Up against a Crusader

Robert P. Jones is the founder and president at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) which studies our American religious varieties. He's also a recovering white Southerner out a Baptist faith tradition which he believes has a lot to overcome in the way of sexism, racism, and unfounded smug superiority.

The Senate hearing on TV pretty boy and macho poseur Pete Hegseth's nomination to be Secretary of Defense infuriated Jones. He concluded:

Not a single senator probed the most dangerous part of Hegseth's background: his support for white Christian nationalism.

Apparently, in addition to Hegseth's history of drinking and sleeping around fathering children, the guy is an acolyte of one of those crackpot little sects which white American Protestantism spawns, led by a patriarch with racist authoritarian politics. 

Hegseth is a member of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a small newly-founded church that is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). The denomination was co-founded by Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist who embraces a theocratic vision of Christian dominance of all institutions in society. Wilson has written that slavery produced “a genuine affection between the races” and argues that homosexuality should be a crime. Wilson holds particularly rigid patriarchal views, asserting that giving women the right to vote was a mistake, that women holding political office “should be reckoned not as a blessing but as a curse,” and that women should not “be mustered for combat” (sound familiar?). 

As religion scholar Julie Ingersoll, who has studied this movement for years, points out, adherence to these theological tenets are not optional in CREC churches. Hegseth is a member in good standing and has called Wilson a spiritual mentor, explicitly saying that he is a disciple of Wilson’s teachings and learning from his books.

The Democratic Senators who might have questioned him about any of this (if they were informed enough) were stymied by our ingrained respect for the absolute right of people to adhere to any belief system they choose.

I get it; I believe quite a lot of scientifically unverifiable things too. But just because people adhere to seemingly oddball religious beliefs must not mean that they cannot be questioned about policy implications of what drives them. Hegseth is about to have much influence and some concrete power over the largest element of the national government. It was the right and duty of Senators to interrogate Hegseth about this.

Jones thinks the Senate is about to confirm someone who is committed to overturning the Constitutional principles that enable him to skate away from searching questions.

If it was not outright cowardice, the Democratic senators’ timidity was at best rooted in a desire to respect the Constitution’s important prohibition against instituting a religious test for office. But if this was the reason for their failures during the hearing, it reflects a serious misunderstanding of the purpose of that principle.

The Founders were primarily concerned about prohibiting the then familiar practice of reserving offices for members of religious groups favored by the state. But that Constitutional protection in no way prohibits lines of questioning related to whether a nominees’ publicly professed beliefs and worldview, whether religious or secular, are compatible with the fundamental principles of a pluralistic democracy and the oath of office they will take to defend and obey not a president but the Constitution.

The Republican Party—whose adherents are two thirds white and Christian in a nation that is only 41% white and Christian—has clearly given itself over to the white Christian nationalist vision that fuels Trump’s MAGA movement. If, over the next four years, if the Democratic Party continues to ignore the clear and present danger white Christian nationalism represents, history will judge them harshly for their naiveté and their abdication of duty to our nation in its time of need.

In [his book] American Crusade, Hegseth wrote, “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.” With his nomination looking likely to succeed, that yet has arrived. And now, Trump will have his willing leader of an American crusade that will be fought—not just abroad but at home—with the most lethal forces and arsenal of weapons the world has ever seen.

I do not think Jones is being alarmist. Fortunately MAGA has internal contradictions as well as facing democratic (small "d") popular opposition that may constrain what the likes of Hegseth would like to do. Or not.

If the Dems were feeble, there were protesters in the house who Northern Californians might recognize.

Trumpism -- what does it signify? Anything enduring?

The New Republic and its editor Michael Tomasky are serving up a series of articles which endeavor to discern just how much of a break Donald Trump's 2024 election is from historical American voting patterns. Though the Trump regime seems novel in its ostentatious corruption and bottomless ignorance of the work of democratic governance, are we really seeing a profound realignment of political coalitions to meet popular demand?

I should preface this by saying I doubt we are living anything as profound as the realignment that occurred in the 1840s and 50s at the birth of our current parties or even akin of the shuffling of party allegiances in response to the Civil Rights movement which gave the GOP the recalcitrant white South and encouraged Democratic dominance of most cities. 

The presidential election of 2024 was very close. Donald Trump's margin was tiny by historical standards. It seems overblown to assume it points to stable realignment.

But Trump himself seems such a radical break from what Americans at least pretended to expect from a president that we have to think about whether there is really something new, something discontinuous with our history, in this moment.

Tomasky is giving scholars and observers space to take a shot at this question. The New Republic offers a long interview with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the Harvard scholars who were co-authors of the 2018 bestseller How Democracies Die. Here are some excerpts to ponder:

Excessively flattering image - but he'd like it

What if Trump Does Everything He’s Promised—and the People Don’t Care?

... ZIBLATT: I think there’s an analogy here to Bonapartism in France. When Napoleon Bonaparte came along, he added a new element to French political culture. And that continues through today. You know, his nephew then ran for president some decades later, [and] every French president ever since has these kind of overreaching tendencies. So it’s now a part of French political culture—along with a Republican tradition and the socialist tradition, there’s a Bonapartist tradition.

 Maybe this is what has happened in the United States. Political scientists used to talk about the liberal tradition in America. But there’s always also been an illiberal tradition. But there’s now a new distinctive illiberal tradition in American politics today, which is the Trumpist tradition. And so, even if we get through this over the next several years, there’s an electorate that’s out there, there’s a way of thinking about—and talking about—the world that is not going anywhere. And so, to make our democracy stable means, on some level, that we need to have at least two political parties that are committed to democracy, that are committed to the rules of the game. And so if we want our democracy to be stable, our parties need to figure out how to sideline that now persistent part of our political culture.

... TOMASKY: Final question. What if, after watching all this and possibly more unfold, the people just don’t care?

LEVITSKY: That’s always a challenge when it comes to democratic backsliding. I don’t think the problem is merely apathy. A combination of factors—fear for some, exhaustion for others, resignation for others—may push many activists to the sidelines, limiting our capacity to slow down and eventually defeat Trumpism. Apathy would play a role in that. The reality is that life will go on as usual for most people during the Trump administration. Most people won’t be targeted by DOJ, the FBI, or the IRS. The economy may remain relatively healthy, so many people may continue to live good lives. So the combination of some people moving to the sidelines out of fear or exhaustion and others remaining on the sidelines because they don’t feel a compelling reason to join the fight—that could easily deplete the ranks of the opposition. It’s something I worry a lot about.

I have always looked back at periods of abuse like the internment of Japanese Americans and McCarthyism and wondered why so few people rose up against it at the time. Now I fear we may see something similar under the second Trump administration.

ZIBLATT: I guess I don’t accept the premise. I think overwhelming majorities of Americans are committed to democracy. We may just take it for granted. But when citizens lose their democracy around the world, the record is pretty clear: They clamor to get it back, and they begin to appreciate it. I only hope we all have the collective imagination to realize what’s at stake before we lose it ourselves. 

Kevin Mahnken writes for a non-profit education news organization, The 74 [million], named for the number of young people undergoing that education. In The New Republic, he offers an interesting effort to situate Trump's re-election in the history of political parties and federal government. 

Constant Change: The Global Anti-Incumbent Bias Is Real. But America’s Is Worse.

... Americans’ distaste for their own elected officials is not the symptom of a memetic bug recently caught from Argentina or Poland, but a distinctly homegrown phenomenon. In fact, it has been at work for the better part of two decades.

This becomes clear when one asks which recent election, whether in a presidential or midterm cycle, was decided in favor of continuity rather than change. Control of either the White House or at least one chamber of Congress switched parties in nine of the last 10 federal elections dating back to 2006; even in the lone exception, 2012, Republicans held onto their majority in the House of Representatives despite winning 1.3 million fewer votes than their Democratic opponents nationwide.

While Biden’s belated exit from the 2024 race will be remembered as a singular episode of political hubris, the whiplash of those results has befooled a generation of leaders in both parties—periodically leading them to make, and lose, political gambles that subsequently appear mysterious. George W. Bush staked the political capital he won in 2004 on Social Security reform, only to have it open a trapdoor under his entire second term. Barack Obama hit the Tea Party wall just two years after charging into office on a generational tide of progressive enthusiasm. Mitt Romney’s team was reportedly dumbfounded on election night in 2012, just as Clinton advisers deluded themselves on their way to a 2016 shock for the ages. The list goes on.

The peculiarity of the age is even more apparent when examined over the sweep of the twentieth century, during which an incumbent president was reelected in almost every decade. More impressive still, he typically captured more votes, a higher vote share, and often a better Electoral College margin than in his previous race (or that of the man he succeeded in office). Theodore Roosevelt accomplished the feat in 1904, Wilson in 1916, FDR in 1936, Ike in 1956, LBJ in 1964, Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984, and Bill Clinton in 1996.

You can throw in Bush II for good measure, but none others have followed. Barack Obama, as gifted a vote-getter as any of his predecessors, couldn’t recreate his huge 2008 margins after four years in Washington. Trump collected 11 million more votes in 2020 than he had in 2016, yet still lost by a considerable margin. Add it up, and a different party has won the White House in each of the last four consecutive elections.

The most recent time that happened was between 1880 and 1896, when Republicans traded blows for five straight campaigns with a Democratic Party that had finally washed off the reek of slavery and secession. Not coincidentally, it was also the only other period when a president—New York’s Grover Cleveland, beloved of bar trivia contestants and mugwumps alike—served two nonconsecutive terms.

The politics of the late nineteenth century are often cited as an analogue for those of modern times. We too live in an era of close elections and ultra-high voter turnout, each driven by our intense partisan identification. And, as in the Gilded Age, modern Americans’ animus toward incumbent politicians extends from the Oval Office to Congress. Back then, the House flipped between parties six times in the span of 20 years.

The political entrepreneurs of our own times have put a ceiling on that kind of volatility through the use of algorithm-powered gerrymandering, but it is impossible to imagine one party installing a four-decade majority, as the Democrats did in the 1950s.

The electoral lessons of this comparison are undeniably murky. In 1884, the Democrats managed to break the GOP’s 24-year stranglehold on the White House by running Cleveland, the governor of what was then the country’s most important swing state. If they wish to turn the page from the Obama-Biden-Harris epoch, they can choose from among its talented governors in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or North Carolina, none of whom are closely associated with the party’s disastrous 2024 performance. ...

But nominating a few outsiders in the short run won’t quell the apparently perpetual disgust that Americans feel for their leadership class. ...

I think Mahnken is onto something in that those of us shaped in the long 20th century experience did tend to assume that incumbent presidents get re-elected. We projected that onto Biden until it became completely obvious that he could no longer cut it as a candidate. (I assume his incapacity was also true of him as a President and his post-election behavior seems to confirm that. But the two roles are different, a main driver of much political dysfunction.)

What this country needs to get out of this cycle is some inspirational politicians with a uniting vision. Obama once offered that, however shallow it proved in practice. Is inspiration that grips a majority still possible in a time of imperial uncertainty and the collapse of trust in any media to communicate truth? We don't know. But humans have a strong desire to be inspired, so such a turn seems possible, even if we currently don't see it. The USofA-- to be continued ...

Big trouble ahead

The presidential election just past was a very close contest. Oh sure, Trump wants to overwhelm us with his claim that he won by a landslide. That's just authoritarian bombast. Because he won all the projected swing states, his win looks huge, especially on a map. And across the country, he did actually dig out a one percent plus actual majority. But if only 115,000 voters distributed across Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had gone the other way, we'd have a President Harris.

Since the election was so close, everyone gets to have their own plausible theory of what happened. I'm sticking with mine: COVID put us in a nasty mood and Trump was able to capitalize on this. (That's the only thing he knows how to do: turn venomous emotions into profit for himself.) I read the deluge of explanations for Harris' loss, but remain conscious that even vast quantities of data -- and there is more every day -- can't definitively account for the narrow outcome. Eventually many pundits and commentators will settle on some theory -- and then historians and political scientists will come up with their alternative takes. The 2024 election lends itself to interpretation and reinterpretation.

All that is introduction to sharing excerpts from the leftish economic historian Adam Tooze's take on our American predicament. Although I am not sure I buy it completely, I find his Olympian draft of contemporary history quite intriguing. 

... The essential fact about US politics in the current moment remains that the two party system anchored in the ancient constitution divides the country almost half and half. Those cleavages run through society including through the working-class and the business interest. ...

... If the class analytic of workers v. owners is not helpful in making sense of Trump’s victory, the idea of a revolt against the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) may be more so.

The PMC was a term coined in 1977 by Barbara and John Ehrenreich. The term designated the rising mass of college-educated white collar professional and managerial workers whose ambiguous role in modern Western politics the Ehrenreich’s were trying to explain.

In the 1960s and 1970s many professional and managerial people contributed to social movements that were clearly progressive. Furthermore, for the vast majority of folks who count themselves as progressive this alignment has a deep logic all the way down to the present day. 

As Gabe Winant, one of the sharpest observers of the contemporary scene, noted back in 2019 in N+1:

For all the cynicism and compromises that professional pretensions engender, professional labor  [i.e. the labor of the PMC, per Adam Tooze] does carry a utopian seed—in the impulse to create and disseminate knowledge, to care for the sick, or to defend the rights and dignity of the democratic subject.

And yet what is also undeniable is that in the late 1970s and 1980s large and powerful parts of the PMC broke with any association with classic, working-class. left-wing politics, rooted in the trade union movement. Instead, they provided their support to the agenda of neoliberalism. Despite its endless critiques of the state and its rhetoric about markets, actually existing neoliberalism was the latest iteration of PMC politics. Neoliberalism was a managerialism.

.. The outcome in electoral terms in the US from the 1990s onwards was an increasing alignment of the Democrats with College-educated voters, an alignment that was particularly strong for women and minorities. Figures like the Clintons and the Obamas personify this coalition.

By 2008 this corporate-PMC synthesis made a large and tempting target for populisms of the left and the right. These populisms pitted “the people” against an elite bloc that was more often than not personified, not by oligarchs or the owners of the means of production, but by members of the PMC. Perversely, the much remarked upon resentment of working-class voters, particularly men, triggered by new patterns of inequality and disadvantage, vented itself in the first instance on elementary school teachers and social workers, often women, who found themselves grouped with “beltway liberals” in the crosshairs of right-wing populist vitriol.

... Trump and Brexit in 2016 were early breakthroughs for the new anti-PMC politics.

The Trump shock of 2016 caused soul-searching in the Democratic party elite. The principal wager of the Biden administration was an effort to react to the first wave of anti-PMC revolt by widening the Democratic electoral coalition so as to attract trade unionists and working-class Americans back into the fold. In many ways this was ironic. The fact that the American working-class is increasingly feminized and diverse is no conceit of woke PMC ideology. Under Biden the party chased the image of the blue-collar production worker, almost as hard as they would eventually chase the respectable centrist Republican.

In 2020 when COVID demonstrated the harsh and dysfunctional reality of governance under Trump, the Democrats won back a majority. Though not for the anti-vaxxers, but for a majority of the population, COVID was a “PMC moment”. Nurses, doctors and lab scientists mattered, along with logistics experts and people who could get things moving again. It was not merely coincidental that COVID handed a PMC-dominated Democratic party a surprise victory. It was not for nothing that it was the Democratic majority in Congress that carried the US under Republican Presidents, both through the crisis of 2008 and that of 2020.

In 2024 with the electorate wanting a faster return to normality - resentments concentrated in the superheated discussion of “inflation” - what came back to the fore was the anti-PMC coalition that Trump rallies like no politician before him....

... What has become obvious with the Clinton-Trump-Biden-Harris-Trump sequence is that the Democratic formula is itself increasingly a driver of crisis. It is not capable of providing reliable electoral wins. And when it does have power, nostalgia for the bygone era of hegemony and the reflexes of US globalism - a quintessential product of the 20th-century PMC - tend to accelerate crisis in the form of aggressive claims to US leadership and a resurgent neoconservative revisionism. ...

In the first Trump administration, expressive gestures of rupture with the status quo were tempered by vested interests and the functional imperatives of the moment. The administration then inherited an economy with plenty of slack and a relatively calm geopolitical environment. Until 2020 few complex trade-offs were called for. When COVID hit, the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress rapidly decomposed. How the Trump administration will actually look remains to be seen, but the environment today is far more complex and will test the anti-PMC politics of the Trump administration far more seriously.

Looks like big trouble ahead, and that's aside from the Christian nationalist and cult-of-Trump fascist aspirations of the Orange Man's coalition.

Musing on a couple of maps

Seven states voted for reproductive freedom -- that's significant. It's particularly good to see Missouri among the places where abortion rights won; at every level, the state is blood red Republican, but women still had their say.

The losses in South Dakota look to have been about strategic/tactical misfires. The Florida loss, where abortion freedom got 57 percent of the vote, came from the state's unusual 60 percent requirement to pass a measure. Look for more GOP states to try to implant that.

But all in all, this was more demonstration that women, of all political inclinations, don't want the state telling us what we may do with our bodies. 

All these initiatives don't make legal abortion safe though. With the Republicans in power across the federal level, it's a sure thing that many of them will come after reproductive health care... To be continued. ...

• • •

Meanwhile, here's a picture of the fact that elections mostly don't end in split verdicts any more. The states in yellow each have one US Senator from each party. The others are solid Blue or Red.

... only Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will send a split-party delegation of one Democrat and one Republican to the Senate. That is the lowest number since Americans began directly electing senators more than a century ago.

Yet there's still some mixing at the presidential level. Michigan, Georgia and Arizona went for the the Reps this time, but they send two Dem Senators to Washington. 

We know why Maine is a mixed bag -- Susan Collins refuses to go away. She's safe until she retires. In 2026, Dem Senators in Georgia and Michigan will be up for re-election. Can Dems put any other states in play? Possibly North Carolina, but winning back the Senate will be a stretch.

While we fixate on Trump ... MAGA mess below creates opportunities

The Downballot reports that Democrats are contesting far more state legislative seats all over the country than Republicans.

Across the 85 legislative chambers holding regularly scheduled elections in 44 states this year, Republicans are defending 3,169 seats while Democrats are protecting 2,616. But Republicans have failed to field a candidate in 1,066 Democratic seats, while Democrats have left 1,127 GOP seats uncontested.

While the Democratic figure for uncontested seats is slightly higher in raw numbers, on a percentage basis, they're playing more offense: Democrats are challenging Republicans in 64% of GOP-held seats, while Republicans, conversely, are contesting 59% of Democratic seats.

The totals reflect strong Democratic recruitment in many states, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, and even Idaho. In total, Democrats are running 2,042 challengers compared to 1,550 for the GOP. When accounting for open seats (which are also tallied in our new data set), Democrats are fielding 2,485 non-incumbents, versus 2,224 for Republicans.

The disparity also arises from the current dysfunction in the GOP. Lots of veteran legislators retired or were dumped by MAGA voters in primaries.

Altogether, 124 GOP legislators who wanted another term were denied renomination by voters, often for allegedly failing to adhere to far-right orthodoxy. Just 28 Democratic lawmakers, by contrast, lost primaries this year.

This is no way to build a political party. Perhaps a mob ... 

Assuming we live to fight another day, there's lots to build on here.

Door-knocking story from Pennsylvania

We have arrived at the stage in the seemingly interminable election when, after all the ads, and phone calls, and the flood of mail, it's voter-to-voter contact that seals the deal. In the places where there are close contests -- nationally the seven presidential battleground states, but also innumerable local races we hear less about -- it's the people talking with people that make this season our semi-annual festival of democratic engagement with the country's better aspirations.

So here's a canvassing story from suburban Pennsylvania, by @MattHardigree, grabbed from Xitter.

I door-knocked today for the Harris campaign in Bucks County, PA, one of the most important counties in one of the most important states. I've done a lot of door-knocking in a lot of elections, including this cycle, but what I saw definitely changed my view of this race.

Of course, this is just a single day covering about 90-100 doors. But it was also a persuasion run. We were hitting Ds but also had a list that included Independents and even a few Republicans who were considered possibly persuadable. Only had one pro-Trump door the whole day.

This isn't what I expected. This is a 50/50 county and the part we were in skewed Republican. My cousins Joe and Deb, who are wonderful, help organize this area and know their community well. It's a good community full of hardworking, nice folk, but it's not an easy one for Dems.

When I got there I saw a lot of Trump signs. Their [his cousin's] house stood out because it had a giant Harris-Walz sign, albeit one that was slashed by three men in hoodies a few nights before. It's a street fight out here.

The first neighborhood we hit was a fairly representative middle-class part of the county. We saw a mix of Harris and Trump signs, though more Trump signs. And, sure enough, the first door I knocked there was an older woman who told me "Democrats are ruining this country."

"Ah!" I thought, "it's going to be one of THOSE kinds of days." I wished her a nice day and went to the next house. I had a few nice interactions, a few people weren't home, and then I went to a door to find an older gentleman. He'd passed away and his wife was a lifelong R.

She wasn't on my list, but she was all-in on Harris. She couldn't imagine anyone voting for Trump. This was the first time I heard this from a Republican, but it wouldn't be the last time. The more doors I hit, the more Republicans or former Republicans I met who said the same.

I met an older Jewish gun-owner, a Republican who became Independent in January 2020. I met parents who were registered Republicans but whose daughters became engaged and persuaded them to vote Harris. They asked me to put up a yard sign for them.

I was surprised that the Republicans and Independents were actually the most excited about the election and felt strongly about voting for Harris. Democrats were mostly split into two groups: Older women and younger families.

Older women are extremely active and looking for a fight. At one door I was looking for the daughter and the mom asked me if I was there for Harris or Trump. I said Harris and she said "Good! I keep getting mail from Trump and I keep ripping it up!"

She was hilarious and had whipped her family into caring about voting. She even had her mail ballot and was going to return it to a drop box so she made sure her vote counted. These are high propensity voters and they're voting early.

And they also want signs, partially because they don't want to be intimidated by their Trump-supporting neighbors. This is pretty much the opposite of the experience I had with young Dems and Dem families.

Younger Dems, especially those with kids, are calling relatives and getting people to vote but they're also more nervous. Very few wanted signs and multiple people told me it was because they were afraid of their "Trumper neighbors." All the signs made them nervous.

The next neighborhood seemed slightly more upper-middle-class and signs were about 50/50 when we got there, but more Harris tilted when we left.

Overall (TL/DR), Dems are motivated, not a single Independent was voting for Trump and instead voting for Harris, moderate Republicans were all voting Harris. Other than the first door I didn't meet a single Trump voter.

Dems are active and voting by mail ballot and taking nothing by chance. There are a lot of Trump signs and I think it'll still be close, but a lot of people were happy to tell me they were voting Harris even if they didn't want their neighbors to know.

Some observations on this story:

• Campaign organizers hate election signs. They are bulky to store and distribute. The presence of many of them doesn't promise you'll win an area. But signs matter to voters who need to express themselves as in this neighborhood.

• In our present moment, it's often older women who are carrying the struggle for the Dems. We've had it. We won't go back!

• You can call what these guys are encountering "Republicans for Harris" but you can also just call it realignment. Middle class, sane, white Republicans are becoming Dems in the suburbs, much to the their own surprise.

The nation is in a race between grievance and hope for the future -- who will prevail?

He's got it ...

... I could not love this more. A 93 year-old man in Oklahoma bought a billboard declaring, “Women, the Republican party does not respect you…vote Democrat.” When a local news outlet asked Burt Holmes why he bought the billboard, he said, “Because I think women can win the next big election in the country if they will get out and vote.” Burt knows what’s up! -- via Jessica Valenti, Abortion Every Day

Kamala Harris: a long road to a new way forward

As I look at the presidential race, I wonder if I'm seeing an emerging majority coalition that has been inching its way into being for all the decades of my active election experience. We've come a long way.

The Washington Post's Philip Bump observed:

The country clearly exists in a moment of flux, in which, as Obama observed at the Democratic convention last week, we are fully testing the idea that a democracy built on pluralism can succeed. 

But part of the surge in enthusiasm for Harris’s candidacy is clearly rooted in her overtly representing the diversity of America. Conservative White Americans often see America’s non-White population as a unified entity colluding to strip the power of Whites. 

The shift from Biden to Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket allowed for a shift in strategy, too, from treating Trump as an opposing force to treating him as a historic outlier. Waving off Trump as “weird” has a knock-on effect, uniting those opposed to Trump’s candidacy and politics as the true inheritors of the American tradition.

... It may be that Trump helped bring to fruition the political shift predicted with Obama’s 2008 victory. His win proved to be a potent organizing force for White conservatives.

The election of another Black president in the face of that force, an election powered by a coalition strengthened by opposition to Trump, might in fact turn the page that began being written 15 years ago. It is a page, though, that has appeared in American history books multiple times before.

This reminded me of observations I made in early 2008, while watching the Hilary Clinton/Barack Obama primary.

It looks to me as though the Obama candidacy is trying to birth a national coalition which, like the Democratic one in California, doesn't quite have a secure demographic base though such a base seems visible on the horizon. This coalition must, at present, attract enough support outside its obvious members to win an election. Naturally, its leading edge is young voters, folks who live closer to that diverse and difficult demographic future older folks can envision but do not so nearly inhabit.

As Historian Bruce J. Schulman [original link is dead, unfortunately] of Boston University notes, Obama is not the first to try this. In addition to RFK, it's only fair to mention Jesse Jackson in 1988 -- at the end of 2008, will Obama have exceeded Jackson's total of wins in 11 states? ...

A long-term national progressive coalition must somehow hold together most African Americans, most Latinos, probably the majority of various Asian-origin voters, and enough whites, probably predominantly female, to make a majority. ...

Republican overreach, robbing women of our control over our bodies, has hastened the movement of many white women into this coalition. And these white women definitely vote, as do Black women.

On the other hand, it's taken long enough to get here that more and more Latinos and Asian-origin voters are beginning to vote as other immigrants have learned to before them: making electoral choices divided more on their class position in the new country than by ethnic affinities. Think Italians or Irish moving beyond hyphenated status. That's too a kind of American progress but it adds to today's progressive challenges.

But in a general way, the potential Democratic Party coalition visible in 2008, and in California fifteen years before that, may finally be coming to fruition nationally in Kamala Harris' candidacy, if we can push this candidate over the finish line.

MAGA backlash replicates birtherism in response to Obama and California reactionary nativism of the 1990s and before. Anyone else remember when California was Ronald Reagan's launch pad based on bashing hippie students? 

Coalition pluralism was the challenge in 2008; it's still the challenge today. But it can happen. It's no accident that today a Californian leads a Democratic ticket capable of confirming the possibly of a new way forward.

The Baby Boom endures?

Kevin Munger points out: "Harris’s nomination locks in another Boomer presidency." 

 

I hadn't quite thought of it that way. As a product of the leading edge of the Boomers (b. 1947) I don't find it automatic to locate myself in the same age cohort as someone who missed the '50s and most of the '60s. But demographic wizards say all of us born between 1946 and 1964 (including Harris) are out of the same population bulge which first led to a need for new kindergartens and grade schools and now is leading to increased worry about funding Social Security.

Munger is the author of Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture. His commentary on the Harris-Trump match up is interesting. 

Despite being a Boomer, you may have noticed that she’s the young, exciting candidate.

Yes, the generational cutoff points are arbitrary, 19 is too many years to define a coherent generation. But the far more important fact is that Biden and Trump are really quite old.

The echoes of the Baby Boom structure our political, economic and cultural reality. Our country’s age pyramid is just what our country is.

It is a crucial but oddly politically inert fact that at both the mass and elite level, our country is far older than it has ever been before. ...

It’s our electoral institutions [that] cause the US to have such astronomically old leaders. The two-party system, lax campaign and especially campaign finance laws, and the primary system tilt the process heavily in favor of people with time, money and political interest — which, in our society, tends to be older people.

Combine this with the Baby Boom and you get the current situation, playing out in slow motion, a demographic wave not crashing but seeping into and drowning our politics.

... A media-theoretic aside: television has demonstrated its continued dominance of the media ecosystem. The 2024 Biden-Trump debate is — without exaggeration — one of the most important media events in modern history. ...

He goes on to delve into the history of recent elections when there was a substantial difference in ages between candidates (younger won) and the "unmet demand for younger politicians appealing to younger voters."  

We Boomers got to give way someday ... but by once again, somehow, presenting the country with the apparently young candidate in Kamala Harris, we are imprinting yet another generation of young voters with what Munger has named "Boomer Ballast." This has been very good for Democrats for decades.

When Democrats hold office, jobs are created

A couple of charts to ponder. 

Simon Rosenberg, that effectual cheer leader for a Democratic Blue Wave over at Hopium Chronicles, always reminds us that Democratic leaders create jobs. Here's his version:

Washington Post data journalist Philip Bump creates his own version of this information -- and what this responsible guy shows is not so different.

Bump is a careful reporter. He offers qualifications.

... caveats can be sprinkled over all of this. Job growth under Biden was increased to some extent because employers were getting back up to speed after layoffs at the outset of the pandemic, for example.

So what happens if we take just the middle two years of Trump’s and Biden’s terms and compare them? That eliminates the covid effects for Trump and the boost at the outset for Biden. It also gives a year during which their policies could be expected to have had an effect.

In 2018 and 2019, under Trump, the country added 4.3 million jobs. In 2022 and 2023, under Biden, it added 7.5 million jobs.

You don’t have to be a sports whiz to see that seven puts you ahead of four, either.

Still, it's a someone amazing picture. I had not intuited this and I lived much of this economic history. And if enabling people to find jobs is what you think makes for a good country, it contains a blunt conclusion. Dem leadership makes life better for most people.

The power demonstrated at the DNC

I'm loving the Dem fiesta in Chicago. How could I not?

And trying to think about what this happy turn toward looking forward might mean.

Lester Spence is a professor of political science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins. He looks at our society and polity from within a thoughtfully critical frame: 

Over the past 40-50 years we’ve seen a sharp rise in income inequality. Rather than being a natural function of cultural capital or education, with some populations being better able to adapt to post-industrial America than others, this sharp rise is a function of politics, of public policy that reduces the scale and scope of the US welfare state, of political rules that simultaneously increase the mobility and power of capital and reduce the power of labor to organize, and of political rhetoric that lauds the entrepreneur over the citizen. In short, the rise is the result of the neoliberal turn. And during this period, not only has inequality within black communities increased, there’s more inequality within black communities than there is between black and non-black ones.

In his newsletter The Counterpublic Papers, he wrestles with this happy, strange moment: 

... this election is about defeating Trump, but [also] about establishing better democratic conditions going forward.

If we don’t have two fully functioning parties, then we need to create the conditions that ensure the one functioning party continues to win at the federal level, to ensure the one functioning party wins at the state level, and that the one functioning party institutes policies that promote and extend democratic practice. Nominating Harris was the best way to create these conditions. It sends a signal that they trust Harris and the population she’s thought to represent. Further it pushes people like us past spectatorship and into something a bit more robust. This increased responsiveness has the potential to transform the party. Perhaps not radically…but just enough.

• • •

One of the ... aspects of the Harris candidacy pundits and scholars are likely to examine to bits in the future is how quick the rollout was. Her support among black women and men have to be accounted for here. Within days of Biden dropping out, a group of black women who’d already been doing standard political organizing held a zoom call that topped out at somewhere around 44,000 participants—so many that Zoom had to stretch its technical capacities to enable the call. The women were able to raise somewhere around $1 million dollars. Less than 24 hours later a group of black men held a similar event, organized by media personality/journalist Roland Martin. Approximately 50,000 people signed up for that call and raised around the same amount. (I was on that call, and even though I opposed Harris in 2020 I wrote a check.)

We can and should read this as an example of black elites mobilizing to ensure that Harris wasn’t discarded (and we don’t have to look hard to see examples of this—the same day women met on Zoom, Aaron Sorkin suggested in an NYT op-ed that the Democratic Party nominate Mitt Romney), with black men following suit. ...

The delightful DNC is about pulling together the many strands of buried hope and aspiration among us. This sort of coalition can be fragile, but it is immensely powerful in its moment.

DNC night two: a warrior for women

Of course Barack and Michelle Obama brought down house on the second night at the DNC -- "Do something!" And we must.

But it was Illinois U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth who capped the night for me. In 2004, serving as an Army helicopter pilot, she lost both legs and mobility in one arm when shot down by a rocket propelled grenade over Iraq.

So, at length she came home and ran first for Congress and then for the Senate. 

She's the kind of person Donald Trump would hide or throw away. He is afraid of disability and irritated when close to physically "damaged" people. (You could make the case that he feels at home among the morally damaged, but that's another story.)

Duckworth didn't think her life was over when she lost her legs -- nor did she think she should not be able to have children. She spent 10 years trying to get pregnant and used IVF to have two daughters. 

Republicans threaten not only access to abortion for women who need to end a pregnancy, but also access to IVF for women who are desperately trying to have children. A bunch of old men legislators and other weirdos want to decide for everyone.

Duckworth serves now as a warrior for women.

Democratic Convention Day One oddments

How can I not enjoy this?

For the first time in nearly a decade, politics is not all about Trump. This is to the credit of Harris, Walz, and their campaign. The race is now about the future, and about hope and joy, as opposed to the fear that dominated politics since Trump arrived on the scene.

Harris talks about Trump, as she should. He is her opponent, but the thrust of her message is about herself, her values, and her vision. Before the change in candidates, the conversation centered on voting to defeat Trump. Harris is running to do something good, not stop something bad. -- Dan Pfeiffer, comms guy from Obama world

The new folks are moving in. A Chicago tower redecorated.

From historian of European barbarism Tim Snyder who knows how far we can sink:

Democracy is not an easy form of government.  It has none of the certainties of the various forms of tyranny.  It demands that the governed as well as the governing make compromises, learn to to listen, and sometimes resist impulses.  The champions of democracy are not the people who cling to power in its name, but those who put that greater consultation, that larger discussion, that continuing project, above themselves.

The president has set an example. The president did exactly the thing that he needed to do. That is an example we can follow.

Joe Biden has given us a benediction.  The rest is up to us.

Enough for Day One. On with the party

What comes around ...

The New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie offers the observation [gift article] that, by nominating a couple of unattractive weirdos, the Republicans seem to be ceding to Democrats the terrain of the "normal" in US politics.

It's a delicious column, reaching into recent political history as Bouie often does. He points out.

... they’ve given Democrats an opportunity to do what Nixon did: to make their party the party of the silent majority and to define Republicans as one of the worst things a party can be in modern American politics.

Weird.

However I can't let pass what Bouie also reminds me of: GOPer Richard Nixon prosecuted his case that Democrat George McGovern was outside the bounds of normal Americaness by representing the party of “acid, amnesty and abortion,”

Nixon's charge hasn't aged very well.

• Today the Dems are the party of legalizing weed -- an overwhelmingly popular position.

• "Amnesty" referred to re-incorporation of Vietnam war resisters in the political mainstream. Though there's still some residual heat among some old people, the national consensus has long hardened that the US campaign against Vietnam was, at most charitably, a murderous mistake and that the draftee army which fought it had to be completely reconstituted in the 1970s.

• As for abortion, Dems are now firmly the party of "mind you own damn business!" when it comes to women's reproductive choices.

Times have changed and look who is weird now ...

Thank you Joe Biden; bring on Kamala Harris. And Nancy delivers again.

So our Democratic leaders have, at length, led. We can now get on with the business of trouncing MAGA. The dis-eased and depleted state of the nation may defeat us, but the majority of us still have a chance to live to struggle another day for hope, justice, civil compassion and government of the people.

Many of us have watched in horror for the past three weeks as the Democratic Party, through whose big tent we are forced to work, has seemed mired in indecision and in desperate need of a generational transition. Well, we've begun one.

In this moment I want to bring forward a bit of almost forgotten San Francisco history. My Congresscritter, the former Speaker and still Party wisewoman Nancy Pelosi, first came into office through a managed generational transition not so different than the one we are seeing now.  She knows how this goes.

In the 1960s and '70s, San Francisco was represented in Congress by Phil Burton, a liberal giant whose legislative efforts included civil rights, environmental protection, disability rights, and the struggle for health care for all. And then, at in 1983 at age 56, a ruptured aortic embolism killed this man on the move. His wife Sala Burton slid into the safe Democratic seat and served two terms, before succumbing to colon cancer in 1987. The shocking Burton transitions left many progressive Californians unmoored.

Nancy Pelosi was a prominent California Democratic leader, a powerhouse fundraiser. But she had not ever held elective office herself. As Sala Burton was dying, Pelosi came away with her death bed endorsement for the San Francisco Congressional seat. Oh, now this Pacific Heights lady wants to be in Congress?

Not all San Franciscans were ready to jump on what seemed an anti-Democratic dynastic transition. The city was then full of left activists, supporters of revolutions in Central America, of affordable housing for all, and particularly of gay and lesbian AIDS campaigners, desperately trying to force the murderous epidemic onto the national agenda. In the special election held to replace Sala Burton, these forces combined behind gay Supervisor Harry Britt. Nancy consolidated the money, the party regulars, and the politically active unions; Nancy wiped the floor with Harry. (I know. I did some door knocking for poor Harry.)

In the end, Pelosi has been a magnificent Democratic Party leader. From her safe seat in San Francisco, she has served her true constituency, her fractious party. Those of us who cast ballots for her are just extras in her Party drama -- but mostly she's been good for the broad progressive project. 

I feel confident that she has had a strong role in the Biden to Harris transition. This sort of thing is her political meat and potatoes and her political genius. Thanks again, Nancy -- I feel sure you have been in the middle of getting us here.

We already decided this -- we don't like kings

David Rothkopf writes a Substack, Need to Know, which is both hilariously funny (follow the link) -- and wise. He offers these reassuring reflections after watching the Republican convention. 

... The GOP, after all, are not just the party of Trump. They are also the party promoting the idea of the “unitary executive,” a monarch-like president around who sits atop a government that answers to him. Democrats on the other hand recognize or should recognize that the senior most position in our system of government is the citizen, the voter. The president works for us. He or she is accountable to us. That is one of the main reasons the Revolutionary War was fought and it is a concept that Americans have defended with their lives for the past nearly 250 years.

... The Democratic Party is therefore not only not all about our president or presidential candidate of the moment. To succeed, it must be about a large group of professionals committed to shared ideals and goals working to serve a much, much larger group of bosses—the public at large. We should not be, must not become, a party that places loyalty to any one individual ahead of the mission that has brought us all together, that has made what we agree on far more important than our disagreements but must also make a respectful hearing of those disagreements a central part of how we serve a profoundly diverse society.

They have taken blended their cult of personality with their authoritarian impulses and brought this country to the brink of autocracy. (Or returned us to it. After all, as I noted before, that was the state we rebelled against in the first place.) We Democrats ultimately offer the better answer for the country precisely because we are not about any one individual, we are not about blind loyalty to one person’s ideas. We are about capturing and embodying the spirit of democracy of finding a way to serve the many by representing, listening to, acting on behalf the many.

What Democrats are going through now is all good. It is just what we should be discussing. It will make us stronger. It is absolutely certain we all share and will work for the goal of defeating Trump. And that brings me to my last point. Which is I believe we will win in November and not just by a little and, just as importantly, I know we will be ready to better serve the people of this country than the alternative offered by the other cult-like party.

We haven't always, or even often, been a good country. But we were founded with a glimmer of hope for something novel and good. Now our "leaders" need to stop dillydallying and we the people need to get to work. No kings here.

Next post will turn to vacation pictures -- when I can get online again.

Is Hakeem Jeffries the real Speaker of the House of Representatives?

No, he's not. Jeffries remains the Democratic House Minority Leader. 

Republican Mike Johnson is the Speaker, leading a one vote majority with Marjorie Taylor Greene and other far right lunatics nipping at this heels. It's a precarious perch. But Jeffries has managed to win a commanding position in the current Congress by means of cross party legislative legerdemain.

Russell Berman describes the arrangement with Jeffries that is keeping Johnson in his current job:

... in an unusual statement, the leaders of the Democratic opposition emerged from a party meeting to declare that they would rescue Johnson if the speaker’s main Republican enemy at the moment, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, forced a vote to oust him. ... by thwarting Greene’s motion to vacate, Democrats hope they can ensure that Johnson will keep turning to them for the next seven months of his term rather than seek votes from conservative hard-liners who will push legislation ever further to the right.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY

For the sake of historical memory, it seems worth recalling that former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown pulled off similar legislative wizardry in the mid-1990s. Brown served as Democratic Assembly leader for fifteen years, using his near absolute power over his caucus to advance civil rights and to raise the cash to elect Democrats. The push for legislative term limits in the state -- passed by voter initiative in 1990 -- was often described as the only way to pry Willie Brown out of the job.

In 1994, as the new term limits led to a bit of legislative turnover, for the first time in decades, Republicans seized a one vote majority in the state Assembly. But Brown wasn't about to let them take over "his" house. First he persuaded a dissident Republican, Paul Horcher, to turn independent and vote to keep him as Speaker. Horcher was quickly recalled by his Republican district. (Horcher stayed in Brown's orbit; when Brown was later mayor of San Francisco, Horcher worked in department of parking and traffic.)

After Horcher was deposed, Brown worked his magic to hang on yet longer. He persuaded another disgruntled Republican member, Doris Allen, to take the title of Speaker, for the next six months. But her power consisted of Brown's control of the Democratic Caucus. After this, Dems again won the Assembly majority and that was that.

The California legislature only saw the last of Willie Brown when term limits sent him off to be "da Mayor" in San Francisco.

If Democrats win the House in November -- a strong possibility if we do the work -- then Hakeem Jeffries will be elected the actual Speaker. But he's certainly proving a worthy successor to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her mentor Willie Brown in this interregnum. 

• • •

I have to add that Willie Brown's later influence was extremely malign on the city I love . His mayoral tenure was both corrupt and indifferent to majority who were too poor to offer much to him and his friends. He governed for the civic fat cats and left of a legacy of subsequent lesser imitators. But he sure was a phenomenal leader of the Assembly in his day.

Remedial kindergarten required?

If our system of government were parliamentary, we might not be so fixated on just who is the president. At least maybe this would be so. Jamelle Bouie offers some thoughts.

Americans are accustomed to thinking of their presidential elections as a battle of personalities, a framework that is only encouraged by the candidate-centric nature of the American political system as well as the way that our media reports on elections. Even the way that most Americans think about their country’s history, always focused so intently on whoever occupies the White House in a given moment, works to reinforce this notion that presidential elections are mostly about the people and personalities involved.

Personality certainly matters. But it might be more useful, in terms of the actual stakes of a contest, to think about the presidential election as a race between competing coalitions of Americans. Different groups, and different communities, who want very different — sometimes mutually incompatible — things for the country.

The coalition behind Joe Biden wants what Democratic coalitions have wanted since at least the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt: government assistance for working people, federal support for the inclusion of more marginal Americans.

As for the coalition behind Trump? Beyond the insatiable desire for lower taxes on the nation’s monied interests, there appears to be an even deeper desire for a politics of domination. Trump speaks less about policy, in any sense, than he does about getting revenge on his critics. He’s only concerned with the mechanisms of government to the extent that they are tools for punishing his enemies.

And if what Trump wants tells us anything, it’s that the actual goal of the Trump coalition is not to govern the country, but to rule over others.

There it is. The impending election will be a contest between people who never learned to curb toddler emotions of greed and grievance and those who internalized what kindergarten aims to teach: we all do better when we share. And it's all too close a call which way we choose to go.

March primary election (part 1): the California Senate ballot

My March 4 primary ballot has turned up and I'll be casting it in the next day or two.

Most significant contest on the statewide primary ballot is for the U.S. Senate. It comes in two parts,

1) to fill the seat left vacant by Diane Feinstein's passing until January 3, 2025 and
2) to fill the next six year Senate term which begins on that day.

I see no reason to vote for different people for the two parts of this ballot. Others may differ. These are not even the same list of aspirants!

Three excellent Democrats are running (and a bunch of also-rans). The top two in this primary will run against each other again in the November election. How's that for confusing?

Republican baseball player Steve Garvey is also running; his job is to be a spoiler as no Republican can win in November. But he can keep the race from consisting of two Dems if he gets enough votes.

The Democratic choices are:

1) Congresswoman Barbara Lee who, in matters of war and peace and justice I can thank for "speaking for me" for decades when the rest of Congress couldn't see a moral, responsible way forward.

2) Congressman Adam Schiff who led Trump's first impeachment over his Ukraine arm-twisting and who also served honorably on the January 6 Committee.

3) and Congresswoman Katie Porter, she of the brilliant home economics lessons using her white board to teach testifying billionaires and constituents alike.

I find this a hard choice. Any of these would be an upgrade from Feinstein's last years. Any of them would represent our state well. By a smidgen, I come down for Katie Porter. I don't want to lose her intelligence and her ability to communicate from a perch in Washington.

But I am not going to get upset if the winner in November is one of the other two. What political riches California has produced! Remember that when you feel sick of politicians.

Expect violent eruptions. But don't panic.

You probably missed this. I did when James Comey's oped came out. But with Trump romping as expected in Iowa and trying to intimidate E. Jean Carroll (no chance!) and the legal system, it's easy to fear that the Donald and his merry band of fascist cranks are on the rise again. Perhaps their violent assaults are unstoppable?

The former head of the FBI, fired by Trump for insufficient servility, makes the case that fear of Trump-inspired violence is overblown. His argument is strong; I've rendered some key points in bold.

Jan. 6, 2021, was a terrible day, but it was at bottom a security failure. For reasons I still don’t understand, our government didn’t properly assess and prepare for a threat that was moving at the speed of a daytime stroll, broadcast in advance. A mob managed to take a building that sits atop an easily defended hill because it was not properly secured, despite the heroic actions of an understaffed police force. Yes, there were sophisticated actors in the crowd that day, especially the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, who operated with seditious intent in organized teams. But, in the overwhelming main, the offenders of Jan. 6 were morons who bought Trump’s lies. They must be held accountable — every last one of them — but they shouldn’t be the monster under our national bed.

That accountability should comfort us. The Justice Department’s prosecution of more than 1,200 Jan. 6 defendants has sent a shock wave of deterrence at those who might otherwise be tempted to take a day off work to literally fight for Trump. They now know it will cost them dearly and most of them have no interest in paying that price, despite his generous offers of pardon. These aren’t jihadis looking to blow themselves up for some reward in paradise. These are mostly people with day jobs who feel a sense of grievance stoked by the amoral demagogue now running for president again. They might vote for him — those who are not yet felons — but they’re not looking to die for him, or even go to jail for him. They weren’t there when he was arraigned in New York or Georgia or Florida or D.C. They aren’t coming. Sometimes, even idiots aren’t fools.

The rule of law must be vindicated regardless of the threat, which is why public servants at all levels around the country are soldiering on despite the torrent of individual abuse. Terrorists, gangsters and drug lords have long been held accountable in this country even when their organizations posed a serious risk of violence aimed at those who operate our legal system. Fortunately, that’s not what we face today. Trump and his legions are not coming for us. The rule of law is finally coming for him.

My sense -- I could be terribly wrong, but I doubt it -- is that Comey is correct. Trump is a terrible threat to the country because of his almost uncanny to ability to spew the poisoned vitriol that is corroding his broken person into our body politic. He will inspire more violence. Some of it will be bad; a few people, vulnerable people, will be harmed. 

This has always been a violent society with surprisingly violent politics. Texas governor Greg Abbott is literally having migrants and women with nonviable pregnancies killed. Upholding the rule of law and democracy will require bravery from many citizens: jurors, election workers, canvassers, minor office holders, even a few big shots. But we can reject Trumpist venom within the framework of this very imperfect democracy.

Recent off-year and local elections show this. We're winning in improbable places: on Tuesday Democrats flipped a Florida legislative district; Dems elected mayors in Colorado Springs and Jacksonville which were once GOP bastions; and prevailing everywhere voters think the underlying issue is access to abortion -- Kansas, Wisconsin, Virginia, Ohio. These aren't flukes. The voters are not dumb, more tired than anything else.

The Republican presidential run-up is a fizzle. The challengers have no pop with voters. Trump can claim to have won Iowa by a h-u-g-e margin -- but that margin came among a minuscule electorate, barely half as large as Republicans turned out in 2016. They'll say the weak turnout was the weather. We'll see.

Yes, many Democrats aren't enthused either. We would have been glad to turn to another generation of leaders. But there was no way to get there. It will take diligent work to win this November and give this creaky old democracy a chance to right itself. But we can do it; there's nothing in events that says all is lost and much that says we can make a better future. 

Panic at this moment is unnecessary.