I’m doing extra work at Naked Capitalism during their annual fundraiser, so I had two posts drop this morning.
First up, the West Asia war:
Iran War: The Narrative War Continues to Confuse and Confuddle
Yesterday’s narrative dominance by the American commentariat held today, but just barely, amidst diplomatic rudeness from Rubio, more Trump nuclear brinksmanship, harsh criticism of Kpler’s oil accounting, a bizarre incident on a Dubai-Tel Aviv flight, what seems like an obvious false flag in the UK, strong pushback via Iranian and Ansar Allah missiles, American military withdrawal from Iraq, heartbreaking reporting on the Minab massacre, and massive explosions in Damascus.
Let’s start with the narrative wars.
Talk of Negotiations Continuing Continues With “Feedback” Delivered in Doha
Despite (contested) reports that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio evicted the Iranian delegation from New York a day early, a non-Iranian official briefed on the talks says Qatari mediators gave Araghchi the US feedback in Doha Tuesday 29 Sep, on his way home from New York; the document describes “a seven-day period of trust-building” leading back to “an enhanced version” of the June MoU, “including concrete steps on Iran’s nuclear program”; the dispute is over “sequencing,” not the components.
This contrasts with IRGC spokesman Mohebbi saying the only way war will end is if U.S. admits defeat, and since POTUS Trump is babbling about having “decisions to make”… “we blow them up, we make a deal, but the time is coming,” and “it will end very soon one way or the other,” it seems unlikely America will have a return to clarity anytime soon.
If you’re wondering who is filling Trump’s head with visions of nuclear annihilation, Ken Klippenstein reports it’s Undersecretary of Defense War Elbridge Colby.
Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.
Next up, some commentary on Democratic party attempts to contain and steer the blue wave Trump’s insanity, corruption, and incompetence has unleashed.
Democratic Establishment Stuck in Groundhog Day of Neoliberal Economics and Neocon Foreign Policy
No matter how many primaries their hand-picked favorites lose, no matter what the polls say, the Democratic establishment and their allies in the MSM are fighting a desperate rear-guard action against progressives in the party from Florida to Michigan to Minnesota.
I’ll get to those campaigns, but first I’ve got to put a stake in the heart of a monster who keeps getting out of his political coffin.
Rahm Emanuel Embodies Thirty Years of Neoliberal, Neocon Dem Failure
Some nightmares, like Rahm Emanuel’s political career, never end. For three decades, the former key Bill Clinton aide, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Chief of Staff to POTUS Obama, Mayor of Chicago, and Ambassador to Japan has failed upward time and time again.
Never fear, despite a four-year tenure in Tokyo that was marked by nonstop controversy (mostly for his aggressive advocacy of LGBTQ issues he now criticizes Democrats for over-emphasizing) and conflicts with his host country and China (toward which he was so belligerent the Biden admin had to rein him in) following on the heels of his disastrous term as Chicago mayor that saw him essentially run out of town on a rail after covering up a notoriously racially charged police murder and endemic sexual violence against Chicago school children and earning an 18% approval rating by his term’s end, Rahm is back on the campaign trail teasing a 2028 run and getting the fawning press coverage from the MSM that has been a hallmark of his career despite consistently abysmal poll numbers with Dem voters.
Rahm is also trying to claim credit for what seems like the inevitable Trump midterm Blue Wave election that could see Democrats take majorities in both houses. He’s got experience, having done the same in 2006, despite running a centrist strategy that set the Dems up for the 2010 wipeout.
But that’s enough about Rahm. I want to cover a couple of big-picture trends that are shaping the political context and which the conventional wisdom just refuses to acknowledge.
Anti-System Voters
The other eternally recurring Groundhog Day meme of my political era has been the relentless appeal of outsider candidates from H. Ross Perot in 1992, to John McCain in 2000 (as unbelievable as that seems in retrospect it’s true), Howard Dean in 2004, to Bernie Sanders and Trump in 2016 and Sanders (but not Trump) in 2020, and Trump in 2024.
Political analysts are finally realizing that the appeal of these candidates is less about their position on some idealized right-left spectrum and more about their outsider status itself.
G. Elliott Morris writes about a newish (Dec 2025) paper by political scientists Christopher Williams and Leon Kockaya that argues the key swing bloc is not the “economically liberal, socially conservative” unicorn that Emanuel and Schumer and their ilk have been chasing since the Clinton era, but rather “a key bloc of swing voters who distrust both parties, believe elites are corrupt, and think the political system is rigged against people like them.”
This study pairs well with a Wall Street Journal piece that makes what must be a painful admission for Rupert Murdoch’s flagship, “Americans Want Populist Policies That Defy Traditional Political Labels:”
Americans in both parties back government-imposed price caps and other market interventions to make life more affordable, suggesting new support for populist ideas that were once largely outside the political mainstream.
That’s the takeaway of a new Wall Street Journal survey that asked respondents what they want from their elected officials and the political system. Voters of all partisan stripes strongly support capping the cost of prescription drugs, child care and credit-card interest rates.
The survey suggests that a coalition reaching beyond the nation’s familiar party labels exists for a range of policies at a time when Americans view Republicans and Democrats negatively.
