When it feels like things are unravelling
This is not politics as usual
It was tempting to attach a popular meme to this piece. Maybe the “It’s Fine” dog. Or the girl in front of the burning house. Or Charlie Sykes’ favorite dumpster fire.
But things are far too serious for light-hearted images. I’ve begun to think we’ve entered a new phase in society where politics as usual simply won’t work. Perhaps I’m feeling this way because I just finished James Davison Hunter’s Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis.
Hunter’s book will be the focus of Wednesday’s newsletter. I don’t agree with everything he suggests either historically or sociologically, but he paints a pretty bleak picture of how the sources of our solidarity had been weakened or even rejected. He was clear that he wasn’t going to provide a ten point plan for fixing things but I was still somewhat depressed when I got to the end of the book and was left hanging.
The broad culture history outlined in the book was set in sharp relief by a host of real life events that demonstrate our distance from those cultural ideals. And the news cycle just won’t stop. Somebody commented on X that the breaking news segments were being interrupted by new breaking news segments which were interrupted by even newer breaking news segments.
It’s been 18 days since that horrendous presidential “debate”. Biden tried to redeem his position with the Stephanopolis interview but only raised more questions. The post-NATO press conference was good but didn’t allay fears about his ability to serve long term. The Friday rally in Detroit was a sharp contrast to the others and closer to the earlier Biden but it was still parsed excessively. His speeches over the last two days have been solid on content but not delivery. This will be the way Biden is covered for as long as he remains in the race — and he says that he’s in for the long haul.
NBC News reported yesterday on the percentage of Democratic registered voters who are unsatisfied with Biden as the candidate. Even though inflation is down, the Fed is likely to cut interest rates soon, violent crime is decreasing, border crossings are down, and the Dow is well over 40,000, all people can focus on is the age question.
By the way, the percentage wishing Trump wasn’t the nominee is pretty much what was showing up in the Republican primaries.
Trump was mostly quiet in the period since the debate. He could sit passively by and play golf while the media twisted itself in knots over Biden and the Supreme Court seriously damaged the cases against him. On top of all that, Judge Cannon decided today that Special Counsels aren’t real and dismissed the Mar-a-Lago case.
Then on Saturday a 20 year old fired shots at Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, slightly wounding the former president, killing a spectator and wounding two more. I sorry about this violence and glad that the former president wasn’t more seriously injured.
But there was something about him standing and yelling “Fight” with blood on his face that was unnerving. Today, delegates at the Republican National Convention repeated this chant from the floor.
Some Republican didn’t miss the opportunity to blame Democrats for escalating rhetoric about democracy and authoritarianism even though the Democrats weren’t calling people vermin or suggesting the country was being demolished. They seem to forget that Sarah Palin sued the New York Times for defamation1 when they argued that her PAC had circulated an image with congressional districts in crosshairs, just before Congressperson Giffords was shot in Arizona.
Democrats, in response to the critiques, decided to take down their advertising for a period. Biden skipped a planned civil rights speech in Austin. They want to be reasonable and not incendiary.
Of course, the RNC will likely be full of incendiary words. Everything that happens the week will be an opportunity to demonize Biden. They will make up statistics about the economy, crime, and immigration. They will tell horror stories about isolated violent events.
Trump supposedly rewrote his acceptance speech after Saturday’s tragedy. But that remains to be seen.
Now, J.D. Vance is the VP nominee. A senator known for his television spots and social media presence who came to prominence through his Hillbilly Elegy book2, he will be the attack dog in the race. If past performance is any indicator, he will say whatever he needs to say to advance his cause with no regard toward claims of hypocrisy.
And then there is Project 2025 advocated by the Heritage Foundation and other groups. It is authored by many former Trump administration officials and demolishes basic assumptions about how government works.3 Its ties to Christian Nationalists and Catholic Integralists (which reportedly includes Vance) are quite worrying.
So what do we do? It’s not clear to me that replacing Biden with Harris or having a wide-open Democratic convention is going to shift the dynamics. While a number of Democratic senators are maintaining small leads in their races, it’s not clear that there will be enough. The one potential positive is that the House might flip unless there is a huge landslide.
If the Trump/Vance/Heritage plans are even partially enacted, we’re in for a rough period in American government. We’ve survived such periods in the past but they have left indelible images on American society. Consider the Andrew Johnson administration’s dismantling of Reconstruction and the impact that has on race relations to this day.
I’m struggling to find an upbeat way to end this newsletter. I don’t have one that will suffice over the next few months. Perhaps there’s a way to reimagine our cultural linkages, what Hunter calls the pluribus in our unum. I’ll explore that on Wednesday.
And lost.
I wrote about the book on my previous blog. In short, I didn’t like it. While the story of family disfunction was endearing and glad to see how he succeeded in spite of it, his reliance on cultural tropes while ignoring larger structural factors was a conservative’s pipe dream.
Again, helped by recent court decisions.