MATT BAI GOTTA MATT BAI

Matt Bai, a fiercely independent thinker who somehow always lands in exactly the same place after contemplating any issue, has now pondered what he regards as the two major parties' views of Americanism. You will be astonished to learn that he is very dissatisfied with what he hears from -- sing it with me now, kids -- BOTH SIDES! (Although he hates it when people say that, as I'll explain below.)

Bai writes:

... I have not felt as utterly repulsed from the mainstream of both parties as I do right now. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

... I’m confronted with two extreme interpretations of what it means to be American, and I emphatically reject them both.

To Bai's credit, he recognizes that Republicans are dangerous.

It’s not just that Donald Trump and his imitators would blow up the integrity of our elections, or that they have expressly countenanced a violent insurrection against the federal government, or that they basically admit to having no governing agenda beyond the reclamation of some mythical White heritage.

It’s also that the Trumpist GOP advances the notion, in all kinds of ways, that citizenship alone doesn’t mean you belong here — that your race or ethnicity, the language that you speak, or the identity you choose can somehow make you less American than your neighbor.

But those Democrats, man ... they may not be an existential threat to not democracy, but they're kinda awful, too, y'know?

But that doesn’t mean a lot of us who consider ourselves liberal feel kinship with today’s Democratic Party — or that we’d even be welcome if we did.

Rather than focus on traditional American ideals of citizenship over race or origin, the left is in thrall to its own misguided cultural revolution (yes, I use the term deliberately), embracing a vision of the United States that lays waste to the 20th-century liberalism of its greatest icons.

So ... all Democrats are engaging in a "cultural revolution" of "the left"? No, just the ones that get up Matt Bai's nose. But they're the only ones who matter, apparently.

In their zeal to beat back Trumpism, the loudest Democratic groups have transformed into its Bizarro World imitators. Tossing aside ideals of equal opportunity and free expression, the new leftists obsess on identity as much as their adversaries do — but instead of trying to restore some obsolete notion of a White-dominated society, they seek vengeance under the guise of virtue.

Who are these Democrats? Are they House members? Senators? Mayors? Governors? Party officials?

No. The only person Bai identifies by name is a writer who's never run for office or worked as a party official at all.

One of the bibles of this movement is a book called “How to Be an Antiracist,” in which Ibram X. Kendi declares: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

How to Be an Antiracist is not a Democratic Party document. It is not embraced by the entirety of the party leadership. It probably isn't embraced by the majority of the party leadership, many of whom may never have even heard of it, much less read it.

And now we come to the mind-reading portion of our program, in which Matt Bai tells us that he understand what Ibram X. Kendi believes more than Kendi does.

This is not — as the celebrated author claims — an expression of support for Lyndon B. Johnson-style affirmative action, which still makes sense to me. It is a case for the kind of social upheaval that occurred when foreign empires relinquished their colonies.

So when Kendi invokes LBJ, he isn't telling the truth about his own thoughts, because Kendi can't be expected to know what Kendi believes. Matt Bai can, however. Matt Bai is the world's greatest reader of minds.

Here's what Kendi writes in his book:

"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination."

Since the 1960s, racist power has commandeered the term “racial discrimination,” transforming the act of discriminating on the basis of race into an inherently racist act. But if racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor or against an individual based on that person’s race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an overrepresented racial group into wealth and power is entirely different than someone challenging that inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into relative wealth and power until equity is reached.

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”

But this isn't good enough for Matt Bai, who knows what's in Ibram X. Kendi's heart better than Kendi does -- and who also knows that Kendi is the chief spokesman for Democrats on both race and Americanism even though Kendi has never had any job in the party or run for any office under its aegis.

Now, don't you dare call what Bai says about the two parties bothsides-ism. Bai doesn't like that. He writes:

This is about the point where some (most likely some in my own business) will scream: “Both sidesism!” That’s the now-cliche argument that any criticism of Democrats whatsoever must be some kind of journalistic reflex to equate the parties, when clearly one is worse than the other.

No fair saying that! (Even if it is true not just about this essay, but about everything Bai has ever written.)

Bai admits that Republicans are worse. But it's clear that he feels Democrats are really, really bad, even if he can't name a single Democratic politician or official whose words or deeds justify his disgust.

REPUBLICAN INTIMIDATION IS A NON-STORY

Yesterday, Reuters published a detailed story about violent threats to school board members. Does anyone care?

The letter came to the home of Brenda Sheridan, a Loudoun County, Virginia school board member, addressed to one of her adult children. It threatened to kill them both unless she left the board.

“It is too bad that your mother is an ugly communist whore,” said the hand-scrawled note, which the family read just after Christmas. “If she doesn’t quit or resign before the end of the year, we will kill her, but first, we will kill you!”

School board members across the United States have endured a rash of terroristic threats and hostile messages ignited by roiling controversies over policies on curtailing the coronavirus, bathroom access for transgender students and the teaching of America’s racial history.

Reuters documented the intimidation through contacts and interviews with 33 board members across 15 states and a review of threatening and harassing messages obtained from the officials or through public records requests. The news organization found more than 220 such messages in this sampling of districts. School officials or parents in 15 different counties received or witnessed threats they considered serious enough to report to police....

About half the hostile messages documented by Reuters were sent to Sheridan, former chair of the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board, amid controversies over coronavirus protections, anti-racism efforts and bathroom policy. Twenty-two messages sent to Sheridan or the entire board included death threats or said members should be or would be killed.

In June, she received a threat saying: “Brenda, I am going to gut you like the fat f‑‑‑ing pig you are when I find you.”

The alleged horrors of mask mandates, critical race theory, and "boys in girls' bathrooms" are all national stories, because the right-wing media and Republican politicians have made them national stories.

These threats? It's good that Reuters is telling us about them. But despite occasional reporting like this, the story hasn't broken through. And no Democrat has tried to make these would-be intimidators the face of the Republican Party. When Democrats talk about the 2022 midterms, they talk about what they think is wrong with their own party. They're always on the defensive. This is from Politico:

Democrats’ own research shows that some battleground voters think the party is “preachy,” “judgmental” and “focused on culture wars,” according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

And the party’s House campaign arm had a stark warning for Democrats: Unless they more forcefully confront the GOP’s “alarmingly potent” culture war attacks, from critical race theory to defunding the police, they risk losing significant ground to Republicans in the midterms.

... In presentations over the past two weeks, party officials and operatives used polling and focus group findings to argue Democrats can’t simply ignore the attacks....

The data showed that Democrats could mostly regain the ground lost to Republicans if they offered a strong rebuttal to the political hits. When faced with a “defund the police” attack, for instance, the presenters encouraged Democrats to reiterate their support for police. And on immigration, they said Democrats should deny support for “open borders or amnesty,” and talk about their efforts to keep the border safe.

If Democrats are being told to say anything bad about Republicans, I'm not aware of it.

And as far as I know, this isn't a story anywhere except Media Matters:

Ben Marble, a medical doctor who recently spoke at a Capitol Hill event held by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), made a deranged appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ broadcast where he said the COVID-19 pandemic could be ended by killing several government officials and public figures and bombing the next meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Marble said the following people deserve to die and that if he was the U.S. president he would have them killed: financier and philanthropist George Soros, World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci, and “a few others.” Then saying that “the job of soldiers during war is to arrest and/or kill the enemy,” Marble repeated the previous names, along with President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’.

On the Jones show, Marble said:

"... If I was president, [George Soros] would be the first person I would take out, along with Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and Fauci, and a few others. Those people, minimum, they need to be arrested and on trial.”

“The job of soldiers during war is to arrest and/or kill the enemy. Well, first you have to know who the enemy is. And I’m clearly stating who the enemy is. The enemy is Nazi Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates of Hell, George Sore-ass, Dr. Death Fauci, Dementia Joe, Kamala Whore-is.”

Johnson is running for reelection this year and is expected to face a tight race. If a Democrat in a similar position had invited a speaker to an event who later called for the death of Republican officeholders, it would be a huge story on the right. Fox News would make the speaker a household name.

But it won't happen in this case. All we ever talk about are Democrats' real or imagined failings. Unless Donald Trump is involved, or perhaps Marjorie Taylor Greene, most people in our political culture don't talk about the spreading sickness on the right. As a result, there are few if any consequences for this kind of talk, and there won't be until someone is killed.

IT REALLY UPSETS THEM THAT RIGHT-WINGERS MIGHT SOMETIMES FACE CONSEQUENCES FOR THEIR ACTIONS

Certain right-wingers are being held accountable for bad behavior, and some Republican senators thinks that's simply unfair:

A group of Republican senators is pushing back against efforts to create a federal “no-fly” list for unruly passengers, arguing that doing so would essentially draw an equivalence between terrorists and opponents of mask mandates.

The eight Republican senators voiced their concerns in a letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland. They noted that, according to Federal Aviation Administration data, the vast majority of reports of unruly passengers have been related to the mandated use of face masks amid the pandemic.

“While we strongly condemn any violence towards airline workers, there is significant uncertainty around the efficacy of this mandate, as highlighted by the CEO of Southwest Airlines during a recent Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing,” the senators wrote. “Creating a federal ‘no-fly’ list for unruly passengers who are skeptical of this mandate would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland.”

... The eight Republicans signing the letter are Sens. Cynthia M. Lummis (Wyo.), Mike Lee (Utah), James Lankford (Okla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Kevin Cramer (N.D.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), John Hoeven (N.D.) and Rick Scott (Fla.).

Sure, we're against violence on your flights, but most of these violent people are on our side! Why do you hate freedom?

(The letter says, "The creation of this list by DOJ would result in a severe restriction on the ability of citizens to fully exercise their constitutional right to engage in interstate transportation." Yes, just because these people have disrupted previous interstate flights and threatened violence and property damage on those flights! Unfair!)

If I'm reading the letter correctly, the senators seem to believe individual airlines can ban a passenger, but sharing the information is tyranny or communism or ... something.

In somewhat related news, there's this from Fox's favorite faux-liberal legal analyst:

A Fox News legal contributor offered a head-scratching take on Tuesday about the Canadian government’s crackdown on trucker convoys that have choked supply chains to protest measures aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19.

“I thought it was quite excessive,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said of the Canadian government’s actions.

“This is an act of civil disobedience. That is a standard tactic of groups, going back to the civil rights movement, even earlier, to block bridges and streets to do what was referred to as, quote, ‘good trouble,’” Turley added, using the phrase famously coined by the late civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

“And so the troubling aspect of what is coming out of the prime minister’s office is that by this rationale, they could have cracked down on the civil rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King,” Turley said.

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, on Canada PM Justin Trudeau invoking emergency powers to deal with the "Freedom Convoy" blockade:

"By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King." pic.twitter.com/s9dwkcvihQ

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 15, 2022

King, of course, was repeatedly arrested, as were many of the people who demonstrated alongside him. Um, that's why they call it "civil disobedience": You deliberately break the law, and subject yourself to arrest (and beatings, and worse), in the hope that public awareness of your cause and the way you're being treated will rally people to your side.

I don't know if Turley genuinely believes that King strolled into D.C. one day, gave a speech at the Lincoln Memorial, and effortlessly won civil rights for Black people, or whether he just thinks his audience believes that. But the additional message here is that civil disobedience should be consequence-free. You shouldn't actually be risking anything when you break the law for a political cause.

And after all, right-wingers believe it's unfair for their kind to be held accountable at any time. It's not fair if the January 6 rioters are arrested and jailed. It's not fair if those who threaten people at school board meetings are investigated by law enforcement. It would have been unfair to hold anyone accountable for the lies that led to the Iraq War, or for the torture programs that were a key part of the War on Terror. And holding Donald Trump accountable for, well, anything? Unthinkable!

Maybe they think everyone gets to live under those rules. Maybe Turley thinks King did. Hard to tell.

CBS CAN'T PROCESS THE FACT THAT ITS POLL SAYS REPUBLICANS WANT TO PUNISH DISLOYALTY TO TRUMP

Here's the headline of a CBS poll story:

Republicans still back Trump but don't want GOP to punish disloyalty - CBS News poll

Here are the actual numbers:

We're told:

Rather than directly punish Republicans perceived to be disloyal to Trump, Republicans say the party should perhaps take a different approach — like supporting these incumbents' opponents in primaries. And about half would simply accept these other views within the party, rather than punishing them.

Yes, but 52% either want the heretics punished immediately or want them primaried, with the party supporting the challenger. Last time I looked, 52% was a majority, and a party that withheld support from a party member running for reelection was doling out a punishment.

This also reads like denial:

Few Republicans want to see the party take a position of outright support of those who forced their way into the Capitol. A 44% plurality of Republicans say the party shouldn't take a position on these January 6 participants, and a similar number say it should be critical of them.

The key number here is that only 40% of Republicans believe that the party should criticize the insurrectionists. That's a higher number than I would have expected, but if 60% disagree, that doesn't suggest that the GOP is dominated by rational, sober-sided voters who can be trustworthy partners in a democratic system.

Surprisingly, 66% of Republican respondents approve of Mike Pence's actions on January 6 (as the poll question puts it, the fact that he "followed the procedure described in the Constitution for opening and counting the states’ 2020 presidential electoral votes in Congress"). But 49% approve of "Donald Trump pressuring Mike Pence to try to overturn the 2020 election." I would have expected a higher number, but at least 15% of GOP respondents approve of what both of them did, whatever that means.

These Republicans want the January 6 investigation stopped (72% say so), want the January 6 insurrectionists pardoned (61%), and want Trump to run for president again (69%). And they want future Republican leaders to be very, very Trumpy:

I don't know what to make of that vaccine number -- maybe they think Trump doesn't really support vaccination, or maybe they like the fact that he opposes vaccine mandates. In any case, GOP poll respondents want someone who thinks the 2020 election was stolen, and a majority, if a bare one, wants future Republicans to behave like Trump. The ones who don't presumably want someone like Ron DeSantis -- someone who devotes his life to owning the libs just as much as Trump does, but not quite as floridly.

But if this is the GOP's way of saying it's moved on from Trumpism, I'm ... not seeing it.

EITHER THE RICH ALLOW THE NON-RICH TO WIN A FEW OR WE HAVE A ONE-PARTY STATE

Writing for The American Prospect, pollster Stan Greenberg argues that Democrats need to say they're fighting for serious change if they want to have a prayer of winning future elections. He writes about a survey he recently conducted.

The final combined national survey conducted in late October took place at a dark moment for Democrats. They trailed Republicans and Trump by four points on the economy and only reached parity with them on handling crime and jobs and wages.

But voters who heard Democrats were not OK with the status quo had a more positive view of the party. In our survey, respondents read the transformative policies in the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure legislation, and Build Back Better. They heard Democrats concerned about public safety, crime, and funding and reforming the police, not defunding them. And they heard Democrats embracing a blue-collar message and taxing big corporations. This was the message:

The Democrat says, people are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to pay their bills and taxes. They need a government that looks out for the middle class, working families, small businesses, and the vulnerable who work hard. They don’t need a government that jumps whenever the biggest corporations send money and lobbyists. My approach is blue collar. We should bend over backwards for those who work hard so we create jobs in America and grow the middle class again.

At the end of the survey, respondents raised their support for Democrats from a three-point to an eight-point edge in 2022 battleground states and districts.

Greenberg says that voters aren't okay with the status quo and believe that Democrats are comfortable with things as they are.

In our message tests, voters are surprised to hear that Democrats are dissatisfied with an economy where many of the voters themselves live paycheck to paycheck. They are surprised that Democrats prioritize big changes in the economy and who holds power. They are surprised Democrats worry about community safety and crime and want to fund and reform police.

If Democrats are to stop hemorrhaging their working-class support and achieve the kinds of gains that they did in 2018, they have to embrace a message of change. It’s not just their electoral fortunes that hang in the balance. American democracy itself does.

Democrats can embrace that message -- the problem is, they can't enact the really transformative policy ideas behind the message. When they're in power, there are always saboteurs in their own party limiting what's possible -- no public option in Obamacare (much less a truly universal insurance system), and now no Build Back Better. Even though there are some Democratic billionaires, the plutocracy doesn't want Democrats to do anything that will narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots. That's one huge reason why it's so easy to mock liberalism in America. Of course liberalism seems to many people like a failed approach to governing. It fails because can never actually do what it promises to do.

But the alternative, as Greenberg says, is rule by Republicans, who hate democracy and could very well destroy it the next time they're in power. We could save democracy if billionaires would allow Democrats to really help the non-rich, though I'm not naive enough to believe that this could actually happen. If the non-rich could get a few wins, they wouldn't turn to the party that plans to eliminate democracy.

The rich -- even the "enlightened" rich -- expect that they'll be fine in an illiberal America, a Hungary with nuclear weapons. Life will go on. Business will go on. They're not worried.

Taking on the rich is the alternative -- but most of the party doesn't want to do that, and wouldn't have the funds to compete in elections if they did.

I don't know a way out of this. I can't imagine real change in America until post-democratic rule by the GOP creates a country that doesn't work well for plutocrats. It might happen eventually. But for now I they'll keep insisting that Democrats can tinker at the margins at most, because if they press for real change, they're expendable, as is democracy.

THE GREAT MAN THEORY OF NATIONAL DECLINE

Many people say that American political journalism is bad because it ignores real issues and overemphasizes the politcal horserace -- who's winning, who's losing. But here's a New York Times story about right-wing megadonor and supervillain Peter Thiel that downplays what's taking place in key races because it doesn't fit the article's thesis, which is that Thiel is one of the Great Men who drive politics.

The wine flowed. Donald Trump Jr. mingled with the guests. And Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire and host of the event, had a message for the well-heeled crowd: It was time to clean house.

The fund-raiser at Mr. Thiel’s Miami Beach compound last month was for a conservative candidate challenging Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming for a spot on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. Ms. Cheney, one of several Republicans who had voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, was the face of “the traitorous 10,” Mr. Thiel said, according to two people with knowledge of the event, who were not authorized to speak publicly. All of them had to be replaced, he declared, by conservatives loyal to the former president.

Mr. Thiel, who became known in 2016 as one of the biggest donors to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, has re-emerged as a key financier of the Make America Great Again movement. After sitting out the 2020 presidential race, the venture capitalist this year is backing 16 Senate and House candidates, many of whom have embraced the lie that Mr. Trump won the election.

To get these candidates into office, Mr. Thiel has given more than $20.4 million. That essentially puts him and Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel, in a tie as the largest individual donors to Republican politics this election cycle, according to the nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.

What sets Mr. Thiel’s spending apart, though, is its focus on hard-right candidates who traffic in the conspiracy theories espoused by Mr. Trump and who cast themselves as rebels determined to overthrow the Republican establishment and even the broader American political order. These campaigns have raised millions in small-dollar donations, but Mr. Thiel’s wealth could accelerate the shift of views once considered fringe to the mainstream — while making himself a new power broker on the right.

It's good that the Times is informing its readers that the Trump movement isn't just the random malcontents who invaded the Capitol on January 6 -- it's also deep-pocketed resentniks like Thiel, who believes "that the establishment and globalization have failed, that current immigration policy pillages the middle class" (though it's hard to imagine Thiel actually caring about the plight of the middle class), "and that the country must dismantle federal institutions." (Yes, Thiel sounds a lot like Steve Bannon, who's quoted in the story: "'I don’t think it’s just about flipping the Senate,' said Mr. Bannon, who has known Mr. Thiel since 2016. 'I think Peter wants to change the direction of the country.'") If you think democracy is dying and the country is in an irreversible decline, now you know that Thiel deserves his share of the blame.

But this is journalism for the post-Reagan Second Gilded Age, so every detail has to suggest that Thiel is awesomely powerful. The title of the story is "The Right's Would-Be Kingmaker." We're told,

Mr. Thiel has attracted the most attention for two $10 million donations to the Senate candidates Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio. Like Mr. Thiel, the men are tech investors with pedigrees from elite universities who cast themselves as antagonists to the establishment. They have also worked for the billionaire and been financially dependent on him.

Later -- under the subhead "Giving to Win" -- there's more about Masters and Vance:

Mr. Thiel’s political giving ramped up last spring with his $10 million checks to PACs supporting Mr. Vance and Mr. Masters. The sums were his biggest and the largest ever one-time contributions to a PAC backing a single candidate, according to OpenSecrets.

Eventually we read this:

In November, Mr. Vance wrote on Twitter that anyone who donated $10,800 to his campaign could attend a small group dinner with him and Mr. Thiel....

🚨Want to have dinner with me and Peter Thiel? Donate $10,800 by tomorrow and I’ll send you the details.🚨

This will be a small group, with good food and better company.

Link to donate: https://t.co/uG0beq9AvY

If that's too much, see the next tweet...

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) November 4, 2021

What we're not told -- because it would be embarrassing for both Vance and Thiel -- is that Josh Mandel, one of candidates Vance is running against in this Senate primary, humiliated Vance with this response to the dinner-with-Thiel offer:

BERKSHIRE, OH — For $10.80 anyone can join me eating fries off the hood of the car from a gas station Denny’s at midnight. pic.twitter.com/j31BovbTpY

— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) November 5, 2021

It's only in paragraph 50 -- in a 54-paragraph story -- that we're informed,

[Thiel's] backing may not be enough. In Ohio, Mr. Vance trails in polling, partly hampered by a previous denunciation of Mr. Trump. In Arizona, Mr. Masters is competing in a crowded field.

Blake Masters isn't just "competing in a crowded field" -- he's trailing by double digits. And Vance doesn't just trail -- he trails badly.

NEW: @coefficientpoll (R)

2022 #OHSen GOP Primary
Mike Gibbons 20%
Josh Mandel 18%
Matt Dolan 7%
Jane Timken 6%
J.D. Vance 5%
Mark Pukita 1%
Someone Else 9%
Undecided 34%

613 LV | 2/6-2/8https://t.co/R2vaOAztZM

— PPUSA (@PollProjectUSA) February 11, 2022

But that information would make Thiel seem like less of a demigod. This is Great Man journalism. The Times is writing about Thiel the way business journalists write about "hero" CEOs. We're meant to believe that Thiel is the superstar CEO of MAGA, Inc. So of course hints of anything less than undisputed-alpha dominance must be carefully avoided.

IN RED AND PURPLE STATES, IS ANY REPUBLICAN UNELECTABLE NOW?

Jonathan Martin of The New York Times tells us that Mitch McConnell is trying to outmaneuver Donald Trump in 2022.

As Mr. Trump works to retain his hold on the Republican Party, elevating a slate of friendly candidates in midterm elections, Mr. McConnell and his allies are quietly, desperately maneuvering to try to thwart him. The loose alliance, which was once thought of as the G.O.P. establishment, for months has been engaged in a high-stakes candidate recruitment campaign, full of phone calls, meetings, polling memos and promises of millions of dollars. It’s all aimed at recapturing the Senate majority, but the election also represents what could be Republicans’ last chance to reverse the spread of Trumpism before it fully consumes their party.

I wrote about this on Tuesday -- about McConnell's frustration that he can't get outgoing anti-Trump governor Larry Hogan to run for the Maryland Senate seat or Governor Chris Sununu to run for the one in New Hampshire. Today's story cites McConnell's effort to recruit Doug Ducey, yet another governor, in the Arizona Senate race.

In the latter case, I'm not sure what McConnell is worried about. A recent poll shows the current GOP front-runner in that race, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, within two points of the incumbent Mark Kelly, while Ducey is within three points. Trump has vowed never to endorse Ducey, who wouldn't help Trump overturn Arizona's 2020 election results, but Trump has also criticized Brnovich in the past for the same reason, though they're friendlier now. (Trump is demanding that Brnovich indict election officials for doing their jobs in 2020. It hasn't happened yet.)

McConnell seems to believe that Trumpy candidates could jeopardize his chances of being majority leader again.

The Senate Republican leader has been worried that Mr. Trump will tap candidates too weak to win in the general election, the sort of nominees who cost the party control of the Senate in 2010 and 2012.

“We changed the business model in 2014, and have not had one of these goofballs nominated since,” he told a group of donors on a private conference call last year, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times.

But are there unelectable "goofball" candidates anymore? In blue states, sure -- Lee Zeldin, the probable Republican candidate for governor of New York who just nominated Jared Kushner for a Nobel Peace Prize, is not likely to win in November.

But Herschel Walker, who threatened his ex-wife's life on more than one occasion and has other baggage, is slightly ahead of incumbent Raphael Warnock in most polls. (McConnell, as the Times story notes, now backs Walker.) Eric Greitens has been credibly accused of financial crimes and sexual assault and was forced to resign as governor of Missouri a few years back; he now leads in primary polls and has internal polling from a reputable pollster showing him with significant leads against both unnamed and named Democrats.

I think McConnell is worried about nothing -- unless what he's really worried about is the possibility that Republicans will win back the Senate and depose him as party leader, following Trump's lead. The Times story tells us:

Mr. Trump has made clear he wants the Senate candidates he backs to oust Mr. McConnell from his leadership perch, and even considered making a pledge to do so a condition of his endorsement. Few have done so to date, a fact Mr. McConnell considers a victory. “Only two of them have taken me on,” he crowed, alluding to [Kelly] Tshibaka in Alaska, and Eric Greitens, the former Missouri governor running for an open seat.

But pressure could build after the election. McConnell might just be trying to save his job.

He can't stop the overall trend toward Trumpism. For example, no matter who wins the Republican Senate primary in Arizona, the gubernatorial primary (Ducey is term-limited) will probably be won by a Trumpist lunatic named Kari Lake. If she loses the primary, it'll be to this guy:

Great to spend time with my friend Steve Bannon at Saturday's @RealPimaGOP Lincoln Day Dinner — a true patriot and a tireless fighter for our country.

The future of the AZ Republican Party believes in defending our freedom, protecting our sovereignty, and putting #ArizonaFirst. pic.twitter.com/IwXo4AqK9h

— Matt Salmon (@MattSalmonAZ) October 24, 2021

Lake was trailing her likely Democratic opponent by only 4 in a November poll. (Salmon trailed by 8.) In a GOP wave year, a ver Trumpy candidate could prevail in a general election.

But McConnell will try to save his job. Don't imagine that he's trying to save the country.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERS STILL ACT AS IF TRUMP IS THE ONLY REPUBLICAN EXTREMIST

As soon as I saw the headline, I knew I'd find it painful to read this Washington Post story:

Vulnerable Democrats plan to run on kitchen-table issues, but some in party want voters focused on Trump, too

Prominent Democrats believe they have exactly two choices going into the midterms. One is to pretend that nothing insane is happening in this country and instead run on policy ideas (even if Democrats haven't passed bills yet that turn those ideas into law).

Democrats heading into turbulent reelection battles want to focus their campaigns on the bread-and-butter issues that appeal to swing voters, not Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Take Wednesday’s introduction of legislation that would suspend the federal gas tax for the rest of this year. Its lead sponsor is Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), with three other initial co-sponsors being Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.)....

“Things like the price of gasoline, the price of ground beef or groceries or prescription drugs, especially if they’re a senior,” Kelly said in a brief interview. “You know, they’re not looking back at an old — an election a year ago. They’re thinking about, What affects my family?”

The other choice is to talk about one guy who isn't even in office anymore.

But some Democrats fear that this is letting the ex-president’s allies off the hook. They believe that voters, both the liberal base and some swing voters in the suburbs, need to hear a message that links GOP candidates to the attempts to overturn President Biden’s victory and future threats to elections.

“Yes, Democrats need a positive narrative about the work we are doing for the American people," Stop Him Now, a super PAC formed last month, said in releasing its first ad. "Yes, we need smart, aggressive, localized campaigns against individual opponents. ... But it won’t be enough.”

It begins with video of rioters attacking the Capitol and transitions to various GOP candidates shaking hands with Trump, ending with the image of a police officer getting crushed by rioters on Jan. 6.

“Republicans in ’22 means Trump in ’24,” the ad reads in its final image, with shattered Capitol windows in the backdrop....

“Our concern was that lane three — the Trump lane — was being abandoned,” Mandy Grunwald, a veteran strategist who co-founded the Trump-focused PAC, said in an interview Friday.

It's not a bad ad. I agree that Democrats should remind Trump-averse voters that he's poised for a comeback. But Trump isn't on the ballot in 2022. Running against Trump didn't work for Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race last year because voters knew that.

And, more important, there are a lot of other extreme Republicans, many of whom are on the ballot in 2022. Why not talk about them? Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert -- they're all running for reelection this year, sharing a ballt line with many, many crackpots and QAnoners and other fringe-dwellers, except it's no longer the fringe because it's the Republican mainstream. Why not talk about book banning, book burning, abortion bans, physical assaults on mask wearers and flight attendants and store clerks, intimidation at school board meetings?

The parking lot after a school board meeting last night in Franklin, the wealthiest place in Tennessee. Parents harassed medical professionals who had spoken in favor of masks in schools. “We know who you are. You can leave freely, but we will find you.” pic.twitter.com/SzR0uvMeE7

— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) August 11, 2021

A Tennessee pastor live streamed a book burning event on Facebook after encouraging his congregation to burn their "accursed items," including titles from the Harry Potter and Twilight series https://t.co/ppebo8hcl8 pic.twitter.com/2ui07A5shs

— CNN (@CNN) February 6, 2022

But to key Democrats, there are only two choices: kitchen table talk and Trump talk.

“When I’m home and I talk to Nevadans, it’s the kitchen-table issues. It’s health care, access to health care, prescription drug negotiations,” said [Nevada senator Catherine] Cortez Masto, who served as chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the successful 2020 elections. “It is the cost of prescription drugs. It is economy and jobs and education. Those are the top things.”

... Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Cortez Masto’s successor as DSCC chairman, wants his candidates to thread a needle.

“I think it’s incredibly important to clearly focus on things that are impacting families today, which are the bread-and-butter issues, and candidates need to lean in to those issues,” Peters said. “But they should also bring up the fundamental threat to our constitutional democracy being posed by all too many Republicans.”

He thinks a Trump-focused message can help energize liberal voters, so that ads and direct mail might be tailored to talk about the former president to that bloc of supporters.

“You always have to know your audience,” Peters said.

I'm not saying Democrats shouldn't talk about Trump, or kitchen-table issues. But a very dangerous GOP extremism exists on its own. It doesn't depend on Trump. And no one in the party seems to want to talk about that.

IS A SMART ANALYSIS OF DEMOCRATS' PROBLEMS BECOMING AN EXCUSE TO DO NOTHING?

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent is frustrated by Republicans' ability to transmit their messages -- including utter claptrap -- at will:

One big advantage Republicans have right now is their massive network of right-wing media spinners. They spend hours each day communicating a wholly alternate narrative of the moment — one comprehensively purged of contrary or nettlesome facts — straight to the GOP base in a way that has no equivalence on the Democratic side.

Mark Meadows’s new appearance on Newsmax captures how this dynamic works....

In the Newsmax interview, Meadows scoffed at mainstream news organizations for implying that documents that were ripped up and taped together [by then-president Donald Trump] “show some nefarious purpose.”

“Yet they will ignore Nancy Pelosi ripping up something on national TV behind the president,” Meadows seethed....

You will recall that what Pelosi ripped up in February 2020 was a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address, after he had already delivered most of it to the nation. Pelosi’s act in no sense denied the public information, whereas withholding presidential documents very well might, and might also break the Presidential Records Act, a law.

Meadows went on and on in that Newsmax interview, with no skeptical follow-up questions, of course, from the interviewer. Hillary Clinton was invoked, naturally, as another criminal document-destroyer, in contrast to the completely innocent Trump. Again, no pushback.

Sargent laments:

Because mainstream media properly represent all sides of a story, Republicans can inject all manner of unsupported claims to muddy the waters around Trump’s transgressions, and around their own hypocritical treatment of them.

That contrasts sharply with the alternate narrative offered in right-wing media, which simply erases not just the other side’s arguments, but also wholesale sets of facts that objectively contradict that narrative.

As Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer told Vox, that contrast creates a deeply lopsided imbalance. Democrats rely on mainstream media to get their message out, and Republicans can muddy up the picture voters get by exploiting conventions of political reporting dictating that the GOP position will be fully represented, even if it’s obvious nonsense.

Meanwhile, notes Pfeiffer, Republicans benefit from a “massive apparatus” communicating “the exact optimized political message for Republicans” to “tens of millions of people.” As a result, Democrats are “competing with one hand tied behind our back.”

Is it good that Democrats understand this problem? Yes. Is it bad that many of them seem to have decided that the game is rigged and it's futile to try to get their own message out? The answer is also yes.

As Oliver Willis says, Republicans might have Fox, but Democrats have just as much access to social media as Republicans have -- and they don't use it, while Republicans do, usually sending a coordinated message repeated by multiple messengers.

people on here love to act like democrats throwing in two cents together on a topic is the hardest thing in the world when it is actually the simplest. its actually easier now for dems to influence a narrative than it was 20 years ago. but you have to be trying.

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) February 11, 2022

(Willis was responding to a tweet noting that Republicans were talking with one voice about a now-debunked report that the Biden administration is distributing pipes to crack smokers.)

When Democrats do make noise, as Willis notes, they can get results.

[In January], Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans." ...

The comment attracted criticism, from figures like Rep. Bobby Rush, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker, the NAACP, along with thousands on Twitter using the hashtag #MitchPlease.

The criticism generated coverage, to the point where a clearly exasperated McConnell was forced to publicly respond to the hue and cry over his racial demagoguery. "I have had African American speech writers, schedulers, office managers over the years," said McConnell, all but telling the country that some of his best friends are Black.

The episode was a microcosm of how the media truly works, attracted to coverage of an important issue – race and voting rights – through controversy and conflict. Traditionally liberals have tried to get coverage of those topics by soberly providing the media and the public with reports and well-intentioned research designed to tell a story and prompt discussion over solutions.

But none of that works as well as a bloody media fight.

And, more recently:

The argument that if democrats talk about things “nobody will cover it” is not true and a cop out excusing their systemic ineffectiveness, I’ve demonstrated over and over that they can move the needle if they just say something. https://t.co/CpO60VSt1P

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) February 11, 2022

But Democrats don't go on offense often enough. If they're not silent, they're defensive And they don't coordinate their message, as Punchbowl News noted this morning.

So we spoke to more than a dozen Senate Democrats, including their most vulnerable 2022 incumbents, about how Congress should respond to the inflation crisis. What’s most surprising to us is their responses were kind of all over the place. They don’t have a unified message. Compare that to the GOP message (accurate or not) – the government is causing inflation by spending too much money – which is easily understood and digested.

Go on offense. Stop complaining that you don't have access to a liberal Fox News and use the media channels to which you do have access. Coordinate your messaging, and put in on blast.

THEIR STARMAKER MACHINERY, AND OURS

Here's the cover of the latest issue of New York magazine:

Look! It's the Democrats' big star of ... 2018!

Meanwhile, here's a story at the Daily Beast:

According to four longtime Republican operatives working at senior levels on a variety of competitive GOP primaries across the nation, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene’s endorsement in competitive 2022 Republican House and Senate primaries is not only considered as welcome, but also as one that should be actively courted—particularly in races where the nominee is likely to be decided by which candidate most animates the ultra-Trumpist grassroots.

“It is stunning,” one of these sources said. “Her popularity among much of the base and what she brings to a campaign right now is not nothing. Actually, it can be good for the candidate, and I don’t know if I would have predicted that a year ago.”

... “If you can’t get Donald Trump, you are going to want to have MTG in your back pocket,” another one of the four operatives, who professed zero personal admiration for Greene, conceded, in discussing the most desired 2022 endorsements today.

... Since taking office in January 2021, Greene has raised over $7 million, making her one of the most prolific fundraisers in the entire House.

She's a star. Madison Cawthorn and Lauren Boebert are stars. I can't name a single person on our side who's become a star in the thirteen months since Joe Biden became president.

No, wait, I can name three: Liz Cheney, Kyrsten Sinema, and Joe Manchin. They're not newcomers, but the last year has made them famous.

Cheney sides with Democrats on Donald Trump and the conduct of U.S. elections, but she's a right-wing Republican otherwise. Democrats and the so-called liberal media have made her famous at a time when hardly anyone in America can name the Democratic chair of the January 6 committee, much less any of its Democratic members.

Sinema and Manchin are famous, of course, because they blocked much of the Biden administration's agenda. And AOC is famous in part because she's critical of Democrats as well as Republicans.

It's easy to become famous as a Democrat-basher because Democrats ask for it. Democrats have no self-respect. Here's the president planning to fill an upcoming Supreme Court vacancy:

Biden’s strategy session with the Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee came as the White House has also reached out to an array of Republican senators in recent days, hoping to minimizing the partisan bloodletting that has characterized Supreme Court nomination fights in recent years....

“I think we’ll get a vote from Republican side for the following reason: I’m not looking to make an ideological choice here,” Biden said.

The WH counsel called Romney this afternoon to talk SCOTUS -- following up on a call Biden had with him earlier this week. Romney told me he conveyed that he would like a candidate who could receive bipartisan support.

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 10, 2022

If you keep telling people that your decisions as a Democrat are invalid unless they get Republican buy-in, it should be no surprise when voters tell pollsters that they prefer the party you repeatedly praise. Here's the generic-ballot polling for the House in 2022, with Republicans in red:

Take the "Kick Me" sign off your backs, say "We're right and they're wrong," and maybe you'll get out of this tailspin.

ELITE JOURNALISM IS BROKEN, BUT SO IS THE REST OF OUR SYSTEM, SO IT DOESN'T MATTER

This is the story of the day:

While President Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper, Maggie Haberman scoops in her forthcoming book, "Confidence Man."

Much of the response to the story is anger at Haberman because she saved this information for her book rather than reporting it in real time:

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you become aware that someone may have committed a federal felony, it’s important to call the FBI and not save it for your next book

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 10, 2022

There was similar outrage in September 2020, when we learned from Bob Woodward's forthcoming book that Trump had described the COVID virus to Woodward as "more deadly than even your strenuous flu," an assessment at odds with the public statements he was making at the time and would make in the future.

We should have been told these things in a timely fashion. Reporters shouldn't keep information like this secret until they can reveal it in their books.

And yet it's hard to imagine that Woodward's story would have changed the trajectory of the pandemic, or public opinion of Trump, if it had been reported sooner. It's hard to see how Trump might have faced consequences for this, given how he dodged them for all the things we actually knew about. Woodward's book was published a couple of months before the election, but this story didn't have legs; it doesn't seem to have hurt Trump at the polls.

I assume Trump would have weaseled his way out of trouble. At the time, I wrote:

Confronted with his own words, Trump who's been lying longer than most of us have been alive, would have claimed that he'd been told a number of contrary things. He'd have claimed that the danger was contained because he personally had the virus under control. He'd have lashed out at everyone who wanted to use his words to enforce stricter public health measures -- and if he couldn't change the narrative right away, he'd have done it a couple of weeks later, just the way he did shortly after endorsing a (porous) shutdown of the country, when he angrily demanded reopenings and claimed the spring weather would magically make the virus go away, even as thousands died daily in New York City and elsewhere.

We can be fairly certain that Haberman's story wouldn't have made a difference at the time because we had many reports of document destruction by Trump during his presidency. In June 2018, Politico reported on Solomon Lartey, "the guys who tape Trump's papers back together."

Lartey, who earned an annual salary of $65,969 as a records management analyst, was a career government official with close to 30 years under his belt. But he had never seen anything like this in any previous administration he had worked for. He had never had to tape the president’s papers back together again.

Armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape, Lartey and his colleagues would sift through large piles of shredded paper and put them back together, he said, “like a jigsaw puzzle.” Sometimes the papers would just be split down the middle, but other times they would be torn into pieces so small they looked like confetti.

It was a painstaking process that was the result of a clash between legal requirements to preserve White House records and President Donald Trump’s odd and enduring habit of ripping up papers when he’s done with them — what some people described as his unofficial “filing system.”

In February 2020, Yastreblyansky noted that, according to a New York Times op-ed by a historian named Matthew Connelly, "Workers in the White House records management office who used to tape these records together say they were fired without explanation."

This was never a scandal. And when Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed in a 2018 book that she'd seen Trump eating a document, the story barely made a ripple.

So, yes, Haberman should have told us about the document-flushing when she knew about it, because it should have mattered. But it's unlikely that it would have mattered. We had very good reasons to believe that Trump was willfully destroying records in violation of the law -- but Trump wasn't held accountable, and if anyone had tried to hold him accountable, Republican outrage and wagon-circling would have made accountability impossible, as it has been throughout Trump's time in politics. So, yes, elite journalism is failing us -- but so is a system in which lawless Republicans have a veto over any attempt to make their own face consequences.

THE U.S. VERSION OF THE CANADA TRUCK BLOCKADE MIGHT BE UNPOPULAR -- AND IT MIGHT NOT MATTER

At the Mahablog, Barbara O'Brien links to a poll showing that the anti-vaxx truckers' blockade in Ottawa is extremely unpopular with the city's residents.

A significant majority of residents in Ottawa are opposed to the "Freedom Convoy" protest against public health measures, according to the results of a new poll, and nearly nine out of ten say it's time to go home.

The poll, conducted and paid for by Ottawa-based polling firm Abacus Data and obtained by CTV News, found two-thirds of respondents are opposed to the convoy and 22 per cent support it....

Almost nine-in-10 residents said it's time for protesters to leave. The poll found 87 per cent of respondents said yes to the question, "Do you think protesters have had an opportunity to make their point and should leave town?"

Even 46 per cent of respondents who said they support the convoy agreed that it's time for protesters to leave.

Nationwide numbers aren't much better for the blockaders.

Almost two-thirds of Canadians oppose the Ottawa protest against COVID-19 measures, with more than four in 10 saying they strongly consider the demonstration a selfish display, a new poll suggests.

According to the Leger survey, respondents agree with some very negative characterizations of the blockaders.

The survey found that 65 per cent thought the trucker convoy in Ottawa was a “small minority of Canadians who are thinking only about themselves and not the thousands of Canadians who are suffering through delayed surgeries and postponed treatments because of the growing pandemic.”

Fifty-seven per cent thought the convoy was not about vaccine mandates but “an opportunity for right-wing supremacist groups to rally and voice their frustrations about society.”

There's some sympathy ("44 per cent of those polled said they sympathized with the frustrations being voiced by the protesters"), but the general impression of them is very negative.

In her Mahablog post, O'Brien quotes from a post she wrote in 2015, in which she lays out a rule for demonstrators.

The Bigger Asshole Rule

Effective demonstrations are those that make them look like bigger assholes than us.

... The really great mass protest movements — the prototypes are Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement — worked because the public at large sympathized with the protesters. The protesters behaved in a way that demonstrated they were worthy of respect, and the Powers Than Be they were protesting — whether redneck southern sheriffs or the British Empire — behaved like assholes. Eventually it was public sympathy — not the protests themselves — that forced the Powers That Be to step down.

In short, if your demonstrations don’t win public sympathy, you are shooting yourself in the foot and hurting your cause more than helping it.

It looks as if the blockaders, with their incessant noise-making -- at least until a lawsuit led a court to order a halt to it -- have come off as the assholes in this case.

I worry, though, that the rules won't apply in America once we inevitably gets our own truck blockade. Remember the nationwide wars over critical race theory and masks in the months before the Virginia gubernatorial election. These were the right-wingers:

The parking lot after a school board meeting last night in Franklin, the wealthiest place in Tennessee. Parents harassed medical professionals who had spoken in favor of masks in schools. “We know who you are. You can leave freely, but we will find you.” pic.twitter.com/SzR0uvMeE7

— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) August 11, 2021

But after Glenn Youngkin won the governorship in Virginia, it became conventional wisdom that those in favor of masking were the elitist bad guys.

In America, if you're right-wing, you can be the bigger asshole and it's okay, because everyone -- from Fox News to The New York Times -- hates liberals.

When America's truck blockaders are in D.C., and (probably) in a few state capitals, will complaints about noise from highly educated legislative aides engender sympathy? Will local residents of color win sympathy if they complain? The people making the noise will be grizzled blue-collar white guys in plaid flannel, the same people news outlets regularly seek out in Ohio and Pennsylvania diners, so I have my doubts.

Polls might show that our truck blockaders are as unpopular as the Canadian ones. But the media will probably decide that their grievances are legitimate and that they're the victims of elite contempt. They really might be seen as the sympathetic figures -- even if they are acting like assholes.

THE MASTERS OF MANUFACTURED CONSENT CAN'T MANUFACTURE IT FOR POST-TRUMPISM

Here's USA Today's Jill Lawrence with some wishful thinking (paywalled, but available free here):

Is this the beginning of the end for Trumpism or the Republican Party?

... Today, the choice is between preserving Trumpism or preserving the Republican Party.

There is increasing evidence that they cannot co-exist. The [censure] resolution adopted by the RNC in Salt Lake City [targeting Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger] has unleashed a torrent of protest from Republicans and former Republicans including, as of Tuesday, sharp comments from Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.

They want to move on – from lies, from 2020, from Donald Trump....

More than 140 Republican leaders and ex-officials from the bipartisan Renew America Movement denounced the RNC on Monday....

The list of signers is eclectic – Never Trumpers and no-longer Trumpers, conservatives and moderates, strategists and onetime public servants, former senators and House members, and former Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey and William Weld of Massachusetts.

Wow! What an amazing group, especially those last three! Two completely out-of-step GOP moderates and a sexually disgraced former governor! With backing like that, how can this movement fail?

I almost feel sorry for Mitch McConnell and others in the GOP who'd like to be rid of Trump. Most of them have been in the party for years and are accustomed to operating on the assumption that they can sell the public on virtually anything. They sold us on two wars in the Bush years. They've sold us on the idea that tax cuts for the rich, particularly cuts in the estate tax (whoops, I mean the death tax) benefit us. They sold us on the notion that Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi are history's greatest monsters.

Fox News has been turbocharging these messages for a quarter century, but Republicans can often rely on the mainstream media to retransmit the messages as well. That's what they're counting on now.

But it's not working. It's failing because Fox is afraid or unwilling to catapult this particular line of propaganda, and the GOP base isn't buying it. What can McConnell & Co. do?

I know what they're going to do: They'll keep telling friendly journalists and pundits that the downfall of Trump is coming any day now, and those journalists and pundits are going to continue retransmitting this message, because that's what they do for establishment Republicans. It still won't work, and they'll never quite understand why.

DOES MITCH McCONNELL THINK DONALD TRUMP JUST COST HIM A SENATE SEAT?

There are two Mitch McConnell stories right now that I think are related. Here's one:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell disagreed Tuesday with the Republican National Committee’s recent censure of two GOP lawmakers, as well as its characterization of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“We all were here. We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters at his weekly news conference....

McConnell also said Tuesday that the RNC shouldn’t be “in the business of picking and choosing Republicans who ought to be supported,” adding that the national committee’s role is to back all members of the party.

“The issue is whether or not the RNC should be, sort of, singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC,” he said.

And here's the other:

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Tuesday that he will not run for the U.S. Senate, rebuffing an aggressive recruitment push from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans who saw the term-limited governor as the GOP’s best chance to win in the deep-blue state.

Hogan announced his decision during an unrelated afternoon press conference in the state Capitol, explaining that he could not finish his term as governor effectively and run for the Senate at the same time....

Hogan, a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump, had indicated he was unlikely to run all along. But given his popularity, the 65-year-old Republican governor would have instantly become a legitimate contender against Democratic incumbent Sen. Chris Van Hollen — even in a state Trump lost by 32 percentage points in 2020.

I'm not sure why Hogan didn't run. Maybe he really does want to concentrate on his day job in his last year in office. Maybe, after being a chief executive for two terms, he doesn't want to be just one of a hundred senators. Maybe he's more interested in the suicide-mission presidential run he's said to be comtemplating. (Quite a few supposedly intelligent politcal journalists believe Hogan would be a credible candidate in a Republican presidential primary, which is insane.)

But it might be that Hogan simply didn't want to run as part of a GOP field that will be expected to speak worshipfully of Trump and skeptically about American election integrity. Being the kind of Republican who doesn't talk like that hasn't hurt him in Maryland -- he has a job approval rating of 69% among the state's Republicans, though he's actually more popular among Democrats, 78% of whom approve of the job he's doing (which is why he might be able to win a Senate race in a very blue state).

McConnell doesn't care about Hogan's deviations from conservative dogma -- Mitch just wants bodies in the seats so he can be majority leader again (and eventually rubber-stamp a lot of tax cuts and judicial appointments for a Republican president). McConnell wants a majority, however he can get it. Maybe he thinks Trump is costing him.

This is McConnell's second failure to recruit a popular Northeastern governor.

The governor’s decision, while not totally unexpected, marks a second significant recruiting setback in the Republican Party’s broader fight to seize the Senate majority. In November, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, another popular, moderate Republican, stunned McConnell’s team by announcing he would seek reelection as governor instead of launching a widely expected Senate bid.

Sununu was outpolling Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan, while the remaining Republicans in the field aren't. As PBS noted, Sununu "says he doesn’t want to contribute to the paralysis over policy. He believes most Senate Republicans intend to do nothing but block the Democrats’ agenda." That makes it seem as if he didn't want to be the kind of senator McConnell wanted him to be -- McConnell will absoultely want his senators to make Biden look ineffectual in the yers leading up to 2024.

But McConnell badly wanted Hogan to run. He badly wants to win tough Senate races in New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Arizona. He might believe that Trump is the main obstacle to victory because he's the main motivator of Democratic voters who might otherwise be demoralized this year. And now McConnell won't have a chance to steal a seat in Maryland. Poor baby.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WILL PROPOSE JOE ROGAN AS A DEBATE MODERATOR IN 2024

Remember this story from last month?

The Republican National Committee (RNC) alerted the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) on Thursday that it plans to require GOP presidential nominees not to attend debates run by the commission going forward.

... Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel ... said GOP voters "have lost trust" in the commission....

It's not that the GOP candidate will refuse to debate, exactly. The candidate and the party will demand one or more debates rigged in Republicans' favor. Among other things, the party will recommend alternate debate moderators.

I'm calling it now: One of the GOP's proposed moderators will be Joe Rogan.

He'll be sold as impartial. (He said he liked Bernie Sanders!) And despite his current troubles, by then he'll have survived this moment of scrutiny.

Glenn Beck survived saying President Obama had “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” Yes, Beck apologized for that remark, but last year he took back his apology. It doesn't matter. His most recent book was a #1 Amazon bestseller. He's doing fine.

Rush Limbaugh survived three days of attacks on Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who fought for contraception access, including characterizations of her as a "slut" and a "prostitute." By the end of his life, Limbaugh was receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-President Trump; after his death Florida governor Ron DeSantis ordered flags at state buildings flown at half staff in his honor. Both Trump and DeSantis are favored to win their next elections.

So this moment will pass for Rogan. It won't do more than a trivial amount of damage to his career, if it does any.

When I suggested on Twitter that the RNC would propose Rogan as a debate moderator, I was reminded that his name has come up before.

Not even the first time they've floated it https://t.co/vaSBGDv92V

— Critical Race Condition (@mumbly_joe) February 8, 2022

The linked 2020 story from Mediaite previews most of the arguments the Republicans will make in 2024 in defense of of their debate commission boycott:

“Anyone who doesn’t follow him, Joe Rogan is a juggernaut,” McCain said. “He has 200 million uniques on his podcast a month. He signed a historic deal with Spotify. He has an absolutely huge audience. He’s controversial to some people, to other people he’s basically the everyman speaking truth to power depending on your perspective.”

McCain then expressed her disappointment with the current debate moderator choices, which include Fox News’ Chris Wallace, USA Today’s Susan Page, C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, and NBC News’ Kristen Welker, adding that Rogan would be a “game-changer.”

“These are uncomfortable and very dangerous times. I think that we should be asking both of these candidates uncomfortable questions,” she added. “The idea we’re going to have very old school journalists, no disrespect to the people who were chosen, who only get one hour and we can’t stream, is really, I think, not going to be sufficient especially in the era of Covid when we already have had so much of a back bump of not being able to get answers from both of these candidates that we need.”

That's what we'll hear in 2024, and it will sound reasonable to a lot of people. I expect New York Times and Atlantic opinion pieces defending the RNC. It really won't surprise me if Rogan gets the gig, and if Democrats meekly go along.

BUT YOU TOLD ME TRUMP'S GRIP ON THE GOP WAS SLIPPING

J.D. Vance's Ohio Senate campaign has grabbed a lot of headlines, but Politico reports that he can't close the sale.

A 98-page PowerPoint presentation produced by Tony Fabrizio, who has been polling for the pro-Vance Protect Ohio Values super PAC since last year, paints a dire picture of the candidate’s prospects. According to the slide deck, Vance has seen a “precipitous decline” in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary since last fall, when a pair of outside groups backing a rival began a multimillion-dollar TV advertising blitz using five-year-old footage of Vance attacking former President Donald Trump.

... Fabrizio, who is also a longtime Trump pollster, wrote in the presentation that Vance is “now underwater with strong Trump” supporters “and very conservative voters, groups needed to win a GOP primary.” He added that Vance’s “association as a Never Trumper has only grown since November” and that “being anti-Trump is the #1 reason voters do not like Vance.”

... Vance’s decline follows a $2 million-plus TV ad campaign from the Club for Growth and USA Freedom Fund, outside groups that are backing Vance rival Josh Mandel, which have portrayed Vance as an anti-Trump figure. The commercials, which use footage from 2016, show Vance describing himself as a “Never Trump guy” and calling Trump an “idiot,” “noxious” and “offensive,” appear to have made a dent. According to the slide deck, “anti-Trump is by far the top thing the 50% of voters who have seen an ad about Vance remember.”

Fabrizio's polling showed Vance in fifth place, with 9% of the vote (Mandel is in first, with 15%).

Vance has positioned himself as pro-Trump.

Hanging with my dad at the Trump rally! pic.twitter.com/MOKAFvJqhl

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 26, 2021

It doesn't matter. His old remarks are killing him.

But why? I keep hearing that Trump's influence on the GOP is diminishing. Smart people say that Trump could lose a primary in 2024. We're told that his endorsements of 2022 candidates haven't made those candidates automatic front-runners. (Though his record was always spotty -- remember when he endorsed Luther Strange in the 2017 Alabama Senate election and Roy Moore won the primary, then he endorsed Moore and Democrat Doug Jones won the general election?)

Trump might not have the magic touch, but crossing Trump is still the greatest imaginable heresy to Republican voters, unless Trump has given you absolution for your past sins. (See, e.g., Lindsey Graham when he ran for reelection in 2020.)

We'll see if winning the support of Marjorie Taylor Greene will partly compensate for Vance's past deviations from correct thinking. I think it won't be enough. You can poll Trump's influence in the GOP all you want -- he's still sacrosanct.

ANDREW CUOMO IS PROBABLY TOO MUCH OF AN EGOMANIAC TO DO THE DAMAGE HE COULD DO

Bloomberg's Laura Nahmias tells us today that Andrew Cuomo wants to make a comeback.

Five months after he resigned over a swirl of sexual harassment allegations, New York’s former Governor Andrew Cuomo isn’t ruling out another run for public office. He insists it’s too soon to talk about it.

... if he had to do it all over, he wouldn’t have resigned, the former governor, 64, told Bloomberg News in a Friday telephone interview, one of a handful since leaving office. “I never resigned because I said I did something wrong. I said, I’m resigning because I don’t want to be a distraction,” Cuomo said.

It gets worse. Cuomo's people have also been talking to The Wall Street Journal's Jimmy Vielkind, who informed us yesterday that Cuomo could conceivably run against the attorney general whose report ended his governorship.

Some political operatives who have spoken with Mr. Cuomo or his aides said they think he is considering a run for attorney general this year against Ms. James. The people said Mr. Cuomo, who was attorney general from 2007 to 2010, never explicitly mentioned a campaign, but they inferred his interest based on the points he made about Ms. James and questions he asked about the state’s political climate.

... Mr. Cuomo has spent more than $1 million from his campaign account since leaving office and has $16 million on hand, according to the state Board of Elections.

(The New York Times recently published a story telling us that older women, primarily from outside New York State, are making significant contributions to the deep-pocketed ex-governor's campaign fund, although "There is some disagreement over the precise size of the battalion," according to the Times story, which suggests that the story is mostly hype.)

How much support would Cuomo get if he ran? In October, Siena College polled a possible Democratic primary field in the governor's race; Cuomo finished third, trailing the current governor, Kathy Hochul, by double digits. Cuomo was three points ahead of Letitia James, however, who at the time was planning to challenge Hochul. James has now withdrawn from that race and is seeking reelection.

I think James's poor showing in the gubernatorial poll was the result of positive feelings about Hochul. I don't think most Democratic voters reject James herself -- they're happy to have her as attorney general. She has a 55% approval rating among Democrats. There is a pro-Cuomo faction, but I think it's limited in size. I hope it is, at least.

Attempted comebacks by disgraced pols haven't worked out well here in New York. Anthony Weiner ran for mayor in 2013 and finished fifth in the Democratic primary, with 5% of the vote. Eliot Spitzer ran for city comptroller that same year and came closer, but he lost the primary by 4 points.

Spitzer had come to be seen as a good-government nerd rather than an egomaniac pleading with us to like him again; if Cuomo runs for office again, he's going to come off more like Weiner than Spitzer.

But in theory he could make trouble for James. He could force her to spend a lot of money in a competitive primary. He could level allegations agauinst her that a Republican opponent could use in a general election. The state GOP is hapless and hasn't won a statewide election in twenty years, but in what could be a GOP wave year nationally, it's possible that it wouldn't take much mischief to give the Republican candidate, whoever it might be, an opening.

If Cuomo really wanted to get revenge on James, he could run in the general election as a third-party candidate. Then he'd be a spoiler. Perhaps fortunately, that's not what he seems to want. He seems to want complete vindication. He'd like to be a winner and a party favorite again. He should really just go away, but maybe failing to make a comeback would be the next-best option.