It took me multiple days to get through Ross Douthat's interview with Chris Murphy. I've been impressed with Murphy since he was our congressman who came and spoke at our school. He's very bright and conceptualizes politics in clear and easy to understand ways.
He makes some interesting arguments. He echoes calls made by Yglesias and others to "grow the coalition" of the Democratic Party, especially in order to win the Senate. I actually like Yglesias' idea of creating something akin to the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party that exists in Minnesota. Yes, we have some independents from Maine and Vermont who are really just cantankerous Democrats, but a Democrat simply can't win in the Dakotas, and having a third party (with no Democrat running) that isn't associated with some of the Democratic Party's cultural stances on guns or other cultural issues would be helpful.
He has been making another argument that is kind of strange to my ears about "church." He's not arguing specifically for religion or religiosity. He's arguing that we've lost that connective communal experience, and that alienation and isolation that we feel is an opening that Trumpist visions of decline exploits. In the abstract I agree with him, but I have no idea what that looks like as a form of political action or a plank in a party platform. In fact, if Trump eviscerates universities and Democrats ever win power again, I almost think you have to attack the tax exempt status of these megachurches.
Where Murphy makes the most sense is in arguing that Democrats do have to return to kitchen table issues. One thing he alludes to and a concern I share is that Kamala Harris did not run on trans rights. Trump rather successfully did make enough voters feel that Harris cared more about trans rights than economic issues. It wasn't HER campaign that botched that, it was Trump's campaign that exploited, perhaps, latent feelings among many voters about a women of color from San Francisco. Her identity was shorthand for her priorities, regardless of what she said. People don't believe politicians - especially in the Age of Trump - so they rely on cultural shorthand. That's why I'm all on board with a male Midwestern governor in 2028.
Douthat pushes Murphy on the basic Democratic rhetoric of Trump's assault on democracy. It obviously did not work for Harris, so why should it work going forward. I agree that the sort of voters who tilted the election to Trump do not have sophisticated understanding of Constitutional Law, democratic norms or abstract principles regarding separation of powers. However, there is a huge and easy to understand opening.
Autocracy is almost always about the corruption. You destroy democratic accountability in order to enrich yourself. Trump's corruption is absolutely off the hook. Just this morning, Trump basically received an emolument from Qatar in the form of a luxury jet. Since the jet will be Trump's after he leaves office (though technically belonging to his presidential library) this is a pretty clear case of a foreign country buying friendship with Trump. The corruption surrounding his crypto is almost impossible to measure.
Finally, we have the many America companies and law firms who are bending the knee and funneling money and services to him.
Once the GOP Budget is finally produced the depths of cuts in the service of reducing taxes on the very rich - combined with the diminished standard of living tariffs should create will make it easier to paint Trump and the GOP as servants of the very rich.
Some Dem strategist noted that few people know what the word "oligarch" means. I would argue that Democrats should spend the next 18 months drilling that word into everything they talk about: the corruption, the way the game is rigged for the rich, the billionaire boy's club.
That's Murphy's fundamental argument and I think he's right.
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