Here on a week’s road trip of America’s high and low deserts it’s easy to turn off the clamor of the world. That’s kind of the idea, right? Press a button on the dashboard and it all goes away. Or its at least absent. Soak in the sights of sprawling valleys. Savor the silence and look forward three hours down the road to the next cold beer in some raggedy, half-forgotten crossroads bar.
That’s kind of like paraphrasing Bette Davis.
But … no. Addicted as I am to the malignant noise of half the political spectrum I duck back in from time to time for listens to my go-to pundits. What follows is a brief summary of some of the more salient things said by people who … actually know things, and have records to prove it.
But first, allow me to brag. Whether you’re one of the five people reading these unhinged rants regularly or not, Marketing 101 requires me to point out a couple statements I’ve made that have proven remarkably — if not unexpectedly — foresightful. (Checking to see if that’s a real word.)
1: Several times in the past 18 months I’ve written that it struck me as highly unlikely this presidential campaign would end with the same two characters who started it. American politics just hasn’t worked like that in my lifetime. And especially not with two guys who pre-date color television, and one of whom is certifiably demented. (That guy is still in the race.) The prediction, if you will, was that something would change before November ’24. And so it did and so it has. Send kudos and Venmo to Nostralambertus LLC.
2: Two weeks after Biden’s disastrous/but ultimately fortuitous debate performance I predicted he’d be gone “within 10 days to two weeks.” So okay, that was over happy hour drinks with friends. But still: a prediction. You’re welcome.
Now … the best of recent punditry.
Rick Perlstein on The Bulwark with Tim Miller. The author of “Nixonland” and several other histories of the various conservative movements of the past half century, Perlstein is uniquely insightful when it comes to analyzing what makes half of America tick. In his conversation with Miller, (a former GOP operative and Jeb Bush guy turned Never Trumper) Perlstein described “the ratchet” effect of modern Republican marketing.
Those of you familiar with how Rush Limbaugh begat Glenn Beck who begat Alex Jones and QAnon understand what he’s saying. In order to sustain interest in their “cause” (or ratings) today’s Republicans must ratchet up the histrionics of their messaging, making their attacks ever more extreme, incendiary, vulgar and implausible. Their apocalyptic, wildly dystopian fantasies of “liberal rule” inflames the amygdala of the modern conservative base by making their “cause” ever more righteous and god-ordained.
This explains how Republicans have (ethically) devolved from George H. W. Bush and Mitt Romney to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. An honest debate of facts simply doesn’t work with their target audience. Perlstein’s bottom line point being that Trumpism/modern Republicanism is not capable of restraining itself and dialing back the ratchet. The only direction they have is forward, i.e. ever more vulgar and ludicrous to rational listeners but ever more titillating and motivating to the base they have.
But … in this new Kamala Harris environment, mondo bizarro vulgarity and delusional apocalyptic messaging risks an electoral blowback from voters who don’t see a culture falling apart, an economy in its death throes and a need for god-sent retribution. After 15 years (post-Tea Party) this audience is just plain bored with the whole gloomy, weird shtick.
Stay tuned, as they say.
Michael Beschloss and Bob Costa on with John Heilemann. Beschloss, the well known presidential historian, who sees absolutely nothing presidential in an incompetent fraud like Trump, and Costa the well sourced and very serious DC reporter now with CBS, were on Heilemann’s new podcast, “Impolitic”, shortly after Biden bowed out. Everything they said is worth a listen. But I honed in on what Costa said in response to Heilemann’s question about what specific talents are required to be a successful politician in 2024 America.
The question was in the context of whether Harris has such abilities, and Costa’s response about the qualities he looks for in a true “political athlete” (currently an over-used term of art). He responded, “I look for the ability to absorb political pain and the ability to project political imagination.”
The “pain” part referred to what Perlstein’s ratchet analogy was all about. In this campaign Republicans’ only viable tactic, considering their base, is to flood the zone with even higher/worse levels of vulgarity, indecency, dishonesty and viciousness. Harris will have to not just absorb this “pain” but blunt it and find a way to deflect it back on Trump-Vance, most effectively by highlighting to “persuadable” voters that this stuff is exactly what it sounds like … namely it is … to repeat … dishonest, vulgar, ugly and lacking anything in the way of a plan to make people’s lives safer, better and happier.
As for the “imagination” part, the three kicked around names of potential Harris VP picks — the usual suspects — but also her need to talk succinctly (messaging) and coherently about the future she sees coming toward us and how the country needs to manage it, adapting to changes that cynical fools (my words) like Trump, Vance and the MAGA idiocracy prefer to to ignore.
To conclude … (and you’re saying, “Thank god”) … waaaaay back in 2020 I wrote about liking a lot of what I heard from Harris. She’s a “real worlder.” She has a ground level sense of humor and a calming, reassuring saltiness to some of her off-the-cuff conversations. (It’s called, “sounding like a real person.”) I too am enthusiastic about her. She is very underrated as a political combatant and in a lot of very important ways could embody the qualities of the person the country/world needs now.
That said, she and all of us should prepare ourselves for the next 100 days. As Trump and the MAGA-verse begin to feel desperate, lacking any rational policy interests, their only viable path is ever more … indecent, dishonest, ugly and vicious.
