President Vance?

Those of us who have been obsessively following the political campaigns have been struck by Trump’s increasingly precipitous mental decline.  In just the past week, he has turned in truly bizarre performances. At a rally, he stopped taking questions and stood for 39 minutes silently “dancing” to music from what was evidently a playlist; in interviews, he refused to answer questions, instead going wildly off-subject, lobbing insults and demeaning journalists at the Wall Street Journal.

With less than three weeks left until November 5th, we seem to be in a race to see whether Trump’s meltdown will be too complete–and too impossible for even MAGA to ignore– before the election, or whether America will risk the unthinkable by electing him and then waking up to the reality that we’ve really elected JD Vance.

Heather Cox Richardson has focused upon that prospect, noting that–even if Trump wasn’t so obviously losing it–he’s 78 years old. The likelihood of a senile 78-year-old serving a full term is, to be charitable, low.

Trump’s issues make it likely that a second Trump presidency would really mean a J.D. Vance presidency, even if Trump nominally remains in office.

Currently an Ohio senator, J.D. Vance is just 39, and if voters put Trump into the White House, Vance will be one of the most inexperienced vice presidents in our history. He has held an elected office for just 18 months, winning the office thanks to the backing of entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who first employed Vance, then invested in his venture capital firm, and then contributed an unprecedented $15 million to his Senate campaign.

Vance and Thiel make common cause with others who are open about their determination to dismantle the federal government. Although different groups came to that mission from different places, they are sometimes collectively called a “New Right” (although at least one scholar has questioned just how new it really is). Some of the thinkers both Vance and Thiel follow, notably dystopian blogger Curtis Yarvin, argue that America’s democratic institutions have created a society that is, as James Pogue put it in a 2022 Vanity Fair article, “at once tyrannical, chaotic, and devoid of the systems of value and morality that give human life richness and meaning.” Such a system must be pulled to pieces.

Richardson described several other “tech bros” who subscribe to that world-view and support both Trump and Project 2025, which–to use academic language–“operationalizes” it. It is a worldview and a plan that JD Vance wholeheartedly endorses.

Like Thiel, Vance has spoken extensively about the need to destroy the U.S. government, but while Thiel emphasizes the potential of a technological future unencumbered by democratic baggage, Vance emphasizes what he sees as the decadence of today’s America and the need to address that decadence by purging the government of secular leaders. A 2019 convert to right-wing Catholicism, Vance said he was attracted to the religion in part because he wanted to see the Republican Party use the government to work for what he considers the common good by imposing laws that would enforce his version of morality.

Vance would continue the Right’s war on education; Richardson notes that Vance has called American universities “the enemy.” But there’s much more.

Vance wants to dismantle the secular state. He wants to replace that state with a Christian nationalism that enforces what he considers traditional values: an end to immigration—hence the lies about the legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio—and an end to LGBTQ+ rights. He supports abortion bans and the establishment of a patriarchy in which women function as wives and mothers even if it means staying in abusive marriages.

The available evidence suggests that MAGA folks are far less supportive of Vance than they are of Trump, despite (or perhaps due to) the fact that Vance is a far more articulate communicator of their Project 2025 worldview. I wonder how many of them will knowingly vote for a Vance presidency– assuming they are capable of recognizing that probability.

I also wonder how MAGA voters are processing Trump’s increasingly public deterioration. How are they explaining away the bizarre comments about sharks and the “great” Hannibal Lecter, and Trump’s own “beautiful body?” Do they worry about the fact that every economist–liberal or conservative–says Trump’s love-affair with tariffs would tank the economy, increase inflation and impose a huge tax on American families?

Or does their loyalty to Faux News and its clones protect them from even hearing about these things?

And most obsessively of all, I wonder how many of these fearful, angry, and irrational people are there–and how many will vote?

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TPM Says It All

I often refer to Talking Points Memo, one of the most credible and professional online sources of information. But the other day, the site’s Morning Memo blew me away–it was as if David Kurtz, the author, was describing my own fears and moods as we count down to November 5th.

The country is poised at a great fork in the road, with a historically significant decision to be made between democracy or authoritarianism, pluralism or cultism, the rule of law or Trumpian retribution. Yet the national political conversation, the news coverage of it, the pace of daily events doesn’t seem to be rising to the momentousness of the occasion.

It was different in the tumultuous summer of two attempted assassinations against Trump, Biden’s surprise withdrawal from the race, the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, and the political conventions. That period felt as historic as the decision voters would make in November. But since then, things have settled into a odd limbo, like we’re all waiting out the clock until Election Day, resigned that a sufficient number of our fellow citizens may in fact decide to ditch the American experiment as we know it, imperfect though it’s been, in favor of some kind of gaudy neofascist kleptocracy.

Kurtz writes that everything seems “frozen in place until a decision is made on whether democracy is the way to go.” Frozen in place is precisely the way I’ve been feeling–as though I am in suspended animation until I know whether the world I will leave to my grandchildren will be habitable and governable–whether I will leave them an admittedly imperfet society that is nevertheless working toward greater fairness, or one hurtling into another Dark Ages.

Because that concern isn’t hyperbole. That is the choice we face. As Kurtz put it,

Compiling Morning Memo each day has been harder in recent weeks than ever before, not because there is no news but because there’s little that seems to capture the present moment in full, which has forced me to think hard about why, instead of building to a crescendo in November, we seem to be slouching toward a potential second coming of Trump.

He conveyed his “unpleasant sensation that we’re walking eyes wide open into the abyss.”

It is a mark of the poor health of our democracy that democracy itself is on the ballot at all. A choice between democracy or not democracy isn’t a choice but an existential threat that doesn’t sustain or nourish civic life. The social compact has already been broken when we can’t agree that free and fair elections are a universal goal or that we abide by the results of those elections or that the rule of law should apply equally to everyone. We can’t even agree on whether an auto-coup by a sitting president is a good or a bad thing – or a thing at all.

As the essay repeatedly reminds us, Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to American democratic institutions–but the reality and immediacy of that threat tends to obscure what we have already lost–what the last 8 years have cost us, the “vibrant and essential public debates left to molder while we confront the more immediate threat; time, energy, and resources diverted from supporting the best of who we are to fend off the worst of who we can be.”

The current moment is so strange and attenuated in part because the robust public debate we’re accustomed to is shorn of any real meaning when one party to that debate doesn’t give a fuck about debating. You can’t debate democracy with people who don’t believe in democracy, or debating, or empirical evidence, or anything approximating truth or reality.

The essay mourns the multiple ways that the persistence of older journalistic constructs has operated to normalize Trump–how it has created false equivalencies, and allowed anti-democratic forces to denigrate, undermine and delegitimize democratic institutions.

What that has left us with is a curdled public discourse in which the pro-democracy side is mostly yelling at each other about what more can be done to stop Trump; holding up scorecards like figure skating judges on the effectiveness of this or that anti-Trump strategy; assessing the purity of each other’s anti-Trumpism; and railing against democratic institutions like the media for wilting in our hour of greatest need. Not all of those are bad impulses, and to be clear they are not the cause but rather a symptom of our current predicament. It’s what happens when the “other side” rejects democracy as a means of resolving these differences. It’s like having a public debate against an abandoned lectern.

I’m holding my breath…

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The Politics Of Lying

When I was teaching, Free Speech discussions would frequently evoke a question from students appalled by the massive amounts of disinformation enabled by the Internet and social media: “Can’t we at least outlaw lying?” I would have to explain that courts would have great difficulty determining the difference between what is a lie and what is a mistake, etc. The practical problems of such an effort would be insurmountable.

More to the point, the First Amendment rests on reliance upon the “marketplace of ideas.” Bad ideas and lies are to be countered by better ideas and facts. It is a theory that depends upon the participation of We the People.

It isn’t working very well right now, and I see no simple solutions. Neither does Bill Adair, who founded Politifact. In a recent essay for the Atlantic, he explored the failure of that fact-checking site to combat the firehose of propaganda and lies that  distort our political lives.

For American politicians, this is a golden age of lying. Social media allows them to spread mendacity with speed and efficiency, while supporters amplify any falsehood that serves their cause. When I launched PolitiFact in 2007, I thought we were going to raise the cost of lying. I didn’t expect to change people’s votes just by calling out candidates, but I was hopeful that our journalism would at least nudge them to be more truthful.

I was wrong. More than 15 years of fact-checking has done little or nothing to stem the flow of lies. I underestimated the strength of the partisan media on both sides, particularly conservative outlets, which relentlessly smeared our work. (A typical insult: “The fact-checkers are basically just a P.R. arm of the Democrats at this point.”) PolitiFact and other media organizations published thousands of checks, but as time went on, Republican representatives and voters alike ignored our journalism more and more, or dismissed it. Democrats sometimes did too, of course, but they were more often mindful of our work and occasionally issued corrections when they were caught in a falsehood.

After exploring some theories about why politicians lie–the calculus that they apparently apply to determine the ratio of risk to reward– Adair notes that today’s extreme political polarization encourages them to do little else.

Now that many politicians speak primarily to their supporters, lying has become both less dangerous and more rewarding. “They gain political favor or, ultimately, they gain election,” said Mike McCurry, who served as White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. As former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey told me, “It’s human nature to want to get a standing ovation.” Lies also provide easy ammunition for attacking opponents—no opposition research required. They “take points off the board for other candidates,” said Damon Circosta, a Democrat who recently served as the chair of North Carolina’s Board of Elections.

Adair notes that partisan media, especially on the right, fosters lying by degrading our shared sense of what’s real. These outlets expect politicians to repeat favored falsehoods as the price of admission. If you’re not willing to participate in the twisting of facts, you simply won’t get to speak to the echo chamber.

Tim Miller, a former Republican operative who left the party in 2020, pointed out that gerrymandering, particularly in red states, has made it so “most of the voters in your district are getting their information from Fox, conservative talk radio … and so you just have this whole bubble of protection around your lies in a way that wouldn’t have been true before, 15 years ago.”

Adair uses Mike Pence as an example of the way today’s political incentives change people. They had been neighbors when Pence was in Congress, and Adair saw him then as “a typical politician who would occasionally shade the truth.” When he was Indiana governor, Adair watched his lies grow. “By the time he became Donald Trump’s vice president, he was almost unrecognizable to me.”

The question, of course, is “what can we do?” Here are Adair’s closing paragraphs:

If politicians lie because they believe they’ll score more points than they’ll lose, we have to change the calculus. Tech and media companies need to create incentives for truth-telling and deterrents for lying. Platforms of all kinds could charge higher ad rates to candidates who have the worst records among fact-checkers. Television networks could take away candidates’ talking time during debates if they’re caught lying.

But these reforms will demand more than just benign corporate intervention. They’ll need broad, sustained public support. Voters may not be willing to place truthfulness over partisan preference in every case. But more will have to start caring about lies, even when their candidate is the culprit.

Amen.

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Will Texas Corruption Spread?

Recently, the New York Times ran an article focused on politics in Texas. It began by describing a legislative primary battle between Republicans, and a tactic that has become prevalent nationally–the accusation that the incumbent was a “RINO,” or a Republican in name only.

The article then reported on the two men behind what has become an effective and organized effort to drive non-theocratic members out of the GOP, and to ensure that Texas is controlled by the Christian Nationalist Right.

Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks are billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. They are also Christian pastors.

Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think-tanks, media organizations, political-action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the Statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. “They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,” he says. “You kiss the ring or you’re out.”

These men aren’t clones of the Koch brothers and the other conservative billionaires who want to slash regulations and taxes, although they certainly want to do those things. As the article documents, their endgame is far more radical: they intend to steer government toward their version of Christian rule. 

Texas, which has few limits on campaign spending, is home to a formidable army of donors. Lately Dunn has outspent them all. Since 2000, he and his wife have given more than $29 million to candidates and PACs in Texas. Wilks and his wife, who have donated to many of the same PACs as Dunn, have given $16 million. Last year, Dunn and his associated entities provided two thirds of the donations to the state Republican Party.

The duo’s ambitions extend beyond Texas. They’ve poured millions into “dark money” groups, which do not have to disclose contributors; conservative-media juggernauts (Wilks provided $4.7 million in seed capital to The Daily Wire, which hosts “The Ben Shapiro Show”); and federal races. Dunn’s $5 million gift to the Make America Great Again super PAC in December made him one of Donald Trump’s top supporters this election season, and he has quietly begun to invest in efforts to influence a possible second Trump administration, including several linked to Project 2025.

Dunn and Wilks refuse to describe themselves as Christian Nationalists, a label that Dunn rejects as a “made-up label that conflicts with biblical teaching.” But their rhetoric places them firmly within that movement.

Like most Christian Nationalists, the two men speak about protecting Judeo-Christian values and promoting a biblical worldview. These vague expressions often serve as a shorthand for the movement’s central mythology: that America, founded as a Christian nation, has lost touch with its religious heritage, which must now be reclaimed.

A scholar at Rice University who has reviewed the speeches and donations of Dunn and Wilks, believes the two men to be thoroughgoing Dominionists. The article quotes a Republican activist who knows them personally, and agrees:

“They want to get Christians in office to change the ordinances, laws, rules and regulations to fit the Bible,” he told me. According to Texas Monthly, Dunn once told Joe Straus, the first Jewish speaker of the Texas House since statehood, that only Christians should hold leadership positions. (Dunn has denied the remark.)

The two pastors differ on certain points of doctrine — Wilks doesn’t celebrate Christmas, which he considers a “pagan holiday” — but they share a vision of a radically transformed America. And thanks to their money, that vision is spreading beyond Texas.

Lawmakers they’ve funded have introduced bills linked to Project Blitz, a coalition of Rightwing groups that want to advance the role of (their version of) Christianity in public life. One bill requires educators to hang posters of the Ten Commandments  in the classroom.” Another requires schools to display “In God We Trust” placards.

After Texas passed a law allowing the work of licensed mental-health counselors in public schools to be done by unlicensed chaplains — representatives of “God in government,” one of the bill’s sponsors called them — a dozen other states introduced similar bills.

The lengthy article has much more, and it’s hair-raising. Worse, recent research tells us that more than half of Republicans support Christian Nationalist beliefs.

Unless we want to inhabit a theocracy, large numbers of Americans need to vote Blue.

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The Scorecard

There’s a standard sentence in investment prospectuses: past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

That is obviously a fair point when you are considering the purchase of stock; it’s far less persuasive when you are casting a vote. In fact, when one candidate is an incumbent, checking past performance is usually an excellent guide to the positions that candidate will take in the future.

Recently, an article in The Indiana Citizen highlighted a Common Cause scorecard on an element of past performance of Indiana’s Congressional delegation–their votes to protect the country’s democratic institutions.

The fifth biennial scorecard compiled by Common Cause rated seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. representatives and two U.S. senators as doing little to preserve democracy during the 118th Congress.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog, focused on 10 democracy-related bills in the U.S. Senate and 13 in the U.S. House, covering such topics as voting rights, election security, ballot access and ethics reform for the U.S. Supreme Court when rating the federal lawmakers in its 2024 Democracy Scorecard. Then the organization examined the record of every congressional member to determine whether he or she took a “pro-democracy” stance on these issues.

Reps. Frank Mrvan and Andre Carson, Democrats representing  the 1st and 7th congressional districts, respectively, were the only members in Indiana’s congressional delegation who achieved near-perfect scores. Carson took a pro-democracy position on 12 of the 13 bills while Mrvan took a pro-democracy position on 11 of the 13 bills, according to the Common Cause scorecard.

Unsurprisingly, three Hoosier Republicans –- Sens. Mike Braun and Todd Young and Fifth District Rep. Victoria Spartz– rated a zero. Braun is currently running for Governor, and Spartz–despite indicating earlier that she didn’t intend to run again– is once again a candidate for the 5th district seat.

The other six members of Indiana’s congressional delegation – all of whom are also Republicans – received low scores, although not zeros. Reps. Rudy Yakym, of Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, Jim Banks, of the 3rd District, James Baird, of the 4th District, Greg Pence, of the 6th District and Erin Houchin, of the 9th District took pro-democracy stances on just one of the 13 bills. Retiring Rep. Larry Bucshson, of the 8th Congressional District, earned a score of 2 out of 13.

The article quoted Aaron Dusso, chair of the Department of Political Science at IU-Indianapolis, and his reference to the 2018 book, “How Democracies Die.” That book was published in 2018 by Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and it was widely reviewed and discussed. It focused on measures of democratic health, and especially on four major threats to democracy– rejection of democratic rules; denial of political opponents’ legitimacy; tolerance of political violence; and willingness to curtail freedoms, particularly of the press. Since 2016, MAGA Republicans have increased their support for all four, ramping up efforts at vote suppression and gerrymandering, supporting Trump’s “big lie while making phony claims about non-citizens voting and his threats to jail political opponents, telling pollsters that violence “may be necessary” and unremittingly attacking the mainstream media.

Elected GOP officials aren’t doing the people’s work, either.

The scorecard is rating the members of the 118th Congress, which Common Cause called “one of the most dysfunctional in American history.” Through Aug. 15, 2024, just 78 standalone bills – or 0.5% of all the bills introduced in the 118th Congress – have become law, according to Common Cause. This compares to the 116th and 117th Congresses, in which 2% of the bills introduced became law and the 114th and the 115th Congresses in which 3% of the bills passed to the president’s desk.

In fact, Common Cause asserted that in its first year, the 118th Congress turned in the least-productive first year performance of any Congress in nearly a century.

Dusso pointed out that politicians typically act and vote in ways they think their constituents want. When lawmakers continue getting elected, they are justified in thinking that they are fulfilling voters’ wishes.

“It’s probably our fault that this is what’s happening,” Dusso said. “We’re willing to tolerate these types of things and we continue to elect individuals and we continue to elect a Congress that isn’t able to pass bills in any real serious way. And, that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.”

I know Aaron Dusso to be a brilliant scholar, but I’m hopeful that his last sentence is wrong–that this will be the year when We the People begin a long-overdue change, the year we eject incumbents who have failed to respect either the Constitution or the democratic process.

Mike Braun and Jim Banks are clearly unworthy of the promotions they seek, and the others who have failed to protect American democracy should not be returned to Congress to do more damage.

We can do better.

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