The Tragedy of Keaton Jones

Like seemingly everyone else in America, I saw the Keaton Jones video over the weekend and felt an immediate solidarity with the kid. As he wept to his mother and wondered aloud with simple eloquence why his schoolmates had to be so mean, and unconvincingly promised himself that things would probably get better, I was immediately taken right back to that moment when I was in sixth grade…

A rumor had somehow started that I was dating a classmate, that she and I were deeply in love. Now, never mind that I should have been so lucky as to have had any girl even remotely interested in me at that point. That wasn’t how I felt. In the moment all I knew was that it wasn’t true, and that each mention of the “relationship” was hurled at me more tauntingly and with greater acidity than the last.

I remember vividly the awful, movie-like moment as I walked down the hall and had seemingly everyone — including a teacher(!), by the way — pointing and laughing at me. I was completely humiliated. I didn’t know how I could ever go back to school. I didn’t think I would ever recover, and I had no idea what to do. I went home and wept for probably an hour, just as Keaton does in the video.

Of course, with even the slightest bit of perspective, this story seems like an absurd thing to get worked up about. But that’s the thing — 12 year-olds don’t have any perspective.

Keaton’s video hit home because everyone has stories like these, some more serious than others, that linger well after we’ve matured and have enough sense of self and the world to put such incidents into their proper context. But one of the more amazing things I’ve come to realize as I’ve gotten older is that there is no magical point at which you become an adult. You just grow up little by little. For many people, the ghosts of their middle and high school selves are never far from the surface.

And of course, parents have a natural, visceral response to pain like Keaton’s. We’re all well aware that our kids could be in his shoes. We want to protect them from the cruelty of their classmates. We want to protect them from that pain we remember too well.

It’s no surprise then that Keaton’s video became an instant viral sensation, with tens of millions of views just days after his mother posted it to her relatively anonymous Facebook account. It hit a note that everyone could connect with. It evinced a pain that we had all felt, and that we want to protect our kids from. He was a symbol for every kid ever bullied, anywhere.

People shared the video with their own stories of anguish, as I did here. Celebrities posted well wishes and offers of companionship out of a mix of genuine empathy and public relations opportunism. It’s not often that someone can have Snoop Dogg and Sean Hannity together on the same side of an issue, but this kid managed it. As I joked with someone this weekend, every politician in America would kill for Keaton’s approval rating.

But the problem with people is that we’re all flawed, and the problem with symbols is that they can be easily co-opted. Within 72 hours of the video taking off, an MMA fighter who had offered Keaton tickets to an event accused Keaton’s mother of saying she only wanted money. People began to look askance at a fundraising page set up in Keaton’s name, which had pulled in over $50,000. Maybe Keaton and his mom were opportunists. Maybe they were just in this for the money.

Spurred into action, Internet sleuths started digging around to find out who this kid is and what his family is all about. They quickly discovered some rambling Facebook posts from his mother posing with the Confederate flag and taking controversial positions on hot-button political topics. Unverified rumors soon followed that Keaton had used racial epithets against his classmates. Maybe, it was speculated, his bullies were in fact responding to his own abuses. Maybe he started it. Maybe he deserved it.

Keaton was no longer a unifying symbol of the victim against the bullies. He was now just another flashpoint in the endless culture war, an example to take to social media and bash your ideological foes.

I don’t know Keaton or his family at all, and I never will. I don’t know whether he is the innocent, unassuming kid in the video perfectly articulating the pain of being bullied, or if he’s a junior racist who throws the n-word around at school. Perhaps he is neither. Perhaps he’s bits of both. Kids can be complex and, especially at that age, can do a lot of terrible things they don’t fully understand and later regret. And when it comes to family, as my dad once said to me, “Sometimes we all wish we came from the pound.”

What I do know is the pain on his 11 year-old face was real. I know he had a brutally hard day, and that he felt helpless and humiliated and hurt. Because his mother decided to record and share it, his moment of greatest vulnerability was put before the world in a way he (and she) could never have anticipated. And because of our selfishness in co-opting his pain for our own emotional and political purposes, we’ve almost certainly made his life a lot worse.

At the end of the day, the dirty secret here is that none of this was ever really about Keaton. He was just the vessel. It was about us – our need to process long-standing emotions, to feel good about standing for victims against abusers, and ultimately, to have proxy political fights and tear down those who get too big for their own good.

When I was 12 and dealing with emotions I wasn’t mature enough to handle, at least it only seemed like the world was coming down around me. Keaton has to deal with the unexpected weight of tens of millions of people (including me, here, in this very post) chiming in on his circumstance and judging his life and family. I can’t imagine how complicated and confusing it must be. The kid deserved better.

The Tipping Point

The first post I ever wrote on this blog – a month ahead of the 2016 Iowa caucus – was about the “unique political genius” of President Trump.  It dealt with variety of tactical and psychological reasons that Trump, despite snickering among the political class, was continuing to perform strongly in early polling, and why I thought he was the most likely Republican nominee.  I like to think it was fairly prescient in identifying some of the key traits that ultimately put Trump in the White House.

But that post also contained a warning about what an eventual Trump collapse might look like:

It is easy to see how the Trump narrative could quickly unravel.  If he doesn’t win, he’s (obviously) no longer the guy who always wins.  If he’s in second (or third or fourth) he loses alpha male status.  If he’s not ahead, his sniping at competitors goes from bullying and derisive to petulant and desperate.  Trump is not set up to endure failure, and losses could set him up for a vicious and rapid downward cycle.

It took 18 months, but that unraveling has arrived.  The Trump presidency death spiral has begun.

Trump’s response to this weekend’s abhorrent white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, and the corresponding terrorist attack that killed an innocent woman and injured 19 others, will rightly be seen as the tipping point at which his presidency failed.  In a situation with obvious moral clarity, the President hedged, blaming “many sides” and only reluctantly denouncing Nazis (NAZIS!) two days later.  Then, for reasons that can only be attributed to personal pique or actual support for white supremacists, he gave an even more appalling performance in a press conference at Trump Tower, during which he claimed there were “many good people” marching in a torch-wielding crowd that chanted racial epithets and gave Hitler salutes.

This is a point of no return.  There are few things that can unite Americans across partisan lines, but denunciation of the Nazis is one of them.  Having already made it utterly impossible for any Democrats to stand with him on much of anything, Trump has now cost himself the support of Republicans, who can’t get to Twitter fast enough to separate themselves from him.  Even White House aides have been eager to distance themselves from the President, telling reporters that his remarks are “off-script” and against their advice.

In addition to the moral offense that almost all of them certainly feel, Republicans also have a simple political calculation to make here.  For a long time, the prospect of Republican control of the White House outweighed whatever damage Trump incurred.  Now that balance has changed.  He’s clearly hurting the party far more than he is helping, and members can be expected to react accordingly.

This is where Trump’s combative nature will particularly hurt him.  He’s spent no time investing in building relationships within the party, and in fact has mostly done the opposite, insulting and bullying his fellow party members throughout his campaign and his time in office.  He stormed the GOP like a berserker and was incredibly successful in ravaging a path to the nomination.  But doing so left him without a reservoir of goodwill or loyalty from the party infrastructure.  Now that he’s run himself into the proverbial iceberg, none of them are going to be rushing in to bail him out.  In reality, many will probably take joy in his downfall.

Cynically speaking, this might be different if Trump had shown himself to be an effective leader and champion of the party’s interests.  Instead, he has run a completely chaotic administration and demonstrated little aptitude or interest in governance.  His public approval stands at just 34%, which is a disaster for any President this early in his tenure, but especially so when you factor in that the economy is healthy and there are no current international crises.  In 200+ days in office, Trump has led Republicans to little of consequence on their agenda other than the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and even that was achieved only because of the long-term Machiavellian maneuvering of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  There’s just no benefit for elected Republicans to continue taking heat for Trump when he offers them nothing of consequence in return.

None of this is to say that Trump will be gone from our lives anytime soon.  Odds are strong that he’ll limp along through the remaining three and a half years of his term.  But he’ll do so as the lamest of lame ducks, impotent and isolated, with little public approval and few strong allies in Congress.

And given his behavior, he’ll have earned his fate.

 

McCain Bailed Republicans Out

The Maverick went Maverick, and Republicans are livid.

When Senator John McCain gave his dramatic thumbs down to “skinny repeal” early Friday morning, he sunk (for now) the Republicans’ seven-year effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.  The GOP backlash was quick and fierce.  The normally stoic Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was red-faced as he gave flustered and angry remarks immediately following the vote, President Trump lashed out on Twitter, and conservative activists railed against the Senator’s treachery.

But what McCain did wasn’t a betrayal.  It was a bailout.

Yes, the GOP rose to political hegemony largely by banging on Obamacare and pledging to get rid of it.  And yes, politicians ought to try to keep their promises to voters.  But somewhere along the line, this pledge – which was always presented as a way to improve the health care system – gave way to a sort of collective psychosis that the party had to pass something, anything, that could conceivably be labeled “repeal,” or else all would be lost.  Even now, this continues to be the conventional wisdom, accepted as a given in much of the analysis of the collapse of the repeal effort.

Yet “psychosis” really feels like the right word for it, because you have to be nearly out of your mind to think that passing legislation that has 14% approval, and which somehow cuts insurance coverage by tens of millions of people AND raises premiums, is your ticket to reelection.  Thankfully for Republicans, Senator McCain (along with Senators Collins and Murkowski) was savvy enough to recognize this was a suicide mission before it was too late.

Voters, even solidly Republican voters, are much less ideological than pundits and the types of people who collect paychecks from think tanks would have you believe.  They certainly favor a smaller government, but that is borne of a mistrust of a frequently incompetent bureaucracy more than it is a philosophical exercise.  And they really hate paying taxes, because who doesn’t?

But what these voters really hate about Obamacare is not so much that it fails to meet some litmus test of conservative principles.  They resent their rising premiums and copays, restrictions on which doctors they can see and when, and the savagely convoluted red tape that comes with dealing with insurance companies.  Now, there are reasonable arguments that Obamacare didn’t cause these problems, and may in fact have slowed their development.  But that’s largely beside the point here.  By embracing the term “Obamacare,” President Obama and Congressional Democrats willingly took ownership of the American health care system, for better or worse.

Inconceivably, Republicans convinced themselves that it was vitally important to their continued legislative majorities that they steal the mantle of health care ownership while actively making the system worse.  None of the four bills the Senate wound up considering – the House-passed American Health Care Act, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, outright repeal, or even the so-called “skinny repeal” of the Health Care Freedom Act – would have addressed the underlying stresses that most people feel.  Instead, each version would have massively disrupted the individual markets and Medicaid population, while providing effectively no relief for the vast majority who get their health care through an employer.  Most policy changes involve some level of trade-off, but this was a rare instance in which there were no obvious winners but millions of losers.

Now, it should be noted here that many Republicans would argue the policy work was not done, and that McCain and his fellow Republican Mavericks cut off the negotiations preemptively.  The skinny repeal option was (allegedly) never intended to become law.  Instead, it was just supposed a vehicle to pass something from the Senate so that they could conference with the House and produce a final-final bill that could clear both chambers (Senator Lindsey Graham perhaps best demonstrated the contortions involved here by calling the bill a “fraud” and a “disgrace” at a press conference approximately eight hours before voting for it).  But there is no evidence that what would have ultimately come from that effort would have been significantly different than what was produced to this point, nor anything to suggest that it would have resulted in something that could have passed easily and prevented a prolonged and embarrassing stagger to a similar finish line.

In the end, of course, the policy here was secondary to the politics.  How, it is asked, can Republicans go back to their base and ask for support if they couldn’t fulfill their main campaign pledge?  But that underestimates the strength of the Republican Congressional support, and misreads its causes.

As I’ve documented here before, we have a 20+ year history of Republicans dominating Congressional races.  The one blip was when the Iraq War was in its most dire stages and the economy collapsed.  In other words, in the absence of major mitigating factors, Republicans enjoy a natural advantage.  Not actively blowing up the healthcare markets probably works out just fine for them, particularly with the overall economy continuing to improve and no major international crises (at least for now).

Then there is the question of how disenchanted the Republican base will be by not racking up conservative policy achievements.  But again, I think this misreads where those voters’ interests really are.  GOP voters seem much more motivated by serving as a brake on a liberal activist agenda than by implementing the sort of policy-making proposed by the Heritage Foundation and AEI.  I see no reason why raising the threat of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and crew raising taxes, confiscating guns, monitoring energy consumption, and otherwise hyper-regulating and moving liberal social policies won’t continue to work as it has for years.  Heck, you can probably even convince some voters that the health care failure just means that you need even more Republicans in Congress to get things done.  This, to me, seems like a much more preferable landscape to run in than against a highly-motivated and angry group of Democrats who just saw their signature achievement upended.

If GOP leaders were smart, they’d breathe a sigh of relief that McCain saved them from themselves on health care, and they’d move on to some smaller-bore items where they can rack “wins” while not upending the status quo.  Go back to the drawing board on health care and think seriously about addressing the underlying problems – premium and deductible costs, along with access to the doctors of their choosing – that voters feel most acutely.  There are many reasons to believe that such a scenario will work to their benefit, or at least keep any standard midterm losses to a minimum.

Of course, the President seems to be going in a different direction, so… I guess we’ll see.

Some Thoughts on the VA Primary

I was wrong.

When Tom Perriello entered the race for Virginia Governor back in January, I was quick to tell people that I expected him to win.  It felt like his timing and message were perfect for where Democrats found themselves after Donald Trump’s surprising victory in November.  Perriello was young and energetic, combative and articulate.  He had credibility with the rural voters who’ve fled the party in spades, having been elected previously in a central-western district.  But he was also on the pulse of the “#Resistance” – participating in the Women’s March, showing up at Dulles Airport for the spontaneous rally against Trump’s travel ban, and demonstrating a nimble online response effort to news and policy updates. 

Perriello presented a particularly striking contrast to Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam.  Dr. Northam is by all indications a man of profound decency who is well-liked by his colleagues, but he is also older and far stiffer on the stump than Perriello.  He speaks with a thick, folksy Eastern Shore drawl that sounds out of place in the vote-rich DC suburbs.  And while he has a solidly liberal voting record, he’s naturally collaborative rather than combative.  He’s spent much of his political career tacking toward the middle to meet his local constituency, and famously voted for George W. Bush – twice (though he later said the votes were “wrong” and attributed them to “didn’t pay much attention to politics” at the time).

For months, the Perriello pick looked prescient.  Though he started as an unknown in the single digits, by the Spring polls showed him catching and passing Northam.  It seemed like all the momentum was on Perriello’s side, and the former Congressman appeared well-positioned to capitalize on the enthusiasm of an angry, active base in a low-turnout primary.

Then Northam went out and won by double digits.  So what happened?

Fundamentals Still Matter

It’s easy to forget after watching Trump disrupt his way to the White House, but most elections are still won with organization and money.  From the start, Northam had the backing of the Democratic Party infrastructure.  He collected endorsements from the popular Governor Terry McAuliffe, the even-more-popular Senators (and former Governors) Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, and nearly every other elected Democrat and party official in the state.  He drew similar support and endorsements from most major Democratic-leaning interest groups.  Holding events with popular politicians, and leaning on the local party leaders and activists who know their areas and can drive out voters, still matters.  A lot.

With a run that was years in the making and fundraising support from the party bigwigs, Northam also built a sizable war chest.  He was able to use his financial advantage to double up Perriello in television ad spending, particularly in the critical final weeks as voters began to pay attention.  A monetary advantage is not a linear path to success in politics, but it matters more in elections that do not get major media coverage.  It’s clear that in a relatively low-turnout primary, using TV ads to gain name recognition and have a platform from which to deliver his message helped propel Northam.

In addition, a late endorsement from the Washington Post seems to have helped solidify Northam’s win.  While newspaper subscriptions are down, the Post’s endorsement appears to still have some cache among Democrats in the DC suburbs.  A similar endorsement of then-State Senator Creigh Deeds helped vault the largely unknown candidate from rural Bath County to a surprise win in the 2009 primary, carried by surprising support from the northern part of the state.

Building support from local pols, running TV ads, and soliciting newspaper endorsements may seem archaic in the age of Trump, but it is clear that this basic nuts-and-bolts approach to building a campaign helped secure the nomination for Northam.

Local Elections Are Still Local

Relatedly and importantly, while news coverage and voting for federal offices have become increasingly nationalized, elections for state offices are still built around local matters of interest.  Perriello’s campaign focused heavily on national issues, particularly on the idea of battling the President at every turn.  His most notable ad was an eye-catching spot in which an ambulance was crushed by a trash compactor, highlighting his opposition to the Republican health bill moving through Congress.  He made frequent appearances on MSNBC and drew endorsements from national figures like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, John Podesta, and the Obama Administration alums of Pod Save America.

Northam, meanwhile, was able to surround himself with the aforementioned state leadership and claim his share of the credit for the current prosperous state of the Commonwealth.  While Democratic voters are undoubtedly mad about Trump, at the end of the day what they seek from a Governor is different from what they want in a Congressman or Senator.  Northam seems to have better made the case for how he would run the state, while Perriello made an argument much more suited to being a vote against the President in Congress.

There’s No Liberal Tea Party — Yet

Something I took for granted, but which turned out not to be the case, was that after losing in November with the ultimate establishment candidate, Democrats would be primed to upend their leadership in the way that Republicans have over the past decade.  But for all the online hubbub about a “Liberal Tea Party” and the amplified online presence of those calling for a more aggressive declaration of progressive principles, Virginians opted for the less combative, more establishment candidate.

This suggests that while the party has faced numerous setbacks in recent years, Democratic voters in Virginia are simply not as angry at their leadership and elected officials as are Republicans.  Even in this election, with Trump in the White House and Democratic anger and angst at seemingly all-time highs, it was the GOP establishment candidate, not the Democrat, that found himself having to fight off a strong surge from a bellicose insurgent challenge.

The results also speak to who actually makes up the Democratic voting base.  The core of the party – and of Northam’s support – comes from minority voters and women.  Both groups are broadly liberal, but to this point have shown skepticism toward more populist candidates like Perriello and Sanders.  This is a fact that can be easily skewed by the echo chambers of online media, where staunch voices draw the most attention, but it continues to show up in election results.

Of course, there are major qualifiers here that should be noted.  First is that while Democrats have struggled nationally, Virginia is a rare success story for the party.  Every statewide elected official is a Democrat, and popular.  It is the only traditionally southern state that backed Hillary Clinton over Trump in November.  The base in the Commonwealth may be less angry than the Democratic base at large simply because they have less to be angry about.

It also has to be pointed out that about 40% of the primary votes came from suburban DC.  While culturally liberal, it is also one of the richest regions in the country and very much tied in with the political establishment.  It is not likely to be fertile ground for a leftist revolution.

And while the 2016 contest between Clinton and Sanders is not a perfect parallel to the Northam-Perriello race, there is strong overlap in how the party votes split in each of the elections.  To that end, Perriello appears to have overperformed, running about 10 points ahead of what Sanders did the year before.  It is conceivable that Democrats nationally are heading in a direction that is more populist and combative, but that the current Democratic success and ties to the political establishment serve as a brake on that trend in Virginia.

Drawing too broad of a conclusion from a single race is always a recipe for failure, but it’s clear that the Democratic revolt that I expected to buoy Perriello did not arrive this time.

You Can’t Count on Kids

Finally, Perriello was clearly banking on a surge in turnout among young people that didn’t materialize.  His campaign was directed toward young people, with aggressive pushes online through a first-rate social media effort.  Some of this was by necessity – online media is a cheaper and easier way to grab attention than traditional media – but it was also clearly tactical.  The Perriello campaign hoped to capture a win by driving up participation among non-traditional voters who might start to engage in the age of Trump.

But staking your election on younger voters is almost always a path to disappointment.  Perriello was successful in creating an age divide – voters under the age of 40 favored him by 20 points in polls heading into Election Day.  Voters 65 and older, however, went to Northam by 16 points.  That Northam ultimately won by double digits tells you all you need to know about the demographics of voter turnout.

As with the “Liberal Tea Party,” it is conceivable that young voters will become more highly engaged and reshape the political landscape.  But there is no evidence to this point that it is happening, which is something future campaigns ought to factor strongly into their analyses.

With That in Mind, My Big Bold Prediction for November Is…

Nah, I’ve learned my lesson.

Don’t Fall for the Tea Party Myth

The early success of the Democratic “resistance” efforts in opposition to Trump Administration policies has emboldened Democratic activists and has many calling for a “Liberal Tea Party.”  They see obvious parallels between their own massive rallies and town hall protests and the enthusiasm that developed on the right in 2009 and 2010 in response to the stimulus and health care bills.  Understanding the electoral gains that Republicans achieved in subsequent years, liberals want to mimic Tea Party tactics – ideological stridency, with primaries for members of their own party who go “soft” – in order to push their agenda and oppose the Trump Administration.

This is an almost impossibly terrible idea.

First of all, it’s based on a myth.  Tea Partiers, along with a frequently lazy media more interested in narratives than analysis, have mistaken correlation for causation and credited the Tea Party for recent Republican electoral successes.  It is of course true that the 2010 midterm elections were a landslide for the GOP.  Republicans gained 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate in the wake of the Tea Party uprising.  But what happened in 2010 was much more of a return to the status quo than a sudden uprising created by a new Tea Party-infused brand of conservatism.

As I charted in my previous post, the Democratic majorities built in the 2006 and 2008 elections are outliers over a 20+ year period.  In 2010, the map largely reset, and districts and states that had been trending red for more than a decade fell back into the GOP fold.  That’s regression to the mean, not a revolution.

In fact, there is ample evidence that Tea Party candidates hurt the electoral prospects of Republicans in key competitive races.  The nominations of Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware almost certainly cost the GOP two seats in 2010, and Richard Murdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri cost the party two more in 2012.  Without those seats (and others where the party nomination process pushed too far to the right), all of which were strong opportunities for pickups bungled by extreme and unqualified candidates, Republicans had to wait until 2014 to take back the Senate majority.

What Tea Party-backed candidates have been successful in doing is turning solidly red districts even more red.  While having more extreme members from already partisan districts may be psychologically empowering for those with a strong ideological bent, it is a particularly useless endeavor for Democrats at this point.  The party is operating a structural disadvantage due to the poor geographic alignment of their constituents (who are almost exclusively grouped in coastal and urban areas) and the aggressive gerrymandering undertaken by Republicans since the 2010 census.  There simply aren’t enough blue or near-blue districts to be won with more staunchly-partisan Democrats. 

As the centrist Democratic organization Third Way recently pointed out, “you can walk from the Atlantic to the Pacific and not step in a blue county.”  In order to regain majorities and attempt to actually govern under their principles, Democrats will need to find ways to increase their strength in areas that are currently red.  That will almost certainly require more moderate members of the party, not fewer.

The impulse toward Tea Party-style primary challenges of Democrats who do not sufficiently “resist” Trump is particularly suicidal in the 2018 Senate elections.  There are ten Democratic Senators up for reelection in states won by Trump: Bill Nelson (D-FL), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Jon Tester (D-MT), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bob Casey (D-PA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).  Trump won half of those states — Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia — by double digits.  By contrast, there is just one Republican (Dean Heller of Nevada) who’ll be seeking reelection in a state won by Hillary Clinton.  Forcing these members to the left, or replacing them on the ballot with more liberal candidates who lack the benefits of incumbency, is much more likely to grow the Republican majority than it is to upend and replace it.

There is perhaps no better example than Senator Manchin.  Liberals loathe him for breaking with party orthodoxy on a variety of key issues, including environmental regulations, gun control, and certain LGBT rights legislation.  He’s also gone out of his way to cozy up to Trump, publicly visiting Trump Tower during the transition and voting in favor of several of the President’s Cabinet appointments.

But there is a strong case to be made that Manchin is, in fact, the most valuable member of Congress, for either party.  Even if the only vote Manchin cast with his fellow Democrats was for Chuck Schumer as Majority Leader (and he actually votes with the party about three-quarters of the time), this would still be true.  In November, Trump won West Virginia 69% to 27% over Hillary Clinton.  In 2014, Senator Shelley Moore Capito beat her Democratic opponent by about 30 points.

No one else outperforms his or her state’s partisan demographics the way Manchin does.  No, he’ll never vote like Elizabeth Warren does, but Warren represents a state that will elect almost any warm body with a D next to its name (except this one).  Going after him in a primary is tantamount to throwing away a seat the party has no other avenue to win.

Of course, Tea Partiers and those looking to mirror their tactics on the left would argue that winning elections is only part of the battle.  It is also critical, they would contend, to hold members’ feet to the fire and push their issues legislatively.  But the Tea Party example has largely failed in this arena as well.

By maintaining absolutist positions and refusing to accept measures that moved only incrementally toward their goals, the Tea Party (and their descendants, now known as the Freedom Caucus) have prevented Republican majorities from passing key measures to, for example, fund the government and avoid a devastating national default.  Operating as a bloc that rejects anything less than 100% of their goals, they have repeatedly forced Republican leadership to go to Democrats in order to secure votes.  This self-defeating effort has naturally pushed legislation to the left, against the Tea Party’s stated agenda and interests.

Democrats should avoid the simplistic temptation to try and copycat Tea Party methods, and instead focus on the less sexy but much more effective strategies of growing their tent and welcoming a wider array of members in their caucus.  Electoral and legislative realities simply do not allow for any sort of immediate, uniform surge to the left.  If the party wants to succeed, it must understand that accepting that the most electable liberal candidate is preferable to the most liberal candidate, and realize that this means some goals will come only incrementally.

Building a party is about finding converts, not heretics.  Tea Party-style attacks on the moderates will only further relegate the party to obsolescence at all levels, and ensure that none of that agenda ever gets a chance to be enacted.

Recognize the Problem

It is said that the first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one.  Democrats have a major problem.  But I’m not sure they fully recognize what it is.

Yes, obviously, they understand that the physical manifestation of all their anxieties currently occupies the White House, and that the House and Senate are controlled by factions hostile to their agenda.  They know that much of the legacy of President Obama will be undone in the coming months, and that many of their key issues are on hold for at least four years.  Panic is not the problem.  There’s plenty of that going around.

The problem is that they see this situation as temporary, an aberration.  After all, Hillary won the popular vote by millions.  Many Democrats are also quick to point out that if it weren’t for those meddling Russians and that no-good FBI Director Comey, she’d be in the White House.

But this myopic focus on the Presidential election ignores the massive, long-term flaws in the party’s fundamentals, a structural deficit that has put Democrats in their weakest position nationally in at least 100 years.

It is unquestionably true that Russia interfered with our elections, and all Americans should be alarmed at the implications for our democracy and for international relations.  And Director Comey’s timing in releasing information about the ongoing e-mail investigation undoubtedly caused harm to Clinton’s candidacy.

Without dwelling on Clinton’s own culpability in her loss – completely ignoring the Midwest, having an e-mail system that necessitated an FBI investigation in the first place, failing to put away an historically unpopular and (by popular opinion polls) unqualified opponent, etc. – let’s accept that these interventions hurt Clinton’s standing with voters.  Even accounting for these outside factors, and the fact that Independent candidates pulled a sizable chunk of the Presidential vote, in the ten states that were expected to have competitive Senate races – Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – Clinton still outperformed the Democratic Senate nominee in six, and was within a point in two others.  She also carried the Presidential vote in two dozen House districts that Democratic candidates failed to win.

In other words, Clinton, carrying all of her baggage and the weight of outside interference, was still a stronger candidate than almost every Democrat in a competitive state or district.  While it is possible to make excuses that justify her loss, these down-ballot failures are much harder to ignore or explain away.  This is particularly true if you take a longer-term view.

Below is a chart of party control of the House, Senate, state legislatures, and governorships over the past 20 years.  With the exception of a four-year period that coincides with the worst days of the Iraq War and the collapse of the financial markets, Republicans have dominated control these offices.  This down-ballot strength has only grown in recent years.

The implications here are ominous for Democrats.  It means they basically have not been able to win majorities in the absence of a major national catastrophe.

It means that for whatever success Democrats may have in racking up popular vote totals nationally, their supporters are not dispersed in a way that is conducive to building and maintaining governing majorities.  You can make an argument that this is unfair, and that densely-packed urban voters are underrepresented because of the ways in which power is disbursed.  But that is the system we have, and it is the system we have had for generations.  Fair or not, it is the system in which the party must compete.  Because even if they want to change it, they can’t do so unless they win power first.

Above all else, it means that the Democrats’ approach to politics is not working.  And that’s where the real dread should set in.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results, then the party’s early responses to the Trump Administration have been insane.  Senators questioning Cabinet nominees have largely focused on the same tired tropes that have gotten the party exactly where it is today.  Instead of finding new ways to grow their numbers and expand the tent, leaders and activists have increasingly turned inward to further rev up their excitable base.

The challenge is, and will continue to be, that the base simply is not enough.  These are people who already oppose Republican priorities, who already are engaged, who already vote.  Their numbers don’t get you where you need to go.

Until the party can find ways to grow and bring back voters who have fled to the GOP, Democrats will remain mired in the minority.  Instituting this change will require new messaging, new messengers, and an enthusiasm for bringing in a group of people who probably do not align with party orthodoxy on all issues.

Of course, this effort only becomes harder as the party’s ranks are thinned.  Republican success has largely come at the expense of Democratic moderates, leaving only the deepest blue members in control the party’s future.  This helps perpetuate a self-defeating cycle of righteousness and conformity, making it harder and harder to win outside base areas.

The current state of affairs, with Democrats at an historic ebb in governing power, could serve as a wake-up call that allows the party to refresh and find a new path forward.  They could take a fresh look at their outreach and find ways to get voters to buy in to the key elements of their agenda.

Doing so will first require a full recognition of the depth and breadth of the party’s challenges in the current political structure.  It will then require trade-offs that staunch liberals may find unappealing.  But you can’t make policy without a majority, and you can’t build a majority on an ideological base.

Or, I guess, they can hope another crisis hits and voters will turn on the GOP again.  But that is not a means to building the kind of sustainable, winning majority over time.  As they’ll soon see, without solid and continued support, legislative achievements can be fleeting.

The early reactions to Trump do not give me confidence that this is the direction Democrats will choose, or that they appreciate the hole they’re in.  But it is early, and most are still reeling from a defeat they did not expect.  Perhaps with time, a more sober reality will set in, and the hard work of building a broad coalition outside of coastal areas and cities will emerge.  We’ll see.

 

Democrats Can’t Win With “No”

A few weeks back, Michael Grunwald of Politico wrote a great piece called “The Victory of No.”  It highlights the calculating, cynical, but ultimately effective strategy that Republicans used to prevent President Obama from achieving bipartisan victories and making progress on many of his legislative priorities.  It’s well worth your time, and I strongly encourage you to go read it.

The lesson many Democrats took from this strategy is clear – obstructionism works, and the path back to a majority depends on stunting President Trump’s efforts at every turn.  Anything less would be a sucker’s game, adhering to rules and norms that their opponents do not have the courtesy to abide in return.  Fire must be fought with fire.  As The Boss would say, “No retreat, baby, no surrender.”

Here’s the problem.  Democrats, generally speaking, want a more active and activist government to address society’s problems.  But proposing government-centric solutions requires people to believe that the instruments of government can work effectively and deliver on promises.  Gumming up the gears of the legislative process undermines this faith.  If people think the government is fundamentally broken and unable to do even basic things, why would they vote to give it more power?

Anti-government fervor is at the core of the appeal of the Tea Party, and it has fueled Republican electoral success up and down ballots for the past four election cycles.  Trump was elected President largely on his perceived capacity to come in and take a sledgehammer to Washington.  The party that opposes most government action now controls its largest majorities at the state and federal levels in 100 years.  It is not coincidence that this is happening while there are historically low levels of trust in government.

The challenges this presents for Democrats in practice are obvious and numerous.  How do you rebuild trust in government when you don’t have control and you’re facing an opposition unlikely to act in good faith?  An 11% Congressional approval rating isn’t good for anyone, but in the big picture, it’s far worse for the party associated with robust government.  Republicans understand this, so they have little incentive to play nice and make things work better.

There’s also the very real, wholly legitimate fact that Democrats will be fundamentally opposed on principle to much of what the Trump White House and Republican Majorities will put forward.  What incentive do Democrats have to passively allow an agenda that is anathema to their core beliefs?

This is the very delicate high-wire act that Senator Schumer, Leader Pelosi, the eventual Chairman of the DNC, and all aspiring future leaders of the party will have to navigate.  It certainly doesn’t mean abandoning core principles – there’s no reason for the party to yield on, say, a registry for Muslims or maintaining the Department of Education – but it probably means letting some initiatives, such as a major infrastructure bill and certain tax reforms, go through with bipartisan support.  It will also mean the party will have to pick its battles on Cabinet and Court nominations.

Moving good (or at least acceptable) legislation and keeping the government functioning well will be necessary, even if it means letting President Trump have a few “wins” under his belt.  A wholesale effort to “RESIST!” on every front, while catnip for an enraged base, is unlikely to work.  It will just perpetuate negative attitudes about the government that Democrats ultimately hope to expand.  Fair or not, they have the constant burden of maintaining people’s belief that government is and can be a positive in their lives.

The good news for Democrats is that in spite of the recent losses and decline in faith in government broadly and Congress specifically, there remains a sizable appetite for government services.  People love Medicare and Social Security, believe in robust infrastructure development, and desire solutions to problems like health care and college costs.  This is a foundation the party can build upon.

It’s also highly possible, and perhaps inevitable, that the Republicans will mismanage their power and the “throw the bums out” toxicity of public opinion will tilt control back to the Democrats.

But when that moment comes, Democrats will need a public faith in government to enact the kind of changes they want.  Following the path blazed by Republicans in recent years would make that nearly impossible.

An Appeal for Election Eve

As we come to the end of a heated election season, there’s a strong impulse to impugn the character and motives of the other side. They’re “deplorable” or “criminal,” “racist” or “socialist,” or maybe in either case, simply “evil.” People are breaking from friends, family, and colleagues, because support for the opposition is tantamount to being in league with an enemy. How can you possibly associate with someone who believes in something so terrible?  This is a continuation of the well-documented Big Sort, in which people increasingly isolate themselves in a bubble of the like-minded.

I’m here to make an appeal to you: reject this impulse. It’s bad for you, and it’s bad for our country. Whichever side wins tomorrow will probably end up with around 60 million votes. Whichever side loses will have just a few million less. Don’t pretend that the half the country that doesn’t agree with you doesn’t exist, and don’t let yourself believe that they are somehow less American.

Instead, appreciate that people can come at the same issues from different sides honestly, and be humble enough to accept that no one — not even you, especially not me — has a monopoly on truth or morality. Keep talking to people of all stripes, even if you’re going to argue. Those relationships are important.

We can never assume that everyone thinks the way we do, nor that they should. This is a big, diverse country, and people come at situations from different perspectives. Understand that everyone has different values and life experiences and try to learn from what they tell you.

Listen to what people say, and more importantly, listen for what they’re trying to say. Do this even if what they’re saying offends you. Maybe do it especially if what they’re saying offends you.

Don’t believe that your party or your favorite candidate is always right. They aren’t. Don’t reject everything the other party says as being wrong. It isn’t.

Challenge what you hear and read, even if you often agree with the source. You’re plenty smart enough to make up your own mind and develop your own thoughts. Don’t take short cuts by becoming a parrot for somebody else’s talking points.

But also be less certain. Being smart doesn’t always mean you’re right. Accept that you might be wrong. You will be. Often.

Talk to people who challenge what you tell them. Consider their feedback, even if you don’t agree with it. At worst, you’ll learn what the opposition is so that you can better craft your argument. At best, you’ll gain valuable new perspective that will help you take a fresh look at the world.

Political opponents are not an enemy to be obliterated. They are your friends, neighbors, coworkers, and countrymen. It’s ok to disagree strongly.  It is good to fight passionately for what you believe in.

Don’t run from disagreement, and don’t disassociate from people with a different ideology than yours. Respect the honesty and dignity of other’s opinions. At the end of the day we’re in this together. There is no other choice. The best way we can move forward is by growing the number of voices we hear from, not shrinking it.

The Trump Fallout

In February, I wrote about the Democrats’ worst-case scenario: unpopular nominee Hillary Clinton failing to keep the party in control of the White House, while Republicans maintained their fierce grip on Congress and state governments across the country.  Though Hillary remains broadly unpopular, the “Disaster” likely won’t arrive.  Instead, all indications are that Donald Trump’s inability to run a serious campaign, combined with utterly toxic history with women (and even more toxic present with minorities) will assure the Democrats four more years of control of the Executive Branch.

So now it’s Republicans’ turn in the box.  Their near-term is much less catastrophic electorally – even if the bottom falls out on Trump, they’ll still dominate state legislatures and governorships, they’re a 50-50 bet to keep the Senate, and they will almost certainly maintain control of the House – but there is major trouble on the horizon.  If the GOP cannot successfully manage the fallout from Trump’s likely loss, it could mean an intraparty civil war that would upend its current coalition and create a splintering effect that could reorient the two-party balance of power.

Trump is already laying the groundwork for this battle.  In the days following the release of the tape of his highly controversial “locker room talk” with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, several prominent Republicans responded by revoking their endorsements of the party’s nominee.  House Speaker Paul Ryan essentially endorsed this effort, telling his caucus that he would no longer actively support Trump and they were free to do as their districts’ interests required.

Trump promptly did what he does best: he went to war.  He lit into Ryan as a “weak and ineffective leader” and said he no longer wants the Speaker’s support.  He called out establishment Republicans for their “disloyalty.”  He made fun of John McCain, again.

The Access Hollywood tape was bad for Trump, of course, in that it extended his deficit from three or four points nationally to seven or eight.  But that’s just a measure of the size of a loss he was likely to face anyway, not a change in his fortunes.  In a way, the fallout from tape gave Trump the very thing he needed most – an excuse, and an easy boogeyman at whom to direct the anger of his supporters.

That anger is falling first and foremost on Ryan.  At a rally in Ryan’s home state in Wisconsin over the weekend, Trump supporters began a loud and prolonged chant of “Paul Ryan sucks.”  A YouGov poll taken after Ryan distanced himself from Trump found that the Speaker’s favorability among Republicans tanked as a result.  His net favorability among GOP voters went from +5 to -23, and from +8 to -36 among Trump voters.  The poll found Ryan with a higher unfavorability rating among Trump voters (64%) even than among Clinton voters (61%).

Paul Ryan is, in many ways, a natural foil for Trump.  Ryan wants desperately to be taken seriously for his intellectual approach, and has tailored his entire career to being regarded as the ultimate conservative policy wonk.  He’s also the definition of a career politician, a man in his mid-40s who has already served nearly 20 years in the House.  He cares deeply about policy and philosophy, and wants nothing to do with the political rock fights to which Trump is so uniquely suited.

There has been much ink spilled contemplating “Trumpism” and what it means from a policy perspective going forward.  But that is the ultimate in missing the forest for the trees.  Trump’s rise was never based on his policy positions, few (if any) of which he articulated in any sort of clear way.  He doesn’t care about policy.  His appeal is entirely emotional.  He is an angry man for an angry electorate.  Trump’s candidacy is and was a giant middle finger to a class of political and social elites, a visceral rage against the machine.  Nothing more, nothing less.

What Trump made clear in winning the Republican nomination contest is that the much-vaunted “conservative movement” is largely a myth.  A large swath of Republican voters care little about the philosophical underpinnings of the free market and limited government.  Sure, they want lower taxes, because they don’t like giving their money away and don’t trust the government to use it well.  But what they really want more than anything is to kick the shit out of the smooth-talking politicians and eggheads who look down on them.  That was why voters gleefully cheered along as Trump demolished “Low Energy” Jeb Bush and “Little” Marco Rubio and even “Lyin’” Ted Cruz.  All of those candidates checked the right boxes on orthodox Republican policy, but they also spoke and behaved like Washingtonians.  When Trump stuck it to them, he was channeling the anger that millions of people feel at a system and a class of people they do not think work for their interests.

That anger isn’t going to go away on November 9^th.  If anything, it’s likely to amplify.  Hillary Clinton, the living embodiment of Republican base vitriol for 30 years, will occupy the White House, and the finger-pointing will commence.  Establishment Republicans will likely produce another “autopsy” report that calls for moderating the party’s rougher edges on immigration and social issues in order to sell small government ideals to a diversifying electorate.  The message will be clear: this loss falls on the Trump supporters and for indulging their worst instincts.

Trump supporters will learn the opposite lesson.  They’ll see that as late as mid-September, Trump was within striking distance, only to be sold out by the party elites in the home stretch.  Ramped up by a conservative media echo chamber – potentially including Trump himself on a newly-created TrumpTV network – that loves finding Republican heretics far more than creating converts, they’ll turn their pitchforks on the accommodationists who betrayed their hero.

This dynamic within the Republican Party is not new.  It has been the central tension in our government since at least 2010, when a wave of Tea Party challengers took out establishment incumbents.  It has continued in this Congress, where last year the conservative Freedom Caucus formed a voting bloc that ousted then-Speaker John Boehner.  Ryan was, at the time, viewed as the only man in the party who could help bridge the gap between the two sides and lead it as a cohesive unit.  But after some small, early successes, within months the Republican caucus was already back to being unable to corral the votes to pass a budget or move other major pieces of legislation.

If Trump continues to turn his forces against the Speaker, there are real questions about how and whether the party can continue to be managed heading into 2017.  The size of the GOP majority in the House will likely be halved, from 30 to around 14-16.  But majorities are meaningless unless they can agree and work together.

When the next Congress convenes, their first vote will be to choose a Speaker.  If a voting bloc of 20+ members refuses to support Ryan for his “betrayal” of Trump, what then?  If the “only man” who can unite the party can’t do it, where do they go?  These are not rhetorical questions.  I honestly don’t have the answers, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

The best way to circumvent this collapse would be to have Trump strike a conciliatory note post-election and publicly pledge his support for Ryan.  Even this might not work, as the damage among the voters may already be done, and even Trump is not perpetually immune to claims of “selling out.”  But it would be the most direct way to short-circuit a Boehner-style coup.

Unfortunately for Republicans, Trump is expanding his attacks on Ryan, not reining them in.  His personality and style do not suggest that he will “fall in line” after a loss, nor that he will fade quietly into the background the way other general election losers have.  The future of the party is now in the hands of a volatile man with no political future or particular regard for its history and relevance.  How he handles the coming weeks will have significant, long-lasting effects on an already tenuous coalition.

The Summer of Our Discontent

“What’s you prediction for the fight?”

“Prediction?”

“Yes, prediction.”

“Pain.”

This… this is going to be bad.  However much you think you hate politics now, I promise you that by November you will feel exponentially worse.

The 2016 presidential campaign will not be a “hopey changey” election.  Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump pits two historically unpopular candidates, each well-versed in the dark arts of negative politics, in an all-out race to the bottom.  It is the political equivalent of a Cactus Jack-Terry Funk Deathmatch: no ropes, barbed wire, C4 explosives, and after ten minutes, the ring will explode! (Spoiler alert that should surprise no one: that video is extraordinarily bloody and violent.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

The goal for each candidate is quite clear.  Clinton inspires little enthusiasm among the young optimists who helped sweep Obama into office, most of whom are currently “Feeling the Bern” and think she’s a corporate shill.  She’s not particularly well-liked by independents either, and she has a catastrophic approval rating among men.  Overall, her disapproval rating, which sits in the mid-50s, would be an all-time low among presidential contenders… except that her opponent’s is even worse.

Hillary has one simple mission – scare the bejeezus out of voters with the prospect of a Trump presidency.  Make sure that every minority and female voter sees Trump as a threat to their very existence if they don’t show up on Election Day.  Terrify swing voters into thinking that giving The Donald the keys to the White House and the nuclear football will end the country as we know it, and possibly the world.  Drive home the idea that he is intellectually, morally, and temperamentally unsuited to be Commander in Chief.  Then stand there as the experienced, competent alternative who maybe won’t send a thrill up your leg, but also won’t fundamentally disrupt the status quo or endanger planet Earth.

For Trump, whose unfavorable numbers sit in the 60s and who trails significantly in most polls to this point, the path to victory involves dragging Clinton down into the gutter with him and (metaphorically, of course) pummeling her to death.  It is a task for which he is uniquely well-suited.

Trump has ridden a wave of anti-Washington resentment, paired with overwhelming assaults on opponents, to upend the establishment and take the Republican nomination by brute force.  Now he’s set to unload the entirety of artillery on Clinton for six full months.  He can be expected to launch these attacks with the glee of Buddy the Elf pressing elevator buttons.

The first front in Trump’s battle will be to put the stink of Washington on Hillary and stoke voters’ anger with politicians.  This will not be hard.  Hillary has been a fixture in national politics for 30 years, and can be tarred with basically any unpopular policy decision in that time.  She’s also deeply entrenched with major donors, political operatives, and lobbyists.  This is an angle that Bernie Sanders has been able to demagogue about to great effect in the primaries, and Trump has been transparent in saying that he will co-opt the attacks in the general.  He already brands Clinton as “Corrupt Hillary” in every press release, statement, and tweet.

The other battlefront for Trump will be to upend Clinton’s narrative of being the safe, competent pick.  This is where the election will turn darkest.  Trump will attempt to humiliate and obliterate Hillary at a personal level.  He’ll look to consolidate millions of Republicans by reminding them why they have feared a Hillary presidency since the 1990s, and he’ll try to make her such a disgusting choice to the newer and softer voters of the Obama coalition that they just stay home in November.

There is no shortage of material on the Clintons in this arena.  Rumors about the couple have swirled on the Internet for a generation, and in private moments most anyone who has crossed their paths will quietly whisper to you about one potential scandal or another.

Most journalists and politicians are reluctant to chase these stories, but not Trump.  One of the qualities of his unique political genius and success is that he is utterly unbound by convention or shame.  On Ted Cruz’ last day on the campaign trail, Trump casually threw out the possibility that the Senator’s father had helped conspire to assassinate JFK.  He didn’t need to do it, but he could.  So he did.

Benghazi.  The private e-mail server.  Funding for the Clinton Foundation.  Vince Foster’s death.  Juanita Broaddrick’s rape allegations.  Jeffrey Epstein’s sex island.  Ron Burkle and “Air F**k One.”  The list will go on and on and on.  No stone will go unturned, no missile unlaunched.  Trump will throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, and when something does, he will latch onto it with pitbull-like ferocity.

Launching these fusillades suits Trump’s instincts to always go for the jugular, but it also serves a practical purpose.  If voter turnout looks like it did for the Obama elections in 2008 or 2012, Trump will lose.  But if he can muck up the system and turn voters off from participating at all, the electorate will look more like a midterm Congressional election.  That plays very much to his favor, as Republicans have dominated these elections in recent years.  Making Hillary an unpalatable choice is absolutely critical to his campaign’s success.

Clinton contends that she will not spend her campaign responding to these sorts of attacks, and will instead focus on her policy priorities.  But that assertion is naïve.  By invoking the stories, Trump will give license to the media to begin discussing them openly.  Hillary will be asked about them constantly.  There will be investigations and exposes and fact checks.  Trump will constantly be lighting fires and making Clinton put them out.  Nothing will go away.

Hillary’s only option then will be to try and shift the narrative and launch her own barrage of attacks right back at him, for which there is comparable fodder – divorces, shady business deals, mob ties, etc.  This will create a vicious downward spiral of mutually-assured destruction.

And that’s how we begin our summer.  Two widely unpopular candidates looking to become Leader of the Free World by making their opponent look unbalanced, unlikable, and unfit for office.  This is what you have to look forward to.  These are your only choices.  Good luck, America.