WaPo:
The angry White populist who paved the way for Trump
Fifty years ago, George Wallace was winning Democratic presidential primaries. Gunfire ended his campaign but not the political forces he unleashed.
Today Americans remember Wallace as a villain of the civil rights era — the governor who stood in a doorway at the University of Alabama in 1963 to block the arrival of Black students and coined the battle cry of White Southern backlash: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.”
Yet just as important, historians say, were Wallace’s presidential campaigns, which helped unleash forces that shaped the country long after his White House aspirations were ended by what happened that day in Laurel: an assassination attempt that nearly killed him.
Among American politicians, Wallace would become, according to historian Dan T. Carter, “the most influential loser” of the 20th century. His enduring relevance, Carter said, lies in his discovery of the “underground stream” of modern American politics. Wallace tapped a current of grievance and barely muffled racism that would later propel the rise of another combative populist: Donald Trump.
Dara Massicot/Foreign Affairs:
The Russian Military’s People Problem
It’s Hard for Moscow to Win While Mistreating Its Soldiers
Despite its sophisticated military equipment and multiple advantages on paper, Russia has stumbled strategically, operationally, and tactically in Ukraine. It has been hampered by faulty planning assumptions, unrealistic timelines, and impractical objectives. It has suffered from inadequate supplies, bad logistics, and insufficient force protection. It has been impaired by poor leadership. These problems do not stop at technical equipment issues, poor training, or corruption. Rather, they are linked by a core underlying theme: the military’s lack of concern for the lives and well-being of its personnel. In Ukraine, the Russian military struggles to retrieve the bodies of its dead, obscures casualties, and is indifferent to its worried military families. It may spend billions of dollars on new equipment, but it does not properly treat soldiers’ injuries, and it generally does not appear to care tremendously whether troops are traumatized.
Read the entire thread here.
Cameron Joseph/Vice News:
Trump’s Big Lie Made It Easier for Racists to Sell ‘Great Replacement’ Theory
Some Republicans who say Democrats want an immigrant ‘invasion’ to control America also claim immigrants vote illegally to swing elections.
There’s a direct line between the two conspiracy theories. And the Americans who believe the former claim are much likelier to believe the latter.
While “big lie” proponents have pushed a variety of false claims about how the last election was supposedly stolen, one key claim pushed by Trump’s team and other top GOP officials is that scores of undocumented immigrants illegally voted in the 2020 election, swinging the election to President Biden.
Those allegations make the claims pushed by those Republicans and conservatives who are pushing “great replacement theory” all the more potent—and fills in a gap in their reasoning. In their eyes, it’s not just that Democrats want a flood of new immigrants to change the demographics of the country and eventually help their electoral chances down the line. They claim that it’s already happened
Ezra Klein/NY Times:
The Economic Mistake the Left Is Finally Confronting
Many of progressivism’s great dreams linger on the demand side of the ledger. Universal health care promises insurance that people can use to buy health care. Food stamps give people money for food. Housing vouchers give them money for rent. Pell Grants give them money for college. Social Security gives them money for retirement. The child tax credit gives them money to care for their children. The minimum wage and the earned-income tax credit give workers more money. A universal basic income would give everyone more money.
...
But progressives are often uninterested in the creation of the goods and services they want everyone to have. This creates a problem and misses an opportunity. The problem is that if you subsidize the cost of something that there isn’t enough of, you’ll raise prices or force rationing. You can see the poisoned fruit of those mistakes in higher education and housing. But it also misses the opportunity to pull the technologies of the future progressives want into the present they inhabit. That requires a movement that takes innovation as seriously as it takes affordability.
Ed Yong/Atlantic:
What COVID Hospitalization Numbers Are Missing
As COVID numbers tick up, hospitals are supposed to be ready to jump in as needed. Only, they never really had a reprieve.
But even in calmer spots, Biden’s strategy overlooks a crucial truth: The health-care system is still in crisis mode. The ordeals of the past two years have tipped the system—and its people—into a chronic, cumulative state of overload that does not fully abate in the moments of respite between COVID waves.
Some of the problems I’ve written about before: Even in quieter periods, health-care workers are scrambling to catch up with backlogs of work that went unaddressed during COVID surges, or patients who sat on health problems and are now much sicker. Those patients are more antagonistic; verbal and physical assaults are commonplace. Health-care workers can also still catch COVID, keeping them from their jobs, while surges elsewhere in the world create supply-chain issues that keep hospitals from running smoothly. All this, on top of two years of devastating COVID surges, means that health-care workers are so exhausted and burned out that those words have become euphemisms. In trying to describe his colleagues’ mental state, Plante brought up Migrant Mother—the famous photo from the journalist Dorothea Lange, which captured unimaginable hardships in a single haunting expression. “That look in her eyes is what I see in folks who’ve been on the front lines,” Plante told me.
Enough health-care workers—nurses, in particular—have quit their jobs that even when hospitals aren’t deluged, the remaining workforce must care for an unreasonable number of patients over longer hours and more shifts. In a survey of nearly 12,000 nurses, conducted by the American Nurses Foundation this January, 89 percent said that their workplace was short-staffed, and half said the problem was serious. Worse, almost a quarter said that they were planning on leaving their jobs within the next six months, and another 30 percent said they might. Even if just a small fraction of them follow through on their intentions, their departure would heap more pressure upon a workforce that is already shouldering too much. “There’s a palpable concern that this can’t be our new normal,” Beth Wathen, president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, told me.
Jonathan V Last/Bulwark:
Fettermania Is Now
How Fetterman could win—or lose—in November
Vote for the Largest Primate
Look, I first started preaching to you about Fetterman in November. This guy is selling something rare. His blowout victory over Conor Lamb looks inevitable now, but it’s important to remember that Conor Lambs is a quality candidate.
Lamb was not a tomato can. He’s a good candidate who was perfectly aligned with Pennsylvania Democrats. He’s got a great story. And Fetterman more than doubled him up: 59 - 27.
Now here’s the deal: I am not convinced that Fetterman is a lock to win in November.
If he faces Mehmet Oz, then he’s got a very good chance. Certainly better than 50-50. If Dave McCormick is the nominee, it’s a much tougher race. Call it 40-60 odds. In a neutral environment, Fetterman schlongs either of them. But November ain’t going to be neutral. We’ll be deep into recession territory and Biden’s approval numbers are still going to be underwater.
So let’s start with the bull case for Fetterman and then we’ll talk about what can go wrong for him.
Media Matters (audio):
Sean Hannity suggests election fraud in Pennsylvania primary: “I don't trust people” who “have the ballots”
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I think under every scenario I have factored out, extrapolated out, Oz will be the winner in this race, but God only knows when we're going to get that final call. And to be perfectly honest, I don't trust people. And I'm not talking about Republican candidates. I'm talking about the people that have the ballots.