By Noah Rothman
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
There must be currency in the nonsensical pieties that
glut social media, which serve only to signal the individual’s tribal
affinities. But like so many of the financial products that enthuse America’s
investor classes, it is a currency that lacks any intrinsic value.
Take, by way of example, House Progressive Caucus
chairwoman Pramila Jayapal’s latest thought bubble:
Good news, representative! It’s not.
You don’t need to apply for a permit to purchase concert
tickets. You don’t need to seek out reputable references or familiarize
yourself with your state’s particular regulations to do so, either. You are
highly unlikely to be prosecuted for providing Ticketmaster with erroneous
personal information. Rejoice! Our long national nightmare is over.
It’s unclear who non-sequiturs like these are for, save
those whose ignorance is matched only by the anger their ignorance inspires.
Perhaps Jayapal is resurrecting a failed Biden administration effort to render
concert ticket purveyors the latest black hat — an example of corporate
America’s avarice. That campaign failed because the Democratic Party’s populist outrages are limited to their
ability to access high-end luxury services — Beyoncé to Taylor Swift tickets,
airfare, the annoying noises lawncare crews make when they’re prettying up your
lawn. These are exclusive comforts reserved for those of relative means. Beating
your chest over that exclusivity is an odd way to foment a mob.
But even this logic risks lending Jayapal too much
credit. The simplest explanation is that Jayapal succumbed to one of her
regular bouts of bad judgment.
Among the many reasons to mourn Russia’s second invasion
of Ukraine, according to Jayapal, was the pressure Moscow’s actions had placed
on Western governments to increase their defense commitments. “We had thought
with the ending of the war in Afghanistan, we could push for a real reduction
in the defense budget, and there will be another opportunity,” she mused. Why in the world would Jayapal have been
operating under the delusion that the Afghan withdrawal would provide the U.S.
with a peace dividend when there was no peace to be found?
There would be a “huge backlash” not just in politics but
“in the streets” if Congress passed and the White House signed into law
spending cuts in 2023 to accommodate raising the debt ceiling, the representative
recklessly opined at the time. Even when she issued these remarks, poll
after poll found that the public sided with the GOP’s view that an increase in
the nation’s borrowing limit should be paired with spending cuts, and that was the deal to which Joe Biden agreed. Either the
representative badly misread the political landscape, or her speculation about
street action was a thought fathered by a darkly perverse wish.
Indeed, Jayapal’s penchant for blundering extends to
tactics, too. She was one of the architects of a bizarre and all but forgotten
episode in October 2022 in which 30 House progressives signed an open letter to
the White House calling on Biden to negotiate with Moscow and avert “World War
III.” How? By paring back America’s commitments to Europe giving Moscow the
security assurances it insists it needs, all while preserving a “free and
independent Ukraine.” See? Simple. Indeed, the only “alternative to diplomacy
is protracted war,” the letter read, with all its “catastrophic and unknowable
risks.”
The letter was so humiliatingly naïve — such a backhanded
swipe against Democratic leadership — that the president’s party was described
as “furious” with House progressives. The backlash was so
severe that Jayapal withdrew the letter and insisted that it had not been properly vetted before its release by some unnamed
staffers.
All this is to say that Jayapal has made a habit of embarrassing herself and her allies. Her latest senseless posts on social media are of a piece with that tendency. It’s a testament to the progressive caucus’s low expectations for its leadership that none of her colleagues seem to mind.
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