That Uncanny Feeling You Get When You Find That the Lincoln Project Podcast From This Week...

...sounds virtually identical to the podcast you and your wife did exactly a decade ago this week.

Back when you were just alarmist Libtard scum. 

And also sounds damn near identical to posts you were writing and taking all kinds of shit for back in 2005.

And 2006.

And 2007.

And 2008.

And 2009.

And so forth.

The Lincoln Lads brought together their heavy hitters -- host Reed Galen, fellow Lincoln Project Co-Founder Rick Wilson, Lincoln Project Senior Advisors Stuart Stevens and Joe Trippi -- to share their peerless insights on the State of Things, so let us now bask in their collective wisdom.  

But first, this disclaimer: the Lincoln Lads' podcasts do not have a transcription option, so any hilarious errors or typos in the following are mine.

The 2022 Midterm Elections: Democracy Is On the Ballot - Part 1

Wilson:  This is about democracy versus authoritarianism.  Democracy versus fascism.

driftglass:  Well duh.

Trippi:  What I'm surprised about was how long it took.  I mean we were out there talking about democracy versus autocracy, like, literally from the get-go, coming into this [election] cycle.  And when you started to do that people would look at you like you're crazy, and you're exaggerating and it's not that bad...

driftglass:  Wow.  Talking about it for a whole election cycle, huh?  

Trippi:  One of the things I just want to say is, it strikes me as weird that the punditry hasn't caught up to this...

driftglass:  And the pundits paid you no never minds?  How sad.  How terribly sad. 

Stevens: Once the Republican Party decided it cared about nothing but winning and would do a deal with the guy who promised them power even if he was against everything they had held as a deeply held belief, they would go along with it.   

driftglass:  You mean like Newt Gingrich?

Galen:  For some reason, everyone forgets that in the Republican Party, the inmates run the asylum.  It's not the elites.  It's not D.C.  It's the MAGA voters. 

driftglass:  Not quite sure that everyone forgets this.  In fact I know a whole bunch of people who have been banging this drum for a long, long time ("Little Red State Fundy" from April, 2005).

The 2022 Midterm Elections: Democracy Is On the Ballot - Part 2

Stevens:  Ultimately the Republican Party has become about frightened people who are afraid of change.

driftglass:  The Republican Party has arrived where it was headed all along.

Wilson:  The "LOL! Nothing Matters" movement was started in 2016 by Ben Domenech and a bunch of cynical Republican media types.  And they were laughing, "Oh Trump's gonna do this, and nothing matters ha ha ha!"  Well once that nihilism took root, it infected the educated class of the Republican Party.  The smart set.  The consultants.  The lobbyists.  A lot of the elected officials.  And they stopped caring about the implications, because all they want to do is win.  

driftglass:  Yes, it all started in 2016 officer.  I swear.  So kindly refrain from looking in my trunk where I keep all the shit I said and did before 2016.

Galen:  So Joe, let's look at the media for a second.

driftglass:  Yes, Joe.  Let's do that!

Galen:  So we've seen CNN have this, for them, big change.  Which was they had plenty of on-air personalities...

Yadda yadda yadda.  CNN falls prey to the strategy if chasing Fox News viewers at the expense of democracy.  

So what else is new (actual MSNBC ad from 2016):

Galen:  They know better.  They just don't seem to care.

driftglass:  There's no "seem" about it.  They don't care.  They never did.

Trippi:  It's the eyeballs.  The problem is, the outrage machine of the Right --

driftglass:  The the outrage machine of the Right, for which Galen and Wilson and Stuart worked as enthusiastic pit crew members for decades...

Trippi:  -- Rupert Murdoch [inaudible] billionaires and decades building the damn thing, it's... Trump can do no wrong and we will purge you, we will feed you, all the stuff that Rick just outlined, that's who they are.  And they've invested billions of dollars to build it.  And as the market gets more fragmented, CNN, all of 'em, are trying to figure out how to keep people watching.  Well the only people watching cable are old folks, man.  And that's why Fox is winning it.  And so, I think this is just a bunch of front office guys thinking they know how to get more eyeballs, and it's not going to work.  

Trippi: There's bias in the media, but there's no one out there with a bias for democracy against all of democracy's enemies.  

driftglass:  Except for the god damn Liberal blogosphere and podcast-o-sphere since day-fucking-one.  

Trippi: There's plenty of places that want to say "That's a Both Sides kind of thing" but I don't see any current networks out there doing what needs to be done, and in fact they're going to do what CNN's doing: hoping to hold onto viewers [and] get more of those Trump viewers away from Fox.  That's not going to happen.  

Wilson:  And I do think that Both Sidesism is an absolute deadly poison in our political and media culture right now -- 

driftglass: Let us pause, you and I, on our headlong flight through this mess to contemplate for a moment the sight of Rick Fucking Wilson complaining about  Both Siderism being awful as if he just fell off the turnip truck from Hooterville and suddenly noticed the shady goings on in the Big Media City.  Rick Fucking Wilson shaking his head over the "deadly poison" that put a roof over head head, a boat in his slip and a private plane in his hangar....

Wilson:  -- it is an enabling technology for bad guys to just say, "Yeah, c'mon, we're not really fascists.  Were Republican and you have to listen to Both arguments."  No!  If you have Martha Stewart and Hannibal Lector...

Yadda yadda yadda which you have already heard before 1,000 times on Liberal bloges for neary 20 years.

Wilson: But this is an argument that I think is going to continue to consume a lot Americans because they don't have a place to go. 

driftglass:  Except they could go to that awful Liberal blogosphere and podcast-o-sphere ghetto, where, sure, if you want to get technical about it, they've been right about the Right and the Both Siderist media all along.  But golly, it's so icky over there.  They don't send a car for you when they put you on the air.  There's no Green Room with hot and cold running interns bringing you Asian Palm Civet poop coffee or Venezuelan beaver cheese or whatever else your palate may desire.  There's no makeup team to make you look human under the lights.  They're all poor and potty-mouthed.  Always shaking their stupid tip jars.  And so angry.  I mean, if they were so right about everything all along, how come they're not rich with their own teevee network and syndicated radio empire and book publishers and newspapers and stuff, huh?!?

Wilson: They don't have a place where they feel that there's a bias for Truth and Democracy and America...

driftglass:  Except for that aforementioned shitty Liberal blogosphere and podcast-o-sphere.  

Wilson: ...that isn't crazy and jingoistic on the Fox side or too hypercritical of America on the other side.

driftglass:  And there we go.  The inevitable Lincoln Lad sales pitch.  Literally 30 seconds after Wilson denounces Both Sidesism as "an absolute deadly poison in our political and media culture" he picks it right up again withour hesitation to use as a bludgeon against you and me, and to justify why good, decent, god fearin' American should send their checks or money orders to The Lincoln Lads, who are neither too Right nor too Left, but riiiiight up the middle.  

Wilson: I wish we had a media outlet in the country that spoke to the fight and the urgency of the fight for democracy right now.  I wish we had a place where people could sit down and say, "We need to clear the decks of all the other ideological baggage that we have..."

driftglass:  Be aware that when Wilson says "we", means you and me have to jettison out beliefs since the Right is going to hand onto their ideological baggage until we pry it out of their cold, dead hands.  And by "baggage" he means...what?  Health care?  Abortion?  Voting rights?  Climate change?  Or any of the other critical governmental functions that the GOP has been trying to destroy?

Wilson: "...and focus on the fact that if we don't get this right, and don't get it right today, we could lose this country."

driftglass:  Which is exactly what we baggage-laden Lefties have been warning about for decades. Which is the actual reason there's no Liberal teevee network and syndicated radio empire and book publishers and newspapers.   Because nobody wanted to hear that shit, and assholes like Wilson had million watt megaphones while we had our little, tip-jar supported blogs.

Then Trippi moves in to explicitly reassure large dollar donors that the Lincoln Lads are definitely not about those icky, baggage-laden Lefties...

Trippi:  That's why I joined you guys in the first place.  It's not Right/Left.  It's not Republicans versus Democrats.  

driftglass:  Fuck you Trippi.  You guys spent twenty minutes declaiming in minute detail that the Right is dangerously insane. That Republicans Party is fascist.  And the only mechanism to stand against that fascism is the Democratic Party.  So, no, Trippi, this is the literal definition of Republicans versus Democrats.

Stevens:  I think the greatest difficulty that our media has now is this legacy that there is this obligation to tell Both Sides of the lie.  And there is not.  There is an outdated concept that comes from this belief that there is an agreeable good that will govern the discussion in America.  And what we discovered in the Trump era...

driftglass:   And in the Nixon era.  And in the Reagan era.  And in the era of Limbaugh and all his imitators.  And in the Gingrich era.   And the Tom Delay era.  And in the Fox News era.  And in the Bush era.  Both of 'em.  And the McConnell/Tea Party era.  And in the David Gregory era.  And in the David Brooks era.  And in the Chuck Todd era.  And in the Chris Cillizza era.  And in the Trump era. But please, do go on.  

Stevens:  ...discovered in the Trump era a lot of the so-called guard rails of our democracy are, in fact, voluntary...  And I think this is the great difficulty that journalists have in covering Trump.  And it's the great difficulty they have in covering what the Republican Party has become.

Galen:  But Stuart, where, though, I think that both the media and even some I'm going to call them "Centrist groups"...

driftglass:   They're talking about you Forward "Four Word" Party.  And you, No Labels.  And you, New York Times.  And so forth.

Galen:  ... are selling a utopia of a status quo that does not exist anymore.  And they can't get over it.  They want thing to be the way they were, but they'll never be that way.  One, because time marches on.  But also because that world is, by definition, over.   Trump was elected.  A million dead Americans.  Russia invades Ukraine... That world of the last 20 years is gone.  But so much of the political media donor set want to believe they can hold on to what they have and can go into the future, y'know, with maybe blinders and ear-plugs.

Stevens: I think we don't talk enough about the role of race in this.

driftglass: OK,  I'm just gonna stand here not saying a word...except to mention that some people have tried, and tried, and tried and have gotten shot down over and over again by the Very Serious People of the respectable media for trying to talk about the role of race in our politics.  In fact, back when men like Wilson and Galen and Stuart were pushing all the racist hot-buttons they could lay their hands on in order to get Republican monsters elected, I wrote a whole thing which you can find here ("The Negrological Constant") about people like Charles Barkley and Connie Shultz and Michele Norris trying very hard to get the Very Serious People of the respectable media to start taking race in our politics seriously.  

Then I wrote another thing here ("David Brooks Doesn't Know When To Sit Quietly And Say Nothing") about how the King of the Very Serious People of the respectable media -- Mr. David Brooks -- used his many Very Serious Media platforms to methodically shoot down any suggestion that race had anything to do with anything.  

But other than that, I'm not gonna say a word.  

Stevens: Because the Republican Party has become a white grievance party.

driftglass:  Like I said, I'm not saying a word.

Stevens: And people out there like Ross Douthat in The New York Times saying, well, things aren't that bad.  Saying that, oh, I don't believe there is a danger to democracy.  The answer is, yes, things really are that bad.  And I think you, Reed, talked about the role of language here.  It is difficult to have the language here to talk about this moment and not sound alarmist.

driftglass:  You mean "not sound like those crazy, baggage-laden Liberal alarmists" don't you?

Stevens: Again it goes back to the lack of a media voice in this country that captures that sense that we are in that struggle and we must fight and the old rules of journalism shouldn't apply.

And so forth...

So let's look at the checklist and see if we can find some similarities between what the Lincoln Lads are preaching today, and what those crazy, baggage-laden Liberal alarmists have been warning about for decades.

The GOP is racing down the road to fascism?  Check.

The GOP is deeply racist?  Check.

The mainstream media would rather shove 11 porcupines up their collective ass backwards than admit any of this?  Check.

The real power in the GOP is the lunatic base?  Check.

Both Siderism is a terrible, systemic poison?  Check, one million times.

Both Siderism is tool the Right uses to get away with murder?  Check.

The Right was willing to invest billions of dollars over many decades to build its mighty propaganda machine?  Check.  

There is no, actual pro-democracy media in this country, just various media corporations chasing phantom Fox News viewers?  Check.

Centrism is bullshit?  Check (except when it's used to slap around the icky Left.)

The New York Times is a haven for toxic respectable Conservative denialism?  Check.

So how to end this long and winding journey?

How about like so.

I Am The Liberal Media