Tag Archives: midterms

An Interview Worth Your Time

Mark Elias of the Democracy Docket recently interviewed Rick Wilson, the Never Trumper who established the Lincoln Project. The transcript of that interview (linked) is lengthy, but it really is worth your time to read in its entirety. If you haven’t that time, or the inclination, I’ll focus on some highlights.

Wilson defected from the GOP when he realized the party had gaslighted him.

All of us jaded, cynical consultants were actually the guys who really believed everything we said, like the Constitution, the rule of law, personal responsibility, and integrity. The rest of the party was like, whatever comes next that gets us to the next job, we’re going to be with it. And then Trump was that. I just decided I wasn’t going to be a part of it.

He also understands something that far too many progressives do not–that you can’t have a policy debate with a man who is totally uninterested in issues–and you can’t argue policy in a GOP that lives in its own preferred ‘reality.”

I think two things happened to the Republican Party. The first was the emergence of a separate populist conservative subculture. It came out of talk radio, and it came out of right-wing media on Fox and elsewhere. It came out of the rise of social media where people were suddenly able to pick and choose the news they got, pick and choose the world they wanted to have represented to them. Politicians suddenly realized in the Republican party that the incentive structure was to go further out, to be crazier. To raise money, you needed to be the guy who was on Fox. To be on Fox, you had to be the guy who was the crazy guy. And they’re on a hamster wheel of that. So the perverse incentive structure inside the party was the opening act of it.

Wilson notes that most Democrats don’t understand how to debate someone who is not motivated by ideas or policy preferences, and he criticises  Democrats who tend to enter the political debate by saying something like  “Check out page 74 of my climate change plan, and then you’ll be convinced.”

In what may be his most significant observation, Wilson attributes the solidity of the Republican base to the fact that “it’s not a political party anymore. It’s a cultural movement, and it wraps up nationalism, populism, fascist adjacency, white nationalism. It’s a culture, and it’s hard to convince somebody in a culture to change that culture over a policy.

Even though the things that the Republican party has done to working-class voters in the last 12 years has been horrific, and as an ex-Republican, I can tell you that it’s horrific, they still believe that the cultural thing — and that’s God, that’s guns, that’s gay rights stuff — that an awful lot of this country that are not in coastal cities, that are not college graduates, that are not folks who are politically tuned into MSNBC or CNN or Fox every day, they feel like the culture around them is changing in a way they don’t like.

Trump offered them an easy solution: “I’ll be the enemy of your enemy. I’ll hurt the people you want to hurt. I’ll hurt the people you think are hurting you.” And that offer, that deal that he made, was a culture deal. You’re seeing them play it out right now with the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing. You’re seeing them play it out in the censorship regime they’re trying to impose because a lot of the things in that culture, they are connected only to the branding of America, not to the reality. They don’t believe in a pluralistic republic based on democratic principles. They believe in a Christian nation. They believe in a nation where authority figures like Trump have power because that will make it easier to hurt the people they don’t like.

The interview also contained some hopeful observations.

Donald Trump is so much weaker than you think. He is right now 26 points underwater on inflation and prices….  right now, the economy is unspinnably bad for a lot of his voters. When you go into the grocery store or Target or Walmart or the gas station, prices are not down, and you can’t spin that away….

His polling numbers right now are so far below where they were in the first term, and they’re so far below where Biden’s numbers were at this time in the beginning of his term, where we had roaring inflation. We’re going to go into 2026, unless there’s some unforeseen economic miracle, with an economy that’s dragging on Donald Trump pretty badly. An economy that is saying, “Okay, we tried your tariff game, it didn’t work.” And all these Republicans who backed Trump on this do not have the immunity that Trump has from reality with his voters…

The laws of political gravity still apply down the ballot. So we’re going to go in with an environment where a change election is in the wind. And a change election means that it’s not going to be, as the DCCC thinks, we’re going to fight it out over six or seven seats… We’re going to fight it out over 25 or 30 seats if Trump’s numbers continue to remain so low… He is an unpopular president, and the Republicans have defined themselves by only one thing: being Trump’s guys. They don’t represent people in a district anymore. They’re just Donald Trump’s representative from the fourth congressional district of Missouri or whatever…

He’s a boat anchor right now in terms of ratings and politics. The big bad bill is having very nasty impacts out there on rural hospitals. People are getting how bad it is. We’re in the middle of a real estate collapse in about seven or eight Sunbelt states right now, which we’re pretending it’s not happening … across the deep south in the Sunbelt, we’re about to have a real estate collapse. That is a very bad political outcome for Trump. A lot of these Republicans are also still trying to sell immigration as a net win, but it’s also destroying our agriculture system around the country and raising food prices. There are all the components here for a Democratic sweep of the House.

You really need to read the whole thing, or you can watch the full interview here.

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The Way We Are

Persuasion’s Yascha Mounk recently interviewed Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Kleinfeld’s response to a question about interpreting the midterm results, and whether those results showed a rejection of  extremism and election denialism, was–in my opinion–an important summary of just where we Americans find ourselves politically, and although it was rather lengthy, I’m quoting it in its entirety:

The election showed that with a gigantic amount of work on behalf of many, many organizations, you can move a tiny percentage of independent and right-leaning swing voters away from election denialism and real authoritarianism in swing states. That mattered a lot, because it means that the 2024 election will be free and fair. But what it didn’t do was fundamentally shift the dynamics in the Republican Party. While Trump might be losing steam, Trumpism, Christian nationalism, othering people to build your base with wink-and-nod authoritarianism, is still alive and well. We’re seeing DeSantis do it. We’re seeing other front runners do it. We saw candidate intimidation. We still saw election deniers win in deep red states. We have about 16 states now where there’s trifectas—a state in which the governor, the attorney general and both chambers of the legislature (basically all of your major executive roles that would control elections) are all of one party. In about 15, maybe 16 states, those are all Republican and a number of election deniers were elected to those positions. It’s worth remembering that the Jim Crow South was only 11 states, really, in its full form of election suppression against African Americans and poor whites. It doesn’t take the entire United States to have an authoritarian enclave somewhere. The role of the RNC in Arizona was notable. Arizona is really the only place we saw any kind of election violence, with the supervisor of Maricopa County elections going into hiding. An RNC phone call seems to suggest that the Republican National Committee was possibly threatening that the mob would be released if certain things didn’t happen. 

A significant minority of Americans continue to embrace “Trumpism, Christian Nationalism and ‘othering'” and the most obvious question is why?  Those of us who follow politics and policy answer that question with various allocations of racism, anti-intellectualism and (especially) fear of loss–loss of privilege, loss of social dominance.

As Kleinfeld highlighted, attacks on the bases of America’s governing philosophy are being nurtured and encouraged by today’s GOP. 

Devoted Republicans with whom I worked “back in the day”–when the GOP was a very different animal– bemoan the reality that the party that bears that name has no resemblance to the party we once knew. The lack of  two respectable, adult parties in America’s two-party system is more than troubling for a multitude of reasons, many of which I have previously explored, but in a recent column, Jennifer Rubin discussed a  consequence that had not occurred to me: the GOP’s disdain for objective fact attracts voters and candidates who also believe facts to be irrelevant and governance beside the point.

Rubin calls this “politics as performance art,” and references GOP fabulists besides George Santos. She says that Republicans have moved on from the party’s lies about climate change, vaccines and voter fraud — they’re increasingly lying about themselves.

Granted, it would be hard to beat Santos for lying, and no one else (to the best of our knowledge) comes close. But not for lack of trying. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has claimed to be Jewish– to have been raised as a “Messianic Jew.” (Messianic Jews aren’t Jews, for one thing, and it seems her father was Catholic and her grandfather fought for Nazi Germany.)

She changed her last name from Mayerhofer to Luna, and The Post found no evidence for her claims that her father was incarcerated for long periods. Other claims that she was traumatized by a home invasion in 2010 did not check out, either.

Rep. Andrew Ogles is not an economist, despite claiming to be one during his campaign-he has no degree in economics and was never employed as an economist. He also wasn’t a “trained police officer and international sex crimes expert,” as claimed; he was actually a volunteer reserve deputy. (Shades of Hershel Walker…)

It isn’t only in folks running for Congress. Arizona’s Republican attorney general investigated election fraud, then buried the findings when  no evidence emerged. (The documents were just released  by his Democratic successor.)

If it is “harmless exaggeration” to fabricate a life story, and “politics as usual” to insist that your election loss was due to vote fraud, what are assertions that “those people” want to replace White Christians, or that “woke” people are indoctrinating your children?

When such people hold office, how can we hope for governance based upon evidence and reason?

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The Stakes

I’ve always liked Joe Biden, but the descriptive words that come to mind when I think of him are words like “decency” and “competence.” He’s an essentially understated man; unlike with Obama, the word “eloquence” is not the first word that comes to mind in connection with him.

His speech this week on democracy, however, was nothing if not eloquent– and heartfelt. It was also an accurate and important reminder of where we are right now in this experiment we call America.

I’m linking to the transcript of that speech, and begging you to click through read it. Completely.

Then vote BLUE NO MATTER WHO.

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About That Swamp…And Your Vote

Early voting is now underway in most states; here in Indianapolis–thanks to Common Cause and the pro bono efforts of local attorney and all-around good guy Bill Groth–we have nearly as many satellite voting sites as our rural, Republican neighbors. Preliminary reports are that those sites have been flooded with early voters.

This is one of those years where most voters have made up their minds weeks, if not months, ahead. But just in case anyone reading this is tempted to send a less-than-emphatic message to the current iteration of the once Grand Old Party, let me remind you of the “quality” of the people in the Trump Administration, and the fact that electing any Republican to any position in any level of government is an endorsement of the “best people” that constitute Trump’s Swamp.

Who did they get to vet these people? Rod Blagojevich?

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is plagued by scandals — facing about a dozen different investigations of his conduct — but he may have found a solution to his oversight woes: replacing the person investigating him with a political stooge.

Subsequent reports suggest this particular appointment was reversed, but the fact that Zinke tried this stunt simply confirms his sleaziness. Of course, he has lots of company. CNN recently published a compendium of cabinet scandals and embarrassments.

The term “embattled” has now been thrown around so often in news coverage of Trump Cabinet secretaries’ assorted foibles, it’s practically been fused to the front of some of their titles. The President himself, perhaps for variety’s sake, referred to Jeff Sessions in a tweet last year as his “beleaguered” attorney general.

Some of the alleged (and confirmed) transgressions have been more damaging than others. The White House’s handling of the Rob Porter scandal might have been its darkest episode, an ethical failure leavened by bureaucratic incompetence. Mostly though, the administration’s scandals and embarrassments have been characterized less by furtive malfeasance than some kind of open disdain for (or ignorance of) basic ethical standards (or a lack of due diligence).

That lede was followed by a rundown of some of the most glaring “embarrassments,” from the nomination of White House doctor Ronny Jackson to head the Department of Veterans Affairs (he withdrew after reports emerged of his excessive drinking, creating a “toxic” work environment, handing out prescription pain medications without proper documentation, wrecking a government vehicle after a going-away party, and drunkenly banging on the door of a female colleague during an overseas trip) to the multiple transgressions that led to Scott Pruitt’s resignation from his position destroying the EPA, to Ben Carson’s $31,000 dining set, to White House Secretary Rob Porter’s penchant for domestic violence, to Tom Price’s pricey flying habits. And much, much more.

It’s a long list–an inclusive one would make a much too-long post– and the ethical problems continue to mount. Vox suggests that the administration is unable to clean house because the President himself is too “soaked in scandal.” As the story says,

But inside the Donald Trump White House, grifters, abusers, racists, and harassers still get hired; they lurk around the Oval Office after they’ve been found out; and even in the rare instance where they’re forced out, it’s only grudgingly.

We have an administration that is setting a new (low) level for corruption; a racist President who proudly proclaims his Nationalism; and a GOP controlled Congress that is at best feckless and at worst in active collaboration with the criminals and thugs in the administration.

A vote for any Republican–no matter how unconnected that person might be to the Trumpists’ constant affronts to democracy and the Constitution–will be seen as an endorsement of the GOP’s corruption and White Nationalism.

Is that unfair to local candidates who may be nice people? Yes. But it’s necessary. We can go back to being fair when we get our country back.
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Crazytown

It’s unlikely that Bob Woodward’s new book will move public opinion. The country is so polarized between people who are appalled by Donald Trump and dispirited by the unwillingness of the Congressional GOP to meaningfully confront him, on the one hand, and his white supremcist “base” on the other, that it is hard to see the added documentation doing much to change the political dynamic.

For me, the most difficult aspect of the last few years has been the need to accept an ugly reality: approximately 35% of my fellow Americans enthusiastically support a racist, and are willing to ignore every other distasteful and disgraceful thing about him, in return for his constant reassurance that– despite all the evidence to the contrary–their pigment makes them superior.

Woodward’s book won’t penetrate that. At best, assuming America survives this descent into tribal hatefulness, it will join the growing mountain of evidence available to future historians and psychiatrists.

As CNN describes the book,

Woodward’s 448-page book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” provides an unprecedented inside-the-room look through the eyes of the President’s inner circle. From the Oval Office to the Situation Room to the White House residence, Woodward uses confidential background interviews to illustrate how some of the President’s top advisers view him as a danger to national security and have sought to circumvent the commander in chief.

Many of the feuds and daily clashes have been well documented, but the picture painted by Trump’s confidants, senior staff and Cabinet officials reveal that many of them see an even more alarming situation — worse than previously known or understood.

Actually, those of us who have been glued to news sources since November of 2016 do understand how alarming this Presidency is, and how utterly pathetic a man-child Trump is. It really isn’t necessary to get confirmation from anonymous sources–every day, Trump tweets his lack of even the most superficial understanding of the government he heads or the Constitution and laws that constrain it.

Let’s be honest. Trump owes his (very slim) electoral success to Barack Obama. Trump’s votes came largely from the white people (mostly men, but plenty of women) who couldn’t abide the presence of a black family in the White House. For eight years, they seethed, exchanging racist emails and sharing racist posts, looking for anything they could criticize publicly, and inventing things when the pickings were slim.

When Trump proved willing to say publicly the things they’d been thinking and saying privately–when he was willing to re-label civility as “political correctness,” and to “tell it like (they believe) it is,” they were his. Woodward’s book won’t change that; it is doubtful that many of them will read it.

I know that many good people, good citizens, good Americans will cringe at what I’ve just written. It’s too close to name-calling, too uncivil, paints with too broad a brush. President Obama himself, in his recent speech, took the higher road.

We won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic. When I say bring people together, I mean all of our people. This whole notion that has sprung up recently about Democrats needing to choose between trying to appeal to white working-class voters or voters of color and women and LGBT Americans, that’s nonsense. I don’t buy that. I got votes from every demographic. We won by reaching out to everybody and competing everywhere and by fighting for every vote.

I understand what he is saying, and I absolutely understand that candidates cannot be as accusatory as I have been. But as Zach Beauchamp wrote after sharing that paragraph  in a perceptive article for  Vox 

There’s a part of this that feels like it’s ignoring reality. Political science research on the 2016 election suggests that Trump won because a huge chunk of voters responded positively to his racism and sexism. Voters who scored high on tests of racial resentment were unusually likely to support Trump, as were voters who scored high on measures of hostile sexism. These voters did not tend to be particularly stressed economically; this wasn’t displaced economic resentment. Rather, they seem to genuinely share the current president’s values, agreeing that the way to “Make America Great Again” is to slow or even roll back social change.

My hopes are pinned on the midterm elections. I do believe that most Americans are better than the base for whom “Crazytown” is just fine so long as they see it vindicating their white privilege. This is one election where every blue vote will count–whether it elects someone or not–because it will be, and will be seen as, a vote against tribalism, racism, sexism and the pervasive corruption of Crazytown.
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