The Permanent Long Slog

I'm not sure how anyone could read the thread and think it's comforting. Glad of the victory, but the work ahead is large. https://t.co/THODvUOizX

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 24, 2022

The other side of this is calls for Democrats to win the mid-terms (and 2024) NOW! 

I volunteer as tribute. https://t.co/EloTuJ2gBz

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 24, 2022

Electons are won on Election Day, which is to say: what happens between now and then matters, especially what happens much closer to then. The political junkies on Twitter may be all excited, but the average voter barely cares about their state’s primary, much less November.

I live in Texas and I’ve already voted three times (primary, special state election for Constitutional amendments, school board election), and still have a ballot to cast in the primary run-off. Don’t start bothering me with November, I’m already getting school board candidate robo-calls.

Can we get a break from the permanent campaign?

LePen wanted France to see it as a referendum on Macron and his low approval numbers. Instead the country saw it for what it was - a choice. And the choice she offered got it’s ass kicked. Can happen here too. https://t.co/QXofaqcmWW

— Joe Trippi (@JoeTrippi) April 24, 2022

This argument is sound:

1/ Macron didn't just beat Le Pen.

He crushed her.

I don't know the French term for "road kill" but this was a resounding, total victory.

There's no upside for the end of the decades-long Le Pen investment by Putin and others.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 24, 2022

Then collapses into "Evil must be eradicated and everyone must think like me!"

3/ The alt-right/national populist still pulled 40% of the vote, so the work isn't over.

Macron should understand that his enemies abroad -- Putin, Bannon, Greenwald et al -- won't rest and won't stop coming.

They need to mow them down before a cleaner, smarter...

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 24, 2022

4/ ...version of Le Pen emerges.

Complacency is death for democracies. In America, too many believe that being rid of Trump ended the threat to our republic and its democratic system.

They only have to win decisively in one big election and that's the ballgame.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 24, 2022

There’s another Hitler out there, too; if we allow the conditions that led to the collapse of Weimar Germany to be recreated. Punishing Germany for WWI didn’t exactly teach them a lesson, did it? (Yes, I’m a broken record.) But would Germany today re-elect Hitler? Not anytime soon. And Hitler at least took a broken economy and created one of the great military powers of European history (yes, at what horrific cost?). But Trump was so incompetent he just drove the economy into a ditch. Who better is coming along? DeSantis? He’s going to raise taxes on 2 Florida counties just because he’s pissed off. He's forced Sen. Rick Scott to cancel his Disney+ account (Scott is a big Marvel fan?  Who knew?). O, the humanities! These things are a recommendation for national leadership? Who is the Hillary Clinton DeSantis will run against?

And who is Biden running against?  Because he doesn't really mind the Macron comparisons, especially if his opponent is Trump again:

An interesting observation, just FYI.

President Macron appears to have secured a double-digit victory over LePen, at a time when his approval rating is 36%. Hmmm....https://t.co/N50u8He5gW

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) April 24, 2022

The conditions that led to Trump weren’t exactly an indifference to democracy (an indifference Rick Wilson earned a good living from). It was, if anything, an excess of democracy. The party machinery that ran everything from smoke-filled rooms gave way (for many reasons) to primaries, which shifted the powers from the center of the parties to the fringes. No one worried about “primary voters” when conventions chose Presidential candidates. Now they rule the parties, more by perception than real authority. The parties themselves are so shrunken they are virtually meaningless, except for their lock on ballot access in all 50 states. That’s really the only reason they are important. (Trump is raising more money than the GOP. That’s one more reason he is perceived as the power in the party.) With the best of intentions we created the conditions that allowed for Trump and single-person rule and blunt demagoguery.  Indeed, the Republicans have benefitted from that since the days of Reagan (and further back the failure of Goldwater). It wasn’t complacency that led to that, or we’d still have the smoke filled rooms and conventions that actually elect candidates.

Being anxious (the opposite of complacent) isn’t really going to fix that; or anything else.