And the stupid crazy
Ron Brownstein interviewed Simon Rosenberg of the NDN , one of the few Democratic analysts who saw that the 2022 Red Wave was hype. Here, he explains how he knew that:
Brownstein: There was a widespread narrative in the media about the red wave. I spoke on the weekend before the election to half a dozen top-level Democratic operatives and pollsters who were anticipating disaster. You and a couple others were really the conspicuous exceptions to that. I’m wondering why the general wisdom, not only in the media, but in much of the party, was so off? And what are the implications of that for 2024?
Rosenberg: When I look back at what happened, I go back to something we’ve been discussing, which is the power of the right-wing propaganda machines to bully public opinion into places that it shouldn’t be going. And I think there was never a red wave, and there needs to be a lot more public introspection done by those of us who do political analysis about why so many people got it wrong.
The only way you could believe that a red wave was coming was if you just discounted the ugliness of MAGA. You had to get to a place where insurrection and these candidates that Republicans were running and the end of American democracy were somehow things that really weren’t important to people; where, as you heard commentators say, “Well, people, I guess, have settled that eggs costing 30 cents more is more important than loss of bodily autonomy by women.” It was always one of the most ridiculous parts of the discourse in the final few weeks of the election.
We had real data backing up everything that we were seeing, and we were sharing that data with reporters. I was writing it in my Twitter feed, which got 100 million views between the middle of October and Election Day. It wasn’t like the data wasn’t available to all the media analysts and others. But what happened wasn’t a failure of data, but a failure of analysis.
Brownstein: So, roll all of this forward for me into 2024. Are you comfortable with Democrats relying on Biden running again? And how do you assess the landscape at this point?
Rosenberg: I think that Biden is running for reelection. And I think that we’re favored in the presidential election. For us to win next year, the economy has to be good. And we have to look like we’ve been successful in Ukraine. Those two things are going to be paramount in him being able to say, “I’ve been a good president, and I may be a little bit old, but I still got 90 miles an hour on my fastball, and I’m able to get the job done right versus they’re still a little bit too crazy.”
What the Republicans should be worried about is we’ve had three consecutive elections where the battleground states have rejected MAGA. And so, if the Republicans present themselves as MAGA again, which looks almost inevitable, it’s going to be hard for them to win a presidential election in 2024 given that the battleground has muscle memory about MAGA and has voted now three times against it.
This was what I saw at the time and believe today although I’m constantly trying to check my biases and make sure I’m not just projecting my own desires onto the electorate. But this week we had a highly successful series of special and off-year elections which indicates that this dynamic is still in play. It’s not just Trump anymore. It’s Marge Greene and the congressional crazies and Dobbs and book bans and Ukraine, things that just seem nuts to a majority of people.
That’s not to say that Democrats don’t have a share of culture war issues that are making some people nervous. But overall, it’s the meanness and craziness of the MAGA agenda that makes the Independents and moderates recoil. It’s a huge factor and it’s not over yet.
I think …
Anything can happen.