David Jolly and the Triumphant Return of 2016

You may know David Jolly as a former one-and-a-half term congressperson from Florida who is now a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC.  

In addition to being a former one-and-a-half term congressperson, you may or may not know that Jolly is also a former Republican (bailed on the party in 2018) a former Independent (bailed on that whatever-it-is in 2020) and is now registered under the Serve America Movement, an organization which he chairs.  

And you probably had no idea that (according to Wikipedia) 93% of the Serve America Movement's funded comes from one former Big Tobacco executive, Charles Wall, and that, as of November 2020, the "movement" had a grand total of 649 registered members in New York, which is the only place on Earth where it appears on any ballot at all.

So since his is entire "movement" is being bankrolled by one guy, and since the world is not exactly beating a path to its door, you may be wondering why Mr. Jolly has any platform, anywhere?

Fair question, and one which reveals itself to the careful listener in Mr. Jolly's conversation with Charlie Sykes here. 

Broadly speaking, David Jolly is on your teevee far more often than makes any sense because what he lacks in tangible achievements, he more than makes up for in what I think of as political HerbalLife, vertical marketing, time-share doubletalk.  

It's Ricky Roma stuff straight out of Glengarry Glenn Ross.  First, get the credulous suburban mark loose and lubricated.  Get them nodding along to some deep-sounding fortune cookie BS --

-- and then, while you have your mark agreeing with you that "transparency" and "problem solving" are indeed fucking awesome,  out comes the solution to all of their problems in a pamphlet and a pitch --

-- all calibrated to get them to sign on the line which is dotted.

When his conversation with Mr. Sykes turns to the unsalvageability of the GOP David Jolly was very proud that he has been "involved in this space for five years now" and handed out plenty of attaboys the tiny handful of:

Jolly: ...other Republicans who started this war five years ago.

Actually, David, this war has been going on for decades.  You just never noticed until stepped up and punched you in the face -- a moral and political myopia which, to be clear, has been the rule rather than the exception until, well, five years ago.

And that's the common element here.  A deep desire in the media and among former Republicans like David Jolly to pretend that everything wrong with the GOP started spontaneously and with no warning five years ago.  It comes in the form of a longing for good old days of 2015/16 when the media and every member of the GOP Brain Caste could openly laugh at the notion that Donald Trump could ever win the Republican nomination.  A because of this yearning for the imaginary greener pastures of the Good Old Days,  David Jolly has decided that, in a political marketplace already overstuffed with boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scams, that the perfect foundation on which to build his own, boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" grift would be...the Beltway common wisdom of five years ago!

And you all remember what the Beltway common wisdom was back in 2016, right?

It was rampant, willfully blind Both Siderism.  It was the imperative of defeating the K'rupt Duopoly above all else!  And how does one overthrow the K'rupt Duopoly?  By Disruption!

And now that Donald Trump has been temporarily entombed in Bedlam-by-the-Lake, Jolly figured it's safe to ransack Matthew Dowd's 2016 storage locker and cobble together his very own scam out of whatever he found there.

And kids, it is a treasure trove of golden oldies.

Sure the Republican party "isn't worth saving", but really, are the Democrats that much better?

To begin his pitch, Jolly asks you to place enormous faith in the Greatest Grandfalloon of all!  The...

Jolly:  40% who self-identify as Independents.

Now we've had over 16 years of, well, jolly good fun mocking Conservative mopes who, every few months, peer into the impenetrably murk of America's "independents" and somehow, every time, miraculously see exactly what they want to see.  In fact, at this point "I'm an in-dee-pen-dant!" is the unofficial punchline of  The Professional Left Podcast because, just for starters, most "independents" aren't independent at all.  They just like to say they are to impress their dopey friends or to increase the odds of hooking up with an attractive stranger they meet at a bar:

According to the Gallup polling firm, the identity that people choose most often is actually “independent” – not Democratic or Republican. In 2019, 42% of Americans chose this label – up from the low 30s just 15 years earlier, in 2004. 

 

However, three-quarters of these “independents” admit, when asked, that they lean toward favoring the Democratic or Republican Party. Judging by how they vote or what they think of national political leaders, the truth is that these “leaners” really are partisans rather than independents. Apparently, many people who like to think of themselves as independent-minded and free of party influence aren’t. 

 

So, why call themselves independents? Typically, according to one leading study, it is “not because they disagree with the parties ideologically or politically but because being a party member is embarrassing.” 

 

In fact, only about 10% of Americans are what political scientists call “pure independents” – that is, people who identify as independents and claim not to favor either of the two major parties. Nor has that percentage grown in recent years. This means that the vast majority of Americans – consistently around 90% – are partisans, whether they like to admit it or not.

Heedless of this, Mr. Jolly plunges ahead, affecting a unique insight into what "independents" want that would make 2009 David Brooks ("What Independents Want") envious:

Jolly:    This 40% is not wandering the political wilderness looking for a Center/Right coalition.  That is not what informs their politics.

And what does inform their politics?  Beyond, y'know, politics?

Jolly:    They're actually rejecting the prescriptive dogma that parties suggest you have to adhere to, whether it's Left, Right, Center/Right, Center/Left, middle.

I don't recall being forced to sign up for any prescriptive dogmas when I registered as a Democrat, but  maybe I was drunk.  Nor have I ever felt any special need to adhere to any prescriptive dogmas when I vote, but maybe I've been drunk then too. 

Jolly:    [Independents] don't want to be told that to be part of a political organization -- a "party" -- we all have to coalesce around this shared ideology.  What they want, I believe that the numbers prove out...the 40%, y'know, can be all over the map, but it is a rejection of dogmatic party organizations.

Of course nobody wants anyone telling them to do anything, and everyone wants to be a member of the "All Good Stuff/No Bad Stuff" party, but, see what we have here in this country is whatchacall a representative form of government.  And since laws are passed by the people who are elected through a series of winnowing "primary" contests, I pick the people who I think broadly reflect my values and have a decent chance of actually winning in the "general" election.

Because (and Jesus, David, I can't believe that I really need to explain this) in our representative form of government we don't decide everything from tax rates to declarations of war by plebiscite.  And as is true in examples as disparate as multicellular life forms, multinational corporations and the Catholic church, so it is true in politics:  large well-organized groups stand a vastly better chance of winning the Darwinian competition survival sweepstakes than small, scattered groups with very little in common.

Which is why Jolly wants to bypass the idea of a "party" altogether and doesn't want to be pinned down about believing one thing or another.  His pitch is for great big empty phrases like "problem solving" and "principles".  Which, to the inebriated suburban mark, may sound like, hey, you know what?  Maybe this is plot of land in the Glengarry Highlands is exactly what I've been searching for my whole life!  Sign me up right now!

But then, inevitably, the cold light of morning comes creeping in.

Beyond "democracy" and "freedom" and "apple pie", what exactly am I signing up for?  What specific problems is Mr. Jolly's "movement" going to solve and exactly how do they plan to solve them?  Because honestly, right now, there already is a large political organization called the Democratic Party which actually does accommodate a wide spectrum of beliefs.

Foe example, when it comes to trying to, say, solve the problem of gun violence, one party -- the Democrats -- are willing to try anything that will work to even marginally reduce the slaughter, while the other party -- Mr. Jolly's former party -- is firmly locked into a "Bazookas for Everyone Because Liberals Are Commies!" position.  

The same is true for  fighting to expand the franchise.  One party -- the Democrats -- believe in the principle of making easier and safer for every eligible American to vote, but are of many minds about the strategies and tactics that will advance that cause, while the other party is single-mindedly devoted to the proposition that "Elections Don't Count Unless We Win".

In fact, the same is true for long list of critical national issues, because one party already is a Very Big Tent where actual solutions to actual problems are debated among often fractious and constantly shifting coalitions.  While the other party is a white nationalist madhouse goose-stepping towards the abyss and dragging the rest of us along with it.  

But of course the obvious truth that the two parties are not at all equivalent is where all Third Way shell games that promise to transcend partisanship come a cropper, which is why the Beltway common wisdom of 2016 is so alluring.  Because if you can convince people to move past the central political reality of our time -- that the Republican Party is the fucking problem -- you have freed yourself to slip back into he easy, lazy, toxic bromides of the pre-Trump world.

For example, Mr. Jolly makes it explicitly clear that the goal of his 649-member club is to  "Disrupt!" our politics (yes, he actually uses that word) which he insists is broken because it's stuck on the "Left/Right" spectrum instead of twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!

What slayed (slew?) me was that Charlie Sykes was trying so hard to be Mr. Helpful that  he accidentally undercuts Jolly's whole premise and never noticed:

Sykes:    I... I... I... do think that on areas like the Child Credit that it seems like there's a moment when, if people would just take a deep breathe and find out that, y'know, Mitt Romney and Joe Biden are not necessarily that far apart.  That we can actually come up with some pro-family, pro-life policies involving child care, involving child credit.  But it's hard to break from those... those habits, y'know, that... that... that... habits of, oh, y'know, Us versus Them that have been so ingrained.   

Yes, Charlie, Joe Biden, the president of the United States and the leader of the Democratic Party would probably be close enough to Mitt Romney on child care to work out a deal...in an alternate universe where Mitt Romney is not a pariah within his own party with no standing to negotiate anything.  But in this universe, Mitt Romney is the leader of nothing and speaks for virtually no one because he has lashed himself to the mast of the American Fascist Party.

See, at this moment in history, we don't actually need our politics to be "Disrupted!"  because the problem is not "those habits of....Us versus Them that have been so ingrained." The problem is the Republican Party.  And to solve that problem we need for the Republican Party to not be seditious sociopaths anymore.  And since that is never going to happen, Plan B needs to be the demolition of the Republican Party, root and branch, and to do that we need to be honest about how the Republican Party came to be a mob of seditious sociopaths in the first place.

And for the foreseeable future this means supporting the Democratic Party.  Period.  

And that simple, irrefutable fact is Kryptonite to anyone trying to get yet another boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" grift off the ground.  And so Mr. Jolly once again rummages through the 2016 Beltway Book of Common Prayer and comes up with...

...the K'rupt Duopoly!

Jolly:  So the Duopoly has produced a very effective currency called "negative partisanship".  And we all see it.  We might not use those terms but every election is about demonizing the other side.  Republicans are calling Democrats "socialists".  Democrats calling Republicans "authoritarian".  

This is one of those places where the sheer, ham-fisted goofiness of Mr. Jolly's pitch cracks me up.  Because we're now around 36 minutes into this podcast, with Jolly bitching that our politics is broken because each side unfairly demonizes the other.  Except is it demonizing a pony to call it a pony? Or a plague to call it a plague?  And is it demonizing the Republican Party to call it authoritarian when it clearly is authoritarian?  Because if this is the bedrock on which Mr. Jolly's Both Siderism stands, I'll gladly step aside so Mr. Jolly can take his complaint up with the long list of former Republicans who say so.

Like Jennifer Rubin:

The Republican Party seems to be getting worse. In some cases, it has exceeded the level of dishonesty, bigotry and anti-democratic fervor that it displayed when its MAGA cult leader was in office.

And Max Boot:

The GOP is accelerating its descent into authoritarianism

And David F. Brooks:

Without Trump, the GOP is getting worse 

...With their deep pessimism, the hyperpopulist wing of the GOP seems to be crashing through the floor of philosophic liberalism into an abyss of authoritarian impulsiveness. Many of these folks are no longer even operating in the political realm. The Republican response to the Biden agenda has been anemic because the base doesn’t care about mere legislation, just their own cultural standing.

And holy crap, here is Charlie Sykes' own publication demonizing those poor Republicans!

The GOP’s Telltale Signs of Authoritarianism

And double holy crap here are David Jolly and Charlie Sykes on this same podcast just 15 minutes prior writing off Republican Party as irredeemably anti-democratic and fucked-in-the-head

Jolly:  This is Donald Trump calling for a cover-up of his instigation of an insurrection that tried to topple our republic, and it's Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson and every other person who worships at the lap of Donald Trump saying "Yes, sir, we'll help you cover this up."

Also here:

Sykes: ...That war is over.  It is lost.  The Republican Party has been taken over by the conspiracists, the cranks, the bigots, the people who believe the Big Lie.  And anyone who thinks the Republican Party can now be reformed I think is incredibly naïve ...

And also here:

Jolly:  Let's start with the premise that the Republican Party's not worth saving.  Because even if you rid it of Trump and Trumpism, it would still require making common cause with te likes of Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and I say you can't find common cause with anti-democratic, illiberal politicians under the same tent.

All of which sure as hell sounds to me like Sykes and Jolly taking turns calling the GOP "authoritarian".

Then Jolly decides to radically rewrite the history of the Affordable Care Act, recasting it as some kind of zero-sum, tribal food-fight between equally intractable partisan warriors: Obama (who was dug in on one side interested only in protecting Democrat's interests) and Republicans (who were dug in on the side interested only in protecting their constituency.) And wasn't it a fucking pity that there wasn't some kind of Third Way Savior Party like David Jolly's merry band to Disrupt The K'rupt Duopoly! because then maybe everybody would've gotten what they wanted!

Jolly:  What about the coalition that says that all three constituencies are valid and all their experiences are all equal?  So how do we do this?  And to your point, is it a Romney/Biden-type coalition?  Hopefully we would see that.  The problem is, we'll go back to fair elections, we have so rigged our election process towards hyperpartisanship that... that Romney/Biden alliance would never get rewarded and successfully build through a general election that would successfully change our politics. Which leads us to this new party space...

Nope, nope, nope.  Everything about this is the ripest kind of bullshit and I just can't let it sit there, stinking up the joint.  So once again a lowly Liberal is forced to do what Charlie Sykes never has the balls to do:  remember the past accurately. .

First, since it is impossible for me to believe that David Jolly simply doesn't remember how many different kinds of pluperfect Hell president Obama went through to get any Republicans to work with him in any way to create exactly the kind of "everybody wins" compromise that David Jolly is whining about, I'm forced to assume that Jolly is just lying his ass off here to manufacture a demand for his S.A.M. scam.

After all, there were endless of town halls and hearings an hundreds of hours of negotiations. President Obama even went down to Baltimore and crashed the annual Republican retreat to plead with them, in person and without notes, to work with him on behalf of all Americans to make the bill work for everyone.

And they told him to fuck off.  Many, many times.

Consider how many Republican amendments were included in the final bill (from The New York Times) -- 

Obamacare Included Republican Ideas, but the G.O.P. Health  Plan Has Left Democrats Out

When Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010 without a single Republican vote, they were criticized for being too partisan. In the end, however, the bill included many Republican ideas.

The keystone principle of the act — a mandate that all Americans buy health insurance — is rooted in conservative thinking. Additionally, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate committees adopted nearly 190 Republican amendments while writing the legislation, according to data compiled by The New York Times...

-- and yet the Affordable Care Act never got a single Republican vote precisely because their goal was to sabotage president Obama at every opportunity, to give him nothing, to deny him any wins at any cost...and then go on the Sunday Shows where they knew the craven Beltway media would let them get away with playing the victim.

Second, where the fuck does David Jolly summon the nerve to weep into his beer over how "rigged our election process [is] towards hyperpartisanship that... that Romney/Biden alliance would never get rewarded" when talking about the Affordable Care Act when Romneycare was president Obama's fucking starting point when he came to the negotiation table?

And finally, of all the people in the known universe he could've dragged into his idiotic game of historical revisionism, how does Jolly pick Romney's name to put in his mouth over this specific issue?  When it was Mitt Romney's Republican Party that had so poisoned the political atmosphere in this country over the issue of the ACA that Mitt Romney himself was reduced to lying about his involvement in the creation of his own healthcare bill during a presidential debate?  Even though it was prominently mentioned in Romney's own biography?   Even though the bill itself was included on his desk as part of his official portrait as Massachusetts governor?

Once again, at this moment our problem is not the K'rupt Duopoly or an election system that is rigged towards hyperpartisanship, or Both Sides Doing It or the Left being so rude as to correctly identify the GOP as an authoritarian dung heap, or any of rest of the pundit flotsam from the good old Beltway media days of 2015/16.   

Our problem is the Republican Party.  Period.  

But of course that clear and present danger to the republic was never not gonna get some former Big Tobacco executive to foot the bill for yet another boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scheme. 

And so, instead, we get cold 2016 leftovers.  

Burn The Lifeboats