Public Reason: A very, very nice piece indeed from Dan Drezner, from which I want to quote extensively. I believe that Drezner has Taibbi, Wolff, and Greenwald’s numbers. I would quibble, however, in that I do not think they are stopped clocks. Stopped clocks are stopped—not making excuses for and rapidly moving toward their full joining-up with neofascism:

Dan Drezner: Horseshoes and Hand Grenades and Neoconservatives and Contrarians <danieldrezner.substack.com/p/horseshoes…>: ’Never follow a “thought leader” after they have been right once…. Public intellectuals… knew a little about a lot… excellent critics. Thought leaders… know one big thing…. They stick with it…. Hammers [that] see the world as nothing but nails…. When a thought leader is right once, it is human nature to believe that they have puzzled out some fundamental insight that will lead to even more insights in the future. We know from Tetlock, however, that… thought leaders being right about something big twice in a row is a highly unlikely outcome…. 

The Matt Taibbis, Glenn Greenwalds, and Naomi Wolfs of the world… already had their thought leader moment in the sun… 20 years ago when they opposed the war in Iraq…. They cannot believe that the neoconservatives who erred in 2003 are being invited to appear on MSNBC rather than facing trial in The Hague. And so as the neocons drifted leftward, the contrarian right seemed more appealing to them…. 

As contrarian thought leaders they are delighted to rebel against the elites welcoming neoconservatives into their fold… by arguing that mainstream Democrats are worse than the MAGA folks, that Trump is simply not as bad as reported, when in fact he has been that bad and would be even worse…. After being right on Iraq… they have been proven wrong on Trump in every possible way. But… it is probably easier to keep being wrong and well paid. Who knows, that clock might stop again in the future and they could be right again. 

Or they will wonder, like Taibbi, how they got to where they are now…