On the menu today: Politico declares that former president Donald Trump is “the main character of 2022,” which is a particularly convenient narrative for Democrats who do not want the midterm elections to be a referendum on the performance of the Biden administration; Pennsylvania Democrats who are sweating their chances in this year’s Senate race have no one to blame but John Fetterman for not disclosing his stroke sooner; and wondering what conservatives should make of Tulsi Gabbard, ex-Democrat.
Wait, Who’s the Current President Again?
This morning, Politico’s Playbook newsletter makes a case for, “Why Trump is the main character of 2022.”
That newsletter effectively argues that there is a lot of news surrounding Trump in the closing months before Election Day, and he’s had enormous influence on whom Republicans nominated for offices in this year’s midterm elections. I’m not going to argue that the controversies surrounding Trump, the hunt for missing documents at Mar-a-Lago, the hearings of the January 6 committee, and all the rest aren’t newsworthy or worth discussing. (I’d also note that we get a lot less “you won’t believe this crazy thing Trump just said on social media” coverage than we did when he was on Twitter, and I think the country is better off for it.)
But it is awfully convenient for the Democratic Party that publications such as Politico have decided that “Trump is the main character of 2022,” and not, say, the current president of the United States, or House speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer — you know, the people who have actually been running the government and shaping U.S. domestic and foreign policy for the past two years. A week ago, Biden declared that, “Folks, when it comes to the next Congress, this isn’t a referendum, it’s a choice.” It’s obvious that Biden doesn’t want the midterm elections to be a referendum on his performance. As no less a figure than Jen Psaki declared on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, “ If it is a referendum on the president, [Democrats] will lose. And they know that.” Today, Politico goes right up to the line of contending that the midterms are actually a referendum on the performance of former president Trump . . . again, which would make them the fourth consecutive national election cycle that was a de facto question: “What do you think of Trump?”
I suspect that a lot of mainstream-media reporters either A) really enjoy writing the latest version of “Republicans stink” or B) know their established audience is hungriest for the latest version of “Republicans stink” stories. A lot of people wake up with the attitude of, “I know my side is right; tell me why my side is right today.”
That’s why on any given day, you will see a lot of coverage of Trump, his family members, who’s rising and who’s falling in his inner circle, whatever crazy conspiracy theory Mike Lindell is talking up today, the trial of Alex Jones, and the latest antics of non-Left celebrities such as Elon Musk and Kanye West, with a healthy dose of “You won’t believe what Tucker Carlson just said” mixed in.
You notice that none of these people are currently in elected office.
I suppose someone could argue that the Right does this too, and no doubt over the past two years, I’ve written a lot more, and a lot more critically, about Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, “Prime Minister” Ron Klain, etc. But Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer etc. are currently running the country.
I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is over-covered — she’s not even on any committees! — but at least she’s currently a member of Congress. If you want to argue about what governors such as Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott or Brian Kemp are doing, fine — they’re actually setting policy at the state level.
A bit more than a decade ago, CNN’s Jake Tapper reviewed Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom for The New Republic, and he had a sharp, illuminating observation about what Sorkin thought the media was supposed to do:
And what are the important issues “News Night” covers instead of the piffle of Faisal Shahzad, a homegrown terrorist funded and trained by the Pakistani Taliban? McAvoy instead devotes at least a week of his broadcast to showcasing what a horribly inept and dangerous bunch Tea Party Republicans are as they — gasp! — defeat establishment Republicans in free and fair primaries and elections. It’s all well and good to follow the Koch brothers’ money, but at a time when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, it’s telling that McAvoy and Sorkin aim their sights at conservatives seeking power — not moderates and liberals wielding it.
A lot of members of the mainstream media are much more interested in watching the watchdog for flaws or controversies than joining the watchdog in watching the powerful. This is why we get so many stories about Republicans “pouncing” on a Democratic controversy, instead of the actual Democratic controversy. And this is how a major publication such as Politico can look at a country the day after inflation is at 8.2 percent, with waves of migrants at the border, a gallon of unleaded gasoline averaging $3.90 nationally, violent crime rising in major cities, and school children’s test scores plummeting, and conclude that, “The big story of this year’s midterm elections is Donald Trump.”
Remember, Fetterman’s Campaign Delayed Revealing His Stoke
Now that large swaths of the media have decided that NBC News reporter Dasha Burns is the villain of the Pennsylvania Senate race, let’s pause and refocus on some factors that aren’t getting enough attention, because most of the national media is partisan and stupid and works backward from, “We want the Democrat to win.”
1) John Fetterman’s stroke occurred on May 13, the Friday before the Tuesday primary in Pennsylvania.
2) His first brief statement about the stroke came out on Sunday, May 15. In it, he declared that, “The good news is I’m feeling much better, and the doctors tell me I didn’t suffer any cognitive damage. I’m well on my way to a full recovery.”
3) Five hours before the polls closed, Fetterman’s campaign issued a statement that he was undergoing surgery: “It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation (A-fib), by regulating his heart rate and rhythm.”
4) On primary night, his wife Gisele characterized it as “a little hiccup.”
5) The initial explanation of his ailment drastically understated the severity of the stroke, which Fetterman later characterized as life-threatening. It wasn’t until June that a letter from Fetterman’s doctor revealed that Fetterman had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, along with a decreased heart pump in 2017, but had stopped taking his medication and didn’t see any doctor for five years before he suffered a stroke.
The Democrats are in this mess, in large part, because Fetterman and his team were not honest about his condition when it mattered most, and when Democrats could have considered other options to run for Senate. The reason Pennsylvania Democrats are nervous when Fetterman, his wife, and his campaign say his recovery is going fine is because they don’t trust him, because he and his team have already lied about his health.
If either of Fetterman’s primary rivals — Representative Conor Lamb or state representative Malcolm Kenyatta — were the nominee, they would probably be polling about the same (maybe better without this health issue hanging over their nomination!) and they would vote the same way as Fetterman on 99 percent of votes in the Senate. Fetterman is not irreplaceable, but he chose to act as if he is.
Also, if Fetterman wins, there’s at least a 50-50 chance Pennsylvania Democrats figure out some way to strongarm him into resigning and appointing a Democrat with no health issues.
The Dramatic Change of Tulsi Gabbard
I believe that Tulsi Gabbard is a genuinely independent, idiosyncratic, unpredictable voice who doesn’t naturally fit in either of the two major parties. When she’s willing to help the conservative cause, or make an eloquent argument against bad Democratic policies, I welcome her. But she is a particularly unique and unusual figure in the American political spectrum, and I hope Republicans adopt the old Reagan maxim, “trust, but verify.”
I think Dan McLaughlin has the right sense of how Gabbard can be an ally to conservatives but should not be mistaken for a 100-percent-reliable ally:
If Gabbard is actually inclined to go the next step and become a Republican — or a Republican-aligned independent — much depends upon the uses to which she puts her talents. If she were to run for office again in Hawaii, even the possibility of winning elections that are typically closed to the GOP would be worth making some common cause with her. Surely, Gabbard as an independent in the Senate, for example, would be an improvement on Mazie Hirono. But all too often, what some sections of the right prefer is to make Gabbard a national figure speaking at CPAC and on Fox News, taking up places better filled by actual conservatives, or — worse yet — encouraging her to run as a third-party candidate in a race Republicans might stand a chance of winning without her. No thanks.
I’m surprised how many people are surprised, or think it is significant, that Gabbard declared she’s no longer a Democrat. Once Gabbard embraced the pro-life cause, endorsed Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s legislation on schools and sexually explicit materials (and in fact argued that it should have gone further), denounced the Build Back Better legislation, argued that Biden’s immigration stance was an “open-doors policy” that benefited “gangs, cartels, and human traffickers,” guest-hosted Tucker Carlson’s program, and spoke at CPAC . . . should anyone have been all that surprised that she formally left the Democratic Party? Hadn’t she informally departed the Democratic Party a long time ago?
And yet, up until this past August, Tulsi Gabbard was listed as a fellow at the Sanders Institute in Vermont — the progressive think tank launched by Jane Sanders, the wife of former presidential contender and U.S. senator Bernie Sanders.
Gabbard endorsed Biden for president in 2020, and now, two years later, she’s campaigning for the very Trumpy GOP Senate candidate Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. That is a very intense shift in a person’s political outlook in a relatively short span of time.
ADDENDUM: I am pleasantly surprised to see that the Washington Post editorial board, in discussing how to “protect democracy,” remembered that Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars to promote GOP candidates who denied the results of the 2020 election and embraced kooky conspiracy theories. If you really think these guys are a threat to the country, stop reaching into your wallet and helping them!