Maureen Dowd's Hill To Die On

Also, my all-time favorite recipe...

Dear Readers,

The first presidential debate (of July) just wrapped up, and this is how I feel:

Michael Wear @MichaelRWear

It is absolutely ridiculous that Bernie/Harris/Biden/Warren won’t be on the same stage for these debates.

I know, I know…we have a long way to go until the first votes, and perhaps it’s best to whittle down the field before putting all the top contenders on stage together. BUT. These candidates are not waiting. They’re all going after one another. Have y’all seen the health care back and forth between Bernie/Harris/Biden over the last? Voters deserve to see these candidates make their critiques to face-to-face, not with oblique references to candidates who aren’t even on the stage to defend themselves.

By the way, check out this profile of Elizabeth Warren. Related, while Warren is in the top four, and is perhaps the candidate who is most staking her candidacy on her willingness to fight and take on big and powerful “enemies,” it’s noteworthy that she has probably been the most reticent of the four front-runners to attack fellow Democratic candidates. This could work in her favor when Democratic Enemy #1 is Donald Trump. Will Biden and Harris lose ground to Warren on the “who is best positioned to beat Trump” front, because they’re enmeshed in a battle with one another? Remember, historically, Democratic primary voters have been known to punish candidates who are too harsh against fellow Democrats. Warren, who has typically been criticized (including by me) as being too conflict-oriented, might just benefit from being conflict-oriented in what Democratic primary voters deem the right direction.

Don’t Push Maureen, Because She’s Close to the Edge

Maureen Dowd, daughter of the working-class and columnist of the people, is now someone Democrats have to worry about in 2020, apparently.

Sure, she recognizes that Louie Gohmert is a “blockhead.” She believes Republicans have been “craven and hypocritical.” She thinks Trump is “impeachable.” But, alas, her vote is still up for grabs.

In four of the most insane, aloof paragraphs in all of political commentary, Dowd explains why in her column this past week:

After I interviewed Nancy Pelosi a few weeks ago, The HuffPost huffed that we were Dreaded Elites because we were eating chocolates and — horror of horrors — the speaker had on some good pumps.

Then this week, lefty Twitter erected a digital guillotine because I had a book party for my friend Carl Hulse, The Times’s authority on Capitol Hill for decades, attended by family, journalists, Hill denizens and a smattering of lawmakers, including Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Susan Collins.

I, the daughter of a D.C. cop, and Carl, the son of an Illinois plumber, were hilariously painted as decadent aristocrats reveling like Marie Antoinette when we should have been knitting like Madame Defarge.

Yo, proletariat: If the Democratic Party is going to be against chocolate, high heels, parties and fun, you’ve lost me. And I’ve got some bad news for you about 2020.

Dowd’s appeal to the socioeconomic status of her parents came in for some due mockery on Twitter, but it has been interesting to see Dowd relatively sheltered from the withering attacks others have faced when making far more substantive claims. Someone like David Brooks writes that Democrats should restrain themselves on policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All to win voters like him (consistent with principles Brooks has held his entire public life), and he’s excoriated. Entire voting blocs have been discarded because they supported Trump in 2016.

To return to my last analysis post, it is now mainstream to blast white evangelicals as hypocrites and fundamentally amoral for supporting Trump. Now, I disagree very much with the political decision that many white evangelicals made to support Trump in 2016, and I clearly have very fundamental substantive disagreements with many white evangelicals when it comes to political issues. That said, I find it interesting that many seem more ready to sympathize with Maureen Dowd’s equivocation on the moral stakes involved in this presidential election than with that of white evangelicals and many other groups of voters.

The truth of the matter is that Maureen Dowd is the kind of person that many senior Democrats can relate to or want to relate to. Dowd’s accusation that Democrats are “against…fun” stings some folks far more than many principled moral or policy claims. If Democrats are going to win in 2020, they should muster up more sympathy for and real interaction with voters who are truly torn, and less for preserving the sanctity of Maureen Dowd’s cocktail parties.

My Adult Men’s Basketball League

So my adult men’s basketball league just wrapped up last night, and my team was absolutely toxic. Teammates yelling at one another, sniping from the sidelines and grousing on the court. It was a terribly frustrating season. Needless to say, we did not make the playoffs.

I have played in this league for a year now, which has amounted to three seasons. Each season I join a new team as a “free agent” with teammates I do not know from around D.C. and Virginia. Most are younger than I am, but there are some older players as well (mid-30s). It has been challenging for me on many levels. First, because I’m not the basketball player I used to be (and I was never an all-star). More fundamentally, it’s just an entirely different social universe. Social capital operates in a different way than my typical environments. Your value is determined by how much you can contribute on the court. Sociability, education, kindness are all secondary, and it’s a far second. My inability to effectuate my will as I would like on the court, unlike in other areas and settings in my life, is terribly frustrating.

I don’t mean for this to be trite, but it’s made me think about the anger and despair people face in much broader, more critical areas of their lives. I try not to curse, but I can’t yet help muttering vulgarity to myself on the court when something doesn’t go the right way or my teammates are frustrating. Just that little bit of pressure, for forty minutes every week, makes me lose self-control. What about for the person who’s in a job where they face harassment and bullying, but can’t leave? What about the person who just can’t get out of a destructive familial relationship?

If you’re not forced to be in situations and environments where you do not get your way, where you are not constantly praised and affirmed, would you ever place yourself in a position like that? Why or why not?

My Favorite Recipe

This is my all-time favorite recipe: Lidia Bastianich’s Salsa Genovese. It’s from her book Lidia’s Family Table. Make it this Sunday. It will blow your mind, and satisfy your soul. Note: As the author of this recipe notes, she halved the recipe. I’d double it back up to make enough for a big family plus leftovers. If you can afford the cookbook, I’d get the cookbook…I don’t agree with some of the suggestions for the recipe on this website.

Have a great week, friends.

-Michael

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