of international studies at Indiana University-Bloomington. Co-Editor, Int'l Studies Review. Politics & history (liberalism, democracy, some Iran), gardening, and strings. Working on a book project on enmity.

hussbanai.info

Posts Replies Media

The private equity conservative elite factory that is Amy Chua…

Couldn’t agree more. My wife and I have published in both national and local papers (she on repro rights and I on Iran), and the feedback/engagements we’ve received from local readers easily outweigh those of national papers each time.

Scholars often ask me what they can do, and this is a tangible thing. State and local media are, in particular, hungry for opinion pieces from experts. Lots of people targeting that media is more effective than lots of people trying to land that one NYT op-ed

“Art restorers use the term photodegradation to describe the process by which a painting fades. The colors remain present; they just become less vivid. That’s the Joe Biden story.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Biden Fadeswww.theatlantic.com His pathos should not become America’s tragedy.

Remarkable how many political scientists and policy-adjacent people think differential press coverage is why Biden is in this mess and why Trump is winning. The fact that one side might be good at politics and another abysmal seems completely lost.

Republicans are happiest about this press conference performance. Good enough to make Team Biden dig in, unconvincing enough to not change anyone’s impression of him as day-to-day.

Camp Biden is going to see this as a decisive moment that demonstrated his competency and why he should stay. This just got a lot uglier.

An IG post from Taylor Swift and this thing will be wrapped up by Friday.

It’s easy to minimize this as “it’s Clooney so what?” but precisely because it’s Clooney this op-ed has the potential to trickle down to voters who haven’t been paying attention to the 2024 race.

The main issue is with Biden’s poor campaign not the debate performance. The latter just exposed how nonchalance the whole team has been. They’ve only just woken up

"What the report finds is that Biden held on to 94% of the people who said they would support him before the debate. For Trump, 86% of people who said they would support him before the debate said they would do so after the debate." news.northeastern.edu/2024/07/09/b...

Biden's poor debate performance had almost no impact on voter preference, new report saysnews.northeastern.edu A new report shows that despite Biden’s debate performance – poor as it may have been – voter preferences haven't been impacted.

As if all the SCOTUS decisions since RBG’s just-for-symbolism departure gamble taught them nothing

“The idea that we are going to slow walk into fascism because we don’t want to hurt somebody that we respect’s feelings?” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on Armed Services. “I cannot even begin to tell you how angry that makes me.” www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/u...

Top Democrats, Swallowing Fears About Biden’s Candidacy, Remain Behind Himwww.nytimes.com Lawmakers in the House and Senate met privately to hash out their concerns about President Biden’s viability, but leaders emerged from two separate meetings pledging allegiance to their candidate.

Mitch McConnell snatched two supreme court seats using these tactics, and Trump is a far more reliable transactional liar than McConnell ever was.

"Imagine a world in which GOP president Donald Trump vetoes the national abortion ban that is sent by a GOP Congress. You cannot imagine that world, because it doesn't exist." On the pod, D strategist Jess McIntosh is brilliant on Trump's softening GOP platform scam: newrepublic.com/article/1835...

Shocker: Trump’s Sudden New Abortion Shift Turns Out to Be a Big Scamnewrepublic.com With Trump abruptly moving to soften the GOP platform on abortion, a leading defender of reproductive rights explains why the move is a big con—and reveals Trump's weakness on the issue.

But the thing that needed saying is about his fitness for office and the impending doom if he chooses to stay on. How this amounts to “sniping” and “sheer pettiness” is beyond me. But it does clarify the the lack of imagination at work here.

So, I said what I thought needed saying about Biden, hating every minute as I did. One thing I won’t do, however, is snipe at him if he chooses to stay in. Anyone who does that is in effect campaigning for Trump — and doing so out of sheer pettiness.

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Huss Banai

What are the big takeaways from Iran's election? @claryc.bsky.social asks @hbanai.bsky.social how we should even think about the Iranian presidency, what we know about the winner Masoud Pezeshkian, the potential succession plan for the Supreme Leader of #Iran, and more:

My thoughts/explainer on Iran's non-democratic elections. goodauthority.org/news/iranian... With thanks to @goodauth.bsky.social @claryc.bsky.social @profsaunders.bsky.social

Iranian voters picked a moderate presidentgoodauthority.org Iranians just voted in the moderate candidate, not the ultraconservative on the presidential ballot.

My thoughts/explainer on Iran's non-democratic elections. goodauthority.org/news/iranian... With thanks to @goodauth.bsky.social @claryc.bsky.social @profsaunders.bsky.social

Iranian voters picked a moderate presidentgoodauthority.org Iranians just voted in the moderate candidate, not the ultraconservative on the presidential ballot.

+1. My @goodauth.bsky.social explainer forthcoming.

Given how little power Iran’s President has, this wildly overstates the case: “Pezeshkian’s electoral success has rejuvenated the marginalised reformist camp.” on.ft.com/3WbTJEF

Masoud Pezeshkian: Iranian reformer who wants to end his country’s nuclear stand-offon.ft.com Heart surgeon turned president pledges reform of system millions of his compatriots believe can’t be changed

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Huss Banai

Reply to

Jacob T. Levy

It's the lukewarm resistance to fascism that I just can't stomach. At the moment he's literally the only hope the States has, and he's like, "Well I'm gonna give it my best and if I fail, oh well!" Nah, dude, get the flamethrowers and your favorite sunglasses and burn this mother down!

Height of irresponsibility and shortsightedness by Biden. It only makes his inevitable exit messier and diminish his stature as a surrogate for the eventual nominee.

Breaking News: President Biden insisted he was staying in the race in a forceful speech at a campaign event in Wisconsin, calling Donald Trump a liar and a threat to democracy. “I’m not letting one 90-minute debate wipe out three-and-a-half years of work.”

Election Live Updates: In Wisconsin, a Defiant Biden Says ‘I’m Staying in the Race’www.nytimes.com The brief speech kicked off a weekend that could be make-or-break for President Biden’s campaign, including a high-stakes ABC News interview that will air in prime time on Friday.

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Huss Banai

That Trump is an authoritarian, a racist, a rapist, a fraudster, a liar, and intellectually incoherent is treated on this site as a sufficient reason to ignore Biden’s age. But it also seems a pretty good reason to want a Democratic candidate who can *beat Trump.*

Picked up Corey Brettschneider’s important latest book yesterday. I’m biased as one of Corey’s former PhD students, but this book is a terrific antidote to despair in these dark times for democracy. Place your order here: www.amazon.com/Presidents-P...

Corey Brettschneider: “The danger of immunity for criminal “official” action is that it protects the enormous power of the president when it is used for the most nefarious political ends, threatening the very existence of democracy.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling mocks the rule of law | Corey Brettschneiderwww.theguardian.com Citizens must make this presidential election about rescuing our democracy from authoritarianism

Steve Bullock or Mark Warner.

So Politics Bluesky: If Kamala runs, who should her VP nom be?

In reality, the response is often magical thinking before anything else. And I can't recall a time with a heavier volume of magical thinking after a political campaign event.

The answer to political anxiety is political organizing.

Harris-Warner 2024.

Donald Trump now leads President Biden by six percentage points among likely voters after last week’s debate, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College showed.

Trump Widens Lead After Biden’s Debate Debacle, Times/Siena Poll Findswww.nytimes.com Donald Trump is ahead of President Biden by six percentage points among likely voters in a new national survey. Overall, 74 percent of voters view him as too old for the job, an uptick since the debat...

Concerns with Biden aren’t just with his age, but with the appallingly bad campaign they’ve been running to date. And concerns about the latter are directly related to voters’ best shot at addressing SCOTUS overreach through the ballot box. NYT editorial choices are not the problem right now.

You can have concerns about Biden's age, but still be absolutely appalled about editorial choices that convey the issue as more important than the Supreme Court offering a pre-emptive thumbs up to a criminal presidency

Let’s face it, this has been a horrendously mediocre campaign org for some time, long before Biden’s senescence became the central concern. There’s a strong case for switching nominees simply on the grounds of the quality of this campaign team, which of course isn’t unconnected to the principal.

That Biden is the most pro-labor president in the lifetime of virtually every voter is something he should be vigorously campaigning to reelection on, not a fact-check people toss into mentions of skeptics wondering why it isn't leading coverage.

Very good thread. I would soften the second point: it’s less about thinking that a switch can solve things for Dems than thinking a switch is a better gamble to take given the trajectory of things to this point with both Biden’s decline and Trump’s ongoing political rehabilitation.

What I'm suggesting here isn't intended as a criticism of any of these camps, but to point out that *regardless* of where you stand it's not really about if we see a lot of movement in the polls. It's about if a) you think Biden is underperforming, period and b) you think a switch can solve that.

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Huss Banai

Weekend Reading: I wrote about the pre-history of Trump’s rise, the nature of Trumpism, and the radical politics of white despair – based on John Ganz’s masterful new book “When the Clock Broke” The Origins of Trumpism and the Birth of the Present. 🧵1/ thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/the-origin...

These numbers don’t and can’t factor in voter flight due to Biden’s inevitable precipitous decline between now and November.

Terrific review essay on literary tradition, criticism, and the mythical method. harpers.org/archive/2024...

Yesterday’s Men, by Alan Jacobsharpers.org The death of the mythical method

"The nation is tired of malaise, but not that tired. The result will be the election of a continuity government, further disappointment and only then an acceptance of uncomfortable change." on.ft.com/3XEAS6q

Britain’s big election will be the one after thison.ft.com Rethinking Brexit, the triple lock and other follies isn’t politically viable now but will be in 2029

Remarkable how little thought about the role of debate hosts and quality of questions goes into pre-debate commentaries. Might it not be wise to consider what questions to ask a serial liar and a convicted felon? www.nytimes.com/2024/06/23/u...

For Biden and Trump, a Debate Rematch With Even Greater Risks and Rewardswww.nytimes.com The matchup on Thursday will be the earliest presidential debate in American history, and any potential missteps could linger for weeks or months.