"Turn it Off!"
In the 1992 film SNEAKERS, Robert Redford and his team of high-tech Corporate Security operatives are hired (some might say blackmailed) to steal a mysterious piece of technology. In the process they inadvertently deliver into the hands of a foreign power a device that could literally destroy America overnight. The sequence where they realize exactly what they’ve done is one of the greatest examples of theatrical tension building Hollywood has ever created. It’s an action scene where nobody actually moves… a comedy bit that’s also scary as hell… and everything about it, from the composition of the shots (the camera angle up through the glass table… the on-screen data, a MATRIX-like double image, reflected in Strathairn’s sunglasses) to the music in the background that follows the scene as it shifts from light and fun to dark and foreboding, is chef’s kiss perfect. You don’t even have to have seen the movie to feel and understand the tension as it builds.
As I look around at the state of American politics here in the first few weeks of 2022, I sometimes wonder if scenes like this one are happening right now inside Democrat National Committee HQ…
Because just like Redford and his merry band of SNEAKERS, Joe, Chuck and Nancy have their own version of that mysterious box sitting on their desk. Except that instead of the ultimate codebreaker, this box contains a group of voices that are luring the Demcorats to electoral doom just as surely as the Sirens lured Odysseus’s sailors to their deaths.
It’s probably already too late, but if the Democrats expect to have any hope of blunting the Red Wave coming in November, they’ll need to realize the danger their own version of the “Sneakers” box represents while there’s still time to “TURN IT OFF!”.
So what is this mysterious weapon in their midst? Joe Biden gave us a clue during his bizarre Press Conference last week when he said that he’s spoken to several Republicans who agree with him on policy but are afraid to say so. This is, of course, utter nonsense, but it’s becoming clear that the President and his allies in Congress actually believe it. What dark magic could have tricked the Democrats into contructing this fantasy that rank-and-file Republicans are desperate for Progressive policy prescriptions?
Well, for one thing, there is a river of money flowing through the world of Corporate Media right now that is only available to a very specific kind of pundit. All that one need do in order to drink deep of this river is to be a “Noted Republican” who is willing to go on TV or into the pages of the NYT or WaPo and talk about how extreme the Republican Party has become, while simultaneously advocating for Progressive policies. “Former Republicans” like Jen Rubin, Max Boot, Rick Wilson, Bill Kristol and many others who used to at least pretend to advocate for Conservative policies, have abandonded everything they once claimed to believed in so they could waddle up to the banks of this river and drink their fill.
Nothing like this happens on the Left… there are no prominent disaffected Democrats with sinecures on Cable TV or permanent columns at the NYT, even though we are currently in the middle of an historic period of Democrat disaffection with the direction of their Party and the Country. No, in fact what’s happening on the Left is the exact opposite… Bari Weiss was pushed out of her NYT gig for the crime of Progressive heterodoxy, and if Glenn Greenwald wants to go on the air and suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to get involved in foreign nation building, or that we shouldn’t be using the US Defense and Intelligence Apparatus against American citizens, his only remaining options are (checks notes) Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham?!
Look, if this were a grift that went both ways, Tulsi Gabbard and Bridget Phetasy, who are both scary smart and highly photogenic, would both have full-time media gigs… and yet they do not.
Why?
They don’t because the Media doesn’t actually have any interest in presenting smart well-reasoned contrarian viewpoints, not really. That’s not what Jen Rubin is for. She exists to help the Left demoralize Republicans by making them feel like everyone who matters is defecting to the other side… that the Conservative bulwark is cracking… that’s all.
And since the Legacy Media is not in the business of making Democrats look bad, there is simply no equivalent need for “brave” disaffected Demcorats willing to say the same sorts of things about their Party that Jen Rubin will say about “hers.” This also explains why contrarian Republicans like McCain, Romney and Liz Cheney are lionized as “Mavericks” while Manchin and Sinema are relentlessly attacked and called traitors. The door only swings one way.
By embracing this tactic, the Left has inadvertently created a major blind spot for themselves… one that does not exist on the Right. Progressive Elites no longer interact with actual Republicans, and so they have no idea what average Republican voters actually think. They were so horrified by Trump and so angry with those who voted for him that they cut us off. We became the “Deplorables” overnight, our opinions no longer even worthy of consideration, and so now the only contact most Progressives have with Republicans is through people like Rubin, Boot, Wilson and Kristol.
Thing is, though, no one was ever supposed to actually believe this “former Republican” grift. These people were supposed to be something more like a modern version of Tokyo Rose… a willing convert reporting from behind enemy lines, telling those still fighting for the other side that they are wasting their time, that it really is better over here on The Left. Jennifer Rubin’s real job was never to inform Democrats, it was to demoralize the GOP.
But Democrats have forgotten that, and now they have no choice but to take Rubin seriously, for the painfully prosaic reason that they no longer have any other Republicans to talk to. So, when they need to know what Republicans are thinking, they dutifully run to Rubin’s Twitter account where they discover that, surprise surprise!, Rubin’s priorities are exactly the same as the Democrat Party’s priorities! They don’t have to change a thing… all they have to do is double down on Federalizing Elections, pushing more CRT into schools, packing the Supreme Court, and pushing trillions more in Government spending out into the Economy where it can swamp everyday Americans in wave after wave of inflation, and the votes of “reasonable” Republicans will follow like rats to the Piper.
So that’s what they’ve done. And that’s how Biden has convinced himself that there must be Republican lawmakers who agree with him… not because he’s actually spoken to any, but because Jen Rubin says so. It’s really the only explanation that makes any sense.
Want proof? After Joe Biden’s disaster of a press conference, you couldn’t find anyone who didn’t work for the Adminstration, or who isn’t Jill Biden, who had anything positive to say about it… the best anyone could do was to point out that Ole Joe had managed to stand in one place for two hours without dying. Even CNN spent the day absolutely torching him.
But not Jen Rubin, boy, she really earned her money that day, tweeting this shortly after Joe mercifully stopped speaking:
First of all, you gotta love that “A-”… I mean she’s got to give the guy some room to improve, right? But you have to wonder… does Rubin actually believe that tweet? Does it even matter? The only thing that really matters is whether or not The Democrats believe that she believes it, and I think they actually might. I think they’ve talked themselves into it… because at this point, nine months out from a midterm election that looms like the iceberg over the Titanic, what else can they do?
Even if they were to somehow realize the mistake they’ve made, it’s far too late to “turn it off!”