A few thoughts on the recent South Carolina Republican Primary

A lot of attention was paid to this primary, probably because it was seen as a test of Nikki Haley's ability to pull some votes away from Trump's base. Haley was governor in S.C. for six years, so there was some thought she might get more support because of that.  

But it wasn’t really a surprise when he won, 60% to 40%. The MAGA movement once again dominated a GOP race. (But… dominated? Is that perhaps too strong a word for a 20-point victory?)

Few political movements in U.S. history have been studied more closely than the current Republican base. We know who they are. We know what they want. We know what they believe. None of it is very pleasant stuff, but there are reasons we've developed such a grievance-ridden, misinformed, discontented set of voters. That is probably better addressed in another post. 

What struck me were a couple points. For one thing, it reinforced a point that has probably not gotten enough attention. Aside from the MAGA base, Trump is in trouble with two groups that he needs to win: moderate Republicans and independents. 

According to exit polls (all following numbers are percentages) those two groups went 70-29 for Haley among moderate R's and 53-46 for Haley among independents. In addition, first-time primary voters went for Haley 57-42. That last number is interesting; hard to say exactly what it means, but it could signal an increased anyone-but-Trump position among people who normally aren't tuned into the presidential elections this early. 

To me, another interesting number was the exit polling on race. The Washington Post exit polling showed that only 8% of voters were people of color. The polls showed that 92% of the voters in the Republican primary were white. 

African-Americans, by the way, make up 26% of the population of South Carolina. So, some segment of that 8% of the non-white people were African American voters. 

This does not seem to support the idea that that people of color have become more open to voting for Trump. There have been some polls suggesting that, but in this primary, the R voters where overwhelmingly white. And “overwhelmingly” may not be a strong enough word. 

On Feb. 23, Trump, speaking at conference for Black conservatives, had some things to say about this, including that “the Black people” like him because he has been charged with a lot of crimes. Also, they like him because he has a famous mug shot from being indicted. All the suggestions that Black people relate to criminals is probably not going to do Trump any favors with that voting group. 

A lot of the MAGA movement is based on delusion, so I guess it’s not surprising that Trump and his supporters want to believe that people of color are warming to him. But I question whether Trump really cares much about how many Black voters actually support him. I think it’s possible that his patronizing comments about Black people are mainly a sop to the feelings his white base. All those white folks don’t want to admit that racism exists in America—that’s become a de facto plank of the Republican Party, right? White conservatives frequently get very insistent that racism either no longer exists or that it has become irrelevant (Nikki Haley even has made those kinds of comments frequently in her campaign). 

Few things get white conservatives more agitated than a discussion of race. I have encountered this firsthand in social media, where the angriest outbursts of white conservatives usually come when I suggest that someone or something could be racist. It’s almost like you hit a nerve when you bring it up. 

So, Trump and the whites who support him want to bolster the narrative that race is not a problem for the country, or for their party. Or their candidate. And they want to believe that supporting someone like Trump couldn’t possibly be racist in any way. Look, Black people love him! Or at least, they are liking him more these days. So, we don’t have to think about racism. All fixed. 

The numbers don’t really seem to support that. I mean, even if we ignore the many African Americans who have spoken out on this issue, there just isn’t much real evidence that people of color are changing their minds about Trump. Again, we know who he is. We have a pretty good idea of what his policies will be. And they are decidedly not about diversity, tolerance, and social justice. He is simply not popular with most people of color. Comments about how the system is out to get him is not going to change that. Selling ugly sneakers is not going to change that. I am pretty sure nothing is going to change that. 

 Example One Million*

*= It’s just a rough estimate. 

 

I certainly have lost count, though, of the times I’ve had to make this point. It’s not an easy one to talk about—as noted below, too many white Americans simply don’t want to hear about racial inequities. But that doesn’t mean such inequities should be ignored. 

The example this time concerns Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Some of the more radical House Republicans recently pushed through an amendment to a House spending bill reducing Austin’s annual salary to $1. 

 

I guess the good news is that the amendment will eventually be dropped as the budget process plays out. (Hopefully it will eventually play out)

So, it’s symbolic. But what does it symbolize?

The Republican lawmakers in question say they’re taking this dramatic step because of their displeasure with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is widely seen as having been rushed and resulted in several bad outcomes. These include the deaths of American service members and civilians, and the abandonment of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. 

But Austin is not the only Secretary of Defense to preside over a chaotic withdrawal or the loss of American lives and treasure. During the Reagan administration, we lost hundreds of troops in a bombing in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. An entire building was destroyed, nearly 250 Americans were killed, and the American mission eventually withdrew. 

 

No matter how disastrous the policy or how strong the political disagreements have been, though, no Congress has voted to try to humiliate and punish a Secretary of Defense in this way. 

 

And unlike Reagan’s Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, who was a civilian, Austin is a former general who served in the military for 41 years. And, as this article in The Hill notes, Austin “is the first African American to lead the Defense Department.”

So, an African American who has ascended to heights in the military that no other American from his background has achieved in our country’s history. And then we see this outrageous attempt to punish him.

Not that it’s about race, right? One thing we know for sure: when white American conservatives come up with some creative and bizarre new way to punish or attack prominent African Americans or political figures who are people of color, it’s never about race. I’m sure it wasn’t when Barack Obama was accused of being born in Kenya. Or when the right spread vicious rumors about Kamala Harris. Or with the treatment of Colin Kaepernick, who was quite firmly blacklisted from the NFL for exercising his 1^st Amendment rights. 

 

Or maybe it was. But it’s difficult to make that point in a civil way. White conservatives get quite upset when their cruel and over-the-top antics aimed at Blacks get called racism. They become very indignant and start talking about playing the race card.

 

When I try to make this point with white conservatives, you can imagine how it’s gone over. But in this latest case, I think it’s relevant to ask again. If you were Black, and you saw how this successful, highly respected African American was being treated, the extremes that white conservatives are going to in order to single him out for an unheard-of punishment… would you think race had nothing to do with it? Really? 

If you were a young African-American considering going into military service, or political service, and you saw how this groundbreaking role model was treated, what would you think? How welcome would you feel?

 

The reason white conservatives get called out on this stuff is because of their actions, which speak louder than their protestations of innocence. When your political party or movement is uniformly hostile to people of color, with just a few exceptions, it is not unreasonable to ask if race is a problem here. And I think it pretty clearly is. 

 

Again.

A very limited dip into the well of lies
From the Trump MTP Interview

NBC has been getting a lot of heat for its Meet the Press interview with former president Trump on Sunday, where Trump continued to double down on the lies he has spread on the 2020 election—and on his other potentially criminal activity. 

I did not watch the whole interview. Life is too short, and already too filled with unpleasant experiences, to voluntarily jump into that mudhole. However, two items did catch my attention. 

First was the outright, bald-face lie that Trump told about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who recorded the phone call where the former president pressured the SOS to come up with fake results (“I just want to find 11,780 votes”) in order to overturn the Georgia presidential results. 

In the MTP interview, Trump said: “That was a phone call made in front of, I guess seven or eight lawyers. Brad Raffensperger, the head – who, by the way, last week said I didn’t do anything wrong; he said, ‘That was a negotiation.’ Brad Raffensperger, who I was dealing with, I appreciate that he said that. But he said last week, I didn’t do anything wrong.” 

The CNN fact check on that statement duly noted that there is no record of Raffensperger saying any such thing. But that is irrelevant: for Trump, the important thing is to muddy the waters and plant the claim that he was exonerated. Now, his followers can repeat the lie—they will fill social media and conservative news programs with the statement that Raffensperger said something that he didn’t say. And it won’t matter that they have no proof he said it. It has become a Trump talking point, and so, gospel. 

 

It was also illuminating listening to the former president bob and weave on the question of who convinced him the 2020 election was rigged. The answer? Some people, but mostly just himself. 

 

“I was listening to different people, and when I added it all up, the election was rigged,” Trump told [NBC’s] Kristen Welker in the interview, again pushing the false claim as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

“You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened,” Trump said.

Of course, we know who he should've listened to. His Attorney General. His Vice President. The election officials of the states in question, who were mostly Republican. His campaign officials. The Department of Homeland Security experts who oversaw election security. The audits. The recounts. The 60+ court cases where it was established that fraud had not happened. (In the one case where the Trump campaign prevailed, fraud was not charged; it was simply a matter of deadlines for mail-in ballots.)

That's not who listened to. He listened to a cherry-picked group of lawyers who were telling him what he wanted to hear. Which was, basically, that he could not lose, and if he did lose, it had to be because it was rigged.

The “I listened to some people/I listened to myself” is another transparent attempt to muddy the waters and evade responsibility for his actions. And it is very much in line with the MAGA philosophy overall: believe what you want to believe, don’t pay attention to so-called “facts,” or “experts.” After all, who are they to tell us what is true and what is false?

What is reality, anyway? 

We can only hope that a judge and jury will decide that yes, there are knowable facts. That it matters what election officials and those in charge of election security say about the election. But the bigger problem is that too many Americans have bought into this mindset—that we can ignore the facts and just bend reality to our will. If we say it, it’s so. 

It's a crazy way to live. But not that uncommon these days. And I am forced to agree that the mainstream media is part of the problem. I think the new host of MTP, Kristen Welker, should get a chance to redeem herself after this spectacle. But she’s got some work to do.  

Nancy Mace is a truth-teller

Just a short note--I welcome a moderate Republican recognizing that the takeover of her party by the MAGA movement is going to have consequences. 

"'I’m pro-life. I have a fantastic pro-life voting record, but I also understand that we cannot be a**holes to women,' said Mace, who has been vocal about including exceptions for rape in measures to restrict the procedure."

Unfortunately, this is out of step off with the majority of Republicans, who have embraced the concept of being "the a**hole party." Not all, not by a long shot. But judging purely on polling results, with the majority supporting the biggest a**hole of them all, and putting pro-a**hole candidate Ron DeSantis in second place... it's very much a race to the, um, bottom. 

Rep. Nancy Mace says Republicans in swing districts are ‘walking the plank’ because of abortion restrictions

"They call it run-off because they 'run off' with your money... "

There's a lot going on this week in politics, but there's one number I can't get out of my head:

$1.4 Billion.

That's how much money was spent on the two Georgia Senate seats in the 2020 and 2022 elections. 

Two Senate seats. Six elections, because Georgia's system, created so that white conservatives could stay in power, requires you to win NOT ONE BUT TWO elections if no one gets 50% of the vote. So they have run-off elections--that in Warnock's case produced the same results. (Warnock's original term was two years because he was replacing an appointed Senator, who had replaced a resigned blah blah blah.)

Warnock won in Nov., 2020. Then again in Jan., 2021. Then in Nov., 2022. Then again in Dec., 2022. 

All this time, money was pouring into these races. Democrats ended up spending a lot more, but that in part was because they could raise a lot more. People all over the country sent money to Warnock. I did, once. And my emailbox exploded with pleas for more money for not only Warnock but a bunch of other D's. 

It's a messed-up system. Nobody likes it. Everyone will agree there's too much money in politics. The problem is that politicians don't have much incentive to change it, and plenty of incentive to keep asking for more money. And I hate when people blame "the media" but... the media also profits, a lot, from this system. So we see relatively few questions there about whether this is a good way to spend our wealth. 

$1.4 billion. That's a lot of money. I can think of a few better places we could've spent it. 

Waiting for the red wave

A few days after the 2022 midterm elections, the consensus is that the consensus was wrong. The media, the polls, and many politicians were predicting that Republicans would have a huge day and take over the U.S. House of Representatives easily. The Senate was also in play, with the Democrats' slim majority in danger. In addition, Governor and state officer races were dominated on the Republican side with headline-grabbing election deniers who could wreak havoc with state election system if they were voted in. President Biden had a high disapproval rate. A Red Wave was coming.

Things look a lot different now. 

Despite the historical tendency for midterm elections to be bad for the party who holds the White House, the Democrats outperformed expectations by quite a bit. Three days after the election, we still don't know which party will control the House of Representatives. Same story with the Senate: votes are still being counted in some states, and Georgia will go to a runoff election. It seems very possible the Democrats will hold on to the Senate. And they also held off a lot of those election-deniers in state races. 

Here in Minnesota, Democrats have won re-election for Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General, ensuring that election-deniers will not meddle with our electoral system. Minnesotans also voted in a DFL majority in both the House and Senate, a development the Minneapolis Star Tribune called "a stunning upset." Previously, the Republicans had a slim majority in the Senate and were thought to be positioned to compete for control of the House. But Minnesota now has one party in control of state government. 

How did this happen? The reasons are complicated but I think one word sums up the biggest answer: hubris. 

Both political parties are guilty of living in their own bubbles at times, but in recent years Republicans seem to have had an especially strong tendency to create their own reality. There was even the infamous "alternate facts" expression from the previous presidential administration, and it seemed to fit: many top Republicans seemed to think they could just say something to make it so. 

Part of this was enabled by a media system that endlessly told Republican voters what they wanted to hear. Fox News was a nonstop Republican hype machine this year, and had their own favored pollsters--who always seem to have Republican candidates a little higher up in the numbers than other pollsters. 

In the end, not only Republicans but the political mainstream started to believe the hype--helped by the reasonable assumption that this midterm would follow historical trends. 

It didn't. 

Democratic and independent voters were unusually motivated by things like Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Women, in particular, were outraged by the prospect of politicians taking away their liberty to make their own reproductive choices. Younger adults, who tend not to vote in large numbers in midterms, were also much more involved this year. Other issues, such as gun violence and protecting democracy, also have risen in importance for Americans--they aren't at the top of the polls, but they are polling significantly higher as important issues to voters. 

Yes, the polls showed the economy and inflation were top-of-mind for voters, but that did not translate into Republican support amongst a strong majority of voters. People can be concerned about more than one thing. And it seemed clear that a lot of voters simply did not see the Republicans as presenting good solutions and ideas about our current set of challenges. It's also possible that enough voters were paying attention that they knew Biden and the Democrats had taken several steps to help Americans with pocketbook issues.

I think it's also likely that many independent voters have figured out that the Republicans--some of them, anyway--don't seem to care much about governing. The animating issues among the Fox News/MAGA crowd seem to be things like conspiracy theories and settling political scores. "Owning the libs" is a term we've heard a lot. 

I think a significant number of voters are tired of this type of politics. They want serious people representing them, who will work to find solutions for the many issues we face. It's not even a "bipartisan" hand-holding ideal that they want--they just don't want the endless chaos and bickering that the Trump wing seems to enjoy so much. They want adults in the room, and in the MAGA world, adults are always the exception, not the rule. 

I've had many political discussions with MAGA supporters in recent years, and it's always: "Just you wait." 

Just you wait, Trump will arrest Hillary and Obama. John Durham will come up with blockbuster charges against Mueller and other Trump enemies. It will turn out that Antifa was behind January 6. There's going to be a red wave. Just you wait. 

Delusion has its limits. If you build a house on sand, it will fall. Real facts, eventually, will beat alternative facts. That's the story of the 2022 midterm election. 

Meeting Alex Chilton

(I've been meaning to revisit an old article from Motion magazine, as part of promoting the upcoming "Big Star's #1 Record at 50" tribute. It took me quite a while to dig it up, but I finally found one copy. Being a pack rat does pay off, at times.)

Motion magazine was one of several great publications that Deone Jahnke helped create in the 80s and 90s, and not long after I moved to Milwaukee, I was bugging her to let me contribute as a writer. 

I *think* this article was the first piece that I wrote for Motion, and writing it was a complete stroke of luck. I was living in Milwaukee, but I traveled south one weekend to visit a friend in Bloomington Indiana, where I had gone to college for a year. 

We were considering things to do, and I saw that Alex Chilton was playing the famed Second Story. I had been introduced to Chilton’s band Big Star in Bloomington—at the tiny record store Gulcher Records, owned by Bob Richert, who became a bit of a mentor to me. Richert had recommended the “#1 Record/Radio City” double album re-release to me, and as the cliche goes, that record changed my life. 

I was eager to go to the show, and on an impulse, decided to call the club and ask if I could interview Chilton for Motion. It was by far the most productive use of the line, “I’m a music writer from Milwaukee” in my lifetime. The club asked Chilton, Chilton said yes, and I dashed over to meet with him in the club’s dressing room. 

 

Chilton’s cynical side is something he was known for, but I have met famous musicians with *far* more attitude than Alex Chilton. If anything, he was very polite and generous with his time. He answered my questions and seemed to enjoy talking about music. He mentioned The Replacements as one of his favorite bands at the moment. Well, more accurately, he said the Replacements were one of the few currently-popular bands that he could stand...

So, here is the article I wrote for Motion, based on that interview with Alex Chilton, in a bare-bones nightclub in Bloomington, Indiana. It was never digitized, so I’m just providing a photo file of it, with a favorite anecdote at the end. I have been sharing this story lately, and I realize that in my re-tellings, I have said Chilton played solo. The story says he had a trio--I wish I could remember who was playing with him that night. As with so many things, time has made those memories a little blurry. 

But man, am I glad I met him. 

(Blogger is not allowing me to recreate the article in a form that's very readable. Contact me directly (I suggest Facebook Messenger) if you want to see a jpg of the article.)