The Cycle- On Substack

Political scientists of the future will no doubt burn a lot of digital ink trying to identify where things went off the rails in 21st century America.

Like the first shot of the Civil War, the near-collapse of our democracy in 2020 and 2021 stand out as pinnacle moments in what is, at least for now, a “cold” Civil War.

With the rule of law under severe strain from the full-frontal assault against it by President Trump and his Republican Party peers, the GOP is increasingly using control of government at the state level to codify their anti-democratic efforts.

As my friends Cornell Belcher, Kurt Bardella, and I tried to make as clear, a country in which one of its two ruling parties is changing laws to consolidate power and to undermine democracy’s most sacred tenet, free and fair elections, we have moved way beyond a Susan Collin’s “very concerned” and into

So, to say that author Brynn Tannehill’s in her new book American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy is timely is an understatement. Tannehill adopts a “watch what they do, not [just] what they say” approach to her meticulously researched book to answer THE core question of our time: is the modern Republican Party developing into an Americanized version of german or Italian fascism?

The fascism label may sound like nothing more than the same type of rhetorical red meat thrown about by the Right accusing Democrats of “socialism.” But two things make contemporaneous concerns about the Right adopting fascism distinct and very different than the Right’s accusations of socialism on the Left.

The first is the GOP, unlike the obscure and powerless socialists of the far left, is now controlled by its radical factions. Extremists now hold critical party leadership positions at both the state and federal level. The second distinction is the GOP is already using unilateral control in states like Texas, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, to redefine government- allowing governors to usurp local authority implementing legislation to undermine free and fair elections.

Al Gore called impending climate change from man-made activities an “inconvenient truth” in his seminal lecture of the same name, presented as a documentary in the early 2000s. The collapse of America’s conservative party into fascism is our second “inconvenient truth.” Gore’s clarion call about climate change failed to provoke action.

Will we make that mistake twice?

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Friends,

I’m sorry about the hiatus for the pod so many of you have graciously endured while I launched Strike Pac, prepped my house for my exodus back out West, and dealt with my appendix trying to murder me. That so many of you suffered in silence was not lost on me, and is massively appreciated. Y’all are some really good humans!

Also, before I get into the summary of the pod, I am now at a place where I can start to incorporate some of Strike Pac’s work into the paid subscriber only content/opportunities and start paying you guys back for all of your support (and patience).

I happen to owe my paid subscriber crew a special preview opportunity. SO, I am going to host a paid-subscribers sneak preview at our next ad that includes a panel discussion with some of my Strike PAC team mates. Watch for that in your inbox in the coming days.

Now, with no further ado, I hope you enjoy my fiery conversation with the great Kurt Anderson, a multiple New York Times bestseller and author of Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America.

As I tell Kurt in our conversation, his book pulls together two of the most important elements that drive my work. The first is that nothing that happened to move our economy from post-New Deal Keynesian economics to a redux of Gilded Age economics was accidental. The GOP came to dominate economic policy, regulatory policies, and other core policy areas because they created short and long term strategic plans created by smart people to do so. AND they executed them.

I want to highlight that because that is, of course, lies at the heart of what I am trying to build for Democrats. One of the largest disadvantages Democrats face in the polarized era is the belief that there is some inherent inability for Democrats to centralize their strategy to compete with the GOP. Not only can we, we must!

The second point ties closely with my economic branding strategies. Kurt’s work in Evil Geniuses clearly explains how and why the Republican Party’s “Reagan Revolution” ended up decimating the American middle class, killing social mobility, strangled Johnson’s Great Society in infancy, and yielded American infrastructure and research superiority to pay for tax cuts for their billionaire donors.

My job is to distill the above indictment of the Republican Party’s failed economic policies into hard-hitting, emotive ads and hopefully, get all Democratic candidates hammering this message. Your job is to listen to this pod & read Kurt’s book.

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When UC-San Diego political science Associate Professor Seth Hill and his co-authors dropped their latest article in the journal Science Advances, the title immediately caught my eye.

That title was “Not by turnout alone: Measuring the sources of electoral change, 2012 to 2016.” Now, having spent the better part of 2 years arguing with people about the role of turnout on electoral outcomes, my immediate thought was, “why are they burying the lead here?”

That’s because from my perspective, the novel finding is turnout does, in fact impact election outcomes. That a small portion of Independents, largely the 5%-10% of the electorate we call “pure” Independents switch from one party’s candidates to the other party’s candidates, often cycle-to-cycle, is what I consider the status quo.

But demonstrating turnout rates of various demographic groups within each party’s coalition (what the authors call “composition” explains at least a portion of the variance in party electoral performance cycle-to-cycle? Let’s just say that before that became the new conventional wisdom, it helped make me a pariah on Election Twitter after I waded into an ongoing “this not that” debate I was previously blissfully unaware of.

Its not just that the authors of this analysis deploy a really artful research design to tease out “conversion” versus “composition” effects on vote outcomes in the 2012 and 2016 cycles. That alone makes this research some of the most consequential political behavior work to be released in the last few years, at least in my biased opinion.

What really makes this analysis interesting is that the authors demonstrate party asymmetry in “conversion” versus “composition” impact. Republican vote share is more influenced by “conversion,” while Democratic vote share is more heavily influenced by “composition.”

But wait, that’s not all! The authors also discover that a state’s status as a “realigning” versus “dealigning” state also matters. In states moving towards competition for Democrats such as Georgia, the composition effect is more powerful. But in states moving away from competition, like in the Midwest, conversion is more powerful.

And that’s with just 2012 and 2016 data before turnout really juiced! This led me to ask Seth Hill, the guest on this episode’s pod about what he expects the 2020 data to look like. And a whole lot more interesting questions that you definitely don’t want to miss!

Rachel

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In his very first podcast, Professor Emeritus at University of California, San Diego and prolific political scientist Gary Jacobson previews the 2020 updates to his longitudinal research on key voting behaviors of the American electorate.

If you’re wondering what it means to say America’s politics have “nationalized” Jacobson’s research has you covered.

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Greetings cool cats & kittens,

Today I’m releasing my fascinating conversation with Chris Bail, who runs The Polarization Lab at Duke University. Chris has a new book out: Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing which presents analysis from a major study he and his colleagues in the lab conducted on polarization and social media.

The study attempts to answer some of the most important questions we have about the role of social media as one of many mechanisms contributing to our polarization and hyperpartisanship. Using what we political scientists call a “mixed methods” approach, the study utilizes data and in-depth interviews to uncover a surprising finding- one that you might find counterintuitive.

What is it? If I tell you here, you’ll miss out on our amazing conversation!

Rachel

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Friends,

I hope you’ll listen to my conversation with fellow political scientist and political behavior expert David Moscrop. In addition to his impressive scholarly research, Dr. Moscrop has also written a very accessible book that explains why humans are poorly-suited for democracy.

Titled Too Dumb For Democracy? Why we make bad political decisions and how we can better ones documents the limits of human decision-making, noting in particular how decision-making deficiencies are particularly pronounced in the political context which us political scientists understand as perpetual contests for power and resources.

Now, because David is in Canada I used this opportunity to not only highlight this insightful and important research into our mental and psychological limits for fair, equitable, and healthy self-governance, but also to emphasize how determinative a country’s institutional design, rules, and regulations are for conditioning human democratic behavior.

In places like Canada, where the political institutional structures, rules, and regulations rein in ideology, hyperpartisanship, and “tribalism” democracy is far healthier.

Our political institutional structures, rules, and regulations do the opposite, setting us up for failure.

Enjoy!

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Friends,

What happens when a political scientist with specific expertise in presidential nominations and general elections joins up with two of Washington’s best sourced “stump” reporters to talk about their tell-all “What Happened” book on the 2020 cycle?

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Like many of you, the realization that Democrats would have majority control of the Senate after the improbable victories of Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s runoff elections on January 5th was electrifying! I imagine that for one of my personal heroes, Stacey Abrams, it also came with a deeply satisfying “see! we told you this electoral strategy would work!” as we saw how modernized electioneering can pay dividends even in some of the harshest electoral environments.

My joy was tempered only by the fact that Democrats would have a 50 seat majority-where Vice President Harris would have to step in and provide tie-breaking votes for all legislation Democrats managed to pass with a simple majority, which I’m sorry to tell you is not a lot of legislation. Only bills that qualify under something called “reconciliation” pass through the senate via simple majorities (though confirmations are all now free from the filibuster).

A 50/50 senate involves a power sharing agreement between the majority party, which is the party that holds the tie-breaking vote of the vice president, and the minority party. The minority party in this case being the modern Republican Party, a party that has been completely overtaken by extremism and run by a leader in Mitch McConnell who has spent the past decade destroying the norms of the senate in pursuit of party politics with abandon.

I was trying to dust of my THC-laden brain cobwebs from 2002-2003 to recall what it was like when the senate last did its 50/50 power-sharing stint. But that was a weird time. First off, Jim Jeffords quit being a Republican shortly after and the power sharing arrangement with Dick Cheney as tie-breaker stuff only went on for a couple of months. Then 9/11 happened, and for the Millennials and Zoomers, that changed everything.

As Schumer was absolutely right to recognize, the agreement reached back then was bound to be far more amenable than anything that might have been negotiated 20 years later during the peak of the polarized era- with Mitch McConnell. This was immediately validated when McConnell refused to hand over control of the chairs of the senate’s committees- holding them hostage for 3 weeks until verbally agreeing to transfer them to Democrats and then taking an additional 4th week to actually follow through with it. The effect of this was to reduce the Democrat’s tenure in the majority by a full month- certainly more than a symbolic effort.

Further, McConnell impacted the transition significantly by recessing the senate until January 19th, the day before Biden’s inauguration. The impact of this decision was largely discussed in terms of any potential movement on an impeachment trial- which the long recess delayed. Impactful as that was perhaps more important was the impact it had on the Biden transition, already significantly hamstrung by Trump’s efforts to pull off a coup. Reports of a “hostile” transition, of Trump officials in key departments like the Department of Defense refusing to meet with President-Elect Biden and his transition team, something we’d not seen in the modern era and for obvious reasons having to do with national security complication, tended to focus on speculations of potential pettiness on the part of the departing president and/or his team in the given departments investigators are now exploring whether access was denied for other, much more nefarious reasons.

As it relates here though, the Biden Admin is starting with a very atypical deficit. Normally, pre-inauguration, key cabinet personnel like the Secretary of Defense, Homeland Security (albeit this is a newish position), Secretary of State- cabinet positions that (aside from when they are nominated by Donald Trump) tap unquestionably qualified, non-controversial nominees because they are so critical to the security and smooth operation of the country, they shouldn’t be left vacant ever. Well, so petty is the modern GOP which prioritizes f*****g with Democrats far above national security, when Joe Biden was sworn in at noon on January 20th 2021, he had 0 cabinet members in place. Yes, you read that correctly. 0. Now, it should be noted that Trump only had 2 cabinet members in place- both within the national security realm- and that is really low compared to the 6 that were confirmed by inauguration for Obama and the 7 for George W. Bush.

BUT, and this is a critical distinction, Trump’s own party controlled the Senate and some of the issues on delay & low confirmation rates stemmed from Trump’s unorthodox choices in some key cabinet positions (Betsy Devos?!)- even back in that original class of nominees who unlike later picks, could at least get confirmed by a REPUBLICAN senate.

And friends, here is another REALLY IMPORTANT distinction that I think makes the 6 & 7 pre-confirmed, ready to roll America, cabinets of George W. Bush and Barack Obama versus the 0 confirmed cabinet members given to Biden in the midst of a global pandemic and economic crisis even more remarkable. 16 days into his administration, with Democrats ostensibly in control of the Senate and a crop of nominees who are among the best qualified and least controversial a group ever put forward by a president, just 6 of them have been confirmed by the Senate. Two weeks in and Biden is just now reaching the starting line of his predecessors.

Given this, shall we say “rough start,” I wanted to talk with someone who is really well-versed in the senate- its norms, its operations, how the rules work, and what we might expect in a 50/50 “power sharing” arrangement with the world’s most dishonest broker to function like. I wanted this person to be reasonably well-removed from the current senate, from current senators, from staffers, etc. because I wanted them to feel comfortable, due to separation from the current institution and its members and staffers, to speak frankly about the institution without the urge to protect it too fiercely.

I desperately wanted that person to be Lawrence O’Donnell, who I find to be one of the most compelling and interesting hosts on MSNBC. And I’m not just saying this because when my election theory first emerged, it was Lawrence who reported on it after getting this article about it sent to him by our now mutual friend Karen Russell. Karen is the daughter of some guy named Bill Russell you’ve probably never heard of.

Lawrence’s coverage of my research helped it gain an audience and also led to one of the most valuable compliments I’ve ever received, one I fall back on at times when I need to be reminded that my work has value. Lawrence and I had several great convos on his show about my electoral theory which, did, after all, end up nailing the 2020 presidential election outcome (which is one thing) but much, much more importantly, really getting the why and how the 2020 election would play out.

So I was over the moon when Lawrence agreed to come onto the pod for what was supposed to a short convo, but what ended up being a long one. One in which I learned ALOT about the senate, then and now. Things I had NO IDEA about. Great stories about Lawrence’s time there. I went into this convo understanding I had serious weaknesses about understanding the rules and procedures of the senate. And about 10 versions of questions from you about how to get Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema to give in on the filibuster (I think Lawrence’s answer will surprise you there). As best as I could I tried working your questions into this conversation and where I failed, I apologize- I’m not too proud to admit I got very nervous! I hope you all enjoy the conversation and an opportunity to get to know Lawrence O’Donnell a little better. I know I did.

Rachel

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If there is one other person out there more bullish than I am regarding Donald Trump’s capabilities for Mussolini-like behaviors, it’s his niece Mary Trump. Mary made a splash when her tell-all book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man released.

The book was unique because it combined an autobiographical account of Mary’s family history as a Trump and her various interactions with the man she simply refers to as “Donald,”with detached psychoanalysis of the various Trump relatives covered in the book via her education and training in psychology, which includes a Ph.D. from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies. Thus the book is captivating- combining clinical diagnoses of various Trump family psychoses with Mary Trump’s personal anguish, loss, pain, and decades of crushing disappointment not only with Donald Trump, but with multiple members of the Trump clan.

In our convo, Mary and I decompress from Wednesday’s Capitol siege, where her crazy uncle unleashed a throng of “deplorables” on Article II to try to physically keep them from certifying Joe Biden as the next president of the United States and seize control of the government on his behalf. Like many Americans, Mary & I are frustrated at the lack of security that was provided to the Capitol Building even when the threats being made against Congress were well publicized (as you know, yours truly devoted two episodes of this pod to potential violence in D.C. on July 6th and Trump’s efforts to amass a MAGA Army).

Mostly, we spend an hour ranting about Donald, radicalism in the Republican Party, worrying about sustaining democracy in America, and having the same conversation many of you have been having this week: can America survive the final week of Trump’s presidency?

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Wednesday the 6th will be Trump-driven shitshow in D.C. when Republicans in Congress will turn a mere formality with the Electoral College certification process into a clown show. Thanks to an initial “toe-in-the-water” by senator and 2024 hopeful Josh Hawley, support for the circus in the senate, the chamber supposedly for grown-ups, quickly ballooned to a dozen (now 13) Republican senators. The effort already had robust enthusiasm in the House. Nearly 70% of that chamber’s Republican caucus, including their rudderless “leader,” Kevin McCarthy will vote against certification.

Trump’s effort to steal the election, which has unfolded almost entirely in plain sight and is being done using a classic GOP methodology of “gaslighting:” accusing the victim of the very crime being perpetrated against them by making his rallying cry “Stop the Steal.” The irony of their effort to commit election fraud at a massive scale via making erroneous claims of voter fraud seems entirely lost on President Trump and most of his Republican enablers.

With about half of the Republican Party devolving into what Steve Schmidt has dubbed a pro-authoritarianism faction (after all, if Republicans got what they wanted, democracy would end in U.S., Trump would be installed as a leader or an authoritarian state, and one party rule would commence) the events of the past two months are new chapters in a crisis that has been playing out within the Republican Party for the past decade.

I had come to think of the wart within the GOP as over since Donald Trump not only won the Republican primaries in 2015, but more importantly, became formally nominated by the Republican Party at their party’s nominating convention in the summer of 2016. Until that event, the party still had power to stop Trump’s candidacy, and given his “outsider” status and clear lack of the behavioral requisites to perform the job, legitimate rationales for doing so.

Such a move, while being accepted by the country’s middle, would have been seen as provocative by the progressive base of the Democratic Party and would have provoked a mass implosion within the Republican base. That would have surely written off the GOP’s chances of reclaiming the White House in 2016- a situation that too many elites found untenable after 8 years under Obama. Ultimately, this is what led the party to accept Trump as their standard bearer, even though many of them had devoted the months previous to arguing with their peers that nominating Trump would not only destroy the Republican Party, but likely the very country itself.

Once Trump won the general election though, and became transactionally useful to Republicans the fight for the soul of the Republican Party felt over. Trump had clear control over Republican voters and because elected Republicans in Congress share his constituencies, four years of obedience ensued, leading to the least disciplined presidency in the country’s history that has already locked in “worst president” before the COVID19 crisis rolled in to allow Trump to leave his competitors so far in the rearview they can’t be seen anymore.

MAGA became the modern version of the Republican Party (the 2020 Republican national convention was a great demonstration of what this means, but it can be summed up in one word: Trump) and current members of the party had just a few options to avail themselves to: conform proudly, acquiesce silently, or flee the party. Despite perceptions, the great majority of current Republicans, at least as of the onset of COVID19 were quite pleased with MAGA Republicanism, even the intentional cruelty, a fact that the other half of America, at some point, will have to allow themselves to confront.

Yet, here we are, once again looking at a Republican Party being forced into a choice by Donald Trump: support authoritarianism one-party rule under Donald Trump or continued democracy. So far, because of Mitch McConnell and several other Republicans like senator Pat Toomey and Tom Cotton who remember what being a small c conservative is supposed to mean (it doesn’t involve acty of radicalism like sedition!) and like Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Secretary of State in Georgia, the anti-authoritarians within the Republican Party are maintaining the upper hand. McConnell’s anti-authoritarian faction are set to stand with senate Democrats on behalf of democracy and the rule of law on Wednesday. It’s not hyperbolic to note that the fate of 243 years of democracy hangs on McConnell’s ability to deliver their votes.

Fortunately, because we’re still seeing additions to McConnell’s faction, and pro-democracy activism from Dick Cheney, this suggests the votes will be there on Wednesday. This is thanks, in no small part to to the shiny example that Raffensperger is setting for his fellow Republicans. By standing stalwartly against Trump’s illegal power grab, even in the face of extreme pressure, Secretary Raffensperger has single-handedly done more to subvert Trump’s anti-democratic coup than anyone else. Because keep in mind, Trump alludes to having made similar calls to the one Raffensperger shared with the public. Yet, we have learned of only the one.

The President has cooked up a bit of political theater for the streets of D.C. to correspond with the drama inside the Capitol building. He means to stage a show of support for the country’s “rightful” king. Trump has demonstrated time and again a total lack of regard for the public’s safety, as the illegal clearing of Lafayette Square Park showed. He’s hoping to lure to D.C. clashing factions: his “team” of racists, “Proud Boys” neo-nazis, and other “deplorables” against “antifa” protesters.

Whether MAGA world actually believes, or not, the totally fabricated story Trump and his team tells to convince people that Joe Biden didn’t really win the 2020 election by 7 million votes and robust margins in eight swing states (the most narrow were WI, GA, and AZ but all three of those have been recounted multiple times and thus verified extensively thanks to Trump’s efforts) is moot. They will never admit one way or the other. So long as they pretend to believe it, they can continue to wield it like a weapon and try to drag American democracy down with them.

So what can be done? Having both the truth and the law on your side is not inconsequential. What people can control is the truth. The true timeline, narrative, and facts of the election leaves zero room for Trump’s thesis to be true: and at some point, the truth and the law are coming for MAGA world and Trump’s tenure as president.

As Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling explained in his latest news conference, truth is immutable. Trump’s fantasy world and the real one are on an inevitable collision course. There is a firm date, time, and location for this crash: January 20th, 2021 at high noon. Once the clock runs down to that moment, Trump world’s evasions will no longer work and as Brett Baier challenged senator Hawley last night in an interview on Fox News, Trump voters that are being led-on about the prospects of a Trump second term are going to get a harsh dose of reality.

The question then becomes, what will happen then? Given last week’s podcast looking at lethal mass partisanship, the willingness of partisans to tolerate, even crave, physical punishment for the opposition party’s leaders and or even voters, it seems reasonable to worry about, and be wary of, the potential for political violence this month. Far worse than the fact that Donald Trump behaves irresponsibly with his rhetoric and seems incapable of appreciating the power of the presidency’s “bully pulpit” to incite violence, is the fact that he does get it. That he understands this power just fine. Indeed, watching Trump’s actions over the 5 years of his presidential experience, it’s not unfair to say that at times, Trump has intentionally tried to provoke violence- knowing full well what he was doing and frankly, enjoying the hell out of it.

But what Trump has artfully arranged in D.C. goes far beyond treatment of counter-protestors at rallies, or the treatment of arrestees by police. What Trump appears to have been up to over the past two weeks is an effort to convince the public that the election was literally stolen from him and that people should come to D.C. on Wednesday, January 6th to “Stop the Steal.” Certainly, the KellyAnne Conway’s of Trump World would shoot these allegations down, asserting that of course Trump means to only have peaceful protestors come to D.C. to protest the election and would discourage any violence in his name. But watch Trump talk about the protests and about people coming to D.C. and it’s clear- Trump vision for these protests is an angry mob, pitchforks waving, demanding their rightful ruler be reinstalled to his rightful throne.

The question is, what types of people will answer his call, and what level of devotion will be they be willing to bring to the cause? With the potential for violence and unrest high, does that make it more, or less likely, the type of crowd forms that is conducive to violence? Certainly, the bulk of Republicans who have been made to be upset about Trump’s loss and have been lied to in order to convince them that the election is being stolen would want to come to D.C. to engage in peaceful protest and would have no interest in violence or mayhem.

But it would be naive, after Charlottesville and the events of the past few years not to assume that neo-nazis, white supremacists, and other violent groups are currently descending on D.C., as are “antifa” protestors deploying to counteract them. Security in the city will be a mess and there is no way I’d suggest heading to D.C. on Wednesday if your interest is in peaceful assembly. So it begs a question- will people be willing to subject themselves to potential harm on behalf of Donald Trump?

To understand who and why might be willing to do so, I invite physician and sociologist Dr. Jonathan Metzl onto the show. He made a huge splash last year with his book and it’s provocative title, Dying Of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland. As I told Jonathan, the second I saw this book I KNEW it would resonate with my own research and with the political science literature on polarization and hyperpartisnahip generally. I’ve been “dying” to talk to him about his research for a long time, especially given that the COVID crisis came along and at a mass scale, “horribly vindicated” his thesis.

We have a great chat about his work, talk about whether Trump’s base might be willing to “die for Trump” Wednesday, and bemoan and worry over our current collapsing democracy while musing over possible ways to save it.

Given that today is the Georgia runoff, Dr. Metzl and I are hosting a live Zoom event tonight at 6pm (ETA) in honor of the release of the pod & in conjunction with tonight’s nerve racking election. The Zoom Q & A is open only to paid subscribers, who will receive an invitation email to the event later this afternoon.

Happy Listening!!

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