Bob Somerby was not happy with President Biden's speech last week:
Biden defined a group of Others without taking care to explain exactly who he was talking about. He kept describing the views and ambitions of "MAGA Republicans"—but who did he mean by that?
Was he talking about Republican leadership cadres? Was he talking about the Republican rank and file? Biden made little attempt to define who he was talking about.
Personally, I thought Biden's speech was fine. But I agree with Bob that it would have been better if Biden had focused more strongly on Republican leaders, not the rank-and-file.
Politically, this is useful because there's not much point in insulting a large group of voters. That gets you nowhere.
Factually, it's useful because it's true. The villains in this story are Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump. The institutions at fault are Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, and so forth. The pundits at fault are Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh and a cast of thousands of others. Then add to that all the less extreme conservative leaders who don't spread the worst of the twaddle but tolerate it from others because they're too cowardly to speak out against it.
This is where the hatred originates. I won't say that the Republican rank-and-file is made up entirely of good people—it's some and some, just like any other large group of humans—but they aren't fundamentally at fault for any of this. They're just following the lead of those with big megaphones and lots of power. The rest of us do much the same, and we're just lucky that our leaders aren't as repellent.
The fallacy is that you seem to think that Republican leaders are in any sense leading the rank and file. The rank and file knows exactly what it wants and will reject any “leaders” who won’t give it to them.
Exactly.
The GQP threw in with the Amoral Inferiority in 1964, after Lyndon Johnson culturally appropriated the Party of (still, at the time) Abraham Lincoln, & for awhile was able to corral those George Wallace & Lester Maddox American Traditionalists with the previous era's Establishment Leadership of Rockefellers, Bushes, Lodges. & Tafts, but as the Old Guard died off & lost suasion, they were replaced by Amoral leadership among the Falwells, Vigueries, Ice Man Weyrich, et. al., to the point where the American White Tradtionals were both vote base & platform authors.
& that's how the GQP Party of Abe Lincoln became the Party of George Lincoln Rockwell.
Since Goldwater Republican leaders have been exploiting the racism and religiosity of many whites. The rebellion against equal rights has been growing for this reason. The Republican leaders thought they had things under control, but Trump and now others have found ways to arouse the base more directly.
The Tea Party is said to have originated in a rant in the Chicago Commodity exchange. Was that a grass-roots movement?
The basic racist and tribal instincts are there but there have to be leaders to call them up.
Koch's roots anyone???
Palin-Santelli 2012 was the original MAGA movement.
Amen, treeeetop57.
Yup. This behavior, this mindset didn't spring out of thin air. Much like COVID, it's endemic.
I can’t be as forgiving of the rank and file as you are, mr. Drum, whenever I hear them talking to reporters. …
Republican leaders may have sparked the fire, but a lot of these voters (not a few, a lot) enthusiastically embrace it. The voters I’m talking about (and probably the ones Biden was talking about) are not being fooled. They were just staying quiet until someone told them it was ok for them to be themselves and openly inflict their hatred on others. (I was ok with them keeping it to themselves. Like the one crazy uncle who tries to go on a rant only at the thanksgiving table.) And they cant be burned soon enough in my view. ( Biden said in his speech this is not all Republicans.)
And the MAGA Repub voters have been talking A LOT to reporters. Remember all those fervent articles where Big City Reporter makes their way to some midwest "diner", specifically to give worshipful audience to "typical Trump voters"?
And yet, these folks think they're being "ignored" and "disrespected." How much bootlicking does it take, anyway?
You don't think the reporters look for the worst of the worst when they interview people at GOP events?
There are plenty of reasonable Republicans. They don't go to Trump rallies and they are disgusted with the GOP of today.
Where's Cletus Safari when you need him?
But when November comes, they vote for disgusting Republican candidates because they abhor Democrats more. So screw their ‘reasonableness’.
Reasonable Republicans would recognize that losing one’s principles is worse than losing an election.
Tell that to 2nd amended absolutist Betsy Johnson & her third party campaign for Oregon governor.
She may say she thinks Christina Drazen is more of a danger than Tina Kotek, but the erstwhile Democrat Johnson siphoning votes from Kotek just ensures that Oregon's distaff Scott Walker Drazen will be running a FOXCONN on the Beaver State.
Reporters don’t have to look for “the worst” at Trump events. They are all there. There are few to none “reasonable” Republicans at Trump events.
The inmates are now in control of the asylum.
Over the last few years the power has successfully shifted away from the power brokers (politicians, media figures, clergy, etc.) and devolved into the hands of the rank-and-file. It was certainly stoked initially by the typical people in power, but it is clearly no longer a top-down movement.
You can see it very clearly in the realm of Evangelical Christianity. There used to be a very strong top-down flow of power and ideas. But in the last few years it has nearly flipped, with many Evangelical pastors totally unable to lead their flocks. A lot of the flock has flown the coop - starting or joining independent churches that are stridently political and pro-Trump.
The old "thought leaders" are playing catch up. Of course, they set it in motion. They're ultimately responsible for the monster (they are Dr. Frankenstein), but the monster is running wild around the world, the the Drs. are just trying to catch it. Hopefully, like in the book, they all end up alone on the ice.
And the Democratic Party is becoming more and more like this every day as well.
*Denocrat Party
A big chunk of the Republican rank-and-file are the ideological successors of the Dixiecrat rank-and-file: the unregenerate racists and bigots.
👍👍👍
This is giving way to much leeway to republican voters. The party is composed of a very large contingent of sexists, racists and general assholes. Blaming it all on the party leaders and pundits is ridiculous. The whole country is exposed to right wing propoganda, hate speech and lies. Less than half chose to support it.
Too true.
The South Carolina primary voters could have punished George W. Bush's conversion of Bengali adoptee Bridget Mc Cain into a Mulatto Lovechild of John Mc Cain & a Low Country Black Prostitute, but they didn't. They didn't fancy the idea of a miscegenator in the White House, & responded accordingly.
Give those gop consultants credit. They know their audience.
Something in the Atwater down Ashley & Cooper River way.
To the extent that some are misled, I think those people are being misled by their pastors. The leaders of the religious right have completely embarrassed Trump and pretty much view him as God’s chosen messenger, incapable of error. If your pastor is telling you this and it’s reinforced by Fox, etc. I suppose that would be a powerful motivation to believe it.
Also, I see no way of changing those people’s minds.
I an waiting for the American tradcath convert sedevacantists like Douthat, Vermeule, & Bruenig to openly reject the legitimacy of Francis & agitate for an American church takeover under Timmy Cardinal Dolan.
Growing up, most Republicans that I knew were racists. I don't think Rush Limbaugh made them that way.
there were enough moderate voices among republicans, that lbj could find enough votes to pass civil rights legislation. even 15-20 years ago, there were republican votes to extend the voting rights act. couldn't happen now. not even close.
I agree with what others are saying. Certain leaders and pundits like Gingrich and Limbaugh got the ball rolling decades ago in creating a Republican base that viewed liberal norms and institutions with disdain; that erased the line between religion and political activism; that used racist dogwhistles to realign former segregationist Democrats under the Republican brand, and so on. All it took was for one outspoken, authoritarian demogogue to cast the spell that forged these Republican constituencies, which were already leaning into anti-democratic, fascist-adjacent identity politics, into one massive, uncontrolled MAGA golem.
Hence the inmates are now running the asylum and the party is in dissaray because it's no longer pro-democracy or conservative in any sense of those words. Their only option is to 1. implode and rebuild or 2. successfully launch a coup that destroys the government and installs Trump or some other MAGA toad as dictator.
Early on in the speech, Biden specifically said he wasn't talking about all Republicans. The actual quote was "Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.”
But of course, in the era of Twitter, the response is "I'm deeply offended that Biden would say half the country is crazy!"
The way to deal with this is lay out a list of policies that we should all be in favor of, then dare the Repubs to oppose them.
As KD has mentioned in the past, some sort of national ID for voting. Require everyone to vote. That's the place to start. Let the Repubs come out publicly against democracy.
The eternal question, are leaders leading or following? Probably both, but I think we cannot simply ignore the MAGA republicans responsibility-they don’t have agency? Piffle.
The Republican Party unleashed its crazies and allowed them to be in control. “Leaders” like Trump are just seeing which way their crowd is running and rushing to the front to “lead” them. Note that even Trump couldn’t sway “his” people to accept the vaccine. He desperately wanted credit for it and even deserved some. But the crazies want no part of it so he gave up on it.
Bob Somerby says a lot more than what you've quoted. Indeed, Somerby is so totally dishonest in his blog entry that I decided I would not ever waste my time reading him again. Once upon a time Somerby raised some valid concerns about our MSM (see Al Gore) and some of the hypocrisies of the left but he has descended into being a self appointed, self righteous scold who mouths whataboutisms as lame as the ones the right cranks out regularly. In this case, in order to fit Somerby's narrative he has blithely misrepresented the tenor of Biden's speech. v
Somerby:
"Biden defined a group of Others without taking care to explain exactly who he was talking about. He kept describing the views and ambitions of "MAGA Republicans"—but who did he mean by that?"
And later :
"...who was Biden talking about? He made little attempt to explain who those "MAGA Republicans" actually are."
But Biden did define who they were - repeatedly - and he did it by describing their ACTIONS that were and are dangerously antidemocratic.
Kevin, you should not give this guy even backhanded credit any more. He has become truly, sadly, useless.
Amen to you, too, RZM.
You beat me to it, and have been far more articulate. Thanks!
Somerby has been bending over backwards to find fault with the leftish and centrist side of the political spectrum. Something about the "mote" in our eyes, I guess. No wonder "Dark Brandon" has driven him up the wall.
Not everyone with whom you're inclined to disagree is being "totally dishonest." In fact, many people with whom you're inclined to disagree aren't being dishonest at all.
The point I'll be making this week involves the misleaders versus the misled. For what it's worth, I note that Biden has already adjusted his language today, apparently to signal that he's talking about Republican politicians, not the rank and file.
Many of the rank and file believe the last election was stolen. They've been misled by powerful agents who know that isn't true.
Those voters don't know they're being misled. In my opinion, it would be more productive to aim one's fire at the powerful agents who are misleading millions of voters, rather than to go to war with millions of people who may decide to vote a different way the next time around.
That said, people love to hate Others, preferably by the millions. This is the story of our war-filled human history, and that story continues today, occasionally in the comments to this very post by Drum.
No one is being "wholly dishonest" about the matters at hand. Sadly, some people, myself included, may be so dumb that they're inclined to disagree with your infallible point of view.
We humans are wired to loathe Other en masse. It's bred fairly deep in the bone. As we can read in today's NYT, it's still being played out in Kosovo. Of course, over the course of human history, it's been played out all over the world.
Final point RE "useless." Given the human impulses at play, I'm aware of the fact that all such commentary is completely and totally useless. At the start of Gone With the Wind, the silly Southern boys wanted to go off to war with the Yankees, and nothing was going to stop them. I've been mentioning this basic anthropological point for the past quite a few years.
Luckily, your own perceptions are infallible. As it turns out, The Others are just being totally dishonest. They'll do it every time!
"Whatever you do, don't put in the paper that I got mad".
Sorry, Bobbo, but if anyone other than you said the median Trump supporter doesn't know (i.e. isn't smart enough) to know they're being misled, you would be the first to condemn the pointyheaded, ivory tower elitism of some ( ( ( coastal neoliberal elite ) ) ) disparaging the native intelligence of their supposed fellow Americans.
you're an asshole and either a liar or a fool. maybe all three.
I'll take that as a compliment.
I do believe Kahner was responding to Mr. B.S.
Can't be too sure.
I think you are being more than a little disingenuous and you don't actually address the central point I made, which is that you misrepresented the tenor of Biden's speech. In fact I think you forced your own narrative into the story, that is that people left of center always need to be wary of criticizing people on the right when they speak and act (even when said righties are speaking and acting in ways that are in fact dangerous to the democracy we live in ?) because, hey, we can be partisan and blind to our prejudices too. Well, duh.
BTW, I'm all in favor of trying to single out the "powerful agents" who are leading this dangerous movement, but at this point I'm not inclined to give a free pass t the people who follow them. Are You ?
They aren't children.
Last, I think it's a bit of a cheap debating trick to imply (twice) that because I disagree with you I believe I'm infallible. I voiced a strong opinion disagreeing with your representation of Biden's speech. Period, Of course I could be wrong . OTOH, so could you.
Well stated in every particular.
Just googled up Mr. Somerby. Turns out he's a stand up comedian.
I guess the nation's yuksters have been cosplaying as pundits at least since the likes of Katie Willett were in shortpants & underoos.
Yes, hating on the typical Republican voter, who is not a member of the Proud Boys, accomplishes nothing. Republican politicians' objective is to divide Americans on the basis of race and religion - don't do their work for them. Democrats need to get the message across to voters that the cynical Republican politicians are not working for their benefit. The criticism needs to be much more pointed than "MAGA Republicans". Actually the target should be essentially all Republican politicians, as those in Congress and states are essentially united in pursuing the strategy of division. As for voters they need to be made aware of where their real interests lie, not made the object of hate.
Biden can still claim that he would work with Republicans, since a major complaint is that things don't get done. But the Republican leaders would have to give up their own vicious partisanship.
I think you are missing that a large part of the Republican base see that the party is working for their interests, including:
- keeping Democrats from seizing their guns
- stopping the scourge of abortion
- keeping trans ‘girls’ out of the girls’ school bathrooms
- not giving free stuff to people of whom we don’t approve
- opposing discrimination against white Christian people
I wonder if our friend skeptonometrica was hearted by Dropkick Murphys frontman Ken Kasey going buck on MAGA this weekend, or if he thought it was too coarse.
But, of course, it was a white workingclass man meeting the Democrat-skeptical on their terms.
Some commenters keep saying the the Republican base is responsible for the MAGA movement. So what? What does saying "I hate you, I hate you" accomplish? Biden has to come up with a political strategy that will actually bring over those non-hard-core voters, which there are actually many of.
The time for convincing is over.
https://youtu.be/K7ZHfZt4o6c
" Biden has to come up with a political strategy that will actually bring over those non-hard-core voters, which there are actually many of."
I don't see what Biden could possibly come up with. The Republican base is racist, sexist, homophobic and proudly so. Where's are common ground? He can't bring them along with pleas to save the planet from climate change - they don't believe it's real. He can't make any case for any form of equality or equity - they believe they are the superior race and superior religion. He can't appeal to their better angels - they don't have any.
The Republican party needs to lose every race (I know, wishful thinking) for the next decade.
That's the thing: it's not just deviation from ethnosexual orthodoxy that drives the base to purge the leadership ranks. Infamously, Bob Inglis (Q - SC) was drummed out of the party for saying climate change is real. On every other issue, from #idpol to taxes to defense to abortion, he was in their corner. But saying we need to honor God's earthly bequest to man as stewards of the planet, he had to be cut loose.
When Republicans pick their leaders, they're not picking their best. They're picking racists. They're picking anti-semites. They're picking election-deniers. They're picking anti-democratic autocrats. They're picking misogynists.
And some, I assume, are good people.
If certain GQP leaders get their way & criminalize abortions that happened during the Roe Era, does that mean we get to sentence Scott des Jarlais to life in prison without possibility of parole?
😉
+1
C'mon, fer realz?
The leaders finally stopped trying to hold the frothing Base at bay and ushered them to the head of the line, that's the only difference today than a decade ago.
Remember the firehoses, the billy clubs, the bayonets? Remember escorts of paratroopers, shocked faces in crowds as gunmen pulled their triggers? Instead of institutional uniforms, they're in full fascist/confederate regalia.
I was just thinking how well before the burning of Portland to the ground by the left in summer 2020, the right had its power trip in Charlottesville in August 2017 & Cesar Sayoc, Jr., did his level best to increase USPS delivery volume in 2018, & the likes of Somerby didn't say word one to demand the GQP moderate its tone. Hell, in Portland, the Patriots Pride has been agitating for a race war for years, including the involvement of released felons involved in the brutalizing murder of an Aethiopaean in November 1988, & not a word.
How is James Alex Fields, Jr., or Tusitala Toese or Kyle Brewster (one of the surviving murderers of Mulageta Seraw, & on his release from prison an active member of Patriots Pride) more restrained in their exercise of their first amendment right to speech & expression than is sleepy joebiden in Philadelphia?
Portland was burned to the ground? Hmm. It still seems to exist as a city in 2022 though, and - despite the riots of 2020 - looks better today than other cities that also survived riots in the distant past and never recovered, such as Detroit.
I live here. Nothing was burned down.
Portland ANTIFA isn't the Mrs. O'Leary's cow of ¡REVOLUCION!
While the preceding comments, blaming the MAGA followers as much as the MAGA leaders, may be true, they miss the tactical point.
If you attack the MAGA movement, the natural human reaction of those who have supported TFG is defensive, to attack Biden and Democrats. By focusing on the MAGA leaders you maybe lessen the defensive reaction and get a few of those who are loosely attached to TFG to break away.
We should be looking for incremental changes and forsake the dream of crushing MAGA by force of rhetoric.
But then, when we focus on the leadership, Cokedup Werewolves like Aileen Cannon just press to secure a perimeter around El Jefe.
The tactical point is the right point, imo. Biden's speech wasn't a diagnostic treatise. It was a political action that hung a label on an amorphous group of people and described what makes their actions dangerous to the republic. He wasn't looking for style points by drawing fine distinctions among the people who threaten our system.
Broad catch-all labels work fine for political purposes. All you'll hear Fox and right-wing radio and 3/4 of right-wing politicians talk about is "the left" and they never get more specific than that. (Every individual horror story they tell is just an example of "the left" in action, and they'll say so.) Teddy Roosevelt's targets were "malefactors of great wealth." And so on.
An effective broad label will also give voters an out. "Me? I'm a normal mostly-republican and I really hate those in-your-face MAGA clowns with their big diesel pickups and confederate flags and open-carry ARs and all that. No MAGA shit in this house." So maybe more effort should have gone into specifically separating voters from leaders, and into amplifying and caricaturing what MAGAts do, but that's correctible.
Overall, I think it was useful to retail a label that also happens to suggest a splinter movement that's broken away from its parent.
If you are a true MAGA Republican you are simply never going to vote for a Democrat and there is nothing any Democratic politician can say to get you to vote for a Democrat. What is so hard to understand about this?
We have to be careful not to hurt the snowflakes...
And...
"Willie Horton"
I know that Dr. Feelg--... Oz is using an even more dishonest taek on Willie Horton to try to wound Fetterman, but at least it's good that Ronny D from Tallahassee got his own Dukakis in the tank moment in his Top Gun: Woke Madness ad.
Wonderful brief and alarming outline of Trump psychology, it's epidemiology among the susceptible, and the inevitable narcissistic collapse of all of them,
https://www.rawstory.com/hitlers-bunker/?rsplus
But, I would add, more than just public political figures will be at risk when these people run amok, many popular entertainment and media personalities will be at risk and require bodyguards and much greater security, as well as places like Disney World, CNN, college campuses, and corporations like Google and Twitter, and whatever they might identify as making a key disruption to the economy or money supply.
Milo Yiannopoulos, Andy Ngo, Gavin Mac Innes, Joey Bishop (leader of Proud Bois wannabe the Patriots Pride), Quique Terrio, Stuart Oafkeeper, et. al., remain public menaces & will until they are six feet under.
Blotions 11.
Sorry,--that's Blowtions 11.
That's my typo.
I own the error.
Nothing left to do but lash out.
Their mission: steal the Constitution from the National Archives to restore it to its rightful place at the University of Austin.
The National Archives! The same people causing the God Emperor to rend his beautiful hair in frustration?
Was the secret chamber of the Deep State hidden in plain sight all along?!
Nic Cage got his tax arrearage forgiven as part of being a contract antiquities thief for the Deep State.
That might explain how he got his stolen copy of Action 1 back.
No one gets their stolen comics back.
"The rest of us do much the same, and we're just lucky that our leaders aren't as repellent."
To paraphrase Keynes: "I change my party when I find the leaders repellent. What do you do, Sir?
+1
Damn, Kevin. Every day you regress closer to 1984. It's time to dust off your Reagan-Bush '84 campaign button. It's Morning in America!
Gary Hart would have won.
Yep. they are just following orders. Nothing wrong with that. Can't prosecute someone who is just following orders. It's not like we learned in church that we are each responsible for upholding a moral code. If you see something, don't tell anyone. Just go along to get along.
Also, I heard a new theory about Trump's motives for keeping classified documents. They were the pee tape. Trump didn't like the intelligence briefs that showed his sexual procliviities being passed around the intelligence services, so he took them home.
Possibly.
Given every Jefe accusation is a confession, & he claimed he had intel on Macron's sexlife, it would go to reason that the classified docs at the Maralago Utility Closet are about the Pee Tape.
(Also: if there's a Trump sextape, it's definitely shot Dennis Reynolds style, just a faceless woman in a probe, or doggystyle, position receiving the gift of El Jefe's hot beef injection, the only sound El Jefe's balls slapping the woman's taint.)
ugh, I'm gonna barf.
Then his pained post-near-heart attack strangling noise and him saying, 'That's all, yeah that's --it --thanks alot, bathrooms in there. They'll give you something on the way out. What's your name again? Valerie, right. You're a very beautiful woman, Valerie, you look just like my daughter.'
Sure, Biden in his Dark Brandon incarnation deplored the Deplorables (a name they've taken as an honor, by the way.) Was he expecting to win them over? Seriously?
That speech was for the lefty base and any decline-to-staters who might be paying attention. Don't worry about "offending" the MAGA folks... absolutely EVERYTHING coming out of a Democrat offends them. It's pavlovian. Nothing can placate them. They live to be outraged.
But there are plenty of folks in the middle who can be convinced, and a few percent may be all it takes. That, and rousing the Democratic base for the mid terms.
I hear that recent surveys indicate the American people are increasingly worried about the condition of their democracy. This speech could help to mobilize them.
yes yes yes!
Exactly.
The Democrat Party has an entrenched opposition in the GQP that is implacable, but even more, they have the left tip of the horseshoe ever minimizing the distinctions between Demolicans & Repocrats, while at the same time cozying up the right, on the belief that it's the GQP who are running to the Democrats's left.
joebiden spoke from Philadelphia last week as much to sway the Jacobin #OurRevolution Left to realize that Donald Trump isn't going to unilaterally impose #Medicare4All simply because doing so will pwn tha libz.
I disagree. The threat comes from my coworker and my neighbor. Trump and the political class are pussies. My neighbor should be shot dead.
No lies detected.
Hey! We have the same Co-workers!!
The rest of us do much the same, and we're just lucky that our leaders aren't as repellent.Speak for yourself. I stopped supporting the conservative coalition in Australia when it sent troops to fight in Vietnam. I stopped supporting the Labor Party when it refused to do anything constructive about climate change or racism or the rights of indigenous Australians. I now support the Greens, who are a serious movement in this country, but I couldn't even tell you who 'the leaders' are. I support them because of the party's performance in parliament and its platform.
They're just following the lead of those with big megaphones and lots of power. The rest of us do much the same, and we're just lucky that our leaders aren't as repellent.
This.
I used to lean toward the "in a democracy voters get the government they deserve" camp.
But as I've gone through life my outlook has veered toward a more consequentialist political philosophy. Outcomes tell us a lot!
And one big thing they tell us is that leadership matters. Most ordinary folk are too busy holding down a job, paying the mortgage or shuttling kids to soccer practice to develop a solid understanding of politics and policy. We can bemoan this reality all we like. Reality doesn't care.
Anyway, if the leaders of the Republican Party in the main care more about their material standard of living than they do about the national interest (and they do) we're in a lot of trouble. And we are.
Car sauce go up?
Guess we gotta vote those clowns out!
What a bunch of clowns!
I think it's a wee bit (by that I mean a f*ck ton) easier to think that people who vote for objectively, openly, and proudly awful people are, themselves, awful. If you vote for DeSantis for governor this coming November, you are a bigoted, racist, homophobic, anti-democratic, fascist a**hole. Period. I mean he proudly and intentionally brings a ton of attention to his racism, bigotry, and general awfulness. Even for low info voters in Florida it's impossible to not be aware of how awful he is.
So glad to see people coming around to understanding the villainy of Newt and his war on truth in the early 90s.
A chicken or the egg kind of problem...
Do you cast blame specifically at the people who demanded and rewarded outrage or the leaders who encoraged and provided it?
I dunno....but casting the net widely seems most accurate.
This sounds like a version of the Great (Bad) Man theory of history.
My Exhibit A against it is the vote in Wyoming: about 2:1 against the normal Republican.
The Republican proletariat has had ample opportunity to pick better or saner leaders, & they have pretty consistently avoided that. There are exceptions, mainly in the east.
I have been trying to figure out why Mr Biden gave the speech he did - this discussion has helped me a little. The best explanation I can come up with is that it was a political act designed to amp up base + swing voters already really angry about perceived judicial overreach in Dobbs (& more). I think he made a distinction (a little white lie) between MAGA and ordinary Republicans to allow the rank and file a bridge out for later on - those old enough might remember that Nixon won in a landslide in '72 but but 1974 you couldn't find anyone who would admit they voted for him. Hope this strategy works out.
That's pretty much how I see it. In elementary-school terms, he wanted to give MAGAts a name, define them as a splinter group that jumped the gop fence, and corral them in the middle of a circle of normies pointing and maybe jeering at them. That would give whatever percentage it is of habitual gop voters that don't go along with MAGA the chance to join the circle and point.
MAGAts themselves are a lost cause. R +20 districts are a lost cause. The only solution is to beat them. In a lot of districts, that will only need a small percent of habitual republican voters to either vote D or sit on their hands. That was Joe's target on the right and in the middle. Ds also need motivation, and he gave them plenty.
However, in the long run I think almost everything will end up being swamped by the reaction against Dobbs. It's still building and won't crest really until well after this election, like 2023 and 2024. It's a very, very deep anger, the kind that grows and gets hotter with time. I don't think anybody's really taken it seriously enough yet.
Lol. It's both but the leaders aren't in control anymore. The republican voters are absolutely at fault and if they rise violently I have no qualms if they are slaughtered like the rabid animals they are.
After all we've seen the last 10-12 years (certainly the last 6) rank and file Republican voters deserve 0 benefit of the doubt. If you still vote for people like Trump, Cruz, MTG, well, heck, all Republicans at this point, you are an irredeemably awful person or so low information that I don't think you should be voting.
We are very far past giving the people who vote for awful people a pass.
Biden delivered tough love.