Michelle Goldberg On Harris And The Left

Michelle is an opinion columnist at the New York Times, and before that she was a columnist for Slate. She has written three books: Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, The Means of Reproduction, and The Goddess Pose. She’s also an on-air contributor at MSNBC.

You can listen to the episode in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — debating who the real Kamala is, and how much BLM is responsible for lost black lives — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in Buffalo with conservative parents; her dad a journalist and mom a math teacher; Michelle a teen activist in the “Buffalo abortion wars”; the legality but ugliness of clinic protests; a pro-life man knocking the wind out of her; ACT UP; going to J-school; reporting at mega-churches in Ohio in the 2004 election; Harris’ moderate Smart on Crime book in 2009; her “triangulating” in 2019 (e.g. fracking); her busing moment with Biden; supporting a bail fund in summer 2020; Biden’s bait-and-switch as a centrist; bipartisan support for Israel; Merrick Garland’s effort to appear apolitical; lawfare; from Bush’s “fuck yeah” patriotism to Trump’s dark view of America; the Iraq War and 2008 bailout causing mistrust toward institutions; crumbling infrastructure; Trump never being a majority candidate; the cultural grievance fueling him; Michelle going to Trump rallies; the 1619 Project; debating the US as a “white supremacy”; the left radicalizing after Trump replaced a two-term black president; Covid mania; the distortion of Twitter; the Electoral College and its roots; the violent crime spike in 2020 and after; how the disadvantaged always bear the brunt of disorder; the greed of BLM Inc; the press distortion of unarmed black men killed by police; Michelle’s 2014 piece “What Is a Woman?”; Rachel Levine; puberty blockers; the Dutch protocol; the Cass Review; bathroom bills; and the GLAAD protest against the NYT.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Frum on Trump, Musa al-Gharbi on wokeness, Walter Kirn on Republican voters, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal welfare, Mary Matalin on life, Anderson Cooper on grief, John Gray on, well, everything, and Sam Harris for our quadrennial chat before Election Day. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a listener of last week’s episode with Rod Dreher:

I will say I was moved by Rod’s description of his affection for Vance, and for the pain Rod felt at the loss of a friend who would accept nothing less than a full rejection of Trump.

These experiences, however, seem to have over-personalized the election for Rod. As for the future of the GOP, is it really represented by the likes of Vance, and not those currently banished to the wilderness after supporting the impeachment after January 6?

Another didn’t like other parts of the personalized talk:

It’s very sad to me to listen to you give no pushback to a right-wing demagogue like Rod Dreher (beginning at the 25:45 mark) as he talks about Muslim sexual harassers [in Paris] and child rapists/traffickers in Britain as if they were normative Muslim immigrants. Would you react the same way if he were talking in such generalizations about African-Americans or Jews? 

As Noah Carl — a politically incorrect social scientist if there ever were one — has shown, Muslim Brits commit about the same crime rate as white British. (Although, as Carl notes, in many European countries [Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, France], Muslims do have a considerably higher crime rate than whites — but not so in Britain.) Your default assumption when someone on the far-right makes a racially inflammatory point seems to be, “there must be some truth to it,” rather than looking into the empirical evidence.

The history of migrant grooming gangs in the UK is truly horrifying. And the refusal of the British police to investigate sooner was due to their being more concerned about being seen as racist than about the 1,400 girls in Rotherham, for example, who were raped by gangs overwhelmingly of Pakistani origin.

More on the candid convo last week:

You know, the strange thing about Rod Dreher is that I am actually more inclined to believe him on the religious “woo-woo” stuff than his testimonies regarding political events. I have noticed that his stories on modern miracles and signs (with the possible exception of his exorcist story) generally refer to people with actual names. And he can even generally produce physical evidence of some of the weird stuff that happens to him.

But I really cringed when you called him “deeply honest.” He is deeply confessional and raw, but I often find that, especially with his political commentary, his writing is filled with these “just-so” testimonials that are always anonymous, seem to reflect his worldview perfectly, and communicate in a manner that is suspiciously and verbosely reflective of the man himself. As someone in journalism yourself, I think you know that when you talk to someone directly affected by a political situation, it’s very rare to find a case study in reality of the abstract picture in your mind.  There’s always something to complicate the picture. But Rod has a knack for finding people who seem to serve as perfect exemplars of his worldview.  

Another listener champions the center:

Your recent interview with Rod Dreher was fascinating. I think the point you made about resisting bitterness, even when one has ample justification to feel it, is so important, and I think there was an inconsistency in Dreher’s position in that regard. 

On the one hand, when you pushed him not to vote for Trump, he argued that there was no center to occupy between two extremes, so he was voting for the one he feared less. But on the other hand, when he was discussing white supremacy, he said that anti-white, anti-male sentiment on the left was no excuse for young white men to become white supremacists. So if there’s no excuse to abandon the only morally righteous position in the center when it comes to left- vs. right-wing racism, why does he excuse himself abandoning the only morally righteous position in the center when it comes to left- vs. right-wing illiberalism? 

More particularly, for a devout Christian like Rod, what biblical grounds could possibly justify him abandoning the center? Occupying the center is not neutrality, as he described it in the electoral context. It’s an active standing on principle, and I would have thought the analogy to the passion of the Christ would be obvious to him. I’m not religious myself, but I find a lot of moral meaning in the Bible. As I read it, the passion of the Christ is a brave and active choice to endure suffering for the love of humanity, not some sort of cowardly opting for neutrality. 

This understanding of Christ’s passion formed the basis of MKL’s commitment to nonviolence and refusal to succumb to bitterness. Given that Dreher cares so deeply about seeing himself as an opponent of white supremacy (and good for him), what I would like to know is, what persecution has he suffered that gives him the right to abandon his principles, when so many African-Americans suffering far worse persecution steadfastly refused to abandon theirs? (Though I don’t mean to minimize or excuse the persecution that Dreher has undoubtedly experienced.) 

Part of the reason I moved from the left to the center was because the cruelty of left-wing illiberalism appalled me. But conservatives in this country do not face legal apartheid. They do not have to drink from separate water fountains. They do not live under the threat that if they look the wrong way at a liberal women, they will be dragged from their homes in the middle of the night, tortured, and hung from a tree limb. African-Americans were. Some — understandably, in my view — lost faith in the country that had broken faith with them, but so many kept their faith in America.

Every one of us today who feels their faith in America and a moral center tested owes African-Americans an enormous debt of gratitude for exposing our rationalizations for losing faith as excuses. We retain some element of choice. If no moral center exists, as Dreher claims, that is not an excuse to move to the extremes. It is his responsibility — all our responsibilities — to create a center.

Agreed. It’s what I am trying (and largely failing) to do here. Another listener responds to the religious portion of the pod:

Rod Dreher apparently thinks awe and wonder require religion. He should try wrapping his head around even our basic physical and biological concepts. Of course we don’t know why the universe exists, why it has the properties we’ve observed (e.g. gravity and quantum mechanics), and how consciousness arises or even what it is. But how does throwing in God increase the mystery?

So, God created everything and is in everything. Why is that awesome and wonderful? Whereas, 14 billion years of evolution from elementary particles and energy to the human brain — that’s a cool story. And probably closer to “seeing the world the way it really is” than imagining angels and demons battling for our souls. Why it’s that way, what it’s all about, who knows. That’s the real mystery.

Another was “fascinated to learn that you (like me) believe that our planet has an over-population problem, since I’ve been under the impression that most Catholics do not believe that”:

I really wish more conservatives and Catholics would join you in regarding a reduction in global population — through voluntary, not coercive means — as a properly conservative and family-oriented goal, in that it seeks to conserve the planet for the sake of future generations. Dreher is, of course, correct that a reduction in the population would mean a reduction in our standard of living, at least temporarily. But since when did maintaining a certain standard of living become a goal of conservative religious believers like him? Does he not realize that the obsession with preserving a certain standard of living comes out of the libertarian neoliberalism that he and Patrick Deneen and others hate? 

Perhaps Dreher doesn’t. As I recall you noting in your first episode with him, he seems oddly more interested in the New Testament’s occasional statements on gender and sexuality than with its many criticisms of material wealth. If they are to have a defense against charges of selectivity, conservatives like Dreher have to include the pursuit of a certain standard of living in their critique of the spiritual deprivation and loss of meaning in neoliberal societies. Perhaps the gays, childless cat ladies, etc. aren’t entirely to blame.

And another listener:

Mr. Dreher’s embrace of Viktor Orbán, who has transformed Hungary into an authoritarian, repressive, one-party, one-religion state, makes me more suspicious of his willingness to hold his nose and vote for Trump. Orbán’s support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the contested belief that NATO forced the invasion and therefore it was justified, also raises suspicions. I can buy the argument that Orbán’s position serves his geopolitical, economic and security concerns, but that does not validate the way he characterizes the invasion.

Which brings me to anti-Semitism. Both you and Mr. Dreher expressed your surprise at the rapid emergence of anti-Semitism in the US following the events in Gaza. I was less surprised. Dreher, should, I think, have been less surprised as well.  In your discussion, he said that living in Europe gave him a clearer view of the situation there than was possible from the US. While he was referring to the refugee problem, I am surprised that he did not notice the lingering and waxing anti-Semitism there, and in Hungary itself.

Which brings me to JD Vance, who was given a pass, I think by both of you, for only following the party line in his recent embrace of anti-immigrant, racist-adjacent rhetoric. But I think that he showed these tendencies before he was raised to his current position. His concern for population decline puts a thin veneer on an underlying embrace of the “Great Replacement Theory” and a view of White Christian Nationalism. Vance is not simply a puppet whose strings are being pulled by Trump or his handlers.

So I disagree with Mr. Dreher in many ways. You expressed your disagreements with him very judiciously and probably more effectively than I did. Thanks again for your exposing me to things I need to be exposed to.

Another has a guest recommendation:

Dreher mentioned in the Dishcast a personal mentor of mine: Carlos Eire. It had never occurred to me before, but I think he would be a wonderful guest to have on. He’s a deeply read and thoughtful historian of the early-modern period, including his latest work, They Flew: A History of the Impossible (referenced by Dreher), in which he discusses the epistemological challenges that historians face in studying reports of supernatural phenomena such as levitation and bilocation. Additionally, he has an incredible story as a Cuban immigrant who fled the Castro regime in Operation Peter Pan in 1962, writing about it in his popular memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana, which won the National Book Award.

Eire is also just a very kind human being. Both his scholarship and his life experience hit on so many recurring themes of the Dishcast. That’s my recommendation!

We’re grateful. Another rec:

I suggest you have UVA sociologist James Davison Hunter on the Dishcast to discuss his recent book Democracy and Solidarity. Aaron Renn and David Brooks reviewed it, and it’s a pretty bleak book. Hunter uses terms like “late-state democracy,” and he originally coined the term “culture wars” some 30 years ago.

And another:

If you are going to keep shitting on the Never Trumpers, especially the Bulwark crew, have one of them on the Dishcast to talk it through! I vote for JVL. He is always right, and after you he’s my favorite political writer.

Here’s a rec for another podcast — produced by a woman who joined the Dishcast in 2021:

I’ve written to you before — as the mother of a daughter who has spent five years identifying as a boy — to thank you for your ongoing focus on the scandal of paediatric transition. Julie Bindel, who you probably know as a lesbian feminist in the UK, has just released a nine-part podcast that centers the experience of the parents. I’m not featured in it, but I can directly relate to the tales of institutional and societal failures involving schools, doctors, social services and lobby groups. It’s worth listening to if you can spare the time (episodes are about 30 minutes each). Here’s a preview:

Here’s a personal rec:

I’m a longtime listener and enjoy your podcast very much, and since you mentioned using Ozempic in your latest episode, I wanted to say: in my experience, trizepatide (the generic version of Mounjaro) and Mounjaro itself cause less digestive issues than Ozempic, and for the average user it causes more weight loss.

Next up, a bunch of dissenting readers and others keep the debate going over the Harris-Trump contest. One writes:

As a VFYW super-sleuth (always feels nice to say that), I think this may be my first time responding to something other than the contest. This week I’d prefer to respond to your latest column on Harris and the pod with Rod.

Taking both things together — as well as your previous columns this election cycle — I share most of your critiques of both major candidates and empathize deeply with the difficulty of affirmatively saying which candidate to vote for. I’m more curious about you making an explicit cost–benefit analysis — one that plays out your worst-case scenarios under both potential administrations — rather than continuing to list all the problems with Trump’s “malignant narcissism” and Harris’ nonsense “wokery.”