And so, I think as we have been becoming tired of reality television, you will see voters get tired of reality TV politics, because the two are inextricably linked. Reality TV politics grew as reality TV grew, and it will die as reality TV dies. And you’re seeing little examples of this along the way. You have the Democratic primary, for instance, in Texas, between Jasmine Crockett — far more the traditional reality TV candidate, very aggressive, negative online, attention-seeking — versus James Talarico, who ran a very traditional grass-roots model — having an actual ground game, a positive message — whom I’ve referred to as the “Ted Lasso” candidate. And I think you will see more of those candidates break through to your “truer and better” point.
My second observation is back to this idea that we actually don’t have political parties anymore. We still have teams that we call Republican and Democrat, but that’s not what a political party actually was, or used to be, at least. It used to be a cohesive group around some policies and principles that would support candidates that supported those policies or principles, and the party existed separate from its candidates. Because of campaign finance reform and the law that was passed in 2002, we basically ended having separate political parties. And so, instead, again, it’s actually increased partisanship. But it’s vibes-based. It’s this sense that you belong to, like, you know, the Starbucks, Trader Joe’s tote bag, matcha latte group. Or you belong to the pickup truck, “Yellowstone”-watching, Walmart group. And it’s not policy based.
For the first time in American history, we have more people who identify as independent than with either of the two political parties. So, when you talk about candidates trying to distance themselves from their political party, I don’t think it’s being sick of Donald Trump, I think it’s that political parties are meaningless. They are incredibly negative, polarized, right? The negative polarization is:“Don’t vote for me — vote against them. They are a threat to your way of life.” That’s what the two political parties are, and they are entirely based around what candidates they have.
And I will just say, I lament that we are not arguing over policy anymore. I think that’s a healthier version of democracy. Congress was supposed to be the place where you could work as a pluralistic society to negotiate and compromise, and have long-term stable solutions to our problems. We can’t do that in government by executive order. And so there’s a lot of ideas about how to make Congress great again. We should be focused on those and less on red versus blue.
Dionne: Just a couple of things: One, I’m not sure I see Jasmine Crockett quite as a reality TV candidate, but I do think James Talarico may run a clip of you talking about him as the Ted Lasso candidate. That could help him a lot down there. And one little consumer thing where I think some consumer behavior stuff is relevant: Someone had a story recently, that the sales of Trump paraphernalia, that they sell branded, are way down, apparently. And maybe it’s Trump inflation, but I don’t think so. I think that tells us something about what’s going on down there. I do think what’s going on is more political than a pure market or mood analysis suggests, even though I think some of your points make some sense to me.
