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      I spent years studying American communism. Here’s what I learned | Maurice Isserman

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      I’ll leave it to future historians to puzzle out the reasons why, but in the second decade of the 21st century, in the unlikely setting of the most thoroughly capitalist country in world history, large numbers of Americans, mostly young, displayed a new interest in socialist ideas, values and policy proposals, and in turn in the often neglected history of socialism and communism in the United States.Having written three books early in my scholarly career dealing with one or another aspect of the tangled history of American communism, the last appearing in 1990, I figured I’d said all I had to say on the subject, and turned to other topics. Enough time had passed by the time of the 2010s socialist revival that the several score ageing communists and ex-communists whom I’d interviewed for my early books were now long dead.But in 2020 an editor at a New York publishing house, noticing the upswing in interest among young Americans in leftwing (although non-communist) politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, contacted me wondering if there might be a readership emerging for a new narrative history of the Communist party USA, from its founding in 1919 to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.We decided there was, and the result, out this month, is Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.A lot of what I had written in earlier books on the subject still seemed valid to me. But some things needed to change. For one thing, no one writing on the subject in the 1970s and 1980s had any real idea of the extent to which the party was involved in Soviet espionage activities in the 1930s and 1940s. More generally, what struck me as I returned to the topic was the mystery of why so many often highly intelligent and in many ways admirable people, as communists were when considered individually, could have remained so loyal for so long to a fundamentally flawed movement that never had a chance of success in the US.Most of the interviewees I met while researching my earlier books, starting when I was a graduate student in the 1970s, were in their 60s and 70s by the time I sat down with them, armed with my primitive cassette tape recorder. I came to think of them as the “YCL generation”: teenagers or young adults who had joined the Young Communist League in the early days of the Great Depression, graduating to the adult movement in the course of the decade, some of them fighting in Spain, others organizing unions of steel workers in Ohio and agricultural workers in California, some writing for and editing publications like the Daily Worker in New York and the People’s World in San Francisco.Not a few of them wound up spending time in federal prison in the 1950s for violating the Smith Act, a law that made it a felony to conspire to advocate the overthrow of the government. Most had left the movement before the 1960s, disillusioned by Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” in Moscow in 1956, in which the then Soviet leader indicted his recently deceased predecessor, Joseph Stalin, as a bloodthirsty tyrant.By the time I met them, after the passage of another two decades, these American ex-communists, and the few who remained in the party, generally as dissidents, had had a long time to think over the errors they’d made, and the crimes they’d apologized for, in younger days.And because they were, as a rule, so thoughtful, introspective, self-critical, and eager to share their insights with a then twentysomething-year-old researcher – hoping in doing so, I imagine, to persuade a younger generation via my books not to repeat their mistakes – I forgave them a lot. I like to think I didn’t apologize for their blindness to Stalin’s crimes, or for their willing support of a movement that, had it actually come to power in the US, might well have been responsible for similar crimes.But I don’t think I fully understood, or at least fully conveyed, how the elderly men and women from whom I learned so much might not have seemed so appealing to me if I’d encountered their younger selves decades earlier, when they were still true believers. And this, despite the fact that some of them told me as much: “I was a little Stalin,” Dorothy Healey said of her early years as a Los Angeles communist party leader. “I’m not talking about anybody else.”The central contradiction of American communism – one that defined it from its founding in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution to its essential demise with the end of the Soviet Union 70-odd years later – was, as I write in Reds, that it “attracted egalitarian idealists, and it bred authoritarian zealots”. Some clung longer to their idealism and resisted the authoritarian temptation better than others, but only at the price of concealing their true feelings.Mary Heaton Vorse, a free-spirited feminist and socialist from Greenwich Village, was a labor journalist who seemed to be on the scene of every major moment that American labor challenged the power of capital, from the 1912 textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to the 1937 auto workers’ strike in Flint, Michigan. She noted in her diary in the early 1920s that the people she met in the newly-established Communist party all seemed to have “closed minds, so certain, so dull. They bore me, bore me, bore me,” underlining the last words for emphasis.A few years later, however, she joined the party herself, and remained a member into the 1930s. But she retained the habit of confiding to her diary her dislike for many of her comrades. “I am a communist because I don’t see anything else to be,” she wrote in 1931. “But I am a communist who hates communists and communism.”Writing the history of American communism requires an appreciation of such contradictions. Somewhere along the line, I showed a draft of an early chapter of Reds to a friend and fellow historian familiar with my earlier works. Getting back to me a few days later, he said he liked it well enough, and saw how it grew out of my first books on the topic. But, he added: “You seem less patient with the communists than you used to be.”That was a shrewd observation. Now that I’m in my 70s, roughly the age of those I interviewed back when I first began studying the history of American communism, now that I’ve had ample time to reflect on some of my own youthful political follies in the 1960s, I probably am (in retrospect) less inclined to be patient with my interviewees in their younger days. Understanding, yes. Patient, not so much. As the great British historian EP Thompson, himself a former communist, wrote in his 1963 masterpiece, The Making of the English Working Class, understanding the “obsolete”, “utopian” and “deluded” English working-class radicals of the early 19th century required rescuing them from “the enormous condescension of posterity”.Condescension, historically, can take the form of a patronizing dismissal of those who came long before us for failing to live up to the high standards of moral intelligence and practical knowledge we like to imagine we possess. But it can also take the form of cutting our ancestors perhaps too much slack.In the case of American communism, the appeal of the Soviet “experiment” in the 1930s and 1940s in a world racked by the Great Depression and menaced by domestic and foreign fascism is perfectly comprehensible. At the same time, it shouldn’t have taken a speech by Khrushchev to reveal Stalin’s all-too-evident crimes against humanity in his three decades of misrule over the Soviet Union; lots of people, including many on the American and international left, had figured that one out for themselves long before.In the end, studying the history of communism should be neither an exercise in filiopietism, the excessive veneration of ancestors, nor of demonology, the classification of malevolent spirits. I hope that in Reds I have avoided both (readers, please advise), and thus have been fair to my old and now departed friends, those veterans of the communist movement, whose memories and insights I taped so many years back.American communists in the 20th century included in their ranks people of talent, vision, and genuine idealism. Their tragedy lay in their willingness to subvert their own best instincts in their devotion to a flawed and irrelevant historical model, the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet state. And in doing so, they helped set back for generations the opportunities for the emergence of a genuinely American left. May the new generation emerging on the left avoid their mistakes.
      Maurice Isserman teaches history at Hamilton College. His most recent book is Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism More

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      Louisiana must use House map with second mostly Black district, US supreme court rules

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      The US supreme court on Wednesday ordered Louisiana to hold congressional elections in 2024 using a House map with a second mostly Black district, despite a lower-court ruling that called the map an illegal racial gerrymander.The order allows the use of a map that has majority Black populations in two of the state’s six congressional districts, potentially boosting Democrats’ chances of gaining control of the closely divided House of Representatives in the 2024 elections.The justices acted on emergency appeals filed by the state’s top Republican elected officials and Black voters who said they needed the high court’s intervention to avoid confusion as the elections approach. About a third of Louisiana is Black.Like much of the south, voting is racially polarized in Alabama so any majority-Black district is likely to favor Democrats. Republicans narrowly control the US House and are fighting for an advantage in every seat.It is the latest development in a long and twisted legal saga over Louisiana’s congressional districts.Louisiana lawmakers were forced to add a second majority-Black district last year after a federal judge said the map they drew violated the Voting Rights Act. The state approved a map, but then non-white voters challenged it in court, saying lawmakers relied too much on race when drawing it. Lower federal courts agreed the map should be struck down, and the state said it should not be required to use the map for this year’s elections.The supreme court’s order on Wednesday halts that argument and means the map with a second majority-Black district will be used for this year’s election. What happens after that is unclear.The supreme court has previously put court decisions handed down near elections on hold, invoking the need to give enough time to voters and elections officials to ensure orderly balloting. “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote two years ago in a similar case from Alabama. The court has never set a firm deadline for how close is too close.The court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all said they would not have granted the request to intervene. Only Jackson explained her reasoning.“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” she wrote in a brief dissent. “We have often denied stays of redistricting orders issued as close or closer to an election.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackson was objecting to what has come to be known as the Purcell principle – a novel idea adopted by the supreme court that they should not intervene in an election dispute when election day is near. The liberal justices and other critics have accused the court of using the principle to benefit Republicans.Louisiana has had two congressional maps blocked by federal courts in the past two years in a swirl of lawsuits that included a previous intervention by the supreme court. More

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      US interior department staffer is first Jewish Biden appointee to resign over war in Gaza

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      An interior department staffer on Wednesday became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the interior department, accused Joe Biden of using Jews to justify US policy in the conflict.Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Biden and Kamala Harris, and was a longtime activist and advocate for Israel in Washington and elsewhere before joining the government.She is at least the fifth mid- or senior-level administration staffer to make public their resignation in protest of the Biden administration’s military and diplomatic support of the now seven-month Israeli war against Hamas.She is the second political appointee to do so, after an education department official of Palestinian heritage resigned in January.Her resignation letter described her excitement at joining an administration that she believed shared much of her vision for the country. “However, I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration,” she wrote.In an interview with the Associated Press, Call pointed to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where he said “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe” and at an event at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial last week in which he said the 7 October Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war were driven by an “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people”.“He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong,” she said, noting that ancestors of hers were killed by “state-sponsored violence”.The Hamas-led attacks on 7 October killed about 1,200 people in Israel. Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians.The Biden administration has pointed to its repeated calls to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for more precise targeting of Hamas so as to spare more civilians. It recently paused a shipment of bombs to Israel, saying it wanted to prevent Israeli forces from dropping them on the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah.“I think the president has to know that there are people in his administration who think this is disastrous,” Call said of the war overall and US support for it. “Not just for Palestinians, for Israelis, for Jews, for Americans, for his election prospects.” More

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      Antony Blinken plays Rockin’ in the Free World in Kyiv bar – video

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      The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, performed Neil Young’s 1989 Rockin’ in the Free World at a bar in Kyiv during a visit on Wednesday night. He was called on stage by the frontman of Ukrainian rock group 19.99, before he played guitar. Young’s song was written in 1989 after he was denied an opportunity to perform in the Soviet Union and was released as the Berlin Wall came down. The song choice underscored Blinken’s support for Ukraine as Russia steps up attacks on the city of Kharkiv

      Before the performance, in a message to Ukrainians, Blinken said: ‘So much of the world is with you. And they’re fighting, not just for a free Ukraine, but for the free world. And the free world is with you too. So maybe we can try something.’ Blinken is known for combining ‘music with diplomacy’, and launched an initiative in 2021 through the state department to realise that goal More

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      Pressure on Democrats as Republicans look to flip Maryland Senate seat

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      Republicans have a rare opportunity to flip a Senate seat in Maryland in November, and the outcome of that race could determine control of the upper chamber. The high stakes of the Maryland Senate election have put intense scrutiny on the state’s primaries this Tuesday.Maryland primary voters will cast ballots in the presidential race as well as congressional elections, and leaders of both parties will be closely watching the results of the Senate contests. The retirement of Senator Ben Cardin has created an opening for Republicans to potentially capture a seat in a reliably Democratic state, thanks to former governor Larry Hogan’s late entry into the race. A Hogan victory would mark the first time that a Republican has won a Maryland Senate election since 1980, and it could erase Democrats’ narrow majority in the chamber.Ten Democrats will compete for the party’s Senate nomination, but two candidates have become the clear frontrunners: Congressman Dave Trone and the Prince George’s county executive Angela Alsobrooks. The race has historic implications, as Alsobrooks would become the first Black person elected to represent Maryland in the Senate and just the third Black woman to ever serve in the chamber.Alsobrooks’s victory is far from guaranteed, as polls have shown her running neck and neck with Trone in the primary. Trone, the owner of the beverage chain Total Wine & More, has used his personal fortune to boost his Senate campaign. According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, Trone has already loaned $61.8m to his campaign.Trone has pitched his ability to self-fund his campaign as a crucial asset for the general election, which has become unexpectedly competitive because of Hogan’s candidacy. Hogan, who is expected to easily win the Republican primary, presents a formidable threat to Democrats. When Hogan left office last year, a poll conducted for Gonzales Research & Media Services showed that 77% of Marylanders, including an astounding 81% of Democrats, approved of the governor’s job performance.Hogan’s candidacy will force Democrats to allocate resources to a Senate race that they had previously assumed would be an easy win in the general election. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by 33 points in Maryland, but Hogan also won his 2018 re-election race by 12 points. Polls of potential general election match-ups have produced mixed results, but both parties will almost certainly have to spend heavily to compete in the state. The Cook Political Report currently rates the Maryland Senate race as “likely Democrat”.View image in fullscreenElsewhere in the state, the Democratic primary in Maryland’s third congressional district has turned increasingly contentious, after a Super Pac dropped millions of dollars into the race. Of the 22 Democratic contenders running to replace retiring congressman John Sarbanes, the former US Capitol police office Harry Dunn, who wrote a bestselling book about his experience protecting lawmakers during the January 6 insurrection, has the largest national profile. But polls show a close race between him and state senator Sarah Elfreth, who has won the backing of the pro-Israel Super Pac United Democracy Project.Dunn, a first-time candidate, has proven himself to be a prodigious fundraiser, bringing in $4.6m across the election cycle. In comparison, Elfeth’s campaign has raised just $1.5m, but she has received outside help from UDP, which is affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). UDP has spent at least $4.2m in support of Elfreth’s campaign, flooding the district with ads promoting her candidacy. Dunn has now turned UDP’s involvement in the race into a campaign issue, framing the “dark money spending” as corrosive to democratic principles.The race to succeed Trone in representing Maryland’s sixth congressional district has also attracted a crowded field of candidates. In the Democratic primary, the former Biden administration official April McClain Delaney and state delegate Joe Vogel have emerged as the frontrunners, while former state delegates Dan Cox and Neil Parrott are viewed as most likely to win the Republican nomination. Of Maryland’s eight congressional districts, the sixth is viewed as the most competitive for the general election, and Cook rates the seat as “likely Democrat”.Although Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations, Marylanders will still have a chance to weigh in on the presidential race on Tuesday. Biden’s name will appear on his party’s ballot alongside those of the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, but Maryland Democrats also have the option to choose “uncommitted to any presidential candidate”.Mirroring similar efforts in states like Michigan, pro-ceasefire advocates have urged Maryland voters to cast ballots for uncommitted to protest against Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. The Listen to Maryland campaign hopes that at least 15% of Democratic ballots will be cast for uncommitted, and they have reached out to hundreds of thousands of voters leading up to Tuesday.In the Republican presidential primary, only the names of Trump and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley will appear on the ballot. Although Haley dropped out of the race in March, she has continued to win votes in the weeks since, which has been viewed as a potential warning sign for Trump heading into the general election. In the Indiana primary held last week, Haley secured nearly 22% of the Republican vote, and leaders of both parties will be watching for a similar result in Maryland. More

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      US support for abortion rights up four points to 60% since fall of Roe v Wade

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      In the two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, leading to abortion bans across many parts of the south and midwest, abortion rights have only grown more popular, new polling from Pew research Center has found.A majority of Americans has long supported abortion rights. But more than 60% of Americans now believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases – a four percentage-point jump from 2021, the year before Roe fell.This support transcends numerous demographic divides in US society: most men, women, white people, Black people, Hispanic people and Asian people believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. It extends to majorities of all age groups and education levels, although 18-to-29-year-olds and people with more education are more likely than other cohorts to believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.People who live under abortion bans have also become increasingly supportive of abortion access since the overturning of Roe in June 2022. In August 2019, only 30% of people who live in states where abortion is now outlawed said they believed it should be easier to access abortion. Today, 42% of people in the same states say that.The broad support for abortion may prove pivotal in the upcoming US elections – Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has zeroed in on abortion as a winning issue as the president continues to trail Donald Trump in polls. Battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada are expected to hold ballot measures to protect abortion rights, which Democrats hope will boost both voter turnout and their own chances.Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to support abortion rights, with 85% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters believing that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. By contrast, 41% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters said the same.GOP opposition to abortion is largely fueled by conservative Republicans, since more than 70% who identify as such think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances. More than two-thirds of moderate and liberal Republicans support abortion rights, Pew found.Among the groups measured by Pew, conservative Republicans and white evangelical Protestants were the only groups with majorities that opposed abortion access. Nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances.Some people’s views of abortion did grow more complex the deeper Pew inquired. Most groups that support abortion rights ultimately thought abortion should be legal in “most” circumstances, rather than “all”. In other polling on abortion, support for the procedure tends to dwindle when people are asked whether they would back abortions in the second or third trimester of pregnancy.More strikingly, Pew also asked Americans to evaluate how much they agreed with certain statements about abortion. More than half of Americans agreed with the statement that “the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman”, while only 35% of Americans say they agreed that “human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights” – a stance that would logically lead them to oppose abortion.Yet a third of Americans said that both statements describe their views to some extent, even though those statements clash. More

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      Kristi Noem banned by two more Native tribes in South Dakota

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      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who was once considered one of Donald Trump’s top vice-presidential contenders, has been banned from nearly one-fifth of the state after two more tribes voted to prohibit her from their lands.The move by the Yankton Sioux tribe and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe last week follows criticism from the governor who has – without evidence – accused tribal leaders of “personally benefiting” from drug cartels. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes banished Noem earlier this year.Noem has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks after the Guardian reported that the governor described killing a family dog and a goat in her new book.Noem also falsely claimed to have met the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un – in a passage she later said should not have been included in the book – and claimed to have cancelled a planned meeting with Emmanuel Macron, which the French government denied. The controversies appear to have weakened Noem’s chances of becoming the former president’s running mate.Her dispute with South Dakota tribes heightened after remarks she made at a forum in March, accusing tribal leaders who had been critical of her catering to drug cartels.“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say: ‘Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.’”The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate said it had moved to ban Noem after she made statements that were “injurious to the parents of tribal children”, Kelo, a local TV station reported.In a statement announcing the ban in April, the Rosebud Sioux said the decision was based not only on Noem’s recent comments but an “ongoing strained relationship” with the governor, who took office in 2019.The tribe cited Noem’s support of the Keystone XL pipeline, her opposition to checkpoints on reservation borders established by the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux during the pandemic, and her support of the removal of “significant sections” of Native American history from state social-studies standards, among other issues.“Governor Noem claims she wants to establish meaningful relationships with tribes to provide solutions for systemic problems. However, her actions as governor show blatantly otherwise,” the tribe said in a statement.“Her disingenuous nature towards Native Americans to further her federal political ambitions is an attack on tribal sovereignty that the Rosebud Sioux tribe will not tolerate.”The tribe said it would acknowledge Noem only after she issues a public apology and presents a “plan of action” for supporting and empowering the Lakota people.In response to the wave of bans, Noem again repeated her claims about the tribes’ leadership. “Tribal leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty,” Noem said.Cal Jillson, a politics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said that unlike previous disputes, Noem seems to be “stoking it actively, which suggests that she sees a political benefit”. He said it is likely Noem does not mind the focus on this conflict rather than on other recent controversies.“I’m sure that Governor Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota, because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said. More

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      No Going Back: Kristi Noem and other Trump veepstakes also-rans

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      Donald Trump will never tap Kristi Noem to be his running mate. Indeed, she may never have had a real shot, but in the past few weeks her literary efforts have certainly helped torch whatever dreams she had of living in government housing, complete with Secret Service detail, a heartbeat from the Oval Office.Last weekend, at a vice-presidential cattle call, Trump failed to summon Noem to the stage. She reportedly left early. But at least she made it to Mar-a-Lago for a brief namecheck from Trump. Two other supposed vice-presidential hopefuls, Tulsi Gabbard and Ben Carson, failed to elicit even a mention. As it happens, like Noem, they have campaign books to sell.No Going Back, Noem’s memoir, dwells in a hell of its own, its fires stoked by her stunning story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, and an unnamed goat. The resultant controversy will be a tale for the political ages but more amazing still is that Noem simply refuses to say sorry. In her book, she writes that if elected president herself, the first thing she’d do “is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds”, adding: “Commander, say hello to Cricket for me.” Talk about twisted.This is not the top table. In The Perilous Fight, Carson manages to argue for a nationwide abortion ban at a time when the US has never been more pro-choice, while Trump, seeking to escape a political trap, unfurls the banner of states’ rights. Way to read the runes, Dr Ben.For Love of Country is Gabbard’s bid for relevance. A former Democratic congresswoman, she is now a Fox News regular. She aims to feed the beast but may be consumed by it. Or, more likely, something worse: ignored.For unvarnished self-destruction, Noem wears the crown and will for some time to come. More than two weeks after the Guardian broke news of her cruelty toward defenseless animals and willingness to boast about it, she remains in the public eye, a punchline for daytime and late-night TV, a spectacle without a clue. On a dimwitted book tour, her attempts to sell her work double as a prolonged act of self-immolation.When you cause your seven-year-old to ask, “Where’s Cricket?” – and then print the tale in a mass-market hardback – you have a problem. But when it is revealed that in order to commit the story to print you dismissed the objections of editors and advisers, you are walking where most candidates dare not tread.A Politico headline blared: Kristi Noem’s Team Told Her to Nix the Dog Story Two Years Ago. The site added: “It would have violated the first rule of campaign memoirs: Do no harm.”Some publicity is just bad. Ask Trump about the Access Hollywood tape, about groping women, which nearly cost him the 2016 election. He also overdid the “best sex ever” gambit, regarding a New York Post headline about his extra-marital adventures. Trump now spends his days as a criminal defendant, on trial thanks to alleged affairs, passing gas and getting slapped with contempt sanctions and the threat of jail.Noem has not progressed quite that far. But with her tale of killing set to ring through the ages, when it came to a quite separate unforced error even her publisher threw her to the wolves.“At the request of Governor Noem, we are removing a passage regarding Kim Jong-un from her book No Going Back, upon reprint of the print edition and as soon as technically possible on the audio and eBook editions,” Center Street announced. “Further questions about the passage should be referred to the author.”Such questions may not get straight answers. Noem refuses to say she never met the North Korean dictator. Pro-tip: visiting England doesn’t mean you had tea with the king.View image in fullscreenCampaign trail books often come with awkward subtitles. Noem’s is: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward. Catchy. Carson is not to be outdone. Underneath his own jaunty banner – Overcoming Our Culture’s War on the American Family – the retired neurosurgeon, 2016 Republican primary contender and former US housing secretary offers heartfelt jeremiads and dubious blurbs. Apart from that … not much to help his cause.Carson calls for a national abortion ban, writing: “The battle over the lives of unborn children is not yet finished. The practice continues in many more states.”Said differently, Carson thinks it’s time New York was more like Mississippi. Polling and election results suggest that’s not a popular stance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCarson’s book jacket is graced by Tucker Carlson and Franklin Graham. Tucker’s gonna Tucker. Billy Graham’s son has threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they criticize Trump. Mary Miller, a member of Congress from Illinois, also praises Carson, offering this nugget of wisdom: “It is important to stand strong against the woke cultural tide at work to water down the importance of the traditional family, and I applaud Dr Carson for calling attention to this issue.”It’s always worth repeating that Miller once had this to say: “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’”Carson dedicates his book to “the strong traditional families that provide the solid foundation of our nation”. He bashes pornography but is of course silent about Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, and Karen McDougal, the Playboy model, who claim affairs with Trump.Last and least of the three would-be VPs, Gabbard delivers an awkward mix of memoir and screed. She grew up in Hawaii and served in Iraq. Her father was a Republican until he became a Democrat. Convenience may be a family brand.In 2020, Gabbard ran against Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, then endorsed him. Now she takes a cudgel to the man and a flamethrower to her old party. As to be expected, she attacks Hillary Clinton over comments about Gabbard and Russia. Once again, Gabbard gets her facts wrong. Clinton never called her a “Russian asset”.Gabbard reportedly turned down an offer to be Robert Kennedy Jr’s running mate. She won’t be Trump’s VP but a cabinet slot isn’t out of the question.Generally, campaign books endeavor to simultaneously show enough leg and sanitize a wannabe’s ambition, aiming to make a contender interesting without giving too much away. But such memoirs can still say and do plenty.Think of The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama’s profession of political faith from 2006, used to develop themes that would underlie his 2008 White House run. Promise Me Dad, Biden’s memoir, burnished his image as a warm uncle, put the memory of Beau Biden, his late son, front and center, and provided a foundation for success in 2020.Now, on the Republican side, JD Vance is a leading contender to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016, brought him to national prominence and eventually a Senate seat for Ohio. Noem, Carson and Gabbard are nowhere near that league.
      No Going Back is published in the US by Center Street
      The Perilous Fight is published in the US by HarperCollins
      For Love of Country is published in the US by Regnery More