Like a cow's opinion, you know, it just doesn't matter. It's moo.
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I was recently speaking with a law student who raised a frustration common amongst advocates for the New Right. “I can point to all the comments and proposals I want from JD Vance and Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley,” she said of her conversations with more progressive friends, “but they just say they don’t believe those guys mean it.” My advice to her was simple: “Just tell them,” I advised, “that you couldn’t care less.”
Or to quote Joey Tribbiani, it’s a moo point: “Like a cow’s opinion, you know, it just doesn’t matter. It’s moo.”
It’s a peculiar phenomenon, after all, that progressives deem themselves the authoritative arbiters of who actually cares about, speaks for, or can best represent the average American. They’re not exactly disinterested parties, nor have they ever shown any inclination to think seriously or introspectively about their opponents’ strengths or their own shortcomings. To the contrary, typical assessments resemble Thomas Frank’s infamous What’s the Matter with Kansas?, working from the premise that any working man not already in the Democratic Party column must be suffering from either false consciousness or outright exploitation.
I have a hard time thinking of anything less surprising than a progressive law student declaring he doesn’t believe conservatives care about workers, and an even harder time thinking of anything the conservatives could do that would change his mind. In all likelihood, it would take supporting the PRO Act’s goodie bag of Big Labor priorities, and also the Green New Deal (everyone knows climate change harms workers!), and a pathway to citizenship for every illegal immigrant in the country (they are “workers” too!), and of course student-debt forgiveness (workers have student debt, almost as much as progressive law students, a happy alignment of interests). In other words, don’t expect to satisfy a progressive with anything short of becoming a progressive.
My appearance last week on Jon Stewart’s podcast, The Weekly Show, followed this same recipe, with a healthy scoop of “What about Trump?” poured on top. For the most part, I found it a pleasant and engaging conversation about the return of conservative economics (give it a listen!), but it was amazing the number of times he returned to his belief that this can’t be happening because that’s not what Trump says.
His producers previewed the episode online as: “How is a candidate who hates paying overtime and applauds mass cuts pro-worker? Jon gets into Trump’s contradictions and how his inconsistencies have impacted the Republican Party.” Then they titled the episode, “Jon Stewart Dives into MAGA’s Contradictory Politics.” I guess they know their audience. For what it’s worth, I thought this exchange summed up the quality of that argument pretty well (rough transcript):
OC: But again, you’re still going back over, and over again. I agree that Donald Trump is the head of the party today. I think the question is “what is post-Trump conservatism going to look like?” If you look beyond Donald Trump, and you ask, “okay, who is the generation of leaders who’s going to come after him?” One interesting thing about it is, it’s not a bunch of mini Trumps. I mean, there are mini Trumps out there, but they haven’t been especially successful.
JS: I mean, if I look at Congress today, there’s not one person in there on the Republican side that I can see that has a viable path to, in any way, criticizing Donald Trump, or coming out in a variety of ways.
OC: Of course, which goes exactly for the number of people who were willing to say how Joe Biden looked until he actually announced he was dropping out.
JS: That’s a good point. Touché.
Not for nothing, other than one silly aside, Trump was not mentioned again in the conversation.
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