We Happy Few
We Happy Few
Plus: Why are Trump staffers still beating up on Ron DeSantis?
Tomorrow is a notable day: the date of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, and the two-year anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Happy Friday.
The Friends We Make
We had a Bulwark all-staff meeting yesterday. In person.
That doesn’t happen so often. In this age of text and email and Slack and Zoom, there’s not much need to be physically present in one place.
And in any case, we live scattered all over the United States. And Canada—a fine nation whose destiny is surely to become a part of the United States (by mutual agreement on both sides, of course).
But this isn’t a missive about geopolitics. It’s about us. Not “us” as in the Bulwark staff. But rather “us” as in the broader Bulwark community.
Or indeed “us” as in the even wider Bulwark-adjacent community—fellow democrats (with a little “d”), liberals (with a little “l”), and conservatives (with a little “c’), some of whom may not have even heard of The Bulwark, but who believe in freedom and democracy and the American experiment.
As we sat in the conference room discussing our growing roster of articles and podcasts and videos, I thought back to the founding of The Bulwark, on a bootstrap out of the ashes of The Weekly Standard just over five years ago.
And then I thought about a piece that we published on October 15, 2020. It arrived unbidden from James Carville, whom I’d first met in 1992 when we were on the opposite sides of that presidential campaign (spoiler alert: his side won), and whom I’ve known since as a friend and perhaps the best strategist for a party whose candidates and policies I’d mostly opposed for three decades.
But we were now on the same side.
The piece was headlined, “A Crusade for Something Noble: Americans are coming together to save our Republic. And it means something.”
It was a tribute to all who, coming from different political places and personal backgrounds, were working together for freedom and democracy.
Here’s a taste (but do read the whole thing, as they say):
I know it’s difficult for so many of us to feel hope in this moment, which seems so incomprehensibly dark . . . [But] I see a light ahead . . . A unified and electrified coalition of Americans, coming together like our country did in World War II, standing united to send a message that will be heard around the world to all those who look with expectant hope to the America that led the crusade more than half a century ago . . .
What this moment has done for all of us . . . is that it has given us . . . a sense of common purpose. Common purpose of which we will be able to recall forever: that when our country and our Republic were on the brink of collapse, when our fellow Americans needed us, we took a blow torch to our past differences, our former conflicts and our old rivalries, and we fought together.
I can say with certainty that in all my years, joining in this crusade to take America back from the brink of destruction is the greatest thing I have ever been a part of in my life.
I remember how moved I was when James’s piece showed up in our inbox. And it came to mind at yesterday’s staff meeting because its message is as true today as it was three-and-a-half years ago.
At the meeting, several of us remarked that they were looking forward to a time when we could be less preoccupied by the moment we’re in, by the struggle in which we’re engaged. It can all get a little exhausting. A return to some kind of normalcy would be nice.
But as we said to each other: Beware! The time for that is not yet!
And that’s fine. Though we may occasionally be weary warriors, we’re happy warriors. Our spirits are high. The fight’s a good one. It’s a fight worth fighting. And it has the important added benefit of being a fight in which you make good friends along the way.
—William Kristol
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Back on the MAGA Hitlist: Ron DeSantis
Donald Trump is going up against just one opponent, Nikki Haley, in tomorrow’s South Carolina primary. But some of his top advisers spent a chunk of their week savaging a throwback foe: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Here was senior advisor Jason Miller: “We looked past Rob’s [sic] half-hearted endorsement and the bullshit trip to South Carolina to try to stay relevant, but if his popping off continues, Thor’s hammer will return.”
Here was Trump spokesman Steven Cheung: “Ron tucked his tail between his legs and he should have scurried off into the shadows of obscurity. Now that he’s dipped his high-heeled toes back in the water, he might just find out our shovel can dig a lot deeper.”
And here was senior advisor Chris LaCivita: “Chicken fingers and pudding cups is what you will be remembered for you sad little man.”
It was a remarkable amount of ire to direct at a guy who dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump more than a month ago—not to mention one who remains hugely popular with Republican base voters.
What did DeSantis do to earn this displeasure? He told supporters on a Wednesday call that he wouldn’t be interested in serving as Trump’s vice president, one day after Trump had confirmed to Fox News the Florida governor was on his shortlist for the job. More than that, he suggested Trump might make his choice based on “identity politics.”
“I would want somebody that, if something happened, the people that voted us in would have been pleased to know that they’re going to continue the mission,” DeSantis said. “I’m not sure that those are going to necessarily be the criteria that Donald Trump uses . . . I have heard that they’re looking more in identity politics. I think that’s a mistake.”
What DeSantis meant wasn’t totally clear—although it’s perhaps notable he was the only white guy on the shortlist Trump floated Tuesday, which also included Sen. Tim Scott, Rep. Byron Donalds, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Gov. Kristi Noem, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
But it’s safe to say Team Trump’s objections had less to do with DeSantis’s apparent “won’t someone think of the whites” posture and more to do with his willingness to offer public criticisms of the frontrunner’s decisionmaking at all. It’s a reminder, if you needed another one, that there’s only one criterion for being a member of the MAGA movement in good standing: a perpetual willingness to kiss the ring.
Catching up . . .
Biden announces more than 500 new sanctions on Russia after Navalny’s death: Politico
Trump frames election as battle against ‘wicked’ system bent on attacking Christians: New York Times
Haley performs better against Biden than Trump, polls show: NBC News
More clinics in Alabama stop IVF treatments after court ruling: NBC News
Trump wants to seem moderate on abortion. His would-be advisers have other ideas: The Atlantic
Florida surgeon general defies science as school tries to contain measles outbreak: Washington Post
ICYMI: George Conway Explains Why The House GOP are Lowlifes
George and Sarah discuss the Georgia case against Trump, Trump’s $400 million+ judgment, and the FBI informant who lied about Hunter Biden.
Listen to the podcast / Watch on YouTube / Ad-free for B+ members
Quick Hits
1. Whistling Past the Impeachment Graveyard
Don’t miss Joe Perticone on the House GOP’s heroic attempts to pretend the disintegration of Alexander Smirnov’s accusations don’t affect the strength of their impeachment case:
Last week, the Justice Department charged an informant named Alexander Smirnov with lying to the FBI when he told them, among other things, that Joe Biden had sought bribes from Ukrainian officials while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president. The core argument underwriting the GOP probe collapsed the moment Smirnov was taken into custody at a Las Vegas airport last week.
But none of this stopped Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the Oversight Committee chairman, or Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the other two chairmen in the probe, from continuing the spin.
Republicans running the inquiry quietly deleted references to Smirnov from interview request letters in their probe while insisting nothing has changed about their case.
2. The New American Nihilism
Some grim reading from the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson on Americans’ apparently unslakable thirst for political chaos:
Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why people share conspiracy theories on the Internet. He and other researchers designed a study that involved showing American participants blatantly false stories about Democratic and Republican politicians, such as Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. The subjects were asked: Would you share these stories online?
The results seemed to defy the logic of modern politics or polarization. “There were many people who seemed willing to share any conspiracy theory, regardless of the party it hurt,” Petersen told me. These participants didn’t seem like stable partisans of the left or right. They weren’t even negative partisans, who hated one side without feeling allegiance to the other. Above all, they seemed drawn to stories that undermined trust in every system of power.
Petersen felt as though he’d tapped a new vein of nihilism in modern politics—a desire to rip down the Elites, whatever that might mean. He wanted to know more about what these people were thinking.
Cheap Shots
I second Stephen McErlain's comments. Also, very interesting to read about the start of Bulwark. I was introduced to many of your contributors through Nicole Wallace's TV program - people that I would have ordinarily missed. I was especially touched by your comments on forgetting past differences and remaining focused on the fight for democracy. It is WWII time reframed without our little red wagons full of scrap metal and folded newspapers and card board. I adore the insightfulness of James Carville.
I’m a big fan of the Bulwark, but I can’t let Bill’s obiter dicta about Canada pass without comment. Americans, who speculate on eventual union with Canada typically demonstrate ignorance about Canada’s political arrangements and how they would affect any discussion about political union,, or at a minimum, a failure to think through what would actually be involved in any such discussions.
First, and most importantly, each of Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories would insist on full statehood as a minimum condition of any union. This would raise several political problems, including the fact that the populations of the three territories (not to mention the province of Prince Edward Island) are so small that they make sparsely populated states like Montana look like southern California by comparison. But most importantly, from a US point of view, despite the occasional conservative leanings of almost all Canadian provinces, the general political culture of the country is liberal enough that 8 of the 10 provinces and all of the territories would lean reliably Democratic. Thus, assuming all provinces and territories were granted full statehood, the political makeup of the US Senate would be drastically altered by Canadian union, probably making Democratic control of the Senate a certainty for decades to come. Can anyone really imagine any red state agreeing to an arrangement that would lead to such an outcome?
Of course I haven’t mentioned the real elephant in the room, which would be the insistence on official bilingualism by Quebec, and maybe also Manitoba and Ontario. It is simply beyond the realm of conceivability that a workable coalition could be built in the present-day United States to permit French to be an official language anywhere in the country, let alone nationwide.
(This assumes that Quebec would have the slightest interest in union with the US in the first place, which is highly unlikely given that the overriding goal of the entire political class in Quebec is the protection of the French language and culture. The far more likely outcome of any discussions of union between the US and Canada would be the realization of the longtime dream of many Quebec nationalists, namely the establishment of Quebec as an independent state. I won’t comment on whether that would be a good or bad thing, but it should simply be noted that the US would probably be quite leery of any process that led to the establishment of a brand-new state in North America the international loyalties of which might be unpredictable; remember former premier Jacques Parizeau’s confidence that the first thing that would happen after a successful independence referendum would be France’s recognition of Quebec sovereignty.)
Then there’s Canada‘s ongoing (if often halfhearted) commitment to establishing much greater political autonomy for First Nations. I don’t know enough about how the US has dealt with such issues, but my guess is that the US approach has been different enough that trying to coordinate the two approaches in a political union would be extremely difficult.
All of which to say that while it’s amusing to speculate about all this, it’s more likely that the US itself will split into two or three quasi-autonomous nations before the currently existing US is ever in a position to think contemplate union with Canada.