The entertainer who ran for Governor of California on the Trumpism platform went down in flames. It’s more than a defeat of just Larry Elder, it might well be a referendum on Trumpism. Smash-mouth politics, the stuff of shock jocks, the kind of behavior that belongs more on a wrestling mat than in a political venue, may have seen its star rise and set. But does the GOP have a clue? Because from all appearances, they love them some Trumpism and Donald Trump is the presumptive 2024 nominee. Is that the wisest course of action? The Bulwark:
The California fiasco will probably not be enough to prompt the sort of introspection that Republicans so desperately need. But as 2024 looms, it provides one more reason for Republicans to ask themselves: Do they really want to do this again?
The great political mystery of our time has been the refusal of the GOP to take the many off-ramps from Trumpism.
They could have put the petulant, disgraced, defeated one-term president firmly in the rearview mirror — but, instead, they have embraced their hostage status with an obsequiousness that makes the Stockholm Syndrome seem quaint.
Republicans could have moved on after the election; they certainly could have bailed after January 6. They even had a chance to wipe the slime off during the impeachment process. They could have refused to go along with the Big Lie and easily segued into post-Trumpian oppositional politics.
Instead, they are poised to wear Trumpism like a coat of many colors into the mid-terms; and to nominate him for a second term in 2024, so that he can wage his paranoid revenge campaign against his enemies.
This is not — to say the very least — an obvious choice. The GOP no longer faces a binary choice that forces them to hold their noses. They can’t rationalize that only Trump would give them the policies and judges they want. And it’s is far from clear that he provides the only, or the best hope to seize back power.
There is no way to rationalize Trump as the only sane alternative in 2024. As was made vividly clear in 2020, Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. He’s now being subjected to the same right-wing smear job, however. But even considering that, doing a Trump/Biden rematch in 2024 may not be the wisest course of action for the Republican party going forward — if the rejection of Larry Elder says anything. And I’ll put the caveat up front, the odds of a Republican ousting a Democratic governor in 2021, much less a Trumpist, were pretty slim considering how California hates Trump with its whole, collective heart. I lived there so I know this. So don’t read the resounding defeat of Larry Elder as the pattern that will prevail nationwide in 2024. I wish. I pray, in fact, that it would go down that way.
The 2024 election may very well be Democracy v. Trumpism as opposed to Biden v. Trump. And if the rest of the country reacts like California did to Larry Elder, Trumpism may have seen its day. New York Times:
Mr. Elder isn’t the Trumpiest candidate imaginable, but he’s close. A novice campaigner with a background in conservative talk radio, Mr. Elder has a treasure chest full of embarrassing comments in his past — about women, about Black people — and a penchant for making more of them on the stump.
“Larry Elder has been the gift that keeps on giving,” said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant in California.
Again, Mr. Elder has been effective because this race is so much more about celebrity than policy. But he’s also effective because he, more than anyone else, is attuned to the Trumpist base, and is willing to tack accordingly.
After he drew fire from the right for telling the editorial board of The Sacramento Bee that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, he reversed himself. He has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the recall race is rife with fraud. He is crushing it among the “guys with an Uncle Sam costume in their closet” demographic, but not much else.
Arguably, Mr. Elder isn’t a serious politician; he’s running not to win, but to raise his media profile. But that very fact says something about today’s Republican Party. Many of its highest-profile figures blur the line between politician and celebrity, and act accordingly, even if their success as the latter undermines what we expect out of the former. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn — and, yes, Larry Elder — are only nominally politicians. In substance, they’re entertainers.
True, they’re entertainers who say scary things about guns, political violence, the pandemic and anyone to their political left. And true, some of them do win elections, usually in deep-red districts. And true, many people in the Republican Party are much smarter, or at least more thoughtful about elected office, than they are.
Politics should not be a circus, but it makes sense that it is in America. This is the land of P.T. Barnum. We invented TV, we invented the game show, we invented reality TV. So it makes sense that a celebrity candidate would become president one day. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all, if the entertainer/celebrity is also smart and learns the job. Al Franken was a comedian before he became a senator, Ronald Reagan was an actor who started out in politics very young. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild in 1941. He didn’t just leap from the TV set and the tabloids onto the top of the GOP ticket like Trump did.
Likewise, Arnold Schwarzenegger was not just an actor, he was a successful businessman as well, before becoming governor. Trump isn’t like these other people. He’s a circus side show freak. Is this what the GOP wants to hang onto?
Gavin Newsome won handily because he framed the election about democracy v. Trumpism. When Joe Biden campaigned Monday night he put the cards on the table: it’s Newsom or it’s a Donald Trump clone.
The big question remains, is the future of the GOP to become the party of Trump and what’s been called “smash-mouth spectacle?”
Mr. Elder and Co. highlight a lasting, possibly permanent dynamic on the right: the rejection of politics as anything other than smash-mouth spectacle, in which the most outrageous and insincere figures draw the biggest crowds — and force their colleagues to play constant defense against their own party.
That’s not an insurmountable challenge. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida seems, at least for now, to have figured out a way past it. But many won’t — and many Republicans won’t even try. Remember when the party could dismiss as side shows the occasional extremist figures like Todd Akin, who made comments about “legitimate rape,” and Christine “I’m Not a Witch” O’Donnell? In 2021, that’s become much, much harder to do.
Is that the fate of the GOP? Are Greene, Boebert, Cawthorn, the real loons that Trumpism spawned, going to become the new abnormal of the GOP? I don’t know. I can’t see how that is possible but then again, they got to where they are. I can tell you from monitoring right-wing media religiously, there are a lot of crazies out there.
Let’s leave it on this note: We saw the rally in Kentucky that was supposed to draw 10,000 people last Saturday draw 300. We’ve seen Larry Elder go down in flames and it’s only Tuesday. Let’s see what happens at the MAGA rally on the 18th, which is three days from now. If that turns out to be another right-wing farce, we might be looking at an actual trend here. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
If I were to guess, knowing what I do of trump and trumpism, I’d say trump and other trumpist pols are blaming this electoral flame-out on the color of Elders’ skin rather than a referendum on trump. You KNOW that is what trump is saying right now-you just know it.
Sure but it won’t help them solve the problem of their infighting coming home to roost.
I liked George Takei’s twitter comment,
He lost by so much, it was Elder abuse.
I understand Elder even said, last month, that he wouldn’t be a good governor. So he was running just for the publicity? He can pay for the recall, or a chunk of it, then.
Think back to 2016 when it was clear Trump had sewn up the nomination. The GOP could have if they really, really wanted to found a way to derail him and put up someone else. And didn’t. Now think about things in the context of Stormy Daniels. She didn’t really want to bang Trump, and well before giving him his five minutes (her description of his “prowress”. In fact before they were done with dinner she was pretty sure his invitation to discuss her appearing on an episode or two of his show was just pretext. Still she went along with what he actually wanted. Actors of both genders have been doing the casting couch routine (and so often to no avail) forever and not just porn actors either.
The GOP establishment and tens of millions of GOP voters who cringed at Trump decided to, like Stormy Daniels go along and hope he might come through for them even though they doubted he would. Like Daniels, they collectively decided it was preferable to suffer some indignity just in case, rather than deal with him getting all bent out of shape over a flat-out rejection. So they had what they figured would be a political “one night stand” figuring that at worst they’d feel a bit of shame but if they got lucky they’d get a shitload of fascist judges and a Justice or two – and wound up with more than they had even dreamed. They also figured they’d shove through a third tax cut for the rich. And kill the ACA even if some of them were nervous about winding up being the dog who actually caught the car.
I think that many figured at worst they might deal with the equivalent of a one night stand who keeps bugging them for a while. I don’t think any of them considered that instead they’d wind up with someone who would leave their kid’s pet rabbit boiling in a pot on the stove and not only for revenge but just for fun too! But that’s what they’ve gotten.
So, they have wound up in bed with a flaming orange human shaped rectum stuffed to overflowing with toxic shit. And shit attracts flies, which lay eggs and in this case produce toxic maggots that are mutated and can bite. We know them as MAGAts and they cover not just the floor around the bed they share with Trump but the entire room. Hell, the entire building he’s in! That makes getting out of that bed not just disgusting but painful and even dangerous. And there’s been no off ramp they feel is safe enough to hold them as they try to escape. Especially with Trump shooting turd balls at their heads trying to knock them off.
Sorry but the US didn’t invent TV. It did, however, develop an advertising medium that controlled what you saw and heard, with talking heads spouting whatever craziness they felt like and people fell for it.