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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Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. I could not get to all of them for today’s newsletter, but there are a few I still want to answer, and I’ll do so on a rolling basis next week. I appreciate questions for readers because they force me to think about issues from a different perspective, and I love the challenge. So please keep them coming. (In some cases, I have edited questions for clarity and brevity).
So here we go …
I want to know what you think is really motivating the viral, bandwagon-jumping pro-Palestinian sentiment among younger Americans. You know that 6 weeks ago, they barely knew what continent Gaza was on, and if I asked them a direct question about what they think about the West Bank settlements, they'd look at me like I was speaking Swahili. There was never this level of outrage (or even awareness) of the much greater numbers of deaths in Syria and Yemen.
This is an excellent question and one for which there is no simple answer. Yes, anti-Semitism drives some of this, but I suspect that this is often an involuntary response rather than one that reflects deep-seated anti-Jewish hatred. As I've noted before, anti-Semitic tropes are deeply embedded in Western society and, quite often, expressed by people who don't necessarily understand why they are offensive.
For some, the issue is almost certainly black and white. American Jews, by and large, are white — so for younger Americans, the conflict is between a white oppressor and a dark-skinned victim (Never mind the fact that most Israelis come from Arab countries and are dark-skinned). There's also the fact that over the past few years, Palestine has become a cause celebre on the far left. While that's long been the case, the level of vitriol has increased. Israel is frequently depicted as a rapacious, genocidal regime, and so when October 7 happened, many people retreated to what they knew about the conflict — Israel, bad, Palestinians, good. The fact that Hamas committed a heinous terrorist act didn't puncture this existing mindset. It's little different from Trump supporters simply compartmentalizing negative stories about him and waving off his egregious acts.
Finally, there's a faddish element to this. I was talking to an NYC teacher this week for a piece I'm writing, and she told me that some of her students don't know what happened on October 7 and have only the barest knowledge about Hamas, Israel, and the conflict. They are being fed propaganda on TikTok. Palestine has become the cause celebre of the woke left, and lots of young people want to run with the crowd.
I'd like to understand why there isn't more of an uproar on the left about the ascendency of Mike Johnson to Speaker.
Quite simply, there aren't enough hours in the day to get upset about every GOP outrage. Also, most Americans don't pay much attention to the House of Representatives, and to the extent that Democrats do focus on it, they're probably more likely to be outraged about Lauren Bobbitt and/or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
But here's the thing: Johnson is a liability for Republican Hosue members. He has a track record of extreme positions on abortion, guns, same-sex marriage, climate change, etc. I'm confident that Democratic House candidates will spend much of next year reminding voters about these positions.
And to the credit of major news outlets, like CNN, they continue to dig into his unsavory past writings and do the vetting the House Republicans failed to do.
Is it possible to balance Trump news, comments, etc, with an equal amount of good news about what the other side is doing? I am convinced that every time there is a Trump or crazy Republican story somewhere in the United States or the world, there must be another story that supports the success of democracy over potential authoritarianism. A lot of people are not really interested in what Trump is doing every day, yet it is shoved in front of our faces by almost everyone in the US and world media. We know he is dangerous, but do we have to put up with all the news media's continuous coverage?
I struggled with how to answer this question because I'm sympathetic to the notion that journalists spend too much talking about Trump and "crazy Republicans." I am also somewhat skeptical of all the doomdays predictions around Trump, like this one from Bob Kagan that appeared in today's Washington Post.
But then I see something like this …
I know this is one poll, so grain of salt and all, but my god. Have Americans forgotten how awful Trump’s presidency was? Have they forgotten January 6 and his response to the pandemic? Have they forgotten his incompetence and cruelty? When I see a poll result, it scares the hell out of me and makes me think that we’re not talking enough about Trump.
If you’ve read this newsletter for a few years, you know that I’m not a doomsayer, but if Trump wins in 2024, it will be an unmitigated disaster from which American democracy may never recover. And that’s true even if he is unsuccessful in turning the presidency into a dictatorship. So, for now, I’m okay with keeping the media spotlight on Trump.
Has anyone done a segmentation analysis of Trump supporters?
I looked around for this and found an interesting analysis done in 2017 by the Democracy Fund. The survey broke Trump voters into five categories.
It's worth a read, and I'll continue to look for something more recent.
Six years later, I suspect that Republican voters have, out of a sense of party loyalty and hatred of Democrats, rallied around Trump, even if they don't always agree with him. So, while some of these categories likely exist, the GOP electorate is less segmented now.
However, keep in mind that close to 4 out of 10 GOP voters are supporting a different candidate this cycle. If you start from the premise that Trump is a quasi-incumbent, that's not necessarily a great result. The big question for Trump is how many of those 30-40% of Republicans won't vote for him in November 2024. I suspect the number is small, but even 5-10% could be enough to doom him.
How do Biden and the Democratic party counter the massive coverage of the Republican party and orchestrate a national debate on democracy and the reinstatement of the middle class (you know, Make America Democratic Again!!)?
The simple answer is they run an effective presidential campaign. The best hope for Biden's reelection is if the focus in 2024 is on Trump and not him. Biden is so unpopular that his best path to victory is to make the election a referendum on his challenger. That's how Harry Truman won in 1948, George W. Bush won in 2004, and to a lesser extent, Obama prevailed in 2012. I'm all for high-minded debates on democracy, but ultimately, elections are about winning, and if Biden is to get a second term, he needs to make Trump the focus of the race.
The next few questions are from reader "Pepe," who I must credit for best understanding the exercise: short, pithy questions!
Odds that AOC will ever be president? Who will be the first woman president?
On the first question: you never want to say never, but I'll go with 5-10 percent to be generous. Of all the members of the Squad, AOC has, by far, the greatest political acumen, but her political beliefs are not the kind that would allow her to succeed in a national election. But maybe 20-30 years from now, things will be different.
The first female president is a tricky question. The easy answer is Kamala Harris (her boss is 81 years old). Also, if Biden wins reelection, she'd likely be the favorite to win the Democratic nomination in 2028. I want to say Gretchen Whitmer, but I'm skeptical she can win a Democratic nomination fight against Harris. Democratic presidential nominees need to win Black voters, and I don't think Whitmer can do that more effectively than Harris. But long-term I like Whitmer's chances as a national candidate.
The other name that comes to mind is Nikki Haley. If she could win the GOP nomination in 2028 … well, just keep in mind that it's tough for any party to win three elections in a row.
Pick one to spend a year on a desert island with - Bannon, (Stephen) Miller, or MTG (Marjorie Taylor Greene)?
I’d say, Bannon. He’s the biggest (I’ll let you do the math on that one).
What case/trial is most likely to land Trump in jail? What are the odds he spends a day in jail?
The Florida/Mar-a-Lago case is almost certainly the most open and shut of all the cases. I honestly don’t see what Trump’s defense could be (and more evidence emerged this week that Trump’s lawyers warned him that failing to turn over classified documents in his possession would be a crime). But it’s a Florida jury, and the judge seems to be putting her finger on the scale of justice, so one could imagine the possibility of a hung jury.
The January 6 case in DC seems the most problematic for Trump because he’ll be dealing with a Washington DC jury, which is heavily Democratic and will have relatively fresh memories of what unfolded in their city on January 6. I honestly can’t imagine a scenario in which Trump is found not guilty in this case. Maybe his legal team can get one MAGA lover on the jury, and they can’t reach a verdict, but the chances of him getting off seem decidedly slim.
The Georgia case is also pretty rough for Trump. He’ll be dealing with an Atlanta jury, the evidence appears overwhelming, and he can’t receive a pardon if convicted. However, this case might drag on until after November 2024, and I’m not sure how a sitting president can be prosecuted in a state court.
But considering that his legal team is truly bottom of the barrel — and the evidence against him is overwhelming — convictions in all three cases are a real possibility.
As for spending a day in jail, I’ll go 50/50. Trump might be sentenced to jail time, but he can probably drag things out for years on appeal that he avoids true accountability.
Since 2000, who is the politician most dangerous to the liberal ideal of the United States. Top 2 if #1 is Trump.
This is a difficult question because the liberal ideal is kind of a fuzzy term. But I’ll go with Mitch McConnell. I’ll link to a piece I wrote nearly five years ago about him for the New York Review of Books as to the reason why.
No politician has done more to weaken American democracy and undermine the nation’s most basic norms than McConnell. Nor is any politician more responsible for Trump’s rise to power. All of it has been in pursuit of the narrowest, most parochial goals.”
What separates McConnell from other destructive political actors, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his fellow congressional Republican revolutionaries, or President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, is that McConnell’s political actions are unmoored from ideology and policy. For McConnell, politics is fundamentally about accruing political power for the sole purpose of accruing more political power.
… The sole purpose that animates McConnell makes doing what he “can for the American people” at most secondary or tangential; there is only the will to power. He is a remorselessly political creature, devoid of principle, who, more than any figure in modern political history has damaged the fabric of American democracy. That will be his epitaph.
Do you find the Grateful Dead sound in the 1980s often too tinny? And if yes, do you ascribe that to Brent’s keyboard, Jerry’s new guitar, the amps, or something else?
I do, and I generally think it’s because of Brent’s keyboard. Also, that tinny sound was kind of in during the 1980s. In general, I think the Dead’s ‘90s sound is far better than the ‘80s.
Put in order - Cash, Kristofferson, Nelson, Jennings, and Haggard
I’m not familiar enough with all these artists to give a good answer to this question, but Cash, Nelson, Haggard and incomplete for Jennings, and Kristofferson.
Pick - as of December 1, 2023, you can only hear music recorded in the past or in the future. This applies to live performances/movies/everything.
It’s got to be the past because where I can’t listen to Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” and Thelonious Monk is not the world I want to live in. But not being able to see live music would be rough.
Favorite guest appearance at a Dead show. Top 2 if #1 is Branford
Number one is Branford Marsalis, 3-29-90, and it’s not remotely close.
So number two is my first: September 22, 1987, and Spencer Davis guesting on “Gimme Some Lovin’” (it starts up at the 22:47 mark).
Number three is Etta James at the 1982 New Year’s Show.
An interesting read for Saturday morning. Like the concept and enjoyed your responses; agree with some, but not all, responses...mostly just enjoyed the conversation.
PS: Despite my age, I would be bereft without music of the grungy 90's era🤘
Check your facts, please. Per Wikipedia: "Nearly half of all Israeli Jews are descended from Jews who made aliyah from Europe, while around the same number are descended from Jews who made aliyah from Arab countries, Iran, Turkey, and Central Asia."