The Anti-Anti-DePape Right
And, about that yuge DHS "leak"
“In our bones,, we know democracy is at risk….”
"As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America, for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state, who won’t commit, they will not commit to accepting the results of the elections that they’re running in.
“This is the path to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it’s un-American."— President Joe Biden, November 2, 2022
It’s too late to have much of an impact on next week’s midterm shellacking, but it felt like it needed to be said. Via the Wapo:
Biden spoke days after an assailant armed with a hammer broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and, according to police and prosecutors, bludgeoned her 82-year-old husband, Paul. Biden opened by addressing the gruesome early Friday morning assault.
“We must, with one overwhelming unified voice, speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America, whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans,” he said. “No place, period. No place, ever.”
Happy Thursday.
Biden’s remarks also come as we continue to see the rise of what Jonathan Chait is calling the “anti-anti-DePape” right.
The conservative response to a maniac attempting to abduct and torture Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been a bracing spectacle. Just as many conservatives had insisted January 6 was the work of antifa provocateurs, or perhaps an FBI setup, so too did they claim David DePape was not a right-winger at all. Figures ranging from Elon Musk to Ted Cruz to Jesse Watters to Donald Trump had questions, so many questions. “Wow, it’s — weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks …” mused the former president. “The glass it seems was broken from the inside to the out so it wasn’t a break in, it was a break out.”
As Chait notes, all of this obfuscation serves two purposes; (1) “it avoids a disruption in the right’s meta-narrative of victimization” in which “ innocent conservatives are relentlessly persecuted by an all-powerful progressive cabal,” and (2) “deflecting this reality allows them to avoid having to confront a faction within their own coalition. If they conceded DePape was on the political right, they would concede that ideas like Trump’s stolen-election lie or QAnon contained at least the potential to inspire violence and criminality. Their denial grew out of an impulse to close ranks.”
Read the whole thing, but this part is particularly on target:
And even if DePape did it, the key thing is to avoid conceding he was motivated by shared resentments shared by their party. “The left’s insistence that every conservative personally ‘condemn’ the actions of the mentally ill man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul has nothing to do with lowering the rhetorical temperature or averting violence, and everything to do with trying to compel Republicans to take responsibility for the incident,” argues David Harsanyi, in a column that does not pause to condemn the attack or acknowledge that many Republicans are joking about the incident or denying it occurred. The attack on Pelosi, like the January 6 invasion, becomes fundamentally another episode of conservatives suffering persecution.
The remorseless pattern of the Trump era is that every right-wing impulse that begins as resentment of the critics of some element of their movement ultimately evolves into direct support. The anti-anti-DePape right is clearing the way for something even more sinister.
Speaking of the anti-anti-DePape right:
Another viewpoint…
…is always welcome, right? Josh Barro is pushing back on the “democracy is on the ballot narrative.” In his newsletter, Barro writes:
This is a message of primary interest to the most core voters in the Democratic Party coalition. They are sure to vote for Democrats already — in fact, many of them have already voted. The idea that telling voters about January 6 one more time would help anything is just crazy.
But the other problem is that the message makes no sense on its face.
When Democrats talk about “democracy,” they’re talking about the importance of institutions that ensure the voters get a say among multiple choices and the one they most prefer gets to rule. But they are also saying voters do not get to do that in this election. The message is that there is only one party contesting this election that is committed to democracy — the Democrats — and therefore only one real choice available. If voters reject Democrats’ agenda or their record on issues including inflation, crime, and immigration (or abortion, for that matter), they have no recourse at the ballot box — they simply must vote for Democrats anyway, at least until such time as the Republican Party is run by the likes of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
This amounts to telling voters that they have already lost their democracy.
**
And in his excellent new newsletter over at the Dispatch, Nick Catoggio [formerly known as Allahpundit] wonders why anyone is shocked that this midterm election is turning out… like most other midterm elections?
So why does that feel surprising?
It’s because of the “Dobbs mirage,” of course. For two months, a backlash on the left to the end of Roe v. Wade gave liberals hope that this might be a black-swan election a la 2002. Just as 9/11 warped political gravity and propelled George W. Bush’s party to overperform in a midterm they were expected to lose, pro-choice fury at the end of constitutional abortion rights would erode the GOP’s advantages on inflation and crime. Democrats surged on the generic ballot after Dobbs was handed down and proved more competitive in special elections this summer than anyone expected, a hint that the black-swan theory would bear out. We were headed toward an unexpectedly suspenseful finish to the midterms in which any outcome seemed possible. Exciting!
Then fall arrived, late deciders began making up their minds, political gravity reasserted itself, and now we’re headed for a boring ol’ 30-seat pick-up by the out-party again. Anticlimactic.
Discuss amongst yourselves…
Quick programming note: On today’s Bulwark podcast, I talk with The Atlantic’s Bart Gellman about the dead certainty that a GOP-controlled Congress will impeach Joe Biden.
Sometime next year, after an interval of performative investigations, Republicans in the House are going to impeach Joe Biden. This may not be their present plan, but they will work themselves up to it by degrees. The pressure from the MAGA base will build. A triggering event will burst all restraints. Eventually, Republicans will leave themselves little choice.
We’ll post it later today.
**
Meanwhile: Join us!
Special guest Dave Weigel joins Sarah, Mona, and Tim for this edition of Thursday Night Bulwark. The show kicks off at 8:00 p.m. ET.
Dave recently joined Semafor, a new media startup, where he’ll write the Americana newsletter—described as the definitive chronicle of America’s fast-changing political landscape.
Join fellow members in the live chat and leave a question for our panel.
If you can’t make the live show, we’ll post the video and audio replay here after the show ends.
New to Bulwark+? Learn about Thursday Night Bulwark here.
About that big DHS leak
Remember the yuge story about the “leaks” that exposed a plot between the feds and Big tech to suppress information? There was lots of heavy-breathing on the right after the Intercept report.
But… the folks at Techdirt have committed a flagrant act of journalism, and their conclusion? “Bullshit Reporting: The Intercept’s Story About Government Policing Disinfo Is Absolute Garbage.”
Do not believe everything you read. Even if it comes from more “respectable” publications. The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that “leaked” documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the “smoking gun” of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.
The only problem? It shows nothing of the sort.
The article is garbage. It not only misreads things, it is confused about what the documents the reporters have actually say, and presents widely available, widely known things as if they were secret and hidden when they were not.
The entire article is a complete nothingburger, and is fueling a new round of lies and nonsense from people who find it useful to misrepresent reality. If the Intercept had any credibility at all it would retract the article and examine whatever processes failed in leading to the article getting published.
Let’s dig in…
Quick Hits
1. Trump lawyers saw Justice Thomas as 'only chance' to stop 2020 election certification
Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, according to emails newly disclosed to congressional investigators.
“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020, email to Trump’s legal team. Chesebro contended that Thomas would be “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.”
2. Republicans’ Irresponsibility in Playing Political Games with the Debt Ceiling
Real budgetary reforms are needed, writes James Capretta. A debt-limit fight is the wrong way to advance those reforms.
In a move that fits with the party’s over-the-top combativeness of recent years, Republican leaders have signaled plans for a debt-limit showdown with President Biden. They believe that, if the midterm election flips control of the House, Senate, or both to the GOP, they can extract budgetary concessions by withholding a needed increase in the government’s borrowing allowance in the second half of 2023. But recklessly manufacturing such a crisis brings alarming economic risks, and the brinkmanship will further inflame the tribalism that is already making orderly democratic governance a serious challenge.
3. Now Is the Time to Solve the Iran Problem
Shay Khatiri in today’s Bulwark:
All the debates over the last decade about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program have obscured the fact that we have other issues with the regime beyond its nukes. And now that a democratic revolt is underway in Iran, the Biden administration is letting the opportunity to help the country democratize slip through its grasp. U.S. attempts to support the protesters as they seek to end more than four decades of theocratic despotism have been fitful, few, and far between.
Cheap Shots
Elon Musk. Real Man of Marketing Genius.
I'm sorry, but whoever thinks the reaction against Dobbs was only a mirage and went away just because DeSantis bussed some immigrants to Martha's Vineyard is . . . frankly, delusional.
The only ones distracted by the DeSantis stunt and had their attention pulled away from just how badly Dobbs is going to hurt Republicans are people with punditbrain and journalists who can't resist chasing the dragon of rightwing disinformation.
Dobbs is coming.
I think saying the argument “Vote Democrat or lose democracy” means democracy is already lost is a gross oversimplification. Really, it’s vote Democrat until the other guys decide they will commit to democracy. One is temporary; the other is permanent.