Holy shit this is amazing. It's like he's doing an impression of Doug Balloon but without realizing he's the target of the parody.

To his great credit, Trump reinvented the G.O.P.

...as archetypal Italian fascism...?

He destroyed the corporate husk of Reaganism and set the party on the path to being a multiracial working-class party.

Which races, exactly? Anglos, Saxons and Protestants? Scots-Irish and Muscovite Slavs?

To his great discredit, he enshrouded this transition in bigotry, buffoonery and corruption.

aaaaaand fascism. Let's not disregard the fascism, shall we?

He ushered in an age of performance politics — an age in which leaders put more emphasis on attention-grabbing postures than on practical change.

Ohhhh I dunno, some of us will never forget Terry Schiavo or the original October Surprise.

The left had its own smaller version of performative populism. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became a major political figure thanks to her important contributions to Instagram.

The Green New Deal was not a legislative package but a cotton candy media concoction.

...much like the New Deal, except without passing.

Slogans like “Abolish ICE” and “Defund the police” were not practical policies, just cool catchphrases to put on posters.

I have boots older than ICE, that shit could be abolished tomorrow and the world would breathe a sigh of relief. "Defund the Police" should have been "Demilitarize the Police" and you know it and things would have been fine.

That year, after progressives appeared to cost the Democrats several House seats with randy talk of socialism, moderate Democrat Abigail Spanberger roasted the left and was one of those who helped pull the party back toward the center on crime and other issues.

...who? The former spook who won suburban Virginia by 5 points? That I legit had to look up?

Biden rejected the performative style of the populist moment while harnessing some progressive ideas.

LOL you mean the guy who used executive actions to pardon marijuana offenses and relieve student debt by edict?

Performative populism has begun to ebb. Twitter doesn’t have the hold on the media class it had two years ago.

...which is why they've all been completely silent over the past week.

Peak wokeness has passed.

...maybe you made it up

There seem to be fewer cancellations recently, and less intellectual intimidation.

SHOT

I was a skeptic of the Jan. 6 committee at first, but I now recognize it’s played an important cultural role.

CHASER

That committee forced America to look into the abyss, to see the nihilistic violence that lay at the heart of Trumpian populism.

But remember, it's multicultural "Trumpian populism."

The election of 2022 marked the moment when America began to put performative populism behind us.

Yep it certainly wasn't about abortion.

Though the results are partial, and Trump acolytes could still help Republicans control Congress, this election we saw the emergence of an anti-Trump majority.

Because while 4/5ths of the country didn't vote for Trump in 2016, they are also 7-year locusts and it's taken them a while to claw their way out of the sand.

According to a national exit poll, nearly 60 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable view of Trump.

...'cuz it wouldn't be the New York Times if they weren't linking to polls that have been useless for a decade or more.

Almost half of the voters who said they “somewhat disapprove” of Biden as president still voted for Democrats, presumably because they were not going to vote for Trumpianism.

Shit SURE has changed

The single most important result of this election was the triumph of the normies. Establishmentarian, practical leaders who are not always screaming angrily at you did phenomenally well, on right and left: Mike DeWine in Ohio, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. Workmanlike incumbents from John Thune in South Dakota to Ron Wyden in Oregon had successful nights. Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin had the quotation that summarized the election: “Boring wins.”

"Here are a list of elected officials nobody is talking about that I can cherry-pick to prove my point."

Americans are still deeply unhappy with the state of the country, but their theory of change seems to have begun to shift. Less histrionic media soap opera. Less existential politics of menace. Let’s find people who can get stuff done.

©2020 David Brooks

The telling election results were at the secretary of state level. The America First Secretary of State Coalition features candidates who rejected the 2020 election results and who would have been a threat to election integrity if they had won Tuesday. Most either lost or seem on their way to losing. Meanwhile, Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia who stood up to Trump’s bullying, won by a wide margin.

Thereby surprising exactly no one except the establishment pundit class and those who still humor them for some reason.

Because Democrats restrained their more extreme tendencies while Republicans didn’t,

I love how "extreme tendencies" on the left is things like healthcare.

On abortion and many other issues, the median voter rule still applies.

Let's elide the fact that 80% of the population agrees with democratic policies so we can ignore who the extremists are, shall we?

To be clear, I am not saying the fever has broken within the minds of those in the MAGA movement.

Oh hell no. Nor will he talk about their numbers or their sources of funding.

I am not saying MAGA Republicans won’t unleash a lot of looniness in the next Congress.

Because then who the hell will you ask diners in Cleveland about?

I am saying voters have built a wall around that movement to make sure it no longer wins the power it once enjoyed.

Bothsides it again, David.

I am saying voters have given Republicans clear marching orders — to do what Democrats did and beat back the populist excesses on their own side.

chef's kiss

There are two large truths I’ll leave you with.

Only two? c'mon David you've got some words left!

The first is that both parties are fundamentally weak.

This is why over half the country wants a third party to vote for yet the Democratic Socialists elected one state office and Libertarians won zero.

The Democrats are weak because they have become the party of the educated elite.

The Democrats are weak because they require a stance against corruption in order to retain their voter base.

The Republicans are weak because of Trump.

The Republicans are weak because they've practiced demagoguery and fascism for long enough that eventually, a fascist demagogue captured the party.

The Republican weakness is easier to expunge.

My favorite quote of this election: "You can turn away from Trump and lose the primary or you can turn towards Trump and lose the general."

If Republicans get rid of Trump, they could become the dominant party in America.

something something active shooter drills something something abortion something something debt something something

Second, the battle to preserve the liberal world order is fully underway.

While populist authoritarianism remains a powerful force worldwide, people, from Kyiv to Kalamazoo, have risen up to push us toward a world in which rules matter, practicality matters, stability and character matter.

No thanks to the New York Times, which is far too busy rewarding pithy phrases like "from Kyiv to Kalamazoo."

As Irving Kristol once wrote, the people in our democracy “are not uncommonly wise, but their experience tends to make them uncommonly sensible.”

Great thing about David Brooks? You always know he's quoting out of context. For one thing, he wasn't writing, he was speaking. For another, he was speaking before the American Enterprise Institute, a group that can be referred to safely as, shall we say, "fans of conservative politics." Finally, he was addressing them on the occasion of the end of mutherfucking communism. This is an arch-conservative thought leader, doing a victory lap in front of his biggest fans, and what did he have to say?

The common people in such a democracy are not uncommonly wise, but their experience tends to make them uncommonly ­sensible. They learn their economics by taking out a mortgage, they learn their politics by watching the local school board in action, and they learn the impossibility of "social engineering" by trying to raise their children to be decent human beings. These people are the bedrock of bourgeois capitalism, and it is on this rock that our modern democracies have been built.

But a society needs more than sensible men and women if it is to prosper: It needs the energies of the creative imagination as expressed in religion and the arts. It is crucial to the lives of all our citizens, as it is to all human beings at all times, that they encounter a world that possesses a transcendent meaning, in which the human experience makes sense. Nothing is more dehumanizing, more certain to generate a crisis, than experiencing one's life as a meaningless event in a meaningless world.

The whole piece is worth worth reading. It's an old-school conservative saying "let's be careful of our victory laps." This lolbrooks drivel? This is an old-school conservative saying "we're still relevant." The former is thought-provoking. The latter is a lie.

It's almost like Joe Biden is good at politics. He must have picked up a thing or two in all his years in Washington. Imagine that.

Good thread: