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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The significance of Harvard [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-27
We begin today with a rather provocative review by Crispin Sartwell of Splice Today about Jake Tapper’s and Ezra Klein’s notions that a cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s dementia helped to re-elect Donald Trump.
Let me express my skepticism. I don’t think that Biden’s cognitive decline or his late withdrawal made a decisive difference in the outcome. And I think the direct claim that it did, as in Klein’s headline (the “cover-up” “re-elected Trump”) is self-serving in a familiar way. Also in a way that indicates that Democrats will find it difficult to absorb useful lessons from their 2024 disaster. [...] I don’t think that the Democrats would’ve won in 2024 if Kamala had had more time to run. I agreed with those commentators who at the time argued that the compressed schedule might be an advantage for her. I don’t think that there are good reasons to believe that if there had been a full-fledged or compressed primary and the Democrats had nominated Buttigieg or Shapiro or Whitmer that they would’ve done any better. Harris was as plausible a candidate as any, and ran a fairly competent campaign. The Democrats are fooling themselves if they stick to Biden’s dementia as their explanation, and that without a more honest assessment, they’re liable to lose again. Going into Election Day, everyone on both sides and in between seemed to agree that 2024 was “a referendum on Trump.” I think, by and large, that’s just what it was, and that a variety of factors had the whole country, essentially every region and every demographic group, trending to Trump by Election Day. I don’t see any reason to believe that it would’ve been any different with Gretchen Whitmer. Trump is an overwhelming personality who’d become even more overwhelming after his 2020 loss. It’s hard to focus on anything else while he’s there, yapping and thrashing away. Maybe there wasn’t even exactly a rightwards sing in 2024, but rather a swing to Trump, which isn’t ideologically defined except perhaps as a sort of screeching nationalism.
I never anticipated that I would ever post a Sartwell link again (at least not in APR) given my disagreements with him about politics and philosophy.
Sartwell didn’t like Biden much in the first place and did not vote for him in 2020, IIRC. He did vote for Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag writes for The New York Times that it is time to start worrying about the national debt.
For years it was reasonable to tune out the worrywarts carping about deficits. With very low interest rates, a lack of particularly attractive alternatives to U.S. Treasuries for investors and a muted market reaction to serial Capitol Hill dramas over raising the debt limit, those who bemoaned the unsustainability of deficit spending and debt levels seemed to cry wolf — a lot. Even as a former White House budget director, I grew skeptical of their endless warnings. Not anymore. Two things have changed: First, the wolf is now lurking much closer to our door. Annual federal budget deficits are running at 6 percent of G.D.P. or higher, compared with well under 3 percent a decade ago. Interest rates on 10-year Treasuries have more than doubled — around 4.5 percent now versus just over 2 percent then — and in the current fiscal year the government is projected to spend more on interest payments than on defense, Medicaid or Medicare. That’s right: Our borrowing now costs us more each year than each of these big, essential budget items. Meanwhile, federal debt held by the public, excluding Federal Reserve holdings, as a share of G.D.P. has increased by about a third since 2015. The Congressional Budget Office, which I once led, projects that by 2029, our debt as a share of our economy will grow to levels unprecedented since the years after World War II. All of this is occurring against a backdrop of an even more polarized political system, increased tension with foreign debt holders and less confidence in American security protections that promoted the dollar as the world’s safe haven.
Jan Werner-Müller writes for the Guardian that Trump’s attacks on Harvard University will reverberate beyond the education field.
As Harvard’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security rightly pointed out, Noem’s revocation fits into the Trump administration’s orgy of vengeance prompted by Harvard’s refusal to comply with evidently illegal demands issued in mid-April. Among other things, Trumpists had assertedtheir right to determine appropriate levels of “viewpoint diversity” among faculty and students. After Harvard sued, $2.2bn in research funds were frozen, followed by Linda McMahon, the education secretary, asserting at a cabinet meeting on 30 April that Harvard was failing to report “foreign money that comes in”. This line of attack has now been extended with absurd claims that Harvard “coordinates with the Chinese Communist Party” and is somehow “pro-terrorist”. The background noise to the official letters has been a steady stream of social media posts from the president, throwing invective at Harvard instead of conducting the serious government business of maligning Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift. The founder of a university whose attendees received a $25m settlement has accused the US’s oldest university of “scamming the public”, constituting a “threat to democracy”, and exposing innocent young Americans to “crazed lunatics” (as opposed to non-crazed lunatics). It is a well-known pattern in authoritarian regimes that underlings try to please the leader by anticipating his wishes and imitating his style. Official letters, posts, and press statements from DHS and the Department of Education not only fail to provide evidence and violate procedural safeguards; they not only make up ad hoc demands that have no basis in law; they also contain the signature capital letters, spelling mistakes, and kindergarten-level invective familiar from the president’s rhetoric. It is governance driven by a desire to please Fox viewers, online Maga mobs, and the Avenger-in-Chief.
Jos Joseph/The Hill
Trump’s assault on DEI and “wokeness” and his campaign to fight antisemitism has only focused on one school and seems to hurt students that have nothing to do with his agenda. We live in a world where we like to pretend that the negative things we hear about a place we have never been to be true. You have people genuinely scared to go into cities because the news tells them it’s a warzone, people who think rural areas are populated only by racists, and saddest of all, people who think that anyone slightly different from them is the enemy. I struggle to come to terms with this as a veteran. My experience at Harvard has been amazing and completely at odds with the panic that Trump and his MAGA supporters are trying to sell Americans. [...] What I do see are students that just want to get an education and are pushing themselves to accomplish a goal they set for themselves. I have met plenty of conservatives at Harvard and not just fellow veterans. The international students that Trump now wants to ban come here not to “overthrow America” but to do cancer research, study government, learn about religion and pursue a host of academic goals. It is confusing that Trump has singled out Harvard. Like Regina George said in “Mean Girls,” Harvard has to be asking, “Why are you so obsessed with me?” to an administration that seems to think antisemitism only happened in Cambridge, Mass. Trump has been suspiciously quiet on just about every other non-Ivy League school. I am also an alumnus of Ohio State. Ohio State had plenty of protests against Israel and yet, life goes on for the Buckeyes.
That first paragraph by Mr. Joseph...chef’s kiss. (And I’ll pretend that I did not read or excerpt the last two sentences.)
Paul Krugman explains the significance of Harvard specifically to the Greater Boston area.
Harvard is easy to dislike. It’s rich. It’s elitist. It rejected my application back when I was a high school senior. But the Trumpist effort to destroy Harvard and other elite universities — for that is clearly their intention — will do vast damage to our nation’s future. [...] What is so special about Greater Boston? The economy of Greater Boston can seem confusing, because its world-beating sectors look quite different from each other on the surface. First, there are the schools: Colleges and universities employ 87,000 peoplein the Greater Boston area, accounting for a far higher share of employment than they do in America as a whole. Second, there’s a world-class medical complex, treating patients from around the world and also training many of the world’s top doctors. Third, Greater Boston is a leading player in both AI and “tough tech,” which emphasizes how information interacts with the physical world. Fourth, Greater Boston is the world’s leading biotech hub. What do all these activities have in common? The answer, surely, is that they’re all linked by intellectual curiosity, rigorous thinking, scientific discipline, and an openness to new ideas. All of these qualities engender an openness to the very best talent around the world – students, researchers and entrepreneurs. Moreover, all of the parts are mutually supporting: the intellectual ferment within the universities and medical complex is a prime source of business innovation, and business success brings financial support and acclaim for the schools.
LOL, dude you attended school in New Haven, Connecticut and on the other end of Massachusetts Avenue right off of the Charles River Bridge. But yeah, I’ve heard that a rejection letter from Harvard is not easily forgotten.
Harvard does have an aura, though, that no other school in the United States has.
Sam Roberts of The New York Times writes an obituary for legendary Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel.
Mr. Rangel was the last surviving member of the venerable group of Harlem elder statesmen known as the Gang of Four. The others were David N. Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor; Percy E. Sutton, the former Manhattan borough president; and Basil A. Paterson, who was a state senator and secretary of state, and whose son, David Paterson, was lieutenant governor and then interim governor of New York from 2008 to 2010. For decades, the closest anyone had come to unseating Mr. Rangel was in 1994, when he handily defeated a son of Mr. Powell’s. But by 2012, as the 13th District’s political center of gravity had edged north from Harlem toward a Dominican enclave in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, he was threatened for renomination by State Senator Adriano Espaillat. Mr. Espaillat went on to succeed Mr. Rangel in 2016 after the congressman decided not to seek re-election. Mr. Espaillat’s victory ended the Black political establishment’s grip on a congressional district that had been represented by an African American since Mr. Powell was first elected in 1944. And it affirmed the gradual shift in the city’s Black power base from Harlem to Brooklyn.
Jaime Rubio Hancock of El País in English looks at the pros and cons of public social media networks.
Among the proposals and alternatives to these platforms, the idea of public social media networks has often been mentioned. Imagine, for example, a Twitter for the European Union, or a Facebook managed by media outlets like the BBC. In February, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for “the development of our own browsers, European public and private social networks and messaging services that use transparent protocols.” Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — who governed from 2004 until 2011 — and the left-wing Sumar bloc in the Spanish Parliament have also proposed this. And, back in 2021, former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn made a similar suggestion. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea: a public platform wouldn’t require algorithms — which are designed to stimulate addiction and confrontation — nor would it have to collect private information to sell ads. [...] As activist and writer Cory Doctorow quips over a video call, “There are many reasons why it’s preferable for social media to be independent of the state, but one of them is [Spanish dictator] Francisco Franco.”
Finally today, Chip Rotolo of Pew Research Center notes that ~1/3 of Americans consult astrology, tarot cards, or a fortune teller...all for the fun of it (for the most part).
A fall 2024 Pew Research Center survey finds that 30% of U.S. adults say they consult astrology (or a horoscope), tarot cards or a fortune teller at least once a year, but most do so just for fun, and few Americans say they make major decisions based on what they learn along the way. [...] On most questions we asked about these practices, there are big differences by age and gender. Younger adults – and especially younger women – are more likely to believe in astrology and to consult astrology or horoscopes. For example, 43% of women ages 18 to 49 say they believe in astrology. That compares with 27% of women ages 50 and older, 20% of men ages 18 to 49, and 16% of men who are 50 and older. In addition, 33% of LGBT adults say they consult tarot cards – making them three times as likely as U.S. adults overall to say this (11%). And 21% of LGBT Americans say that when they make major life decisions, they rely at least a little on what they’ve learned from astrology or a horoscope, tarot cards, or a fortune teller. While there is limited academic research on the topic, media publications focused on LGBTQ+ issues have described the prevalence of New Age practices in the LGBTQ+ community.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
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