...and whining that Democrats don't know anything about middle Murrica, boy do I have a Bulwark podcast for you.
Oh the things I do for the England.
At this point you might be asking yourself (for the hundredth time), "WTF is
wrong with these people?
Well gather 'round, kids, and old Unca Driftglass will tell you WTF is wrong with these people.
The begin with, the one thing elite political professional Never Trumpers now swear they never understood was [dramatic pause] their own fucking party. I know this because they have said as much, over and over again, for the last nine years. Complete surprise. Utter shock. Who could have predicted! Because it's either that, or they would have to cop to fucking well knowing better -- that they understood that their party was built on a foundation of racism, paranoia and rage -- but they never believed that the Vesuvius of bigots and imbeciles they had built would blow its top in their lifetime, or damage them personally.
Oops.
So having presided over the destruction of their own party, they rowed their lifeboats across the bay to a realm they understood even less: the Democratic party.
Never Trumpers don't know shit about Democrats. And they don't really care to know shit about Democrats. I've done my best to explain to them who we are and why we are the way we are, but they're, shall we say, aggressively disinterested in any of that. All they know or care about are the caricatures of Democrats they themselves helped manufacture in order to rile up their own base of bigots and imbeciles enough to get them to the polls and voting against their own interests.
And since they were run out of their own party, none of that has really changed. In computer terms, they've installed a few, shitty translation apps that helps them communicate basic concepts -- air, water, food, MSNBC -- but their basic hardware and operating systems remain virtually unchanged. And based on that, they are seized with the conviction that, in order to save!democracy! the entire Democratic party is obliged to tilt on its axis and change its orbit to accommodate them.
From Matthew Sheffield's essay on the subject over at Flux.
...Ever since Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016, we have heard constantly from self-described “centrists” that Democrats are painfully out of touch with White rural America, and that they need to do more to reach citizens who have been left behind by economic globalization and changing demographics and opinions, but if that really were the objective, why then has there been so much Never Trump resistance to Tim Walz, a jovial man from rural Minnesota who has a teacher’s talent for explaining himself? If you want agrarian outreach, Tim Walz is almost the perfect candidate to do it for Democrats, especially since he practices a full-inclusion model of politics that includes people of all races, sexes, beliefs, and orientations.
Tim Walz is everything these pundits pretended to want. What he isn’t is what they actually want, a conservative Democrat.
It’s more than a little ironic for me to complain about this as a former Republican, but the inconvenient truth is that there are way too many conservatives who gave up on their own party and are trying to turn Democrats into the party they once controlled before Trump took it over.
...Nine years after Trump first announced his candidacy, the Republican party as currently constituted is no place for conservatives. It is a reactionary authoritarian party. But instead of fighting the radical right within their own party, conservatives have been trying to move Democrats to the right, while also calling themselves “centrists.”
They cannot help themselves.
They hate the party they left behind, and they deeply resent the party that has generously given them refuge. All they have left are nostalgic memories of the Imaginary Republican Party of their youth, which is why, no matter what moves Democrats make or what Democrats believe or propose or accomplish, they will never stop insisting/demanding/cajoling the Democratic party to become Republican-lite.
They pine for the Imaginary Reagan Party of their childhood, and really believe that we'd all be better off if Democrats would just hand the keys over to them and let them save us from ourselves by dragging the party to the right far enough that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney would find themselves at home there.
And the more the Democratic party doesn't budge, the crankier they get. And because the media invited them to colonize cable news and America's op-ed pages, their little tantrums now cast wildly outsized shadows.
8 comments:
G'd morning DG and BG!
"Lawrence O'Donnell is not our friend." <= I agree, mostly. That said, he's been putting some good things out recently. Here's one:
Lawrence: 'Stupidest' candidate Trump did not answer reporters' questions
Apologies if you've already seen it. I hope readers who haven't seen it will check it out.
(Also, apologies if the "a href=" format isn't working today. DG, by all means fix it if I broke it.)
O'Donnell is speaking an incredibly important truth, one that Kurt Eichenwald also wrote about in 2016. The media isn't just making mistakes - that explanation doesn't hold water at this point. They're actively complicit. You remember Katy Tur vamping over an empty podium waiting for Trump, while Sec. Clinton's speech (which contained actual information, unlike Trump's blathering) largely wasn't shown at all.
The media isn't failing. They're doing exactly what they want to do - prop up Republicans and push down Democrats.
It's not coincidence. They're not missteps. It's deliberate. They're choices.
Thanks for all you do. Forgive me if I post again after listening to the whole cast.
Happy Friday!
Wait, weren't Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in some kind of election a while ago? How did that turn out?
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Well if they are nostalgic for the Reagan years they have a senile, unaware, uncaring Trump.
I don't think the never-Trumpers hate the Republican Party, they hate how Donald Trump took it away so easily and put them out of a job. Who needs flacks to polish the image of the Republican party when the party could give a shit about their image in the mainstream media? The Base is All, Alpha and Omega now. Eliminate the middleman and pass the savings on to the Trump family! They're just making a quick buck showing Democratic pundits how the pros pander to a base, waiting for someone else to stick the knife in Trump so they can pick their phony-baloney jobs back up. Mark my words, all the "saving democracy" bullshit goes the way of the Tea Party's tricornered hats once Trump is out of the picture.
King of complaints. If he aunt grieving something then he wound be asleep.. He needs MAGA to understand how unhappy and mistreated he is. I am not much of a betting man but, I would lay a dollar down that before this election is over. Trump will publicly call kamala a Ni___er. And, I will donate that dollars to the Pro left.
O’Donnell has more integrity in his fingernails than the entirety of the GOP.
Matthew Sheffield, as you quoted above: ".Nine years after Trump first announced his candidacy, the Republican party as currently constituted is no place for conservatives. It is a reactionary authoritarian party." No, you dumb fuck, that is what conservatives are: reactionary authoritarians. That is what they have always been and always will be. They just lie about it.
I don’t think it is going to work for these “centrist” conservatives. The current coalition of the Democratic Party is not likely to tolerate it. We may accept whatever “insights” they can offer, but the keys to the realm will NEVER be handed to them, and there is no one from whom these “keys” can be snatched.
We tolerate them because we are decent people. They walk among us unmolested. They will never put in the effort to understand our politics. Interestingly, they do not even understand why we are willing to endure their presence amongst us, given their crimes against for the past six-plus decades. No apologies from them are forthcoming, and precious little self-critiques of their own actions.
Watch them, even listen to them (on occasion) but do not trust them.
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