I enjoy reading the right wing apostates these days because in some ways they see certain aspect s of our politics more clearly than my own long-time allies. Maybe it’s because it’s newer to them to see this perspective or maybe it’s because some of my own allies are still mired in ancient, and currently irrelevant, internecine beefs.
This piece by JV Last at the Bulwark isn’t exactly a new insight to many of us but it’s refreshingly sharp and very, very accurate:
Imagine that it was the Democrats yesterday. Imagine that Pramila Jayapal and Cori Bush had forced Nancy Pelosi out of the speaker’s chair.
What would the reaction have been?
Let me channel it for you:
Democrats are controlled by their far-left who are totally out of touch with mainstream voters. This is why you got Trump the first time. White working-class voters see that Democrats have no interest in their real lives because they’re captive to progressive radicals. Republicans are going to crush them in 2024 and it will be Democrats’ own fault when Trump returns to power.
Sound about right? Did I miss anything?
Yet when Matt Gaetz holds the Republican majority hostage in the House and forces the ejection of the speaker because he made a deal to avoid a government shutdown the reaction is more along the lines of . . .
Hell’s bells Martha, this is unfortunate. Going to be a lot of chaos. But, you know, that’s how Republicans are. Oh well.
So raise your hand if you think Republicans will pay an electoral price for this debacle. Or if you think that this instance of Republicans’ failure to govern will cost Donald Trump any votes when he faces Joe Biden?
Please understand that this isn’t a complaint about media bias (though that’s real). It’s a complaint about voter bias. The public has asymmetric attitudes about Republicans and Democrats baked into their worldview.
And this asymmetry is creating a danger for democracy.
2. If Biden Had Done It
Now imagine that Joe Biden said the following words:
Just arrived at the Witch Hunt Trial taking place in the very badly failing (so sadly!) State of New York, where people and companies are fleeing by the thousands. Corrupt Attorney General, Letitia James, is a big reason for this. . . . I am not even entitled, under any circumstances, to a JURY. This Witch Hunt cannot be allowed to continue. It is Election Interference and the start of Communism right here in America!
Or these words:
They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its “Country Threatening Treason.” . . . I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events. . . . They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
Or these words:
Mark Milley . . . turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!
Imagine what the reaction would be. Again, let me channel it for you:
Holy shit, President Biden has gone insane. The cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office, immediately. This man has dementia and cannot be allowed to hold power. Shapiro, Whitmer, and Newsom should announce primary challenges this afternoon. America is in immediate danger.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that we’d have an Infinity-Alarm Fire because everyone in mainstream America would think that Biden was literally (and seriously) unfit for office because he’d become mentally defective.
Obviously, those are all things Trump has said just in the last two weeks.
And what has the reaction been? Let me tell you: Over the last four weeks Trump has opened up a small lead over Biden in the polling average.
I’ll just interject here that Romney opened a lead on Obama at roughly the same time in 2012. Same thing with Reagan in ’84. While every election is different, I think it pays not to panic when this happens. Remember, Joe Biden is an incumbent president with a good story to tell who is facing a candidate who is under 91 felony indictments and is certifiably insane. And he beat that same nutcase once already.
No, it shouldn’t even be close but we have a sick political culture and we just have to hope that it’s not terminal.
Again: I am bringing this up not to complain about The Media, but to point out that we have two systemic asymmetries at play in American politics right now.
The first is structural: The combination of polarization, population distribution, and the Electoral College has given the Republican party a large advantage in the Senate and presidential elections. Maybe this advantage is transitory; maybe it’s permanent. But it’s real and is probably worth at least 3 percentage points in the 2024 presidential contest.
The second is notional: The general public holds members of the two parties to very different standards.
Here are some complaints you hear about Joe Biden’s administration:
-Inflation is up: Then the government acts to stop inflation through a combination legislation (the Inflation Reduction Act) and raising interest rates.
-Prices haven’t deflated: With inflation waning, the complaint shifts from rising prices to the fact the prices have not gone down to pre-pandemic levels for select goods and services.
-Interest rates are high: As some prices of goods and services fall, the criticism shifts to complain about interest rates being higher—even though interest rate increases were one of the tools for blunting inflation.
You see how the complaints are always shifting, yes?
Meanwhile, Trump is just Trump. He talks about communism and witch hunts and executing people and it’s all just . . . you know, Trump Stuff.
Democrats think it’s bad, sure. Republicans actually like it. And the people in the middle? Well, go look at those polls. Seems to me that they’re pretty sanguine.
When it comes to the structural asymmetry, you can at least come up with theoretical reforms: Add states; move to a national popular vote; reform the Electoral College.
None of these are going to happen, obviously. They are fantasy politics because it is assumed that the government is too sclerotic to fix serious structural problems. And this assumption is almost certainly correct.
But you can’t even come up with a theoretical solution to the notional asymmetry—to the fact that Republicans can fail even the minimal organizing tasks of legislating and have a madman as the head of the party and yet still be perfectly viable as an electoral matter—while Democrats must play perfect baseball and never antagonize anyone other than their own base voters just to get close to parity.
There is no person or thing that caused this asymmetry. It’s like the growth of a glacier: a product of forces both environmental and particular, which work in ways that are complex, deep, and slow.
Either this asymmetry will eventually resolve on its own, or it won’t.
Democrats look at Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz and say, “How could they act like this?”
And the answer is: Because the voters let them. Not always and not every time. But often enough.
Their voters don’t just let them. They actively encourage them. They now see politics as a game in which their goal is to assert their dominance, period. With the arrival of Trump it’s become the defining characteristic of the party. GOP voters revel in it.