Left Jabs

Let’s talk about the Republican brand. An unpleasant subject, I know, but well worth watching as it turns rancid. Marketing has always been a strength of the GOP. They don’t do policy at all, and they’ve stopped even paying lip-service to reality. But they’ve always had a singular knack for mass manipulation. From Lee Atwater to Karl Rove to Roger Ailes, the party has long been a showcase for brilliant but bent marketing talent, people who understood their target audience and knew what messages would resonate. Those messages have always been deeply fraudulent, and for good reason. They know they can’t tell their audience the real story. The one about who they are and what they stand for. Because the real story is tax cuts and deregulation, nothing else. That’s what they want their brand to be about, but it’s a lousy product. Nobody with a net worth of less than $10 million has any interest in it. So rather than promote it, they’ve had to put up smokescreens to divert attention ...

Back in the nineties, Holocaust denial enjoyed one of its periodic but thankfully brief revivals. It was an old idea given new life, thanks to some shrewd but cynical PR and a few credulous members of the media. Spread virally, or what passed for virally at the time, the “story” — that the Holocaust never happened, that six million Jews were never exterminated — actually percolated up to the mainstream media as a “controversy” for a while. TV news and talk shows, both national and local, worked hard to fan the flames, actually giving serious airtime to the charlatans perpetuating this sludge. But the producers of these shows, sensitive sorts all, couldn’t believe how hard it was to recruit actual Holocaust victims to sit across from the charlatans. They were offering good money, after all. Why would these old folks not want to go on camera? Why would they not want to relive those unimaginable horrors that scarred them for life, listening to some toxic putz who’s trying to conv...

Lately there has been much written — and more than a little hand-wringing — about the fate of the fabled American “Center,” that vast majority of sensible people who just wish we could all get along. In particular, there was an op-ed in the Times last week by Thomas B. Edsall — a seasoned, generally respected journalist — that goes to great lengths to lament the neglect of this supposed Center. Edsall places the blame for said neglect on “polarization,” on an electorate that’s been “pushed by political extremes.” He cites an impressive number of recent studies to show us how big but politically powerless this Center appears to be. One of these studies makes the point that: Bipartisan majorities consider the following to be “essential rights important to being an American today”: ‘“clean air and water” (93 percent); “a quality education” (92 percent); “affordable health care” (89 percent); and the “right to a job” (85 percent). These high levels of demand for...

It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy like Kyle McKenzie. Knowing he’s the research director for Stand Together, an advocacy group owned by the Koch family, I’m not inclined to sympathy. But as a former advertising guy, who once sat through too many focus groups to count, I know well how consumer research can undo the best-laid plans. In McKenzie’s case, the plans were to figure out how the Kochs should handle HR1 — the massive voting rights bill now reaching the Senate — where they are once again on the wrong side of history. McKenzie was charged with finding ways to undermine any positive perceptions the public might harbor about making it easy for people to vote. What they were looking for was a message — any message — that might convince the public that the right to vote is overrated. We know this thanks to the amazing Jane Mayer of The New Yorker . Somehow, she obtained this eye-opening audio of a ten-minute conference call, in which McKenzie presents his research findings to...

For all its faults, I’ve generally regarded 60 Minutes as real journalism, practiced by real journalists. Even so, their political coverage of late has been irksome — with too much both-siderist nonsense delivered none too subtly. The lead story on the March 21 show , however, went beyond both-siderist, to what I hope I’m misconstruing as subversive. The thirteen-minute segment featured an interview with former Associate Deputy Attorney General Michael R. Sherwin, a career prosecutor who until leaving office two days before, was in charge of DOJ’s investigation into the Capitol insurrection. It was a jaw-dropping interview, at least to a non-lawyer. For thirteen minutes, Sherwin took us through the investigation in startling detail, pointing out some of the rioters in the Capitol photos, outlining the kinds of charges they might face, and generally getting viewers salivating over the prospect of righteous restitution. But to anyone in the legal profession, the interview set off ...

Last week, Mitch McConnell voted to confirm Merrick Garland as Attorney General. Twenty Republicans actually crossed the aisle to do the same, an amazing thing in this day and age. But without Mitch, it would’ve been just one more Kamala tie-breaker. The speculation is that this was Mitch’s way of telling Garland — and Joe Biden — that stealing that Supreme Court seat in 2016 was nothing personal. And it wasn’t. I have no doubt Mitch would have tanked anyone Obama nominated. Anything to further vandalize that administration. Garland just happened to be there. But while Mitch surely thinks, in his own head, that it was nothing personal, he knows Joe Biden holds no such illusions. Because when Mitch sabotaged the Garland nomination, he blew a hole through history, full stop. And for Biden that was personal. He was there, in the White House. It’s nothing new that the obstruction of that fifth reasonable voice on the bench was a major disaster, and it only got worse when Trump drew...

In just fifty days, Joe Biden has taken plenty of us — including me — by surprise. He is clearly rising to the occasion, displaying skills few knew he had. He has learned the trick of under-promising and over-delivering, and when he makes a promise, he knows ahead of time that it’s a sure thing. He also has an apparent gift for delegating the right jobs to the right people. He lets them do their thing while he gives them cover, benignly hovering above the fray. So far, it’s working. Let’s hear it for old white guys with something left in the tank. So the fifty-day mark seems a good time to step back and make a few observations, not so much about Biden, as because of him. Boring but Radical It was Ted Cruz, of all people, who nailed it, albeit unintentionally. In a tweet last week he proclaimed Joe Biden “boring but radical.” He was being nasty, of course, because nasty is all he knows. But to me, it was validation. After four years of total batshit craziness, it turns out b...