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In the first part of our conversation, Steve Millies and I discussed what the Democrats can do to exploit the cracks that are showing between the Republicans and within the maga movement, generally.

Right now, some Democrats are focused on impeaching the president over his illegal attack on Iran. But as the political scientist and professor of theology at Catholic Theological Union told me, a better choice would be widening the evident divisions between the Republicans by forcing a vote on something like the Case-Church Amendment of 1973, which ultimately ended the Vietnam War. 

“What’s frustrating is to watch them playing to their base and talking about impeachment without being focused on the very promising opportunity this situation seems to have given them,” he said.

In this second part of our conversation, Professor Millies and I discuss the larger social dynamics that inform the Democrats’ choices, namely, that the system of rational self-interest that used to define politics is largely gone, replaced by a system of dunks, gotchas and sick burns. 

It used to be that politicians would do something for a majority of voters and those voters would, in turn, reward them. This way of thinking determined pretty much everything Joe Biden did. The incentives seemed clear: Save the country from the covid and its economic fallout, and the people will support him (or his successor).

But the 2024 election proved that way of thinking no longer holds. Not only did the electorate punish the party that saved the country. The party that is now trying to harm the country fears no accountability. In response to concerns about Medicaid cuts hurting people, including GOP voters, Mitch McConnell said don’t worry. They’ll get over it.

Professor Millies said that due to advancements in communications technology, especially social media, the old incentives no longer apply, The Democrats could drive a wedge between Republicans, especially among those who are envisioning a time when Donald Trump is no longer their party’s leader, but instead, the incentives are toward “strongly worded social media post that gets clicks and raises money.”

Politics has “been turned around into something that is destroying us,” Professor Millies told me. “The signs on the horizon are extremely worrying, all the more because we may well be so entertained by what’s happening that we’ll laugh and applaud the whole way down.”

All right, do you have faith that the Democrats will capitalize on this opportunity? It seems like an easy layup, but what do I know?

It seems like an easy layup to me, too, but I’m just a political scientist.  What worries me is that we are seeing the same forces that corroded the Republican Party have also corroded the Democrats, but in a slightly different way. Both have abandoned norms and institutions. 

Institutions mediated between political leaders and voters before the immediacy of TV, internet and social media. Those same technological (and, in reality, social) developments have created a sense that norms can be transgressed, because those developments have radically flattened the information landscape, giving many people an ability to build their own “expertise” or at least lose confidence in anyone else’s.  

That’s a bipartisan problem.  

Among the Democrats, I worry we’re seeing the cautious instincts cultivated by a poll-driven campaign industry that encourages a strange kind of playing-it-safe. When Hakeem Jeffries said he hadn’t looked at the war powers resolution by Thomas Massie, that was obviously false and smelled like waiting to see what the polling said.  

Worse, I think this permanent campaign behavior for a lot of Democrats has been captured by social media culture. It’s far better from a member’s perspective to have a strongly worded social media post that gets clicks and raises money than it is to go for the layup. 

In the end, the trouble here is that both parties need the opposition too much. The technological developments, and then the Citizens United decision, created a climate in which it’s actually better to punch an opponent than it is to make good public policy.  

That’s a problem for both parties.  

But I think it explains why the Democrats have largely been content to talk about impeachment (or, for Jeffries, not even that), but they seem not to be thinking about tactical options they have that might work.

How can the Democrats break out of their malaise? The consultant class has a hold on them. Are there past examples we can look to?

I think it’s a mistake to think of it as a malaise. The problem (as I always insist on social media and in class) is all of us. Our political system didn’t change. It worked not flawlessly but well for over 200 years. We changed. The technological and social changes I pointed to earlier have changed us. That has thwarted the effectiveness of our constitutional system largely because it’s created new incentives so that we don’t look to politics for the things we used to look to it for.  

There is a rising literature about the failure of “deliverism,” the idea that politicians will be rewarded if they deliver benefits for constituents. We don’t look to politics for that like we used to.  

We now view politics more like a reality TV show or a WWE match, and politics mainly is about getting the other guy or beating the other team. In this way, the prevalence of the consultant class, in fact, is just another manifestation of those technological and social changes.  

Their job is to make sure that electeds deliver what constituents will reward them for – not public policy that improves their lives, but a win against the other team. And that’s where the Democrats are, I think.  

I’m not sure how a party can appeal to voters to embrace deliverism and reject what these changes have done to us without falling into the trap of just opposing the other side for clicks and to raise money.  

The problem is far more fundamental than any framing of Democrats-versus-Republicans can capture. Our political imaginations have been rewired by TV, the internet and social media, and by the prevalence of entertainment in our lives – is CNN’s coverage of election night so different from Super Bowl coverage?  

And this is the truly worrying thing, because I don’t think there is anything in the past that speaks to this. We’ve understood politics as an expression of rational self-interest for 2,500 years. If that is upended as I fear it is, then we are starting from scratch.  

And we’re doing it in a moment when billionaires are getting wealthier by altering the information landscape even more with artificial intelligence. The pace is too fast and we’re already lagging way behind if we want to address it. The signs on the horizon are extremely worrying, all the more because we may well be so entertained by what’s happening that we’ll laugh and applaud the whole way down.  

I hate to end on a downer, but politics has always been about building the world, improving our lives. It’s been turned around into something that is destroying us. That’s the malaise we need to be focused on.

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