Better Days For Most (Though Not All)
Yes, it's a great time to be alive ... unless you're a Republican presidential candidate. Also an ode to the power of Taylor Swift!
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
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As most of you already guessed, it took the last week of the year off to spend time with my kids (my oldest turned 12 last Thursday, and my youngest turned 10 earlier in the month). It was nice to have a break from writing to recharge my batteries — and I’m off and running for 2024!
You Belong With Me?
For my last MSNBC column of 2023, I argued that Taylor Swift could be an effective political asset to Joe Biden if she endorses him and hits the campaign trail on his behalf.
If a Swift endorsement brings just a fraction of her millions of supporters to the polls, that’s still tens of thousands of people who might otherwise not vote. It could make a — a potentially decisive difference. And would Republicans dare attack Swift and risk the wrath of enraged Swifties? Ask John Mayer or Kanye West how getting on the wrong side of Swift and her fans has worked out for them.
At the very least, it’s difficult to see how it would hurt the 81-year-old incumbent to appear on the campaign trail with a 33-year-old superstar who has her finger on the pulse of young America and is the most beloved cultural icon in the country.
Now, I will be honest: I wasn't totally sold on the argument when I pitched this piece to my editors. I thought there might be something to a Swift endorsement … but I also wanted to write a piece that my 12-year-old Swiftie daughter would read.
But in researching celebrity endorsements, I concluded there might be something here: in particular, the influence of Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama in 2007 suggests a Swift endorsement could be huge for Biden.
Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama in 2007 is estimated by one set of economists to have moved one million voters into Obama’s column. Other research suggests that while Winfrey’s endorsement didn’t change voters’ views on Obama, it may have had a subtler effect of reassuring them about Obama’s viability as a candidate.
To be sure, Winfrey is the exception, not the rule, in celebrity endorsements. Most don’t matter. But as I noted in the piece, while Swift has been a major star for years, in 2023, she is, as Oprah was in 2008, undoubtedly the most famous and influential cultural icon in the country. Her Eras Tour provided the US economy with an estimated $5.7 billion jolt. Yes, that is “billion.”
You can read the whole piece here and tell me in the comments if you agree!
Stop That Train
Oh, Nikki …
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley declined Wednesday to say slavery was a cause of the Civil War, arguing instead that it came down to “the role of government.”
At a New Hampshire town hall, a voter bluntly asked Haley, “What was the cause of the Civil War?”
Haley, the former South Carolina governor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who is aiming to present herself as the top Republican alternative to former President Donald Trump, gave a lengthy answer but did not mention slavery — the primary cause of the war.
“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” she said at the beginning of her response.
On Thursday, she appeared to backpedal, saying in a radio interview on “Good Morning New Hampshire” that “of course, the Civil War was about slavery” and that her comments reflect what it “means to us today.”
“What it means to us today is about freedom — that’s what that was all about. It was about individual freedom,” she said. “It was about economic freedom. It was about individual rights.”
What a mess. This is a huge political misstep, and I suspect it puts the fork in what is left of Haley’s presidential campaign. It’s not because Haley’s comments will upset race-conscious Republican voters (though I suspect that more than a few New Hampshire voters will be turned off by her comments).
There are two problems for Haley. The slavery dust-up was an unnecessary distraction in a race where she is already trailing by 49 points!
Haley had the slimmest of chances already — and truth be told, it’s tough to see how she can catch Trump in the GOP nomination race. She has to run a perfect race — and wasting time on what is, in effect, a self-enforced error ain’t helping.
Second, the more significant issue is that it exposes Haley as a lousy, risk-averse politician. If she had just answered the question about what caused the Civil War by saying “slavery,” she would have been correct … and no one would have cared. I guarantee no one would have noticed what she said, and the clip would not have played out on national news for the next few days. But Haley is so super-cautious — and so fearful of upsetting white, racist voters — that she shot herself in the foot.
You need to be willing to take a few chances when you are trailing by as much as Haley is in this race — and with the odds so clearly stacked in Trump’s favor. You have to be bold to stick out from the pack and create a contrast with Trump. Since this race started, none of the GOP candidates, except Chris Christie, have been willing to do that. Indeed, only days after the slavery screwup, she said that as president, she would pardon Trump if he is found guilty in his various criminal trials. By taking that position, she is basically endorsing Trump’s argument that his four criminal indictments are nothing more than a Democratic witch hunt. If she cannot create a contrast between her and Trump, why should Republicans abandon him to vote for her?
As I’ve written before, I’m not sure any Republican could beat Trump for the GOP nomination — but the way Haley and other Republicans have gone about it was destined to fail.
Was 2023 The Best Year Ever?
This is a very important argument from Nick Kristof.
In some ways, 2023 may still have been the best year in the history of humanity.
How can that possibly be?
Just about the worst calamity that can befall a human is to lose a child, and historically, almost half of children worldwide died before they reached the age of 15. That share has declined steadily since the 19th century, and the United Nations Population Division projects that in 2023 a record low was reached in global child mortality, with just 3.6 percent of newborns dying by the age of 5.
That’s the lowest such figure in human history. It still means that about 4.9 million children died this year — but that’s a million fewer than died as recently as 2016.
Or consider extreme poverty. It too has reached a record low, affecting a bit more than 8 percent of humans worldwide, according to United Nations projections.
Other health news is also encouraging, a reflection of the way public health tools are behind many of the advances in well-being. Two horrifying diseases are close to eradication: polio and Guinea worm disease. Only 12 cases of wild poliovirus have been reported worldwide in 2023 (there were also small numbers of vaccine-derived polio, a secondary problem), and 2024 may be the last year in which wild polio is transmitted. (Shout-out to Rotary International for its heroic work against this disease.) Meanwhile, only 11 cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in humans in the first nine months of 2023. (The hat tip here goes to former President Jimmy Carter for his extraordinary work against the parasite.)
I am uniquely sympathetic to this argument since a few years ago, I wrote an entire book making the case that the world is wealthier, healthier, and better educated than ever before in human history. And as Kristof points out — it’s still true! The global decline in extreme poverty rates means fewer children and mothers die in childbirth, more kids attend school rather than work, and billions of people have access to clean water and health care and don’t go to bed hungry. It’s the most extraordinary advance in global development and has transformed the world for the better. It’s easy to get caught up in all the bad news stories that seep into our social media timelines, but the most important global story of the last 20 years is that the world is a far better place to live.
What’s Going On
Great Washington Post piece on how Trump’s racist, dehumanizing rhetoric has become all the rage in GOP politics.
John Fetterman has no shits left to give.
Israel killed a top Hamas leader in Beirut … he will not be missed.
And the Israeli Supreme Court tossed out Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul bill that sparked nationwide protests earlier this year.
Claudine Gay is out at Harvard.
And Now For Something Completely Different
This might be the funniest video I’ve ever seen.
This is a close second
Musical Interlude
Bro. Tay Tay is 34. Get it straight.