WHY DOES NPR SEEM TO BE PROMOTING A POSSIBLE TRUMP ELECTION INTERVENTION?

I woke up to this Bluesky post from NPR:

Nearly half of Americans support the National Guard monitoring November's elections, potentially signaling an openness to the sort of nationalizing of elections that President Trump says he wants. n.pr/3P1Scjw

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— NPR (@npr.org) March 11, 2026 at 7:03 AM

This would be shockingly anti-democratic election interference, but NPR's take appears to be "Hey, it's not so bad -- almost half the country is cool with it." NPR's write-up of the poll notes that interference of this kind would violate the law, yet the tone of the write-up is measured:

Close to half of Americans support the idea of the National Guard at polling places to monitor this November's midterm elections — something that would be illegal if ordered by the federal government — potentially signaling an openness, especially by Republicans, to the sort of nationalizing of elections that President Trump says he wants.

That datapoint comes from a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll out Wednesday, which found 46% of Americans support the idea, compared to 54% who say they oppose it.

(The Brennan Center has more on the illegality of sending troops to the polls here.)

NPR mentions an "openness, especially by Republicans" to a military intervention in elections because, as in so many recent polls, Democrats and independents are on one side and Republicans are on the other.

But how did this idea get a positive response from double-digit percentages of Democrats and independents? I'm sure it happened in part because the question in the poll didn't mention Trump. Here's the wording:

How much do you support or oppose having the National Guard at voting locations to monitor November's election?

There's no reference to Trump -- the only person who wants to do this. It's quite possible that at least some respondents, especially some of the 25% of Democrats who think it could be a good idea, are imagining that state or local officials might decide to deploy the Guard for benign reasons.

I assume that if Trump's name had appeared in the question, the favorable numbers among Democrats and independents would have been much lower. Trump's overall job approval in this poll is a woeful 38%, with 57% disapproval; he's at 5% approval among Democrats and 34% approval among independents, and strong disapproval is at 50% overall. And in a midterm election that will be a referendum on the president, Democrats lead by a whopping 9 points, 53% to 44%, on the generic-ballot question.

It's as if NPR, PBS, and Marist felt it would be biased to mention Trump in a question about an intervention that will happen only if he orders it. NPR's poll write-up bends over backwards to imagine other scenarios in which the Guard might be deployed:

The finding is complicated by the fact that the National Guard can legally be used to support elections in many capacities when ordered by state governors.

And many Americans may be more open to military protection for elections now that the U.S. is at war with Iran, said Florida State University professor Michael Morley, an expert in election law.

"I think the conflict with Iran and recent terrorist bombing attempt in New York may influence public opinion on this issue, especially over the next few weeks," Morley said in an email to NPR. "Most of the time having the National Guard at polling places would be seen as unnecessary. But I think most average Americans may be far more worried about the possibility of a terrorist attack than they are about the National Guard."

It's as if NPR is trying to help Trump sell this idea by suggesting a pretext for why it might be done.

The benign interpretation of this is that it's the mainstream media's usual "view from nowhere" perspective: We can't describe the world of politics as it actually is because that would seem biased against Republicans, so we'll imagine a world in which all the parties are reasonable and everyone is proceeding in good faith. The less benign view is that NPR is preparing us psychologically for an illegal intervention by attempting to normalize it.

Another possible reason that the pro-Guard numbers are high might be the fact that, in the poll, this question follows several other questions on election integrity:

* How confident are you that your state or local government will run a fair and accurate election this November?

* How much confidence do you have that ballots cast in the election will be counted accurately?

* From this list, what is the biggest threat to keeping our elections safe and accurate? Voter fraud. Misleading information. Voter suppression. Foreign interference. Problems at your polling place such as long lines or broken machines.

* Which concerns you more: Making sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so. Making sure that no one else votes who is not eligible to vote.

* How likely, if at all, do you think it is that during November’s elections many people will show up to vote and be told they are not eligible?

* How likely, if at all, do you think it is that during November’s elections there will be voter fraud, that is, people who are not eligible to vote will vote, or vote more than once?

After all that fear is stirred up, no wonder nearly half of poll respondents think the Guard might be a good idea.

You can almost see the suspicion creep in as the poll progresses. In answer to the first question, 66% of respondents say they're confident that their state or local government will run a fair and accurate election this November. Then 63% say they're confident that the ballots will be counted accurately. Then comes the fear, seemingly induced by poll questions suggesting that surely something will be hinky.

33% of adults think the biggest threat to safe and secure elections is voter fraud. 26% say misleading information is the biggest threat followed by voter suppression (24%), foreign interference (8%), and problems at their polling place (7%)....

Democrats (41%) are most concerned with voter suppression while Republicans think the biggest threat to above board elections is voter fraud (57%). A plurality of independents (32%) mention misleading information followed by voter fraud (28%) and voter suppression (23%).

I can't blame the poll for the fact that 33% of respondents think voter fraud is the biggest worry in elections. (That includes 57% of Republicans, 15% of Democrats, and 28% of independents.) Nearly every mainstream news story about Republican claims of massive voter fraud say that fraud is not "widespread" -- a word that doesn't convey how extraordinarily rare it is. I can't blame most Americans for believing that it happens at least a fair amount, just not all the time.

I'd like to see some polling on elections that reflects the world we actually live in. For instance: What percentage of elections won by Democrats do Republicans think are legitimate -- and vice versa? (I know there are Democratic 2024 election truthers -- I'm not one of them -- but I think many, if not most, Republicans believe that every Democratic win is fraudulent.) What percentage of each party's votes do poll respondents believe are illegitimate? (The real answer is a fraction of a percent.) But that's not what we have here.

IT'S TIME TO PLAY RIGHT-WING RUMPLESTILTSKIN AGAIN

Jake Lang, a pardoned January 6 insurrectionist who threatened to burn a Qur'an in Minneapolis earlier this year, tried to stir up trouble on Saturday at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan, where the mayor of New York lives. His intent was to stage another anti-Islam demonstration -- he brought a roast pig, a live goat (with which he feigned copulation after a similar provocation a day earlier), and a couple dozen ideological soul mates.

I was there, hoping for a peaceful counterprotest, but things looked ugly -- as in Minneapolis, Lang and his crew were outnumbered by young anti-fascists who wanted to rough him up. The scrum seemed like a bad place for your elderly correspondent, and I left.

Then a bomb was thrown.

A device thrown outside Gracie Mansion on Saturday during dueling protests in New York City was confirmed to be an improvised explosive device, according to police.

Two men, described by police as an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old, were taken into custody after at least one of two devices was ignited....

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch described the devices Saturday as being smaller than a football and said they appeared to be jars wrapped in black tape with nuts, bolts, screws and a hobby fuse....

A test of the explosive compound found in a container thrown by one of the men has preliminarily come back as triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a notoriously volatile and dangerous type of homemade explosive....

The two men arrested said they were inspired by ISIS, as the police commissioner noted.

“The defendants were inspired by ISIS to carry out their attack,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday during a briefing outlining the five-count federal indictment against Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi. “There should be no confusion about what ISIS constitutes. It is a designated foreign terrorist organization responsible for deadly terrorist attacks across the globe, and has taken credit for mass casualty attacks in Europe, the Middle East and right here in the United States.”

But the right-wing language police told us they were outraged by what the mayor said, or didn't say. The New York Post reported:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday repeatedly refused to condemn the pair of alleged bomb throwers as ISIS-loving radical Islamists....

Really? What did he say, or fail to say?

“They are suspected of coming here to commit an act of terrorism,” Hizzoner said during a press conference outside Grace Mansion....

Yeah? What else?

On Sunday, Mamdani issued a mealy-mouthed statement denouncing the organizer of a right-wing anti-Muslim rally — but not directly commenting on the alleged bomb tossers.

“Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are,” the statement said.

“What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.”

"Criminal" and "reprehensible" seem like negative words to me. What else?

He again stopped short of condemning radical Islam in a statement following the unsealing of the criminal complaint.

“Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi have been charged with committing a heinous act of terrorism and proclaiming their allegiance to ISIS,” he said in a statement. “They should be held fully accountable for their actions.”

Saying that they were inspired by ISIS and committed "a heinous act of terrorism" isn't enough? I guess not. Mamdani didn't say the secret phrase -- "radical Islam"!

In the past, I've called this "wingnut Rumplestiltskin." Steve Benen has invoked "Beetlejuice." The Republican argument is that Democrats have to utter a particular phrase or the terrorists have won. The phrase keeps changing, but it usually includes some form of the word "Islam" or "Muslim."

So at the 2008 Republican convention, Rudy Giuliani attacked Democrats because they refrained from using the phrase "Islamic terrorism." In 2010, after a failed terror bombing in Times Square, The Weekly Standard chided President Obama for, among other things, refusing to use the phrase "Islamic extremism." In 2013, after the Boston Marathon bombing, Charles Krauthammer wagged a finger at Obama for refusing to use the words "jihadist" and "Islamicist." In 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo bombing in Paris, Ralph Peters of Fox News said that Obama's response was inadequate "because it has to say 'Islamist terror,'" adding, "This administration is just soft on radical Islam."

And then, after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, Marco Rubio said, "What we're involved in now is a civilizational conflict with radical Islam." Shortly afterward, in a presidential debate, Hillary Clinton refrained from using the phrase "radical Islam," but said this:

We need to have a resolve that will bring the world together, to root out the kind of radical, jihadist ideology that motivates organizations like ISIS, a barbaric, ruthless, violent, jihadist, terrorist group.

Rubio went on to criticize that statement as not strong enough.

There was a reason that Obama and Clinton, his first secretary of state, avoided the words Republicans demanded that they use. After Obama left office, Richard Stengel, who worked in his administration, explained:

To defeat radical Islamic extremism, we needed our Islamic allies — the Jordanians, the Emiratis, the Egyptians, the Saudis — and they believed that term unfairly vilified a whole religion.

They also told us that they did not consider the Islamic State to be Islamic, and its grotesque violence against Muslims proved it. We took a lot of care to describe the Islamic State as a terrorist group that acted in the name of Islam. Sure, behind the scenes, our allies understood better than anyone that the Islamic State was a radical perversion of Islam, that it held a dark appeal to a minority of Sunni Muslims, but it didn’t help to call them radical Islamic terrorists.

Obama ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Obama began the process of weakening ISIS that continued in the first Donald Trump presidency. Obama didn't shrink from fighting the violence represented by those words.

Similarly, Mamdani has denounced Saturday's failed bomb attack, and his police force arrested the perpetrators. But for Republicans, deeds are irrelevant. Mamdani and all other Democrats are supposed to use words that make Muslims seem evil. If they refuse to do so, Republicans say, they clearly love evil.

NO, ISRAEL HASN'T LOST THE UNITED STATES

New York magazine's Ross Barkan writes:

Years from now, February 28, 2026, might be remembered as the day Israel finally lost the American public.

The Iran war, launched by the U.S. on that date and executed in direct coordination with Israel, is predictably a catastrophe....

It's not going well, but the usual 40 or so percent of Americans support the war, as they support everything Donald Trump does. In a recent NPR poll, the public opposes the war, but only by a 56%-44% margin, with 84% of Republicans in favor.

Barkan writes that Americans believe the U.S. is "fighting Israel’s war" in Iran, and they're not happy about that:

The fiercest supporters of Israel in the United States do not quite understand that there is no going back. Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and a 2028 presidential front-runner, now calls Israel an “apartheid” state. A few years ago, this would have been unfathomable — a mainstream Democrat who spoke like this would have been ridiculed and censured, driven to the margins of the party.

That's a sign that the Overton window is moving, but Newsom isn't rejecting Israel outright. He's trying to thread the needle.

Gavin Newsom to Ben Shapiro, January 15, 2026:

"I don't share that opinion as it relates to genocide [in Gaza]. I do not agree with that notion. I'm also crystal clear on my love for Israel." https://t.co/RiblgJdiVO pic.twitter.com/Sup5z2eMcn

— lindsay 🙈🏳️‍🌈 (@virtueemoir29) March 4, 2026

Barkan argues that Israel is losing America because anti-Israel critics on the left -- including mainstream liberals -- are being joined by anti-Israel critics (and anti-Semites) on the right:

We are in a new era, and it’s going to be a permanent one: Poll after poll shows that Americans under 40 take a startlingly dim view of Israel.

For a while, Israel hawks could dismiss these polls because they showed only the left-wing youth turning on the Jewish State. They were the radicals who could be, perhaps, nudged off the political stage. Now young people on the right, the MAGA youth, are coming to a similar place, if for different reasons: They view the special relationship between the two countries as a violation of America First. Some of this might be antisemitism; some of it, though, is genuine skepticism of an arrangement that doesn’t make sense to most Americans.

On the right, I think a lot of it is anti-Semitism -- maybe all of it. There's anti-Semitism on the left, but I think it's the dominant reason for Israel skepticism on the right.

But I don't agree that the U.S. and Israel are headed for a divorce, for two reasons: (1) the prominence of Bible-bashers in the GOP and (2) Cleek's Law.

Barkan writes:

The Iran war could be what decisively breaks the United States from Israel. Not yet — certainly not now, with Trump in the White House. But there will be presidents after Trump. A future Democrat will have no incentive to cater to the whims of a warmongering Israel. A Republican not explicitly bound to pro-Israel, right-wing Evangelicals might not care a great deal about Israel, either. Why should he?

Working backward: Does Barkan seriously believe there can be a leader of the GOP who's "not explicitly bound to pro-Israel, right-wing Evangelicals"? I'm reminded of a statistic cited by David French, a product of the Christian right who's become disaffected with the movement:

I’ve shared this statistic before, but if you look at 2024 exit polling, you’ll see that Trump won white evangelical and born-again voters by a 65-point margin, 82 percent to 17 percent. He lost everyone else by 18 points, 58 percent to 40 percent.

There is no GOP without these people. They're not going away. Even a guy like J.D. Vance, who's clearly unfazed by right-wing anti-Semitism, will have to stay on their good side if he wants to be the next president.

But the main reason the GOP won't turn against Israel is Cleek's Law:

Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.

Despite the anti-Israel remarks of thought leaders like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes, and despite the increasing anti-Semitism among young rightists, the GOP will continue to back Israel because Democrats will increasingly reject Israel. Whatever we hate is what Republicans want.

It's an easy fit, of course: Prime Minister for Life Benjamin Netanyahu doles out cruelty to Muslims, whom even the vilest anti-Semites hate more than they hate Jews. (Hatred of Muslims is all but universal on the right.) If you agreed with Adam Serwer that "the cruelty is the point" of GOP policy in most areas, then it's easy to recognize that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is cruel in a way that's extraordinarily satisfying to the U.S. right. And I agree with Barkan that "even if a more moderate politician replaces Netanyahu, religious zealots and anti-Arab fanatics will continue to hold sway" in Israel -- to the delight of Rpublican voters in America.

Republicans were generally pro-war from roughly the Nixon years through sometime in the Obama presidency, because they thought the Democratic Party was full of peaceniks. Donald Trump was able to sell skepticism about war to the GOP largely because Barack Obama killed Osama bin Laden and deployed drones against Islamicists. Joe Biden finished the job of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, and was criticized for the execution of that withdrawal, which gave Trump an opening to be a neocon again. It's always Cleek's Law.

So Republicans won't turn against Israel unless Democrats rush to its defense. They'll attack any Democrat who questions Israel's goodness, even if they're extending a welcome to anti-Semites themselves. All of this will prevent a thorough rethinking of U.S. policy toward Israel.

IF THE ECONOMY WERE EVERYTHING, TRUMP'S POLL NUMBERS WOULD BE LOWER

NBC News has just released a new poll. It was conducted from February 27 -- the day before the Iran war started -- through March 3. The topline number is bad for President Trump, but not awful:

NBC's survey hasn't been one of Trump's really terrible polls -- we're told,

Trump’s job approval rating is at 44% — essentially stable since the NBC News poll conducted in October, when it was 43% among registered voters.

But Trump's overall job approval rating is much higher than his rating on the economy:

Across five issues tested, voters give the president their lowest marks on the economy, with 62% disapproving of Trump’s handling of inflation and the cost of living and 36% approving. It’s an issue Democrats are trying to capitalize on heading into the midterms, after the party’s candidates found success on the issue in 2025....

Many Democratic politicians and candidates behave as if the economy is the one and only issue they should talk about -- even when other issues are in the headlines. Here's Senator Mark Kelly, a likely 2028 presidential candidate:

Why do this? Why not criticize Trump's handling of the war by ... criticize Trump's handling of the war? The war is unpopular. Americans think Trump should be prioritizing their needs and not foreign adventurism. They think the war will make Americans less safe. Why not talk about that?

Democrats who broke out of the "talk only about the economy" straitjacket have helped drive Trump's poll numbers down on immigration (with an assist, of course, from brutal and incompetent Trump subordinates like Kristi Noem). They need to keep pushing on every issue, and offer real plans of their own that differ from what Republicans are doing. Voters still think Republicans have better ideas on too many issues:

And after all the Democrats' talk about the economy, they're merely even with the GOP on who'd do a better job managing it, probably because they mostly say, "I'm laser-focused on affordability," which is not a better idea, or an idea at all. (To be fair, cutting the gas tax is an idea, though it's a Republican-style idea.)

Sometimes you do want to pivot to the economy -- I recently wrote that Democrats should focus on the skyrocketing cost of this war. But Democrats should also talk about the war as a bad idea, one that's depleting our military resources, putting lives at risk, and highly unlikely to make the world safer or more stable.

Trump has thoughts about everything -- ignorant thoughts, but they're thoughts. They impress approximately 40% of the country. Democrats could try having well-thought-out responses to every issue. The public won't fully trust the party, especially with the White House, until it seems ready to handle every issue the country faces.

MAYBE CHAOS IS THE POINT

The Atlantic's Tom Nichols sees Donald Trump's war in Iran as one of "Operational Excellence [and] Strategic Incompetence."

The war in Iran has reaffirmed two truths. One is that the United States is blessed with the most professional and effective military in the world.... The other truth is that the Trump administration, when it comes to strategy, is incompetent.

... The president and his team ... have not enunciated an overarching goal for this war—or, more accurately, they have presented multiple goals and chosen among them almost randomly, depending on the day or the hour. This means that highly effective military operations are taking place in a strategic vacuum.

... Operational competence ... cannot answer the question of national purpose. What is the war about, and when will America know it’s done?

I'm thinking about this in the context of a piece by David Sanger that ran in The New York Times a couple of days ago under the headline "Trump Follows His Gut. His National Security Advisers Try to Keep Up."

On a range of issues, from the goals of the Iran strike to Mr. Trump’s objectives in Venezuela or even in threatening Greenland, there are a blitz of answers. Inconsistency is sometimes celebrated by the administration as wily strategic deception, rather than as a failure to think several chess moves ahead.

... A top Arab diplomat said this week that his government has no real insight into the administration’s planning for a transition of government in Iran — or even whether it wants to play a role, given Mr. Hegseth’s repeated statements that “nation building” was not on the Pentagon’s list of tasks.

When I look at this war, and when I look at the ever-changing tariffs, I start to think that -- apart from the obvious motivations (self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment) -- the chaos is the point for Trump. He spent much of his life wanting to be the most important person in his world -- the biggest builder in New York, the richest, and the most admired -- but he could never pull it off. Other people with less chaotic and more strategic brains were better at building, made more money, and easily avoided the bankruptcies that plagued Trump. The adrenalized fizziness of Trump's brain made him bad at planning, bad at passing up whatever seemed immediately gratifying. He overpaid for what he wanted. He experienced failure.

He's no better at being president -- but what he can do, now that he has a 100% loyal Cabinet, Congress, and Supreme Court, is try to drag the world down to his level. He doesn't know what he's doing (on trade, in geopolitics), but that's fine if no one else knows what he's doing either. Global destabilization is the point. It makes smarter people struggle to react. It makes the world as jittery as Trump's brain.

TRUMP SHRUGS AND SAYS SHIT HAPPENS BECAUSE HE THINKS SHIT HAPPENING WOULD BE FINE FOR HIM

This passage from Time magazine's cover story on President Trump and the war in Iran is getting a lot of attention:

Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Trump acknowledges the possibility. “I guess,” he says. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die."

First, I want to draw your attention to "But I think [Americans are] worried about that all the time." I live in Manhattan. I lived here on 9/11. The vast majority of my fellow New Yorkers aren't "worried about that all the time." We know the risks, and we know they haven't gone away. We know, for instance, that an ISIS-inspired terrorist drove a pickup truck into cylists and runners back in 2017, killing eight of them. Terrorism happens, and we know our city is a much more likely target than the outer-ring suburbs and rural communities where Trump supporters tend to live. But we get on with our lives. We're not perpetually fearful. It's Trumpers who are obsessed with terrorism fears and the fear of "sleeper cells."

🚨 THIS IS INSANE: Democrats have ONCE AGAIN voted to KEEP DHS CLOSED, despite the highly elevated terror threat by Iranian sleeper cells in the United States

Democrats DO NOT CARE about the safety of you and your family.

It’s ALL about political power.

STOP VOTING DEMOCRAT! pic.twitter.com/LFU5HrsSVy

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) March 5, 2026

🚨 BREAKING: US Senate REJECTS effort to reopen the Department of Homeland Security in a 51-45 vote, despite an ACTIVE threat of terrorist sleeper cells amid conflict with Iran

John Fetterman joined Republicans voting YEA

Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are TRAITORS and must… pic.twitter.com/g6lEnSyXeJ

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 5, 2026

Which gets us to the calculation Trump has made. We know he's a narcissist who doesn't care about other people's deaths unless he thinks he can leverage them for his own purposes. So his administration has waved Charlie Kirk's bloody shirt ever since the bigoted podcaster was killed -- but if you're a servicemember who's a casualty of this war, Trump doesn't want to talk about you.

I don't know whether he'll want to talk about any victims of terrorism on U.S. soil. Other Republicans obviously will -- they'll want to blame the casualties on Democrats, even if Homeland Security funding has been restored. But Trump might just want to shrug the deaths off the way he's shrugging them off here, and the way he's shrugging off the deaths of servicemembers now.

But in any case, he thinks he can avoid blame, either by persuading us (or at least the Republican voter base) that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, shit happens, or by leveraging the deaths to stir up outrage. It's certainly worked for Republican presidents in the past.

The Republican voter base will be enthusiastically on Trump's side if there's a terror attack here. I don't think he should assume that the rest of America will feel the same. Most Americans despise the war, according to nearly all polling on the subject.

Many politicians make cynical calculations about life-and-death issues, but I think Trump cares less than any other president we've had about the lives lost as the result of his actions. He's gambling that civilian deaths won't lower his poll numbers. That's pretty much all he cares about.

STOP CEDING "CULTURALLY NORMAL" TO THE PARTY OF NAZIS

The Wall Street Journal has just published the latest in a series of nearly identical mainstream-media puff pieces about Rahm Emanuel. These stories always focus on Emanuel's scolding remarks aimed at fellow Democrats, which are portrayed as exactly what the party needs:

Rahm Emanuel is delivering the Democratic Party a dose of tough medicine—in his usual blunt style—as the party enters a critical midterm primary season.

Asked at a recent fundraiser in this affluent Detroit suburb how Democrats might be able to win back the working-class voters who have defected to President Trump, Emanuel faulted his party in 2024 for being too focused on things such as transgender rights and not enough on pocketbook issues.
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“We weren’t very good in this last election at the kitchen table. We weren’t very good in the family room,” said the former congressman, mayor and U.S. ambassador to Japan. “The only room we occupied in the house was the bathroom—and it’s the smallest room in the house.”

Democrats weren't talking about transgender issues on the campaign trail in 2024, of course, and Emanuel knows this. Remarks from Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign were used against her in 2024, though it's doubtful that they were the reason she lost. Republicans tried playing the trans card in the 2025 Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races and had their heads handed to them.

The Journal story quotes other scoldy Democrats:

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear implores Democrats to talk more like “normal human beings” and avoid “advocacy speak” ...

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom ... recently said Democrats need to be “culturally normal.”

If I were an undeclared Democratic candidate for president like these guys, you know who I'd be denouncing as not culturally normal? Republicans -- specifically, racist, misogynist, Nazi-loving anti-Semite Republicans like these folks:

The secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party started a group chat primarily for conservative students last fall — and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs, someone wrote dozens of ways of violently killing Black people and the chat was renamed after what one member described as “Nazi heaven.”

In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as “whores,” used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics....

The conversations included some of the campus’ top conservative leaders: the county GOP secretary, FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter president and the former College Republicans recruitment chair....

... William Bejerano — who tried to start a pro-life group at Miami Dade College — was the primary user of the n-word in the group. At one point, he posted a block of text calling for dozens of acts of extreme violence against Black people, who he referred to using the n-word, including crucifying, beheading and dissecting people....

The group chat members — which included some women — also frequently discussed sex, sometimes describing women as “whores” and at one point using the k-word, a slur for Jewish people, to describe women they avoid.

[Dariel] Gonzalez [the College Republicans’ recruitment chairman at the time] said, “You can f–k all the [k-word] you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate.” Ian Valdes, the Turning Point USA chapter president, responded, “I would def not marry a Jew.”

If you think you've read this story before, you might be thinking of a story about a different racist, sexist young Republican chat group, from last fall:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

I know this is a wild, crazy, out-of-the-box idea, but maybe, instead of attacking his own party every time he talks to a journalist or makes a public appearance, Rahm Emanuel could try attacking the opposition party -- y'know, as a change of pace. Maybe he and Beshear and Newsom and Josh Shapiro and James Carville could portray Republicans as extremist freaks and weirdos once in a while. It's a crazy idea, but it might work!

The Florida bigots in this chat -- and, apparently, a lot of other young Republicans in the state -- appear to have a favorite politician: a young insurgent candidate who's challenging Byron Donalds, a Black congressman who's been endorsed by President Trump, in the Florida gubernatorial primary.

... James Fishback — a relative political unknown who has used racist and white nationalist rhetoric throughout his campaign — is highlighting the generational divide around extremism on the right in Florida.

Rhetoric such as ...?

“His undisguised racist comments describing a Black candidate’s vision as ‘Section 8 ghetto’ and referring to Byron Donalds as ‘By’rone’ and a ‘slave’ are deliberate, offensive, and beneath this state,” Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly said....

Also:

He says that the only “systemic racism” that exists in the United States is against white Christian men. He’s also proposed burning abortion clinics.

And:

At a recent campus campaign stop, Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate James Fishback dropped some unusual verbiage while inveighing against junk food in school cafeterias.

“I’m not saying that the test scores are the result of the Pop-Tarts,” Fishback told a crowd at the University of Central Florida, in remarks boosting locally grown produce over convenience foods. “But if you wanted kids to fail, if you wanted to set our kids up for failure, you would feed them the absolute goyslop in our cafeterias.”

Goyslop?!

As an Instagram user explains:

In this context, it reflects an antisemitic concept suggesting that “goyim” (non‑Jewish people) are fed this “slop” by supposed Jewish elites to keep them unhealthy.

More:

The term is making the rounds among the largest white nationalist and antisemitic influencers. Clavicular, a popular manosphere influencer recently seen dancing and singing to Ye’s “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub, appeared on a recent livestream with white nationalist Nick Fuentes to lament how “the entire grocery store is filled with goyslop.”

This isn't doing much for Fishback's campaign -- except among young Republican voters:

According to a February poll from the University of North Florida, Florida Representative Byron Donalds leads in the general electorate at 31%, compared to Fishback’s 6%. Half of voters are still undecided.

But Donalds’ 5 to 1 lead completely flips among young voters, where Fishback leads 4 to 1. He is backed by 32% of 18-to-34-year-olds, while just 8% support Donalds.

Instead of incessantly accusing Democrats of being out of step with normal, decent people, why don't more Democrats talk about the edgelord bigotry of an increasing number of Republicans? Why not portray them as the party of abnormal freaks?

The Wall Street Journal might not breathlessly transcribe every word these Democrats say, but they'd at least be attacking their political opponents, which you'd think would be Politics 101.