nathan_j_robinson

The Bad Thing was that I once printed an interview in our magazine in which I pretended to be the Nathan J. Robinson who had found that squid even though you were the one who found the squid. https://images.currentaffairs.org/2020/04/Screen-Shot-2020-04-17-at-2.32.31-PM.jpg

I AM SORRY. I knew eventually I would have to face you.

Oh no. Oh no. I was hoping I would never meet you. I did... a very bad thing once that involved you.

I tried to give Elizabeth Warren a chance. I never saw myself as a "Bernie Bro" even though I am a strong supporter. I have written positively about the CFPB and as I wrote in that article, there were some good policies and she began her campaign using rhetoric that appealed to me (she launched it at the site of a famous labor struggle). Two things happened: (1) I looked more into Warren's actual record and found a lot that made me think she would not be a reliable ally of progressive causes (esp. on foreign policy, but even sometimes on her signature issues) See here and here for more (2) She said and did things that felt like serious betrayals of things I fundamentally believe or that made me not trust her. She said she was fine with the existence of billionaires, whereas I see wealth disparities of this magnitude as inherently feudalistic. She didn't really seem to care about single payer healthcare and made a weird promise that she wouldn't raise taxes to pay for it (echoing Republican anti-tax rhetoric, where the most important point is actually that the tax rises should just be lower than the amount saved in eliminating premiums and copays). Then, even though Bernie Sanders declined to ever say a negative word about her, she accused him of sexism and started saying he had gotten nothing done and branding his supporters toxic. That would maybe have been excusable if not for the fact that she didn't attack Joe Biden nearly as harshly even though Biden is far worse than Bernie. Then, even after losing badly in the first few states, she did not drop out and endorse Bernie. Then, even when she withdrew entirely, she STILL didn't endorse him. To me, that's totally inexcusable. It shows she didn't care about getting a progressive nominee. She knew that staying out would help Biden and did it anyway, which to me vindicates my ultimate conclusion that she was never closer to Bernie than Biden. I can never trust her again and I regret ever saying a positive word about her.

Oh, I know! The Nathan Robinson who chopped up his dad and then kept him in tupperware containers he used as a TV stand is really disgracing our brand. Being a Nathan Robinson is supposed to be about cephalopods and leftism, not doing grisly murders!

Sorry I didn't answer your very serious question about coronavirus.

It's all very complicated. The simplistic explanation has been "Bernie 2016 success was really just disliking Clinton personally" but I don't think that one statistic proves that conclusion. Bernie also beat Biden by large margins in the early states of Iowa and Nevada, and I think if Michigan had voted a few days after Nevada that result would have been very different. I also think the vote in subsequent states would have been different if Bernie had won Iowa decisively rather than by so little that it was easy to fudge the result. I think people's minds are made up quite quickly and that small events can have big cascading effects. If Elizabeth Warren had not run, or had dropped out before voting began and it was clear she wouldn't catch Bernie, Bernie would have crushed it in Iowa and NH. That would have given a huge boost in momentum. He would have won Super Tuesday states like MA and TX. Then by the time Michigan and Illinois voted Biden would not have been able to make the kind of forceful "electability" case for himself that he ended up being able to make, because he would have been losing everywhere except southern red states. So I think a few small changes could have made the primary go very differently, which is depressing, but also means that it's not obvious that this proves Bernie just did well in 2016 because of Clinton.