Remember in 2010 when Barack Obama was still heaving the purpling, moldering corpse of the Bush II administration off our body politic? Thanks in large part to unified GOP obstruction, the economy was still struggling to recover from the depths of that derp recession, and while Obama’s not-quite-robust-enough stimulus package probably saved us from a second Great Depression, it wasn’t enough to stave off the coming Tea Party wave.
Living in Wisconsin at the time, I felt my blood boil whenever I saw Ron Johnson—who was challenging one of my political heroes, Sen. Russ Feingold, at the time—refer to Obama’s economy-saving initiative as the “failed stimulus.” Maybe that was projection and Johnson was actually referring to the many abortive attempts to reboot his brain with an ice-fishing auger and a slop bucket full of irradiated night crawlers, but the reality is that he likely saw a political opening—one that was pried open to begin with by Republican obstinance and incompetence—and successfully exploited it.
To me, these attacks always felt a little like Exxon harshly criticizing the residents of Valdez, Alaska, for being really mediocre at cleaning ducks. But that’s the GOP for you. If there’s one thing Republicans are actually good at, it’s dishonestly sniping from the sidelines.
Unfortunately, perception is often more powerful than reality, particularly when it comes to electoral politics. While the reality in 2010 was that Obama had done a yeoman’s job in getting our financial house in order, the perception was that the recovery wasn’t yet strong enough—and that it was somehow his fault.
Joe Biden learned the lessons of the 2010 midterm cycle well, and that’s likely why he secured a $1.9 trillion stimulus right off the bat before diving headlong into infrastructure negotiations. There would be no sputtering recovery this time, thank you very much.
Republicans, of course, know this, which is why they’ve been glomming onto issues ranging from the ridiculous (Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, critical race theory) to the sublimely desperate (election “fraud”). That said, they may have finally stumbled onto something, and it scares me a little. It scares me enough, in fact, that I feel like we need to get ahead of it sooner rather than later. As in … now.
After decades of steep, sustained drops in crime (my own theory is that those drops were largely due to a sharp decrease in environmental lead exposure), crime has begun to tick up again. Not all crime, mind you. But murders were up sharply in 2020, and other violent crime increased by about 3%. We’re still in the middle of that wave, and Republicans’ mouths are slavering at the potential political whirlwind they could reap as a result.
Of course, the kind of scaremongering you’ll see in the following tweet is nonsense, but whatever else you want to say about them, Republicans are good at delivering consistent messaging, even when their messages are demonstrable B.S. Few voters will research what criminologists think about changes in crime rates, nor will they seek out the relevant context. They’ll just hear the Ron Johnsons of the world harping on crime and inflation every time they open their lying mouths, and they’ll internalize those messages.
It’s not rocket science. It’s politicking for simpletons, and that’s why they’re so good at it and we’re—far too often—so bad.
Of course, Donald Trump, the febrile reptile brain around which a shambling, semi-ambulatory clown man part eventually grew, has a preternatural instinct for understanding exactly what kind of rancid stew his base will hoover up. So I Andy Dufresne’d my way through the internet tubes, finally alighting on this TFG McNugget from the dark heart of Bizarro World:
For the nontweeters:
You can likely spot the numerous lies on your own, though I never tire of pointing out that the first vaccine to gain FDA approval, Pfizer’s mRNA shot, took no research money from the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed and so couldn’t have possibly been “developed” by Trump.
That said, Trump and his fellow Republicans may be able to make hay over the rising crime statistics, which—and this is vitally important to point out—began their sharp increase under his watch.
Sure, I can already hear Republicans and a passel of leftish advocatus diabolis protesting that the “defund the police” movement that gained traction in the wake of George Floyd’s death is the real culprit, so let me disabuse y’all of that right here and now:
Crime trends are wild and unpredictable, of course—but what’s eminently foreseeable is politicians’ ability to smell blood in the water and attack, as The New Republic further explains:
The most likely explanation for the increase in crime we saw in 2020? Chaos Agent Donald Trump flubbed the pandemic response, and people started to go a bit off the rails. It’s only common sense that a stable society breeds passivity whereas an increasingly chaotic society that a man-child whacks over and over again like a hornet’s nest is bound to experience some unrest—in the form of insurrections, civil disturbance and, yes, violent crime. In other words, this crime wave started under Donald Trump and we need to continually remind people of that.
Of course, I’m not the only one beating this drum. James Carville, the legendary Clintonite political strategist, echoed this sentiment in a May 26 Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Democrats are the Anticrime Party.” The article is behind a paywall, and I’d rather climb into Ted Cruz’s windowless white van than give Rupert Murdoch any more money, but the gist of Carville’s argument was captured in a subsequent story in The Hill.
Carville notes that Trump’s administration presided over “one long crime wave” during which Trump “broke laws, obstructed justice and incited violence knowing he wouldn’t be held accountable while in office.” According to Carville, Chaos Agent Trump’s lawless streak also had a corrosive effect on the country. “Corruption became the administration’s oxygen, and Mr. Trump’s stunning display of lawlessness set an example for criminals to crawl out of the shadows and believe they would never be brought to justice.”
Meanwhile, despite Republican efforts in 2016 to scaremonger over small pockets of rising crime across the country (remember Newt Gingrich pooh-poohing low official crime rates under Obama while citing people’s “feelings” on crime?), Carville noted that crime “steadily decreased” from 1993 to 2019 before sharply spiking in Trump’s final year in office.
Even more importantly, Republicans have been the ones intent on actually “defunding” the police.
This is the Trump Crime Wave, and we need to start calling it that.
Once again, a Democratic president was handed a giant shit sandwich by his predecessor, but that doesn’t mean we should allow Republicans to make him eat it. Donald Trump is the sandwich artist, and he deserves all the credit.
So let’s not be afraid to shove it down his venal, corrupt throat.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Just $12.96 for the pack of 4! Or if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
Living in Wisconsin at the time, I felt my blood boil whenever I saw Ron Johnson—who was challenging one of my political heroes, Sen. Russ Feingold, at the time—refer to Obama’s economy-saving initiative as the “failed stimulus.” Maybe that was projection and Johnson was actually referring to the many abortive attempts to reboot his brain with an ice-fishing auger and a slop bucket full of irradiated night crawlers, but the reality is that he likely saw a political opening—one that was pried open to begin with by Republican obstinance and incompetence—and successfully exploited it.
To me, these attacks always felt a little like Exxon harshly criticizing the residents of Valdez, Alaska, for being really mediocre at cleaning ducks. But that’s the GOP for you. If there’s one thing Republicans are actually good at, it’s dishonestly sniping from the sidelines.
Unfortunately, perception is often more powerful than reality, particularly when it comes to electoral politics. While the reality in 2010 was that Obama had done a yeoman’s job in getting our financial house in order, the perception was that the recovery wasn’t yet strong enough—and that it was somehow his fault.
Joe Biden learned the lessons of the 2010 midterm cycle well, and that’s likely why he secured a $1.9 trillion stimulus right off the bat before diving headlong into infrastructure negotiations. There would be no sputtering recovery this time, thank you very much.
Republicans, of course, know this, which is why they’ve been glomming onto issues ranging from the ridiculous (Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, critical race theory) to the sublimely desperate (election “fraud”). That said, they may have finally stumbled onto something, and it scares me a little. It scares me enough, in fact, that I feel like we need to get ahead of it sooner rather than later. As in … now.
After decades of steep, sustained drops in crime (my own theory is that those drops were largely due to a sharp decrease in environmental lead exposure), crime has begun to tick up again. Not all crime, mind you. But murders were up sharply in 2020, and other violent crime increased by about 3%. We’re still in the middle of that wave, and Republicans’ mouths are slavering at the potential political whirlwind they could reap as a result.
Of course, the kind of scaremongering you’ll see in the following tweet is nonsense, but whatever else you want to say about them, Republicans are good at delivering consistent messaging, even when their messages are demonstrable B.S. Few voters will research what criminologists think about changes in crime rates, nor will they seek out the relevant context. They’ll just hear the Ron Johnsons of the world harping on crime and inflation every time they open their lying mouths, and they’ll internalize those messages.
It’s not rocket science. It’s politicking for simpletons, and that’s why they’re so good at it and we’re—far too often—so bad.
Of course, Donald Trump, the febrile reptile brain around which a shambling, semi-ambulatory clown man part eventually grew, has a preternatural instinct for understanding exactly what kind of rancid stew his base will hoover up. So I Andy Dufresne’d my way through the internet tubes, finally alighting on this TFG McNugget from the dark heart of Bizarro World:
For the nontweeters:
You can likely spot the numerous lies on your own, though I never tire of pointing out that the first vaccine to gain FDA approval, Pfizer’s mRNA shot, took no research money from the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed and so couldn’t have possibly been “developed” by Trump.
That said, Trump and his fellow Republicans may be able to make hay over the rising crime statistics, which—and this is vitally important to point out—began their sharp increase under his watch.
Sure, I can already hear Republicans and a passel of leftish advocatus diabolis protesting that the “defund the police” movement that gained traction in the wake of George Floyd’s death is the real culprit, so let me disabuse y’all of that right here and now:
Crime trends are wild and unpredictable, of course—but what’s eminently foreseeable is politicians’ ability to smell blood in the water and attack, as The New Republic further explains:
The most likely explanation for the increase in crime we saw in 2020? Chaos Agent Donald Trump flubbed the pandemic response, and people started to go a bit off the rails. It’s only common sense that a stable society breeds passivity whereas an increasingly chaotic society that a man-child whacks over and over again like a hornet’s nest is bound to experience some unrest—in the form of insurrections, civil disturbance and, yes, violent crime. In other words, this crime wave started under Donald Trump and we need to continually remind people of that.
Of course, I’m not the only one beating this drum. James Carville, the legendary Clintonite political strategist, echoed this sentiment in a May 26 Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Democrats are the Anticrime Party.” The article is behind a paywall, and I’d rather climb into Ted Cruz’s windowless white van than give Rupert Murdoch any more money, but the gist of Carville’s argument was captured in a subsequent story in The Hill.
Carville notes that Trump’s administration presided over “one long crime wave” during which Trump “broke laws, obstructed justice and incited violence knowing he wouldn’t be held accountable while in office.” According to Carville, Chaos Agent Trump’s lawless streak also had a corrosive effect on the country. “Corruption became the administration’s oxygen, and Mr. Trump’s stunning display of lawlessness set an example for criminals to crawl out of the shadows and believe they would never be brought to justice.”
Meanwhile, despite Republican efforts in 2016 to scaremonger over small pockets of rising crime across the country (remember Newt Gingrich pooh-poohing low official crime rates under Obama while citing people’s “feelings” on crime?), Carville noted that crime “steadily decreased” from 1993 to 2019 before sharply spiking in Trump’s final year in office.
Even more importantly, Republicans have been the ones intent on actually “defunding” the police.
This is the Trump Crime Wave, and we need to start calling it that.
Once again, a Democratic president was handed a giant shit sandwich by his predecessor, but that doesn’t mean we should allow Republicans to make him eat it. Donald Trump is the sandwich artist, and he deserves all the credit.
So let’s not be afraid to shove it down his venal, corrupt throat.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Just $12.96 for the pack of 4! Or if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.