Confidence Man with Maggie Haberman // The American Story

 

New-York Historical Society 

The American Story with David M. Rubenstein Recorded: May 13, 2023 Confidence Man with Maggie Haberman How does a man like Donald Trump—simultaneously hailed as an all-American hero and condemned as a harbinger of the end of American democracy—become not only a cultural phenomenon, but the president of the United States? Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the 45th president, offers insight into his background, his motivations, and the true nature of his personality, not to mention the means by which he gained a seat in the Oval Office. Maggie Haberman, a senior political correspondent for the New York Times and a political analyst for CNN, is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. David M. Rubenstein (moderator), co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, is the author of How to Invest: Masters on the Craft and the host of History with David Rubenstein on PBS. *** For more about the New-York Historical Society, visit our website: https://www.nyhistory.org/ *** Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/nyhistory?s... Check out our full video catalog:    / nyhistory  

The Ghosts of Mississippi

 

TomDispatch

Don't miss this Charles Blow column in the New York Times on the loss of rights from the Reconstruction era to future Supreme Court decisions. Tom

"Mississippi may be about to double down on its dubious distinction as the state where the tide of progress is blocked and pushed back.

During Reconstruction, Mississippi became a Black power center in this country. There were not only more Black people than white ones; there were also more registered Black voters than white ones.

Mississippi elected hundreds of Black politicians and gave the United States its first two Black senators.

But white racists and terrorists seethed at this assertion of power and employed every method of intimidation possible to dissuade Black people from voting.

The terrorists devised the Mississippi Plan, in which terrorist groups like the Red Shirts and rifle clubs used physical violence — including murder — and economic coercion to wrest back control of the state’s government.

The governor requested more federal troops, but President Ulysses S. Grant resisted because of political considerations in other parts of the country. (That instinct to countenance Black suffering, so as not to rock the political boat, would resurface over and over throughout the history of this country and continues to this day.)

The Mississippi Plan succeeded in suppressing Black votes in the statewide elections of 1875. The situation was made even worse when a compromise over the contested presidential election of 1876 allowed Reconstruction to fail and led to the withdrawal of federal troops from Southern states.

By 1890, white supremacists had gathered enough power in Mississippi to call a constitutional convention to write white supremacy into the state’s DNA. Although a majority of the state was Black, only one Black delegate was allowed at the convention.

The delegates passed the new Constitution — which included voter suppression tactics like poll taxes and tests — without even submitting it to the public for a vote.

Six years later, in 1896, a Black man named Henry Williams was indicted on charges of murder and sentenced to be hanged. He appealed on the grounds that the indictment was invalid: The jury had been drawn from a pool of registered voters, which, because the state Constitution had disenfranchised most Black voters by the time of his trial, was almost entirely white, and Williams argued that this was a violation of his 14th Amendment rights.

The case, Williams v. Mississippi, made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously, in what I believe is one of the most shocking decisions the court has ever handed down, that Williams had not shown that Mississippi’s new Constitution was discriminatory.

I have read the minutes from the constitutional convention. There is no question that its entire purpose was to discriminate against and disenfranchise Black voters.

Justice Joseph McKenna delivered the opinion of the court, saying that “the Constitution of Mississippi and its statutes do not on their face discriminate between the races, and it has not been shown that their actual administration was evil; only that evil was possible under them.”

As Lawrence Goldstone wrote last year in his book “On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights”:

The opinion was also openly racist. McKenna cited a South Carolina Supreme Court ruling that declared “the Negro race had acquired or accentuated certain peculiarities of habit, or temperament, and of character which clearly distinguished it as a race from the whites; a patient, docile people, but careless, landless, migratory within narrow limits, without forethought, and its criminal members given to furtive offenses, rather than the robust crimes of the whites.”

And just like that, the Supreme Court of the United States greenlit and rubber-stamped Jim Crow, formalizing in law a framework under which Black progress could be rolled back for decades.

Other states followed Mississippi’s example and convened constitutional conventions of their own, where they instituted statutes to disenfranchise Black people.

I couldn’t help but think of the ghosts of Mississippi while listening to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Wednesday in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

It is another Mississippi case poised to roll back constitutional rights, opening the door for another age of Jim Crow, only this time the targets won’t be Black bodies but women’s bodies. (Although any rollback in abortion access will most likely disproportionately affect Black women, who sit at the intersection of race and gender.)

In the late 1800s, opponents of progress had exercised a methodical, decades-long campaign to subjugate and oppress Black people. The same has been done to women by the opponents of abortion.

It all underscores an indelible American truth: No civil rights are inviolable and permanent. Every right you win, you must defend. Rights, unfortunately, can be withdrawn.

Whether Roe v. Wade falls or is significantly diminished, it will raise the question: Which rights are next? Presumably, many others could be vulnerable."

https://www.nytimes.com/.../abortion-mississippi...

NYTIMES.COM

Opinion | The Ghosts of Mississippi

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is another Mississipp

RSN: FOCUS: Feds Could Release 'Alternative' Mueller Report Soon

 

 

04 December 21

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FOCUS: Feds Could Release 'Alternative' Mueller Report Soon
Josh Gerstein, POLITICO
Gerstein writes: "An unpublished investigative compilation sometimes referred to as the 'Alternative Mueller Report' has been located in Justice Department files and could be released soon, according to a letter filed in federal court Thursday."

"Primary processing" of compendium mentioned in Mueller aide's book should be complete next month, court filing says.

An unpublished investigative compilation sometimes referred to as the "Alternative Mueller Report" has been located in Justice Department files and could be released soon, according to a letter filed in federal court Thursday.

A top deputy to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, revealed in a book he published last year that the team he headed prepared a summary of all its work — apparently including details not contained in the final report made public in 2019.

"At least for posterity, I had all the [team] members ... write up an internal report memorializing everything we found, our conclusions, and the limitations on the investigation, and provided it to the other team leaders as well as had it maintained in our files," wrote Weissmann in "Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation."

The reference prompted the New York Times to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for the document in January and to follow up in July with a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Lawyers from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan told Judge Katherine Polk Failla in a letter Thursday that officials have figured out what document Weissmann was alluding to and have begun reviewing it for possible release.

"Since Plaintiff filed its complaint, Defendant has located and begun processing this record and intends to release all non-exempt portions to Plaintiff once processing is complete," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Jude wrote. "Defendant estimates that primary processing of the record will be complete by the end of January 2022 at which time Defendant expects to send the record to several other DOJ components for consultation."

Jude did not provide an estimate of how long those consultations could take, but proposed updating the court by mid-February.

The pledge to process the so-called alternative Mueller report is no guarantee that what's released will contain significant new revelations. The Justice Department can use a variety of exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act to shield parts of the document from disclosure, including by deeming it attorney work-product or part of an internal deliberative process. Current DOJ leaders could waive those exemptions, but releasing other contents such as grand jury information could be more difficult due to legal restrictions.

The group Weissmann supervised in the special counsel's office was called "Team M" after its primary target — former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. The team more directly focused on the ties between Russia and former President Donald Trump was known as "Team R."

It's unclear whether investigative teams other than Weissmann's also prepared compilations that were not contained in Mueller's final report.

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RSN: Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen | Found in Translation: New York Times Says Democrats Shouldn't Challenge Oligarchy

 

 

11 November 21

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URGENT AND IMMEDIATE APPEAL FOR DONATIONS — We’re 11 days into the month and we still haven’t generated a single good day of fundraising, not one. Regardless of what we say or what we do our readers demand free service. We wish that were possible, but it isn’t and every knows it. Stop. Donate. Please. Seriously.
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RSN: Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen | Found in Translation: New York Times Says Democrats Shouldn't Challenge Oligarchy
Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, Reader Supported News
Excerpt: "A few days after the Nov. 2 election, the New York Times published a vehement editorial calling for the Democratic Party to adopt 'moderate' positions and avoid seeking 'progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas.'"

A few days after the Nov. 2 election, the New York Times published a vehement editorial calling for the Democratic Party to adopt “moderate” positions and avoid seeking “progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas.” It was a statement by the Times editorial board, which the newspaper describes as “a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values.”

The editorial certainly reflected “longstanding values” -- since the Times has recycled them for decades in its relentless attacks on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

** The Times editorial board began its polemic by calling for the party to “return” to “moderate policies.”

Translation: Stick to corporate-friendly policies of the sort that we applauded during 16 years of the Clinton and Obama presidencies.

** While scolding “a national Democratic Party that talks up progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas,” the editorial warned against “becoming a marginal Democratic Party appealing only to the left.”

Translation: The Biden administration should reach across the aisle even more solicitously to the leadership of an obstructionist, largely racist, largely climate-change-denying, Trump-cultish Republican Party.

** The election results “are a sign that significant parts of the electorate are feeling leery of a sharp leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build Back Better, which have some strong provisions and some discretionary ones driving up the price tag.”

Translation: Although poll after poll shows that the Build Back Better agenda is popular with the broad public, especially increased taxation on wealthy and corporate elites to pay for it, we need to characterize the plan as part of “a sharp leftward push.”

** “The concerns of more centrist Americans about a rush to spend taxpayer money, a rush to grow the government, should not be dismissed.”

Translation: While we don’t object to the ongoing “rush to spend taxpayer money” on the military, and we did not editorialize against the bloated Pentagon budget, we oppose efforts to “grow the government” too much for such purposes as healthcare, childcare, education, housing and mitigating the climate crisis.

** “Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing that. He captured the nomination -- and the presidency -- because he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence.”

Translation: No need to fret about the anti-democratic power of great wealth and corporate monopolies. We liked the status quo before the Trump presidency, and that’s more or less what we want now.

** “‘Nobody elected him to be F.D.R.,’ Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, told the Times after Tuesday’s drubbing.”

Translation: Spanberger, a former CIA case officer and current member of the corporate Blue Dog Coalition in Congress, is our kind of Democrat.

** “Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people.”

Translation: Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people but not go overboard by helping them too much. We sometimes write editorials bemoaning the vast income inequality in this country, but we don’t want the government to do much to reduce it.

** “Congress should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and -- frankly -- a host of lesser-known Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might oppose were not in office.”

Translation: We editorialize about social justice, but we don’t want structural changes and substantial new government policies that could bring it much closer. We editorialize about the climate crisis, but not in favor of government actions anywhere near commensurate with the crisis. Our type of tepid liberalism is an approach that won’t be a bottom-line threat to the Times owners and big advertisers -- and won’t diminish the leverage and holdings of wealthy elites, including the New York Times Company’s chairman A.G. Sulzberger and the company’s board of directors. We want change, but not too much!

** “Democrats agree about far more than they disagree about. But it doesn’t look that way to voters after months and months of intraparty squabbling. Time to focus on -- and pass -- policies with broad support.”

Translation: Although progressives are fighting for programs that actually do have broad public support, we’ll keep declaring those programs don’t have broad public support. Progressives should give up and surrender to the corporate forces we like to call “moderate.”

---

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Jeff Cohen is an activist, author and co-founder of RootsAction.org. He was an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, and founder of the media watch group FAIR. In 2002-2003, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC. He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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Details on FBI Inquiry Into Kavanaugh Draw Fire From Democrats

Kate Kelly 

Tbu Jul 22, 2021 

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh speaks at the Federalist Society's Antonin Scalia Memorial Dinner during the organization's National Lawyers Convention in Washington, Nov. 14, 2019. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times)

Nearly three years after Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s tumultuous confirmation to the Supreme Court, the FBI has disclosed more details about its efforts to review the justice’s background, leading a group of Senate Democrats to question the thoroughness of the vetting and conclude that it was shaped largely by the Trump White House.

In a letter dated June 30 to two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, an FBI assistant director, Jill C. Tyson, said that the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips the agency received during an investigation into Kavanaugh’s past were referred to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, whose handling of them remains unclear.

The letter left uncertain whether the FBI itself followed up on the most compelling leads. The agency was conducting a background check rather than a criminal investigation, meaning that “the authorities, policies, and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply,” the letter said.

Tyson’s letter was a response to a 2019 letter from Whitehouse and Coons to the FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, posing questions about how the FBI’s review of Kavanaugh was handled.

In an interview, Whitehouse said the FBI’s response showed that the FBI’s handling of the accusations into misconduct by Kavanaugh was a sham. Tyson’s letter, Whitehouse said, suggested that the FBI ran a “fake tip line that never got properly reviewed, that was presumably not even conducted in good faith.”

Whitehouse and six of his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee replied to the FBI’s letter on Wednesday with demands for additional details on the agreement with the White House that governed the inquiry. They also pressed for more information on how incoming tips were handled.

“Your letter confirms that the FBI’s tip line was a departure from past practice and that the FBI was politically constrained by the Trump White House,” the senators wrote. Among those signing the letter were Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s chair, Coons and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Donald McGahn, the White House’s general counsel at the time, and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Former President Donald Trump has long taken credit for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, which was almost derailed over allegations by a California professor that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her during a high school gathering in the early 1980s.

Despite widespread concern over the claims — which were followed by other allegations of sexual misconduct, all of which Kavanaugh has consistently denied — Trump steadfastly backed the judge. He deployed McGahn to shepherd Kavanaugh through the unusually fraught confirmation, which culminated in a heated, daylong hearing in September of 2018.

Both Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who said she was assaulted, and Kavanaugh were grilled by senators on the Judiciary Committee.

In a recent interview with author Michael Wolff, Trump put his handling of Kavanaugh into stark terms, asking “Where would he be without me? I saved his life.”

But in addition to offering shows of support, the Trump White House carefully controlled the investigations into Kavanaugh’s past. After Ford came forward, Trump’s staff tried to limit the number of people the FBI interviewed as part of that probe. Only after an outcry from Democrats over the president’s approach did the administration say the agency could conduct a more open investigation.

Ultimately, 10 witnesses were interviewed by the FBI, according to the FBI’s recent letter. Ford and Kavanaugh themselves were never interviewed by the FBI.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who signed Wednesday’s letter to the FBI, called the process “an injustice in fact orchestrated by the White House under Donald Trump, an injustice that frankly was a disservice to the FBI.”

Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, the lawyers who represented Ford, said in a statement that the nation “deserved better” when it came to the inquiry into Kavanaugh.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

 

RSN: FOCUS: Nathan J. Robinson | How to Handle the Press: A Master Class From Bernie Sanders

 

 

13 July 21

The Only Way We Ever Get Into Financial Trouble

Super Low Donor Response. That’s it, that’s only thing that can bring RSN down. Anything even approaching a reasonable degree of responsiveness from our donors and RSN does fine.

So far for July 287,503 readers have visited RSN and 156 have donated. That has to cause a crisis. And it is.

In earnest.

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13 July 21

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NOTICE TO THE READERSHIP ON FUNDING: Regrettably, the progress of this month's funding drive is insufficient to address the organization's immediate expenses. While the amount of funds lacking may not seem great, we cannot proceed without them. There are a number of "immovable expenses" such as payroll, creative fees, contractors, and vendors that must be paid. Our average donation is roughly $30. 500 donations at that level are required to complete the July funding drive. Thank you.
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FOCUS: Nathan J. Robinson | How to Handle the Press: A Master Class From Bernie Sanders
Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs
Robinson writes: "If you are unfamiliar with Maureen Dowd's newspaper columns, know that they are morally frivolous and a waste of the New York Times' limited space."

f you are unfamiliar with Maureen Dowd’s newspaper columns, know that they are morally frivolous and a waste of the New York Times’ limited space. Dowd writes about politics, but displays zero interest in the human consequences of political decisions. It is rare for serious policy issues to be mentioned in a Dowd column; she is unabashedly interested in Washington D.C. as a soap opera. She writes in an irritating style heavy on “sarcasm, cutesy nicknames, and, most importantly, countless gag-worthy pop cultural references,” and was infamously more interested in cutefying Barack Obama (who she called “Obambi”) than analyzing the consequences of his presidency. Naturally, she was in her element during the Clinton impeachment scandal, and in 1999 won a Pulitzer Prize “for a portfolio of 10 columns, all of them about the scandal and its lively cast of characters.” (Her characterization of Monica Lewinsky is particularly infamous for its lively misogyny; Dowd used her influential New York Times platform to call Monica Lewinsky fat, silly, and crazy, and won the biggest award in journalism for it).

A 2011 Gawker article by Hamilton Nolan called “Why Maureen Dowd Is Not A Good Columnist” explains the core of the problem. Nolan picked a column of hers about former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd, who had recently become CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), making him a top movie industry lobbyist and a clear example of the “revolving door” politics through which corporations create the laws they want rather than the laws preferred by, say, the public. But when Dowd wrote about Dodd’s transition from D.C. to Hollywood, the economics and politics of the situation were apparently of little interest to her. Instead, Nolan says, Dowd’s column tells us that Chris Dodd has “gleaming white hair and laughs with gleaming white teeth,” is “not into the glitz,” his life revolves around his family, he has known many celebrities, he thinks “thinks movies can have ‘a profound influence,’” and he likes Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull. But what about the problem of having ex-senators becoming lobbyists? What about the fact that this was a Democratic senator, offering proof of the rot in both parties? It all went unmentioned, which led Nolan to conclude that Dowd “doesn’t have a single fucking useful thing to say.”

This was back in 2011, and by that point had been true for some time: whatever political instincts Dowd may once have had, she’d given them all up to embody the stereotype of the empty, power-serving gossip columnist. Today, Dowd’s columns continue to impress with how completely she manages to take the policy out of politics. (Is Joe Biden cool? Will Mitch ditch Donald?)

You might have expected that when Maureen Dowd requested an interview with Senator Bernie Sanders, he would have turned her down cold. After all, Sanders is known for despising personality journalism and famously wants to talk about nothing but Medicare For All, free college, and other left policy goals. But Sanders did have lunch with Dowd, and the result is a fascinating example of how a stubborn enough lefty can force a journalist to cover matters of substance against their will.

Dowd’s column begins like this:

I want to talk to Bernie about Balenciaga. And Britney. And Dua Lipa, Sha’Carri Richardson and Joe Manchin’s houseboat. And whether he prefers red or white horseradish on his gefilte fish. And the state of capitalism, and the absurd price of a Birkin bag.

Now, you may be thinking: she’s joking. This is tongue in cheek. She didn’t really want to talk to Bernie Sanders about Britney Spears and a houseboat. But if you think this, you are not familiar with the career and columns of Maureen Dowd. She often makes it sound like she is only ironically interested in these topics, and is mocking the sorts of people who would be interested in fashion and celebrities, but these are quite clearly her favorite topics. Fashion and celebrities are by no means necessarily shallow subjects—for example there are plenty of substantive matters to discuss when it comes to Britney Spears—but it’s unlikely Dowd is interested in a serious discussion of, say, legal autonomy and conservatorships; we can expect she wants to ask about Spears because “Bernie on Britney” would be extremely clickable. But Bernie was having none of it, according to Dowd. When she pulled out her sheet of questions, he produced his own list of the things he was willing to talk about:

He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out his own piece of paper, a list of items written in his loopy scrawl. These are the only things he’s here to talk about. At 79, Bernie Sanders is a man on a mission, laser-focused on a list that represents trillions of dollars in government spending that he deems essential. When I stray into other subjects, the senator jabs his finger at his piece of paper or waves it in my face, like Van Helsing warding off Dracula with a cross.

(That last line is admittedly a fine piece of writing, vivid and true. One of the most disappointing things about Dowd is that under her bullshit she is considerably talented.)

The op-ed is even accompanied by a photograph of Sanders holding up this handwritten list. It says:

Physical infrastructure
-broadband
Climate
Childcare
Paid family & medical [leave]
Home healthcare
Prescription drugs
Expand Medicare
– GME expansion
Higher ed
Housing
Progressive taxation

All of these, I think you will agree, are things that matter a lot and have many consequences for millions of people. They are also woefully under-discussed, not just in the New York Times, but everywhere. Even a cursory look at the average Dowd column shows that she is unlikely to have given attention to any of them.

Sure enough, during his lunch with Dowd, Bernie stuck to the list:

Digging into some eggs over easy and white toast, [Sanders says:] “Does anyone deny that our child care system, for example, is a disaster? Does anyone deny that pre-K, similarly, is totally inadequate? Does anyone deny that there’s something absurd that our young people can’t afford to go to college or are leaving school deeply in debt? Does anybody deny that our physical infrastructure is collapsing? Does anybody except anti-science people deny that climate change is real? Does anyone deny that we have a major health care crisis? Does anyone deny that we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs? Does anyone deny we have a housing crisis? Does anyone deny that half the people live paycheck to paycheck?

Dowd, rather than responding to any of this, tries hard to make her column about the relationship between Bernie and Joe Biden, and about his dual status as outsider and insider, and about the Squad, and whatever other personality matters she can inject. But he remains firm when she attempts to take things in any kind of Dowdian direction:

When I ask Sanders if he thinks A.O.C. could be president someday, out comes the list.
“That’s not what I want to get into,” he barks. “I want to get into what this legislation is about.”
“You don’t want to discuss ‘Free Britney’?” I ask.
“No.”
[…]
“I want to talk about this legislation.”
But wait, what does he think of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lurking around A.O.C.’s office and calling her “a little communist”?
“You’re getting off the subject here,” Sanders chides, before relenting…
[…]
Before the senator leaves to work the phones, he returns to his list with one last directive: “Tell people what we are trying to accomplish.”

Of course, Dowd does no such thing. She does, as promised, tell us that Sanders was “featured in this month’s Vanity Fair cover story as a friend of pop star Dua Lipa, and that he was an inspiration for a Balenciaga show in Paris in 2017.” But because Bernie wouldn’t stray far from the list, and her column was based on lunch with him, Dowd had to mention at least some of the substantive and important things Bernie said.

Bernie is a broken record, and the record in question is usually some mix of the Greatest Hits on the list he brought to his meeting with Dowd. But you can see why this actually makes Sanders a very effective communicator. He is always on message, always trying to make sure the press has to talk about what he wants them to talk about. With Maureen Dowd, that’s difficult; she has built her brand on “frivolous” topics and light cruelty. But instead of declining to meet with her, he had lunch and simply wouldn’t stop talking about the issues he wanted to talk about. In doing so, he forced her to write a column about his refusal to stray from those issues. It’s not the column she would have written if he’d asked her what questions she had and simply answered each one. It is an exercise in manipulating a journalist to successful effect.

I think leftists can learn a great deal from this. Bernie has his flaws and made serious mistakes in both of his presidential campaigns, but he is very good at politics despite his marginal position. If he goes on a talk show, he will be discussing wealth inequality or the future of democracy, even if he is talking to a manchild like Jimmy Fallon. Staying relentlessly on message—and thinking about what topics we want to spend our finite resources and time talking about—is critical to having an effective, persuasive left. It’s easy to lose focus and forget what actually matters. We can get lost in personality drama. Sometimes leftists spend far too much time criticizing other leftists with very similar policy goals, seemingly forgetting that we need to build a unified movement against the right, a thing which can only happen if we treat each other as comrades (and are definitive about what it means to be a leftist, rather than embracing right-wing faux-populism). Perhaps we should directly lift Bernie’s approach and just keep a damn list. It’s fine to let our minds wander, to indulge in frivolity and amusement. But we have to know what’s on the list and train ourselves to always come back to it. Otherwise we will lose. Professional hacks like Dowd do not care about the lives that are affected by the issues on Bernie’s list. They care about D.C. drama. But it’s possible, as Bernie showed, to force the conversation to be about what you want it to be about. This is what we must constantly be trying to do.

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