John Halpin has just announced that he’s shuttering the Liberal Patriot Substack:
We tried our best to make a non-profit media model work with entirely free analysis and commentary published throughout our existence. But it turns out upsetting the partisan applecart on multiple issues is not a particularly good fundraising or business model.
He’s late to the party. I reached that conclusion more than 20 years ago.
Ruy Teixeira’s valedictory post there is a sort of lament for the Democratic Party. In it he reviews the folly of viewing what are called “trans rights” through a civil rights prism as part of the ongoing liberal project of defending and expanding personal rights.
He also proposes ten qualities of what he sees as a “realistic immigration policy”, eventually arriving at the observation that what the Democrats are presently supporting is a de facto open borders policy:
Going forward, Democrats must show voters they understand these realities and are willing to dramatically change the incentive structure for illegal and irregular immigration. That means strict border enforcement, elimination or radical restriction of immigration loopholes, and a credible interior enforcement regime that recognizes illegal immigrants, even if they stay out of trouble, are still illegal and therefore susceptible to deportation. Otherwise illegal immigrants who manage to enter the country will quite reasonably assume that they can stay here forever which of course is a massive incentive for more illegal immigration.
He also wishes that Democrats had some sort of coherent economic policy beyond opposing Trump or vague generalities like “affordability” or “abundance”. He concludes:
It’s time—past time—for Democrats to discard the conceit that they are on the right side of history and that therefore their positions are, and have been, noble and correct. Until they do so, I do not expect them to develop the dominant majority coalition they seek and vanquish right populism. Indeed, it could be the other way around. That’s a sobering thought.
I’ll miss Liberal Patriot. It was a pro-Democratic site with which I was frequently in agreement. I doubt we’ve heard the last of the John Halpin, Ruy Teixeira, or the other contributors there.
