Last night Dave Roberts asked if there was any good political news in 2021. I responded:
Donald Trump was turfed out of office! We passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus! The economy recovered strongly! We got out of Afghanistan! Democrats won two seats in Georgia!
— Kevin Drum (@kdrum) December 16, 2021
But this got me thinking about something else: Is 2021 the year that conservatives finally went too far?
Liberals have long griped about how the media treats obvious conservative lies. The list is endless: climate change, Benghazi, Hillary's emails, tax cuts paying for themselves, and on and on. But these are fairly ordinary partisan disputes, and for better or worse the press is unlikely to take sides. Politics is politics, after all, and political reporters have seen this kind of stuff on both sides for decades.
But then came 2021, and suddenly conservatives went beyond—way beyond—the bounds of normal partisan fights. There have been two in particular:
- The "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen and Donald Trump should have rightfully won the presidency.
- The refusal of conservative leaders to be aggressively pro-vaccine.
Even for people jaded by decades of partisan cat fights, these were shocking. The Big Lie was not something that was even colorably debatable. It was just a lie. A big one. And it was adopted by practically everyone in the Republican Party, leading to the insurrection of January 6. To this day, Republicans insist the election was stolen even though everyone knows this is Goebbels-level fabrication.
The Republican attitude toward vaccination is, if anything, even more shocking. For one thing, it's barely even partisan since it doesn't really harm Democrats in any way. It's just flat-out pandering that has cost thousands of lives and will cost thousands more. There's literally no reason for it aside from either pique (Donald Trump); a desire to promote conspiracy theories because it's profitable (Tucker et al.); or craven capitulation to the mob (DeSantis and other GOP leaders).
I may be fooling myself, but I've noticed at least a small change in the media's treatment of Republicans this year. Even hardened veterans who pride themselves on being cynical toward all sides are stunned by what's happened. Lying for partisan advantage? Yawn. Everyone does it. But lying in service of destroying faith in democracy? Refusing to promote vaccines just to get a few cheers from the cheap seats? Those are whole different things.
So far, this hasn't produced a sea change in coverage of Republicans. But I think it's produced the start of something that might eventually become a sea change—especially if Democrats can lighten up and take advantage of it. We'll see.
Still waiting for that fever to break......
Tell me about it. I've been waiting since ca. 2004 for the country to reach Peak Wingnut, but it seems to recede further and further into the future with each election cycle. I mean, we're almost at the point where Fox News pundits are just going to come right out and start praising Hitler without any qualification. Most of their viewership seems there already.
Since Kevin has continued to be wrong on peak oil & our robot future, he must think maybe peak wingnut is his chance to he right. Even as he normalizes the antiwokeness jermiads of charlatans like Conor Friedersdorf & Andy Ngo.
Decades ago, some statistician or demographer published an influential article on "The Coming Democratic Majority."
I'm still waiting.
In a democracy, demography might well be destiny. In terms of raw vote totals, Democrats already enjoy a very substantial majority. When the present generation of Democratic leadership and consultants eventually are out of the picture, there’s a very good likelihood that majority will grow significantly (young people, current young people aging into becoming chronic voters, outreach to Latinos and Asians will solidify and expand that majority.
What’s being consistently overlooked is that vote aren’t equal in a political system designed with large numbers of counter majoritarian institutions and bottlenecks. In our current situation, it’s geography that is destiny.
@Salamander
"The Emeging Democratic Majority," John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira.
It's here now, but Republicans have rigged things with gerrymandering and voter suppression. Add the Electoral College and you wouldn't know that most recent Republican presidents actually lost the popular (Democratic) vote.
Except dems are losing brown and black vote share.
We will see indeed. But this begs the broader question.
The carnage of WWII was not only caused by Hitler. Hundreds of thousands of Germans had to take part in implementing the "final solution," and millions of Germans elected to fold and support the Nazi government. After a certain point, the definition of "too far" with respect to this example meant that it was no longer a solution to simply remove the Nazi regime -- the entire country had to be defeated in war.
The Democratic party is still treating this as if all we need is what we have at the moment, which is regime change. That leaves off the millions who agree with the Big Lie, and think vaccation mandates are a form or totalitarianism.
The follow up question is, yes, Repub party leadership has gone too far. But I see only a little bit of evidence that Repub party leadership is actually out in front of the base.
So its the base we have to worry about.
Too dialectical and a poor example. Try harder.
No more buttered scones for Spadey, we're too dialectical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy6ph_tSPdU
Hey, Spades learned a new word and can't stop playing with it
Politically the conservatives are like the Hitlerians were militarily in late 43, at the end of a string of victories which ended up putting them in a fundamentally unsustainable position. Seventy-five percent of Americans are vaccinated (90 percent of those over 65, who make up 26% of the voters), not enough in terms of fighting covid, but more than enough to show the Republicans are nuts to dive down the anti-vaxxer rabbit hole. Still, I wish I was more confident about the outcome.
I agree. The people are the problem. Some non-trivial number are just jerks. 30%?
27%, It's the crazification factor.
Put some respect on Alan Keyes's name.
Gotta respect the optimistic holiday season attitude, but as for me ... bah humbug.
Based on general election polling, this is absolutely wishful thinking at this point. I don't understand it but voters seem much more motivated by their distaste for how things are going now than by fear of handing the keys to the asylum over to the lunatics.
Peaked???
We'll now see how their efforts to control state houses and the judiciary will pay off....
Between this, their hermetically sealed media bubble and various human biases (looking at you confirmation and sunk cost...) doesn't make me as optimistic as KD is.
The obvious reason republicans are against vaccines is they don't want the economy to get better under a democratic administration.....it's that simple...keep the country stuck in an epidemic and voila, no return to full employment, no return to normal life, and no credit given to Joe Biden!
I'm not really getting what "lighten up" has to do with taking advantage here.
Trump and a bunch of other people tried to orchestrate a coup in order to nullify the results of a lawfully conducted election. They are traitors. They are unfit for office.
I'm pretty sure Liz Cheney agrees with me on this.
You want me to "lighten up" about this?
"I'm not really getting what "lighten up" has to do with taking advantage here."
Kevin is a big proponent that if liberals would just shut up about racial injustices and other kinds of bigotry, and were more tolerant of some degree of bigotry in general, then a whole bunch of republicans would magically see the light and support Democrats during elections.
I don't know how Kevin feels about this, but I would like white people - white Democrats and supporters - to change how they talk about racial issues. (I am one of this group).
Let me spell this out. When a white person tries to shame another white person for racist behavior, they are claiming, by implication, that they are not part of that and bear no responsibility for the racial bias of the country.
I don't accept that. All of us white people have benefited from those policies, and have some degree of the attitudes embedded in our consciousness. I don't see how it's possible to grow up white in this country and not have that be the case.
Now, some of us started with more of it than others, and some of us have worked harder than others to reduce or mitigate the effect both on our consciousness and on government policy. And that's a good thing.
But we have no business claiming "I didn't do that. I have nothing to do with that." which is what shaming other white people claims implicitly.
We don't have to change our energy about it, or our commitment one bit. I have had very effective conversations with people about racial and immigration issues. Those conversations had as a prerequisite that I let go of my judgement and shaming and embraced my experience and thought of the POC I knew and how things would impact them.
Just like the question "Do you have any gay friends? How do you think they would feel about this" is a much more powerful persuader than "You homophobe!", so to as "How do you suppose the black people you know would think about this?".
Or what I do is talk about the Mexican-Americans I know, or the black Americans I know, leaving the implication to the reader. Yeah, there are hardcases, but most of the people I talk to aren't that hard.
Again, I don't see this as "lightening up". If anything it takes more commitment and attention. Shaming people is the easy stuff. Do the hard work. We need it.
You betcha!
+++
I accept that you "don't see how it's possible to grow up white in this country and not have that be the case." Your inability to see how it's possible does not prove that it's not possible.
Shaming people for overt racism doesn't automatically imply that one doesn't recognize one's own privilege. Still worth doing.
This is why Rockefeller Republican Kevin Drum is a Warren Democrat.
"I may be fooling myself, but I've noticed at least a small change in the media's treatment of Republicans this year."
Come on Kevin, just this past week you had two articles defending the nonsensical lie that what really motivates Republicans is their "patriotism" even while in one of your articles you noticed that all the gripes of the conservative you were quoting had to do with racial issues.
Also: four weeks in a row on Meet the Press, Ol Pudding Ring's headline guest has been a GQP Senator or Governor who refused to acknowledge joebiden as the legitimate president of the country, & Republiqan pollster emeritus Pud offered no pushback.
he doesn't appear to engage at all with anyone here or on twitter so I assume this doesn't bother
Wishful thinking as in just the last few days we have inside the beltway "journalists" arguing that their *only* responsibility is to quote politicians accurately. If GOP politicians say that they Democrats stole the election by illegally counting the votes of 10 million Martians, well by golly, it might be true. The important thing is to get the number correct.
I've had similar thoughts. Maybe country has hit bottom after 40 years of conservative dominance, and we'll look back at Joe Biden's election as a turning point. It's still too early to tell. We won't know for sure for years to come.
We can look back at Reagan's election as a turning point, the end of the era when the New Deal was the defining moment. The new regime was in large part a reaction against the New Deal way of thinking. Electorally, it was set in motion with LBJ's pushing through civil rights. That changed everything -- but not overnight. Bill Clinton was still winning Southern votes into the '90s, but by 2000 Al Gore had no chance to carry even his home state of Tennessee.
The GOP had ambitions overseas and the desire to roll back government, but never came up with a governing philosophy. They got good at winning political battles, but that was it. That only goes so far before people get tired of self-inflicted disasters and things falling apart.
Obama's presidency scared the shit out Republicans. If a black man can get elected, their hold on power was shaky at best. Instead of reform, they chose to double down.
The decision to rally around Trump in 2016, after he had a string of primary wins, was a fateful moment. The party leaders could decided to sit out the election and wait till 2020. Instead, they went all in. That's the downside of having a Fox be the voice of the party. The politicians are no longer in charge.
Trump's win may have sealed the party's fate. If HRC had carried a few more votes in the right places, she'd have had neither house in Congress and no chance to get anything done. Not even a SCOTUS seat. GOP might have done well enough in the midterms to finally get the Constitutional convention they've been longing for. When Covid came, relief would have been meager. The economy would have suffered far greater damage. A new Republican president would have been elected just in time for a vaccine to end the pandemic and a booming economy to take off. We might have been looking at a stronger-than-ever Republican party poised to rule for years or decades to come.
Instead, we had the Trump years, a failed coup, and a GOP nightmare that is hard to put into words. Let's hope that is the bottom. If we go down any further, it's hard to see how we'll ever get out.
By the way, Reagan's presidency was mired down for much of the time he was in office. His approvals sank during his first three years (only rallying when he survived assassination in his first hundred days). His second term was largely the scandal of Iran-contra, and the largest stock market crash since 1929. What he got done through Congress was only what the Dem majority allowed him (a different era, and Dems did cede too much). He won a big reelection and saw soaring approvals as he left office, largely because of an improving economy (thanks, Paul V.) and telling fanciful stories about the goodness of America. Then he was canonized as a secular saint. All that was decades before Fox.
Actually, Fox began not that long after, in the mid-90s. But it was nothing like today's media landscape for Reagan.
Great points, but I think the question Kevin raises is whether the electorate has had enough.
I recall Reagan being a response to Carter, and Carter was a response to Nixon/Ford. Bush I was fortunate to run against Dukakis. Clinton was the natural, and I've long thought that because Clinton was so believable to some faith based people and also to minorities, that the attempts to smear him, and later Hillary, were based on fear.
Bush II, did not lead the country anywhere, and as for Obama, his Presidency really cemented Repub obstructionism, its not even as if they deny it.
I see Trump as truly unique among this list, not because of his obvious moral shortcomings, all politicians may have them but most politicians spend a career trying to hide them rather than tout them as virtue, but because Trump has absolutely no problem pandering to the worst attributes of his base, and telling anyone who isn't in his side to f-off.
So that is where we are, the Repub half of the country is not amenable to being persuaded of anything. The best result would be for many of them to just stay home.
Trump showed GOP politicians that they could be absolutely shameless and openly corrupt, criminal, and bigoted. And that they would never have to pay a price at the ballot box.
Scott des Jarlais was forcing his mistresses to abort his lovechildren when Donald Trump was still doing fake chicken restaurant ads on SNL (2004).
The GQP has been openly depraved for a long time.
Prolly started with Warren G.
Trump is such a narcissist he’s never accepted that only a dwindling minority of voters supports him; that’s why he makes no effort to broaden his appeal.
Trump is a massive narcissist, true. But it's unlikely (at least in his heart of hearts) he's unaware of the paltry size and strained margins of his coalition. His failure to even attempt to broaden his appeal flows from two different factors in my view:
1) An utterly grotesque level of insecurity and weakness makes him incapable of even a hint at reconciliation or comity toward "the other side." It's revenge, meanness and toughness 24/7 with him. Anything else is for suckers and losers in the Trumpian world view. (A mindset, I gather, he picked up from his father and from his longtime lawyer Roy Cohn, and marinated for decades in Nixonian resentment at the swells on the other side of the East River).
2) From the beginning, Trump's conscious and highly energetic cultivation of the party's white ethno-nationalist base set up a feedback loop: the more he pandered to these racists loons, the more he felt (probably rightly) he needed to get every last one of their votes to eke out political victories. Trump, from the beginning, put himself on the path to doubling down on hatred and racism. And that left virtually no room for outreach to moderates, liberals and Democrats. Relatedly, Trump realized going down this path made him intensely loathed by wide segments of society, which exponentially increased the absolute necessity of knowing he enjoyed the zealous, unswerving, maniacal loyalty of his movement. And that movement feasts on hatred. So again, no comity or reconciliation.
The thesis that Reagan was a reaction to Johnson ignores the 12 years between them. NIXON was a reaction to Johnson; it was Johnson's VP that Nixon defeated.
I’ve noted it here before - TFG’s high-water mark was 2016, and he didn’t even win a popular-vote plurality then. He got a smaller share in 2020, losing by seven million votes. Republicans are doing their best to perpetuate a pandemic which is disproportionately killing off their voters. If Trump lives long enough to run in 2024, he will be handed the nomination, and go on to be soundly beaten in the general. The polls taken now are more reflective of people’s general irritability than of actual voting intent, IMHO.
Trumps ability to hold single issue voters in the Midwest wasn't that impressive either considering the mess Obama made and campaigning like a east liberal and useless vermin like Harris. Maybe try getting out of your own way. Without those swing voters, Trump is killed.
Obama's mess? Was it mustardy?
Your trying way too hard. Considering the northeast progressive establishment has been a net negative for the Democratic party for the last decade+, your missing the forest from the trees. Being anti-covid vax didn't work for Fox. They should have been quiet.
I'm with you, that there has been good news.
But I don't see green shoots.
I will happily eat crow in 2024 if Emperor Tang is not stinking up the Oval again.
How do you think his 2022-23 trial will go???? It's coming.
The hope lies in the economy. If inflation lessens - which is probable - and the recovery continues, Biden will look a lot better to people who think Presidents run the economy (which is probably most people). But improvement in his ratings might not be enough for Democrats to retain their majorities in Congress. And the economy can work both ways. If there is a crash (and there will be one sooner or later) the party in power will be out.
Assuming MSM coverage has improved, which I am not convinced of since it was already harsh on Trumpistas between the election and Jan. 6th, it can bring good change but also discouragement. If crimes are reported and the perpetrators get off scot-free and keep at it, won't they be normalized? It's what I see happening. Things that would have been very shocking just a few years ago, despite everything Gingrich and Bush and McConnell already did, lead to shoulder shrugs today. Five years ago Trump could have shot someone on 5th Ave and gotten away with it. Now it looks like he could shoot EVERYONE on 5th Ave.
If crimes are reported and the perpetrators get off scot-free and keep at it, won't they be normalized?
After the mass vandalism of the summer of 2020, it was pretty clear that if you have the right political support, trespassing and vandalism of public property is a winning strategy.
I don't understand the point of this post.
You're not very clear about why conservative influence is waning, Is conservatism waning on its own or is it the result of ____?
And your solution to support its waning -- for Democrats to lighten up -- seems disconnected from why the media is treating conservatism (we should really separate conservatism from Trumpism as one is a dogmatic cult and the other is just a cult of personality) differently from the usual acceptance of their lies.
Which then calls into question your position on the state of American democracy.
Perhaps when the cancer that is Fox News is finally excised, Kevin. Perhaps then.
"Donald Trump was turfed out of office! We passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus! The economy recovered strongly! We got out of Afghanistan! Democrats won two seats in Georgia!"
Because so much of this came earlier in the year, and because there was so much optimism the country had turned a corner and was on its way to "normalcy" in the spring, so much of what's happened since feels like a huge letdown whether its inflation, crime, the pandemic continuing to wreck havoc on our lives and the economy regardless of the responsibility level of the Administration. If these problems aren't being solved (and when you have a President who sometimes is over-optimistic in his assessments that events make him look foolish) then people, ordinary people not just partisans, are going to blame the person in charges as they have always done. It's no coincidence Biden's poll numbers began to decline in the summer and then Afghanistan and it hasn't been the same since. And I'll admit I was wrong, I think what happened there, again regardless of how responsible the Administration was for what happened, even though it doesn't show up in the polling, I mean, Americans don't like to lose a war and Biden again gets the blame for it for being the guy in the Oval Office. And I tell you all this, if Trump gets back in again, he owes Biden a huge debt of gratitude for taking the bullet on Afghanistan in eight months that Trump the Coward wasn't willing to do in four years.
None of us knows what's going to happen next year so speculation is pointless. What I will say is the Dems best campaign argument, and I agree with Jamelle Bouie on this - is waving the bloody shirt of Jan. 6 and fitting it into the larger picture of the Republicans being a party of both sedition and authoritarianism. Because the Jan. 6 Committee in Congress is doing a nice job revealing how organized this was, not some chaotic, slapdash adventure. And the fact that Trump continues to argue the election was stolen and is demanding the GOP candidates he endorses repeat this, only plays into the Dems hands. Some people will say the public is sick of Jan. 6. I would tell them in response especially Republicans because I think even some of them are tired of hearing about the stolen election judging by the decided LACK of turnout - in Florida of all places - of Trump supporters at his last public event. There's a flip side to going to the well too often.
Joe Manchin seem to be single handedly assuring that the Democrats will not win the 2022 mid-terms.
Nope. Why even make slobber posts like this.
The news / political media (and especially social media) are effective at dividing people and sowing chaos. They cannot and will not ever be effective and bringing people together for a good cause. They can stir up a war and unite many against an enemy, but they cannot lower the temperature of political conflict. They cannot "de-escalate".
I think this de-escalation was once possible when there was a truly mainstream and consensus media, but that world is long gone. The business model does not support good objective journalism anymore.
There will be no sea change in coverage of republicans. The downward spiral continues unabated. Sometime in the near future, there will be a terrorist attack on democrats / liberals of some sort. It will be committed by the "when do we get to use the guns?" crowd. And the media will blame the victims.
And yet, the Washington Post quoted an study by Forge.ai analyzing news coverage of Biden v that former guy, and determined that coverage of Joe Biden was MORE NEGATIVE. And yet, Biden has broken no laws, has not abused his power, has been neither crude nor viciously deprecating, and has actual accomplishments that have benefited ordinary Americans.
Here's the Dana Milbank column: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/03/biden-media-coverage-worse-trump-favorable/
If "the media" is treating Democrats better, I'm sure not seeing it.
If there are no laws against a vice president disdaining wireless headphones or a president refusing to give solo press conferences, it is that the laws are bad, not that the vp & potus are lawful.
One countervailing factor, very visible from the more-conservative side: the media is now perceived as fully partisan by a large portion of voters.
Could an ad campaign be developed that says "Fox News Lies and Americans Die"? I would donate to have those billboards, Facebook ads, etc running 24/7. Just keep running these ads over and over again and slowly they will collapse (because it's true).
" Politics is politics, after all, and political reporters have seen this kind of stuff on both sides for decades."
On both sides? No wonder bothsidesism is the bane of American journalism.
Every story Kevin mentioned -- Benghazi, Emails, etc. -- redounded to the benefit of the GQP.
Meanwhile, while KanYe was recording Donda, his press attache was roughing up, blackmailing, & attempting to compromise elections chiefs in Georgia to admit ( ( ( Brad Raffensperger ) ) ) was lying about who won the state's presidential vote.
Republicans are the enemies of humanity.
Treat them like it.
Yet the Repukes will win the House and Senate, and the presidency two years later. And have SCOTUS for decades.
Is that Matt Ball or Crystal Ball? The outcome of future elections is not yet determined.
The Republican attitude toward vaccination is, if anything, even more shocking. For one thing, it's barely even partisan since it doesn't really harm Democrats in any way. It's just flat-out pandering that has cost thousands of lives and will cost thousands more.
Flat-out pandering? Doesn't hurt Democrats? Where does Kevin come up with this shit?
It's not pandering. It's a well thought-out, deliberate plan to weaken America, thereby helping the Republican Party. Anti-vax lying on the part of the right spreads death and disease. The first order effect is to put voters in a pessimistic mood (that hurts the incumbency brand and helps the GOP). The second order effect is to weaken the economy (this also hurts the incumbency brand and helps the GOP).
Prominent rigtists who engage in anti-vax lies do so because they believe the road to power is paved with dead Americans. Full stop.
Because they know they can count on Democrats to do the right thing by trying to save the dimwits from themselves. It’s the mask and vaccine mandates that keep the MAGA crowd pissed off, along with quite a few low-info folks.
Lighten up? Whatever could Kevin mean at the end of an otherwise reasonable article? Perhaps he might grace us with an explanation?
Upon reflection, he might be referring not to strategy at the top but attitudes at the bottom. I know that reading the comments here they are unremittingly negative. If I am ever in danger of feeling a bit too optimistic, the comments here are the place to go to bring me back to earth, and even considerably lower.
Not that there is any shortage of things to be concerned about. But worst-case scenarios rarely fully materialize, while in the meantime, sap useful energy that could be used to avert them. And they could happen, and we are all going to die. And yes, we are all going to die, but maybe and probably not so soon.
As a general rule I would agree. However this is an argument you could hear in Germany around 1930. And guess what: It got worse than any of the pessimists would have dared predict.
Our situation now reminds us very much of the Germany 1930 situation: insurrectionists who claim all constitutional rights for themselves while demanding that they are taken away from their opponents, flagrant racism/anti-Semitism, a stab-in-the-back legend, street (in our case Capitol Hill) violence, outrageous lies that are believed by a large number of people, conservatives who are siding with the insurrectionists rather than with the truth, motivated half by fear and half by financial interests.
So excuse me if I think this situation is not covered by your (generally wise) injunction.
In other words: There is a realistic chance that in 2024 we cede to be the United States with its American exceptionalism and instead become the largest banana republic on earth.
If we don't face up to this threat we have no chance to beat it. And if we refuse to accept this fact we we will not face up to the threat.
Yes, I realize that history proves that worst-case scenarios do occur with dismaying frequency. And I admit that we may be on the cusp of one right now. If we are, then we, like countless millions before us, are going to have to try to survive in some very rough times.
Given that, I claim that wallowing in that possibility is debilitating rather than empowering, and also that it makes at least as much sense to examine the differences between the situation now and those that obtained in the past.
If Nazi Germany is the comparison, that was a country coming off of a debilitating defeat in WWI, and whose economy was a shambles. Neither of those apply here today. Indeed, what makes this situation so unique is how well off Americans are (for a large majority). Yet we nevertheless seem to be living on the edge of violent conflict.
My own opinion is that the human race is endemically prone to conflict, finding reasons for it where none really exist other than the greed and paranoia which characterize the species. Still, in this situation, there is at least the possibility that the objective factors of economic stability and governmental tradition are such that they will not feed into worst-case scenarios of the type that are admittedly rife in world history.
And then again, I could be wrong, in which case I will be pissed. History will little note that I was pissed.
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