Perry Bacon

@perrybaconjr.bsky.social

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Government, policy and elections writer. Views are my own. [email protected]

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"Plenty of us actual Midwesterners will vote for all kinds of people. If you’re worried about the bad vibes, stop creating them. If you’re worried about electability, remember that what makes a candidate electable is when you elect them into office." www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...

Perspective | Kamala Harris and the coconut tree of hopewww.washingtonpost.com A candidate’s electability exists in a context.

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Perry Bacon

Glad to see this piece on the New Popular Front from Piketty and Cagé. While almost all the attention has been on the gains by the right, the success of a unified left with an ambitious program seems like just as an important story from the French elections. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

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Perry Bacon

wrote about becoming coconut tree-pilled nymag.com/intelligence...

A Socialist’s Case for Kamala Harrisnymag.com She’s not a lefty, but I think she’s our best option.

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Perry Bacon

I think that the people who ignored or yelled at those who pointed out that A LOT of voters thought Biden was too old for another term should do some self-reflection but I don't think they will have the humility to do so.

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Perry Bacon

CNN's new poll: Trump leads Biden 49/43. Trump leads Harris 47/45. Some differences: —Independents: Biden -10%. Harris +3%. —People of color: Biden +21. Harris +29. The side-by-side:

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas is I think the first sitting Democratic member of Congress to call for Biden to opt out of running for reelection. www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/l...

Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett calls on Biden to withdraw from …www.texastribune.org Doggett, 77, is the first Texas Democrat in Congress to call for Biden to withdraw from the ticket.

"With the unknown candidates, there is more upside potential. Novelty is always a powerful force in politics. And the electorate right now is screaming for something new and different," writes @leedrutman.bsky.social. leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-many-u...

The many uncertainties of saying good Bidenleedrutman.substack.com Sometimes the risk of staying the course is greater than changing the course. Here’s how I’m thinking about the choice Democrats have to make, and the consequences for 2024 and beyond.

"After many of Biden’s accomplishments have been dismantled and erased by right wing courts, it will become clear that his inability to get to the right place on those two issues was one of his most deadly miscalculations," writes @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-end-of...

The End of Liberal Institutionalismwww.hamiltonnolan.com Excessive belief in institutions is a proven failure.

www.thenation.com/article/arch...

A Senior DNC Member Says There’s a Way to Replace Biden and Beat Trumpwww.thenation.com James Zogby, who has served on the Democratic National Committee for decades, says that if Biden stands down, the DNC can establish a transparent, fair process to choose its nominee.

“Nothing fundamentally changed about this election last night,” said Quentin Fulks, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager. "We’re going to get punched. We’re going to punch back. We’re going to get up when we get punched.” www.nytimes.com/2024/06/30/u...

48 Hours to Fix a 90-Minute Mess: Inside the Biden Camp’s Post-Debate Frenzywww.nytimes.com With countless calls and a rush of campaign events, the president’s team began a damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors.

"Above all, Biden and those around him need to understand that this is not about them, their touchiness over who has underestimated the president in the past or who is loyal and disloyal." www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | What Biden owes his country if he stays inwww.washingtonpost.com He needs to show he has clear strategy for undoing the damage of his debate performance.

"He’s being selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating." www.nytimes.com/2024/06/29/o...

Opinion | The Ghastly vs. the Ghostlywww.nytimes.com Do the Democrats really want to stop Trump? What are they prepared to do?

Interesting. www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/6/...

"Biden’s subtler, policy-driven steps — deport a million people here, hire more immigration judges there, offer temporary protection to 300,000 recently arrived Haitian immigrants over here —don’t offer a feeling of comfort to anyone, whether immigrant or native-born." theracket.news/p/there-were...

There were two debates last nighttheracket.news One pitted Donald Trump against reality and a complacent pair of moderators. The other pitted Joe Biden against himself. Everyone lost.

"Instead, the party decided it would smother democracy to protect the struggling president, ruling out any debates and even simply declaring him the winner of some primary contests without any voting." jacobin.com/2024/06/demo...

Democrats Can No Longer Pretend Biden Is Fit to Be Presidentjacobin.com The Democratic establishment has been fretting about Joe Biden’s fitness for years behind closed doors, while misleading and dissembling about it in public. Last night’s presidential debate shattered ...

"We’re at this place where both candidates are repeatedly using a moral panic and pushing more state power and systemic repression at the border and in communities across the country." www.democracynow.org/2024/6/28/bi...

Biden-Trump Debate: Silky Shah on How Both Candidates Scapegoat Immigrants, Promote Xenophobic Mythswww.democracynow.org Thursday’s CNN debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump was “a really, really rough night for those who are fighting for immigrant rights,” says Silky Shah, executive direc...

www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/o...

Opinion | Kamala Harris Could Win This Election. Let Her.www.nytimes.com The vice president is the obvious path out of the mess Joe Biden has created.

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Perry Bacon

Reply to

Nails Nathan

Back the blue, shut down the border, and be silent about Gaza because democracy is on the line while offering endless olive branches and mewling retorts to the people loudly proclaiming their aim to wrecking the shit.

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Perry Bacon

My favorite part about tonight was when Biden implemented a draconian border policy that violates human rights and international law and Trump and the CNN moderators still tagged teamed to accuse him of basically giving citizenship and a million dollars each to everyone south of the Rio Grande

inthesetimes.com/article/bide...

wapo.st/3zes3pG

Opinion | Centrist politics are failing in the U.S. and Europewapo.st Reading the polls and staying in the political center seem like they should work. But they don’t.

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Perry Bacon

In his right-wing turn on border policy, the Biden administration has invoked the widespread popularity of increased enforcement. Why, then, isn’t he running on universal pre-K, Medicare for All and a permanent ceasefire—policies voters support in droves? inthesetimes.com/article/bide...

The Myth of the "Poll-Driven" Democrat Is Cover for Conservative Policy Preferencesinthesetimes.com Selective "popularism" is being used by the Democratic Party establishment to pursue reactionary ideological goals.

"Private institutions with large endowments and small undergraduate sizes, and public state institutions in red states, dominate the small list of schools requiring SAT and ACT scores again." www.theguardian.com/us-news/arti...

US universities are reinstating SAT scores. Experts say it will exacerbate racial inequalitywww.theguardian.com After offering test-free admissions, some US schools are reversing course, claiming it will help under-resourced students – but critics say it will do the opposite

"We do have a fearless leader in Donald Trump, where they have thrown the kitchen sink at this man over nine years and they cannot believe that he is still standing. Hand of God!" www.theguardian.com/us-news/arti...

In Trump we trust: religious right on crusade to make their man presidentwww.theguardian.com America’s evangelicals sense a chance to impose a radical agenda and resist what they see as a tide of liberal secularism

"In the past seven days alone, billions felt heat with climate change-fueled intensity that broke more than 1,000 temperature records around the globe." www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Billions of people just felt the deadly intensity of climate-fueled heat waveswww.washingtonpost.com Scorching heat across five continents set 1,400 records this week and showed how human-caused global warming has made catastrophic temperatures commonplace.

"The city did create an Office of Community Safety ... We have unarmed mental health and behavioral crisis response teams now responding to calls, and we have an office devoted to violence interruption work," says @michellesphelps.bsky.social. slate.com/news-and-pol...

New, Surprising Data Has Lessons for All Sides of the “Defund the Police” Debateslate.com Police departments have shrunk. Crime is plummeting. Now what?

"Public schools are open to all and over the past several decades have become increasingly equitable. Moreover, the schools are publicly governed—meaning they are an ongoing experiment in democracy and self-rule," write Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Why "Fund Students, Not Systems" Is a Recipe for Disasterwww.thenation.com When the "Race to the Top" becomes winner take all, students are the big losers. And as the stakes grow higher and higher, public education falls further behind.

"The antidote to Christian nationalism is separation of church and state .... And that’s why Christian nationalists have gone after the separation of church and state, and that’s why their allies at the Supreme Court are on a crusade to eradicate church–state separation." slate.com/news-and-pol...

The Religious Right Isn’t Hiding What It’s Doing in the Courtsslate.com Their aims are not hard to discern if you're paying attention.

"The concept of a wealth tax is thus still alive—but only because the conservatives decided to pick a different day to finish it off," writes @jaywillis.bsky.social. ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/moore...

The Conservative Justices Picked a Different Day to Kill a Wealth Taxballsandstrikes.org Moore v. United States didn’t give conservatives everything they wanted. But it gave them good reason to be optimistic about the future.

"We used to call people like this the ruling class. These high appointees understand what American values are, and today American values are standing by Israel even as it massacres thousands of children," writes Philip Weiss. mondoweiss.net/2024/06/the-...

The U.S. power structure is blindly dedicated to Israelmondoweiss.net When the board of the Columbia Law Review clumsily censored a pro-Palestinian article it revealed the degree to which pro-Israel ideology is enmeshed in the U.S. power structure. Luckily, a generation...