Frank: So call him a normie Democrat, then! My point is that such a breed exists!
Bret: A dying breed, I sometimes fear, much as I’d like to believe you. First, I think the center of the party is well to the left of where it was under Obama, to say nothing of Clinton. I mean, I’m glad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has now admitted that “Woke 1.0 was crazy,” but I don’t really see her distancing herself from Woke 2.0, whether the subject is economic populism or a boycott of Israel. Second, and despite honorable exceptions like Josh Shapiro, I think party moderates live in fear of the left, in part because the left is much more effective at organizing and mobilizing, with their door-knocking cadres and their ability to turn out younger voters. And third, finally, because Trump is so polarizing that a lot of voters, especially at the primary level, tend to support the most anti-Trump figure they can latch on to, like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Problem is, those candidates will tend to be much more vulnerable come November.
Frank: You are right, Bret, that the center has not held (hat tip Yeats). You are right, too, that too many center-left Democrats quiver at the ire and fire of the party’s most ardent progressives. But even in better times, politics is the business of messy, ugly choices, and I submit to you that wherever the average Democratic voter or candidate exists now is less frightening — and less threatening to democracy — than where Trump has yanked the Republican Party. And that’s the problem I have with what is otherwise warranted and even virtuous Democrat bashing. On the cusp of the midterms, it requires context. And the context is if I’m choosing between the army of A.O.C. and the tribe of Trump — if this is the binary before me — I’m marching behind her.
Bret: Well, I’m not marching behind Trump — and, as I confessed a few weeks ago, I’d sooner vote for her than for JD Vance in a presidential election. I just pray that isn’t the choice.
Frank: I’ll dust off the rosary beads to join in that prayer.
Bret: And I’ll pull out the tzitzit and tefillin. But, getting back to Trump, I do think we are seeing levels of nuttiness that probably surprise even his most constant critics. I mean, he’s now taking sides with North Korea over South? Or threatening to go to war with … Oman? As a country, we’ve somehow moved from “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” to “If It’s Trump, This Must be Bonkers.”
Frank: I am with you there, my friend. The other day I was thinking: Remember how, in late 2018, not even halfway through Trump’s first term, there were all those whispers and all that commentary about how senior officials in his administration possibly contemplated or even actively discussed invoking the 25th Amendment, by which the vice president, acting with a majority of the cabinet, can move to replace the president? They were supposedly heartsick about and panicked by the incompetence and capriciousness he was demonstrating then. Well, that Trump was like a stately, steady lion next to the mangy, rabid alley cat skittering between the Oval Office and various golf courses now. I’d give just about anything to have him back.
