Jonathan Chait, Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, and a dozen elephants walk into a bar

Why is it so hard to say what we mean? Or is it just inconvenient?

Over at New York magazine, Jonathan Chait has a column up, The Case For 2024 Indecision Is Feeble Trump-wary conservatives have run out of rational reasons to be undecided, giving much deserved grief to “conservative” NYT professional pundits/big mouths Bret Stephens and Ross Douthat for both writing columns saying that the “case” for Kamala over Donnie is still “unproven”.

Bret, in his column What Harris Must Do to Win Over Skeptics (Like Me), tells us that he has “questions” that Harris needs to answer before she gets his vote. Chait gives us this sample of Bret’s queries, to wit:

Stephens’s column [Chait says] begins with a series of specific policy questions he wishes Harris would answer. These are all perfectly valid questions, of course, but there’s something comical about demanding this level of specificity from one candidate — “Are there any regulations she’d like to get rid of in her initiative to build 3 million new homes in the next four years? What role, if any, does she see for nuclear power in her energy and climate plans? If there were another pandemic similar to COVID-19, what might her administration do differently?” etc. — when the other candidate’s platform ranges from incoherent blather to promises or threats so outlandish his own party is reduced to hoping he is simply lying. Stephens sounds like a parent who is unsure about whether he should hire a serial killer to babysit his children because the only other candidate hasn’t supplied enough references.

Now, I agree with Chait’s beatdown 100%, but I’m afraid that Jon isn’t giving us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—though neither is Bret. Here is the entire list of Bret’s questions, in his own words: 

What does Kamala Harris think the United States should do about the Houthis, whose assaults on commercial shipping threaten global trade, and whose attacks on Israel risk a much wider Mideast war? If an interviewer were to ask the vice president about them, would she be able to give a coherent and compelling answer?

…

A few more questions for Harris: If, as president, she had intelligence that Iran was on the cusp of assembling a nuclear weapon, would she use force to stop it? Are there limits to American support for Ukraine, and what are they? Would she push for the creation of a Palestinian state if Hamas remained a potent political force within it? Are there any regulations she’d like to get rid of in her initiative to build three million new homes in the next four years? What role, if any, does she see for nuclear power in her energy and climate plans? If there were another pandemic similar to Covid-19, what might her administration do differently?

First off, Bret hasn’t indicated that Trump has answered any of these questions, so why is Harris’ “refusal” to come clean such a biggie? Secondly, and more to the point, or at least more to my point, three of these questions—“What does Kamala Harris think the United States should do about the Houthis, whose assaults on commercial shipping threaten global trade, and whose attacks on Israel risk a much wider Mideast war? If, as president, she had intelligence that Iran was on the cusp of assembling a nuclear weapon, would she use force to stop it? Would she push for the creation of a Palestinian state if Hamas remained a potent political force within it?”—relate directly to the Middle East, and, of course, Israel in particular.

Now, both Chait and Stephens are Jewish, and, of course, Chait knows Stephens is both Jewish and a fanatical (my word) devotee of Israel. Yet he (Chait) makes no mention of this, even though it’s clear that Stephens’ real objection to Harris is that she’s a Democrat, and, in any true AIPACer’s eyes, irrevocably tainted with the curse of the “two state solution”. Rather than call out Stephens’ arrant hypocrisy—inventing reasons for objecting to Harris rather than acknowledging his real motivation—Chait joins in the charade.

Of course, Stephens offers plenty of additional hypocrisy to the stew. Why is the Houthis assaulting global shipping? Perhaps because Israel is reducing Gaza to in uninhabitable ruin, killing tens of thousands of helpless civilians for no purpose—for “even” Israelis acknowledge that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announced goal of eliminating Hamas in Gaza will not be achieved, that he is engaged in a massive exercise in murder and destruction for no other purpose than to avoid having to admit that he doesn’t know what he is doing.

But Stephens’ hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. He asks “Would she push for the creation of a Palestinian state if Hamas remained a potent political force within it?” as though he believed that the creation of a Palestinian state would be “acceptable” (even to him) if Hamas were neutered, which is unquestionably a lie. Stephens is no more interested in a Palestinian state than Netanyahu is. Furthermore, one might point out—as Stephens did not—that Netanyahu carefully nurtured the growth of Hamas in Gaza as a way of dividing the Palestinians politically, fostering the radical Hamas as the counterweight to the more centrist Palestinian National Liberation Movement.

Okay, now for Ross “Jerk” Douthat, who attempts to explain to us “What Undecided Voters Might Be Thinking”, complaining, in effect, that the Biden administration is simply a continuation of “the constant pattern of the Western elite over the last generation”, making Uncle Joe somehow responsible for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya, along with the policy failures of the European Union, with Harris predestined to provide more of the same, while “forgetting” that the Obama administration successfully guided the U.S. economy through the worst economic crisis in 70 years and the Biden administration successfully guided the U.S. economy through the worst epidemic in a hundred, and that the “Trump Boom” was simply a continuation of the Obama administration’s Keynesian stimulus strategy, which the Republican Party shamelessly embraced after spending eight years screaming about deficit spending when a Democrat was in the White House. (Naturally, Douthat also doesn’t ding the administration on its one real foreign policy disaster, its all-in support of Israel’s mindless revenge campaign against first Hamas and now Hezbollah. Mustn’t make AIPAC angry.)

Furthermore, Ross somehow “forgets” to offer one of the most potent reasons for a conservative like himself to object to Harris—her announced goal of “restoring Roe v. Wade”—because, of course, Douthat is part of the “abortion is murder” crowd, who are now caught in the classic “dog that caught the car” situation, having to face up to what I regard as two “established” facts: 1) a solid majority of American voters believe that abortions induced by the use of mifepristone followed by misoprostol do not constitute “murder” and 2) that the same thing may be said for the destruction of human eggs during the process of in vitro fertilization. Aggressive attempts to outlaw these practices, particularly by the Supreme Court, would, I think, be disastrous both for the Court and the pro-life movement in general.

It’s not surprising that Ross doesn’t want to talk about these issues—not in public, anyway—but it’s not particularly “honest”. I think pro-lifers are quite worried that if the Democrats get control of the machinery of government in 2024, the opportunity to solidify the “gains” obtained by the Dobbs decision reversing Roe may be lost forever, that a permanent “abortion okay for the first thirteen weeks and maybe sometimes after” consensus may be set in stone.

As for Trump, Ross admits he’s no picnic:

And, sure enough, the great leader of American populism is currently hanging out with the far-right-influencer Laura Loomer, who’s so manifestly bigoted and conspiratorial that she gives other far-right influencers hives. He’s currently litigating the Biden-Harris immigration record via Facebook rumors and anti-Haitian animus. His smartest supporters premise their loyalty on the idea that he’s a huge B.S. artist who probably won’t actually follow through on all his promises, even as his most devout supporters stand ready to excuse excess, corruption and constitutional brinkmanship.

Okay, that’s not terrible, until we get to the part about “constitutional brinkmanship”. January 6, 2021 wasn’t “constitutional brinkmanship”, Ross. It was sedition. It was Donald Trump seeking to anoint himself the President of the United States, our head of state and commander in chief of our armed forces. It was the greatest crime in American history other than the Southern Rebellion. Whatever you want to say about Kamala Harris, that “apparatchik of progressivism” as Ross calls her, she is willing to accept the rule of law, unlike Rep. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who voted not to recognize Joe Biden as President-elect on Jan. 6, and unlike Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, who rewrote/sabotaged the U.S. Constitution to smooth Donald Trump’s path to re-election, and particularly not like, of course, Donald Trump, the greatest criminal in American history.

Chait, to get back to him, for some reason doesn’t mention the fact that Trump’s crimes not only disqualify him from holding any public office ever again but also demand that “we” vote for Harris to keep Trump out. Both Stephens and Douthat, while trying hard to sound “thoughtful”, are really concealing their true concerns and ignoring the irrefutable need to, yes, vote for Kamala Harris.