Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The former president’s comments have ignited concerns from critics and scholars who have warned that a second Trump administration threatens democracy – even as his advisers push back on those fears, dismissing them as baseless. 

Many likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers have no issue with several of Trump’s recent statements, a new Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll has found, and, more often than not, they say the same statements make them more likely to support the former president. 

Holly Rice, a 57-year-old poll respondent from Cumming, Iowa, said she was backing Trump for his policy agenda, saying “I don’t care what he tweets. It’s a little off the wall, but you know? A lot of them do stuff like that,” Rice said. “At least we know he’s not a polished politician. He reminds me of my father.” 

June Koelker, a 71-year-old poll respondent from Monticello, Iowa, said Trump’s immigration plans made her more likely to back him, but she answered she was “less likely” to support him for his statement about those who enter illegally “poisoning” the country.  

She said there is “nothing wrong” with immigrants who seek entry legally but expressed concern about America’s national security under the Biden administration’s current border policy. 

Trump’s declaration that he would have to root out “the radical left thugs that live like vermin” in the U.S. prompts 43% of likely Republican caucusgoers to say they are more likely to support him − words historians said echoed language used by fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. 

And Trump declaring that he is “the only one who will prevent World War III” makes 42% of likely caucusgoers more likely to support him. Trump has pledged to swiftly resolve ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel. 

Rice said Trump is “good at getting people to come to the table,” citing his peace accords with Israel and tariffs on China as examples of negotiations with foreign leaders. 

“Maybe he can put it back together again, I don’t know,” Rice said. “You never know. But he’s the most likely one to be able to do that. It’s like negotiating a business deal.” 

Just one statement makes a plurality of likely caucusgoers less likely to support Trump: his suggestion that “fraud” in the 2020 election could justify terminating parts of the U.S. Constitution. Forty-seven percent of likely caucusgoers say that makes them less likely to support Trump. 

Trump calling himself “the most pro-life president in American history” effectively elicits a shrug from a plurality of those surveyed, with 41% saying it would not impact their support one way or the other. 

A similar share of likely caucusgoers (43%) say it doesn’t matter that Trump said he would have “no choice” but to lock up his political opponents. 

It’s possible that a few Republicans will decide that voting for Hitler 2.0 might bot be the greatest thing:

Supporters of Haley have the most negative reaction to all eight statements polled compared with Trump and DeSantis supporters. Backers of DeSantis fall between the Trump and Haley supporters on every statement but trend closer to Haley supporters than Trump supporters on their level of concern for all but two statements. 

For example, 71% of Haley supporters say they are less likely to support Trump because of his statement that he would have “no choice” but to lock up his political opponents; 52% of DeSantis supporters say it makes them less likely to support Trump.  

Just 12% of Trump supporters say his consideration of imprisoning political opponents makes them less likely to back the former president. 

Travis Webber, a 43-year-old independent from Creston, Iowa, who is leaning toward supporting Haley, said Trump’s past actions and remarks were “an embarrassment” to the Republican Party. 

The two Trump comments they don’t have a problem with are replacing Obamacare and that he’s the most pro-life candidate in history (which I’m happy to concede as well.)

These comments need to be relentlessly hyped by the Democrats and the media must continue to be vigilant in exposing them to the greater public. People need to see it and understand that it is beyond the pale. If Trump agrees to do debates in the fall (which I’m fairly confident he will not do) the moderators must confront him with them over and over again.

Those numbers really reveal the hardcore Trump cultists for what they are: a basket of deplorables, aka fascist cultists. They are unreachable. But it appears that buried deeply in the psyches of at least a few Republicans are some of the ideals that most Americans used to share (not that we ever fully lived up to them.) That may be the most hopeful thing I’ve seen in ages.

Who knows if they’ll actually defy the pull of the Trump cult in the end. I’d guess it’s probably a tiny total number anyway. But every vote is going to count and I just hope that a few of these folks continue to wince at hearing Trump casually spout Nazi rhetoric and decide that it’s just not worth the risk.

Happy Hollandaise Everyone!

Stay hydrated, get good sleep

As we approach the winter solstice, things are not as dark as they seem. More sunlight is on the way. As I noted the other day:

I’m assembling mailing lists for the 5th Ed of For The Win right now. Two years ago 40% of Idaho’s counties either had no functioning Democratic committees (or no sign of them on the Net). Today all do. Two years ago an even higher percentage of Iowa’s counties were MIA. Today only 5 [of 99] are. Sure, it’s red Idaho and Iowa, but it’s dramatic progress in two short years. Nobody knows about that. Now you do.

Candidate filing closed at noon on Friday in North Carolina and I was thrilled:

Chided for absences across more than 25% the General Assembly races in 2022, Friday’s final half-day of election filing for the 2024 cycle brought a resounding end to the fortnight. All 50 Senate districts have a Democratic candidate, and 118 of 120 House of Representatives districts have one.

That’s a far cry from nobody in 15 Senate and 29 House races.

But let former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper tell it:

@DavidPepper

Dec 16 • 11 tweets • 3 min read  Read on Twitter Bookmark Save as PDF

🚨 🚨

BREAKING: Great news in NC

A 🧵

I could tell the first time we talked.

The new North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman, in her mid-20s, didn’t just believe in running everywhere.

@abreezeclayton gave the candidates running in the toughest districts a name:

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“Champion Candidates.”

Because, as she says, by running in those tough districts, these heroes are championing the Democratic cause and values.

And from my standpoint, they’re championing democracy itself.

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Now THAT is how you show that you value running in these tough districts—which means you value running everywhere.

Well, Chairwoman Clayton got to work finding those champion candidates, in a state that’s seen a non-stop attack on democracy as brutal as any state.

3/ 

Chairwoman Clayton has been tirelessly circling the state recruiting ever since, and yesterday was the filing deadline.

And…WOW did she succeed!

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Only 2 years ago, North Carolina Dems didn’t field a candidate in 29 statehouse districts. That left about 40% of GOP members without opposition.

And THAT is an unacceptably high number of politicians feeling zero accountability to the people—exerting power with no democracy

5/ 

Well, here’s the headline in North Carolina after yesterday…

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That’s right, for 2024, Chairwoman Clayton and her colleagues now have a candidate in all but 2 districts!

From 29 to 2!!

And all 50 Senate districts have a Democratic candidate—in 2022, 15 seats went unopposed!

From 15 to zero!

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Incredibly, as a brand new chair, Chairwoman Clayton bested the Republicans in recruiting in a state THEY gerrymandered.

Republicans are leaving far more districts uncontested (25 statehouse, 8 senate) than she is!

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How is this success being treated in North Carolina?

“NC Dems have reversed the narrative…Chided for absences across more than 25% the General Assembly races in 2022, Friday’s final half-day of election filing for the 2024 cycle brought a resounding end to the fortnight.”

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This is how you go on offense in states, where democracy is most directly under attack!

Kudos to @abreezeclayton , all the other leaders and activists who recruited so vigorously, and especially to the many Champion Candidates for stepping up and providing this invaluable…

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and patriotic public service.

Your service has already begun!

For more on recruiting success elsewhere, and what we need to do next, go here:

BREAKING: Great News in NC, TX and ARKOur New Baseline: Running Everywhere!https://open.substack.com/pub/davidpepper/p/breaking-great-news-in-nc-tx-and?r=17y7a&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Do Not Underestimate Gen Z

The lead organizer from RuralOrganizing.org e-introduced me to Anderson Clayton in August 2021. Like David Pepper, I knew with our first phone call Clayton was going places. By October, she was electing Democrats in a red county. When she ran for state chair last February, I may have been the only one on her campaign Slack over 35. The level of organization I witnessed there was super-impressive. Same-old was not going to cut it. Clayton won handily on reversing the the underperformance in 2022. Since then, she’s won over skeptics, including one close to home. Her team is bringing back the fight.

Yes, I’m a fan. My generation can still be footsoldiers and advisers, but it will be this young cohort that will save democracy. Help yourselves by helping them. Stay hydrated, get good sleep.

Happy Hollandaise Everyone!

How the Russia hawks have fallen … for Putin

Not that long ago the American right was militarist, love-it-or-leave-it, and rabidly anti-Communist/anti-Russia. To a comical “no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops” and “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” degree, even. Fight ’em over there so we don’t fight ’em over here. War was good business, good politics, and a resume-builder for aspiring politicans. Americans of all political stripes reflexively pulled for the underdogs facing imperialist aggression (unless we were the imperialists).

Then came the BIg Shift. Now righties are fans of authoritarians and dictators. They’ve soured on all-American democracy and have turned fascism-curious. Let Russia have Ukraine, whatevs. It’s been in the making since the 1990s.

Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos take a swag in The New Yorker at explaining why American conservatives have turned fans of Vladimir Putin:

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins the Washington Roundtable to discuss his reporting on CPAC  Hungary, where far-right political figures gathered in Budapest last year, and on why American conservatives are gravitating toward figures like Putin and Orbán. “You don’t have to be a red-string-on-a-corkboard conspiracy theorist to see the connections,” Marantz says. “In Florida, for example, Ron DeSantis’s administration has admitted when they wrote the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, they were modelling it on a previous Hungarian law, which was itself modelled on a previous Russian law. So, no one’s really entirely hiding the ball here.”

Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists patterned their legal discrimination after Jim Crow laws in the U.S. So there’s been an undercurrent present for some time.

Click over and have a listen: How the American Right Came to Love Putin.

Happy Hollandaise Everyone!

Another round of Hitler talk for the fascist faithful

And some concrete plans to make it happen:

Lovin’ those dictators:

New promises:

Bold predictions:

Sure. Remember this? It was November 2, 2020

Not that his followers, enablers and henchmen care of course. It’s just Trump, playing his greatest hits and nothing matters except owning the libs.

Dementia:

And then there’s just sheer fun for the folks:

He hasn’t gotten any better over the years. He’s gotten worse.

Oh well, Happy Hollandaise folks. Let’s take a break, shall we?

He has a novel (final) solution for Social Security funding

Asked in New Hampshire whether he plans to raise the retirement age he had some great news. It isn’t going broke after all!

“What I don’t think people are acknowledging the way they should is that life expectancy in this country is declining. And so, you know, we used to think it was just gonna keep going up. I mean, it’s been a pretty steep decline. So I don’t see how you raise it if life expectancy is declining.”

What a relief, huh? The old people are dying early! Whew!

DeSantis said that the decrease in lifespans isn’t “just from COVID,” but is “from a lot of other things,” including “deaths of despair, overdoses” and “other things, that have happened that I think the government hasn’t been willing to really be honest about.”

Apparently, he didn’t express any particular concern about this decrease. He clearly sees it as a big plus, saving him from having to support raising the retirement age. He’s here to tell you the truth which the government refuses to do! We’re all gonna be dead soon!

It also explains why a Florida Governor, of all people, would be so cavalier about a pandemic that was especially deadly for elderly people. There are a whole lot of them down there and I’m sure it saved the state some serious money. Who says he’s not a true conservative Republican!

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Stephen Miller is only 38 years old. He sounds like somebody’s crotchety old grandfather there, living in some pre-1960s world. I suppose he’s speaking to the aging Fox boomer audience but I hate to tell him, purple and pink hair and piercings and tattoos have been around for decades now.

We’ve been hearing an awful lot about appropriate dress and proper decorum from Republicans lately. But seriously, don’t you think they should take a look in the mirror?

How about whatever this is?

Let’s just say that the left doesn’t have a monopoly on wild hairdos and garish fashion.

And those Fox News boomers need to take an extra dose of their Prevagen. This is from 1972:

Miller’s idea seems to be that liberals and progressives are out of step with mainstream America but that requires a very creative definition of mainstream. Here’s how the dictionary defines it:

having, reflecting, or being compatible with the prevailing attitudes and values of a society or group

To put this into political terms, all you have to do is look at the popular vote counts since 2016 to see where the mainstream of America really is.

Not that this is anything new. Hippie bashing has always been one of their standard go-to insults and since they have abandoned all sense of sense of shame and no longer reside on planet earth they can say anything and their people will nod their heads in agreement.

This is what they see as upstanding behavior from the kind of people who make this country great:

When they say that the left doesn’t feel joy and wants everyone to suffer, what they mean is that they don’t enjoy lynching. That’s what they consider fun:

Back when I first started this site, over 20 years ago, I said I wanted to document the atrocities. At the time we were engaged in the “war or terror” and the prevailing attitude in America was that we need to “hit them back,” the same way that the townsmen go out and kill a bear, any bear, in the wake of an bear attack. It was horrifying but it was recognizable phenomenon.

What’s happening now, 20 years later has scholars all over the world scratching their heads trying to define exactly what’s going on. There’s plenty of historical data on the rise of fascism and the decline of democracy but this particular toxic mix of modern media, conspiracy theories and celebrity worship is a peculiarly American recipe for the right’s authoritarian movement. I wish I could say that it’s dissipating but it doesn’t seem to be, Trump or no Trump.

It’s going to be a long year, everyone. I know that many of you would rather stick chopsticks in your ears than hear another word from Trump and his henchmen and they’re going to be everywhere this year. But I hope you will come by here from time to time as we try to find the most informative of their grotesque utterings and synthesize them for you so you’ll be able to follow the conversation without having to mire yourself in the muck of the Trump campaign. (And if you want a respite from all of it, you’ve always got the Friday Night Soother with adorable animals and fell good stories and my old pal Dennis Hartley’s Saturday Night movie and music post to take your mind off the hellscape of our political culture. )

If you’d like to support this effort you can do so below. I am so grateful for your help over these years and I hope you’ll continue to read us even if you can’t contribute. Subscriptions and donations are always 100% voluntary. 🙂

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

It was only a matter of time

I confess I didn’t see this coming. And I should have. Of course the normalization of the narcissistic imbecile Donald Trump would lead inexorably to a Nixon revival on the right. After all, how can you hold him responsible for his crimes if everything Trump has done is perfectly above board?

Politico reports:

In late August, Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy took a break from his typical campaign events to make a pit stop at an unusual venue for mainstream Republicans: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Speaking before a packed house, Ramaswamy was slated to deliver a speech on foreign policy. But his opening remarks served the more provocative purpose of challenging Nixon’s much-maligned status in the annals of conservative history.

“He is by and away the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country — probably in all of American history,” said Ramaswamy, without a hint of irony.

Ramaswamy’s homage to America’s most disgraced ex-president perplexed some liberal commentators, for whom Nixon remains the ultimate symbol of conservative criminality. But Ramaswamy is far from alone in rethinking Nixon’s divisive legacy. Among a small but influential group of young conservative activists and intellectuals, “Tricky Dick” is making a quiet — but notable — comeback. Long condemned by both Democrats and Republicans as the “crook” that he infamously swore not to be, Nixon is reemerging in some conservative circles as a paragon of populist power, a noble warrior who was unjustly consigned to the black list of American history.

Across the right-of-center media sphere, examples of Nixonmania abound. Online, popular conservative activists are studying the history of Nixon’s presidency as a “blueprint for counter-revolution” in the 21st century. In the pages of small conservative magazines, readers can meet the “New Nixonians” who are studying up on Nixon’s foreign policy prowess. On TikTok, users can scroll through meme-ified homages to Nixon. And in the weirdest (and most irony laden) corners of the internet, Nixon stans are even swooning over the former president’s swarthy good looks.

“I’ve always been pretty fascinated with him,” said Curt Mills, a conservative journalist and self-professed Nixon fan. (Mills has contributed to POLITICO Magazine.) “I think the Nixon story is really an American story. He really is this guy who is from nowhere, and he’s just absolutely reviled … [but] I do think he has this charisma that’s sort of underrated.”

The Nixon renaissance is being driven in part by young conservatives’ genuine interest in Nixon, whom Mills colorfully described as “our Shakespearean president.” But when pressed about their pro-Nixon views, even his most sincere supporters readily admit that the Nixon-mania isn’t being driven solely — or even primarily — by academic interest in Nixon. Instead, the populist right’s ongoing effort to rehabilitate Nixon, which is unfolding against the backdrop of the 2024 Republican primary, is really about another divisive former Republican president: Donald Trump.

In the topsy-turvy historical tableau of 2023, to defend Nixon is to back Trump — and to rescue the former from historical ignominy is, according to the thinking of some young conservatives, to save the latter from the same fate.

“If we can rehabilitate Richard Nixon in a balanced and fair manner — or even if we can just create questions in the public discourse about Nixon and about Nixon’s presidency — then I think, by way of analogy, it will provoke similar questions about Donald Trump,” said the conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who published a lengthy defense of Nixon earlier this year for City Journal. “It will give us the kind of template, it will give us the precedents, it will give us the skills, where we can more effectively defend a conservative president against these kinds of attacks.”

Amid the surge of interest in Nixon, different conservatives are finding different things to admire in his legacy. Some — like Ramaswamy and Mills — have taken a shine to Nixon’s foreign policy realism, which they see as an alternative to the naive idealism that has led Democrats and Republicans alike into ill-fated entanglements abroad. In his speech at the Nixon Library, Ramaswamy identified Nixon as the forebear of his own foreign policy vision, which includes withdrawing from NATO, cutting off U.S. support for Ukraine and adopting a more combative military and economic posture toward China.

“No man is perfect — Richard Nixon definitely wasn’t — but one element of his legacy that I respect is reviving realism in our foreign policy,” said Ramaswamy in an interview from the campaign trail, pointing specifically to Nixon’s successful efforts to reestablish diplomatic relations with China during the 1970s. “Pulling Mao out of the hands of the USSR was one of the great victories that allowed us to come to the end of the Cold War … and it took an independent thinker like Nixon to lead us out of that.”

Meanwhile, other conservatives are looking to Nixon’s domestic policy as a template for the GOP’s battle against the liberal establishment and its alleged allies in government, academia and the media. In August, Rufo — who is best known for leading the conservative crusade against “critical race theory” — produced a short film called “Nixon Forever,” which identified the former president’s “law and order” policies and his efforts to constrain the power of the federal bureaucracy as “a blueprint for counter-revolution” in the 21st century. Rufo has gone so far as to suggest that the next Republican president look to Nixon’s brutal (and occasionally illegal) treatment of leftist groups like the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground as a model for their own war on the “radical left.”

“I think a Nixon-style effort — within the limitations of the law — would be correct,” Rufo told me. “The basic strategy would be to identify violent left-wing networks, to infiltrate them with confidential human sources, undercover agents [and] electronic communications — if that can pass muster with a judge — and then to start just imploding them from within.”

Bring on the Cointelpro baby!

I do love Rufo’s disclaimer “within the limits of the law” considering that Donald Trump is making it clear that he plans to deputize the Department of Justice as his personal goon squad to punish his enemies. They don’t need no stinkin’ laws or judges.

Nixon would have been impeached and convicted if he hadn’t resigned and would have faced jail time if he hadn’t been pardoned. But that was 40 years ago. What these people are really suggesting is that times have changed and Trump can get away with the things that Nixon did. And they are not wrong. Half the country is now enthusiastically supporting an openly corrupt half wit and the entire Republican Party is behind him too. Nixon would never have resigned under those circumstances.

But Rufo is one of those guys who says the quiet part out loud. He is the MAGA Goebbles:

Rufo says future generations will instead remember Tricky Dick, “as a good, honest man who rose from humble beginnings to the highest office in America, who loved his country, who tried to save the ideals of 1776.” Someone who, per Rufo, “was caught in the web of his own culpability, the tragic nature of politics, and a vicious bureaucratic coup set out to destroy him.”

Amid the overwrought comparisons to the founders, it’s worth asking how much the Nixon renaissance is, at its core, just an elaborate troll, one designed as much to provoke as to educate?

“Yes — yes, it is,” Rufo said, without hesitation, when I posed that question to him. “But,” he added, “it’s not just a troll, because there’s a substantive purpose to it. If we can rehabilitate Richard Nixon in the public mind, we will have demonstrated a capacity for reshaping how people think about political figures in the past, which gives us a lesson in actively shaping [the perception] in the present of political figures of our current day.” In other words, a blueprint for rehabilitating Trump.

What was it the Bushies used to call this? Catapaulting the propaganda? I don’t know if it could work but I wouldn’t be surprised. Rufo could also disappear like a relic of an embarrassing past and MAGA could be remembered as a severe form of mass delusion. Only time will tell.

Happy Hollandaise, everyone!

Moms For Liberty, flash in the pan

It looks like another vaunted group of culture warriors bites the dust:

Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing advocacy group, was born in Florida as a response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. But it quickly became just as well known for pushing policies branded as anti-L.G.B.T.Q. by opponents.

So when one of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, recently told the police that she and her husband, who is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, had a consensual sexual encounter with another woman, the perceived disconnect between her public stances and private life fueled intense pressure for her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board.

“Most of our community could not care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy takes center stage,” said Sally Sells, a Sarasota resident and the mother of a fifth-grader, told Ms. Ziegler during a tense school board meeting this week. Ms. Ziegler, whose husband has denied wrongdoing, said little and did not resign.

Ms. Sells was one of dozens of speakers who criticized Ms. Ziegler — and Moms for Liberty — at the meeting, an outcry that underscored the group’s prominence in the most contentious debates of the pandemic era.

Perhaps no group gained so much influence so quickly, transforming education issues from a sleepy political backwater to a rallying cry for Republican politicians. The organization quickly became a conservative powerhouse, a coveted endorsement and a mandatory stop on the G.O.P. presidential primary campaign trail.

Yet, as Moms for Liberty reels from the scandal surrounding the Zieglers, the group’s power seems to be fading. Candidates endorsed by the group lost a series of key school board races in 2023. The losses have prompted questions about the future of education issues as an animating force in Republican politics.

Donald J. Trump, the dominant front-runner for the party’s nomination, makes only passing reference in his stump speeches to preserving “parental rights” — the catchphrase of the group’s cause. Issues like school curriculums, transgender students’ rights and teaching about race were far less prominent in the three Republican primary debates than abortion rights, foreign policy and the economy. And the most prominent champion of conservative views on education — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — has yet to unite conservatives behind his struggling presidential bid.

John Fredericks, a Trump ally in Virginia, said the causes that Moms for Liberty became most known for supporting — policies banning books it deemed pornographic, curtailing the teaching of L.G.B.T.Q. issues and policing how race is taught in schools — had fallen far from many voters’ top concerns.

“You closed schools, and people were upset about that. Schools are open now,” he said. “The Moms for Liberty really have to aim their fire on math and science and reading, versus focusing on critical race theory and drag queen story hours.”

He added: “It’s nonsense, all of it.”

It just goes to show you how quickly things change in today’s politics. It was just over a year ago that everyone was gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands over the new “parental rights” movement with many advising that Democrats needed to “moderate” on these issues or they would lost everything. As usual.

School board races and moral panics around education have been a feature of right wing politics as long as I can remember. And then it almost always turns out that they get exposed as hypocrites or move on to the next outrage and it settles down. It’s rare that one of the far right leaders is a woman involved in a three-way sex scandal (it’s common among the men…) but maybe we can call that progress?

It’s Happy Hollandaise time, folks!

Can we “match the level of in-the-streetsness”?

“I can’t seem to get out of my own way,” my best friend from college used to complain. By that he meant that all his smarts and cleverness were stumbling blocks to getting what he wanted out of life. Which was another way of saying he thought too much.

Democrats and lefty allies have the same problem: stubbornly insisting this is a survival-of-the-smartest world when it isn’t.

Anand Giridharadas the other night issued a warning about that. First he notes that while lefty anger is dialed up to 11, our actions do not reflect it. Are we serious about stopping fascism or what?

Do our actions “really match the level of in-the-streetsness” we saw in the 1960s, Giridharadas asks. Just as I’ve argued before:

Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills.

At some point, you have to play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes. At some point, you have to win on the ground instead of in your head. You’d best be good at it.

And that “on the ground” fight is won in part through stories, not data. Stories are how humans process data and make sense of their actual experiences. Abstractions like “the economy” or GDP do not carry the same weight.

Giridharadas doesn’t say it this way, but Democrats must quit thinking that being the smartest person in the room wins elections. Think George W. Bush vs. Al Gore. Or Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton. Someone this week on social media noted that even when he’s alone Donald Trump is not the smartest person in the room. And he won the presidency.

Trump’s movement was built on tapping into human sentiment, Giridharadas says, “in all the dark ways, in all the morally neutral ways,” but it persuades and turns out voters. It’s a skill. Neither the White House nor the DNC rely on those skills. The Lincoln Project gets it though.

What’s driving political sentiment in this country is much deeper than data, Giridharadas believes. Economic data does not address people’s psychological distress and feelings of displacement.

“And right now in America, the bad guys know how to speak to psychologically adrift people, and the good guys do not.”

If we’re as smart as we think we are, we’ll learn. And fast.

Here’s a spot that goes for the gut:

@nowthispolitics The latest ad from Mothers Against Greg Abbott and Mothers for Democracy darkly hits back at politicians’ thoughts and prayers on the 11-year mark of Sandy Hook #mothersagainstgreggabbott #texas #sandyhook #politics ♬ original sound – NowThis Politics

It’s Happy Hollandaise Time! You help keep lit this beacon of sanity.