"What's Project 2025?": The Horseracing Of The 2024 Election

<"Just Say No, 

While You Can"/Take I:

Image Source: Institute For Strategic Dialogue
Amendments: The Reckoner>

Reckoner's Note: Alas, this piece turned out to eerily prescient, and more timely than I could ever have imagined, having been written before the so-called Biden-Trump "debate." However, I really need to address it separately, most likely for July Fourth, because this post is long enough already! Suffice to say, though, it confirms practically every point I made here. And then some. With that cheery preamble, read on!

<i.>

Imagine the scene: you're talking with friends at the library, and inevitably, the discussion swings to the 2024 Presidential race. "So what do you think about the election? How do you think it'll go?"

"Well, start with the so-called 'double haters,'" you answer, "or people who don't like Biden, or Trump." You reel off the usual imponderables: what'll the independents do? Which states seem within each for either candidate? Will the A-word (abortion) carry the same weight as it did in the 2022 midterms.

And so on, and so forth, as you explain. "Of course, whatever Trump's spouting out on the campaign trail is nothing, compared to he's dreaming up for Project 2025..."

Your friend furrows his brow. "What's Project 2025? I haven't heard of it."

"Wow, you mean -- you don't know?" You struggle to contain your amazement. "It's his plan to become President For Life, basically, the all-powerful autocracy that he and his cohorts dream of creating."

Your friend begins scribbling in his notebook. "What are the basics of Project 2025?" he asks.

"Well, start with Schedule F, which he tried to implement in 2020. It's an executive order that he'd use to fire some 50,000 federal employees, and replace them with zealots who'd pledge to do his bidding..."

And off you go to the races, breaking down the most alarming points into bullet points, while your friend mostly just listens. When America's most recognized autocracy expert, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, describes the 2024 election as "an information emergency," I'm sure she's encountering similar scenes, like the one you're describing here. Because it's keeping her up nights, too.

<See You At The (Horse) Races..."

Image Source: Institute For Strategic Dialogue

Amendments: The Reckoner>

<ii.>

Even so, you're not prepared to give your friend too much grief. Sure, the Mainstream Media (MSM) has devoted a fair chunk of column inches to Project 2025, but its attention is largely consumed by the approach that it pursued in 2016, indeed, in every election -- the Baseball Game/Beauty Pageant/Horse Race Model of coverage.

You know how that model runs, if you're paying any kind of attention. It's the model that laser focuses on a few cliched questions: Who's up? Who's down? Who's in, who's out? Who's cool, or uncool? Who's relevant, or irrelevant? What trends are dominating today's news cycle?

It's a dead horse that was already starting to stink when I started my own media career, so long ago. What sounded sober and sensible in a less chaotic era, no longer makes sense nowadays, as we'll see. The existential dread, the audible shudder that so many feel, at seeing Trump, the failed coup leader, sharing face  time with Biden, the incumbent President -- as they did on the debate stage, in Atlanta -- is worlds away from the '90s, when complaints about overly bland, polished, Tweedledee-Tweedledum candidates were all the norm.

We saw ample glimpses of the Horse Race Model's limitations in the 2016 race, when Trump became the first presidential contender to resist releasing his tax returns, as the MSM chased the bright, shiny object of his opponent's emails. We all know why Trump fought so hard to avoid scrutiny, of course, once The New York Times finally, belatedly, ran some sort of investigative series in 2018. 

That series showed the Trump origin story -- the crackerjack negotiator, the eminence grise of American business, so far-sighted, that he could see around corners -- for the PR mirage that it was, amplified and magnified by a fog of pure BS. By then, however, Trump was halfway through his presidency, with all the calamitous implications that it implied. But hey, better late than never, right?

What's particularly galling, too, is how much the Times and its MSM cheerleaders clapped themselves on the back, once its series appeared -- since the source material rested largely on documents supplied by Trump's niece. Obviously, those papers contained facts and figures that required further legwork and follow-up, but it might have been nice if they'd managed it all a bit sooner.

After all, Trump's presentation of himself as a laser-focused, uber-business figure  -- one unsullied by the dirty business of politics -- was the centerpiece of his presidential brand. We'll never know how many people might have had second thoughts, if they'd known otherwise (particularly late deciders, who broke decisively for Trump). But without having those details in front of them, how would they ever had the chance to think twice?

Just ask Atlantic City, whose residents paid dearly for the Trump-built casinos that went bankrupt there -- no mean feat, when the house always wins -- thanks to the political establishment that rubber-stamped it. They, too, bought the Trump origin story.

Unlike their residents, the boodlers can simply move on to another place on the public payroll. That disconnect highlights one major problem with horseracing: there is no cure for buyer's remorse, once the inconvenient part of the story rears up. And regrets are such a bitch, when you can't take them back.

<"See You Down The Memory Hole..."/The Reckoner>

<iii.>

The limits of horseracing don't end there, of course. Boiling races down to numbers and personalities dumbs them down to the point of absurdity, and in that respect, the 2024 election coverage is serving up an unnerving parallel to the 2016 version. Ha, ha, hee, hee, that whacky Biden. Can't put his pants on, and chew gum, at the same time! Listen to him yammering about empathy and decency, when folks can't even afford a hamburger. Hey, that stuff's for losers, right?

Ho, ho, ho, Trumpy Bear's back for sloppy seconds. Sure, he has no filter, and he can't string together a sentence, but c'mon, what did you expect? That's just Trump being Trump. He's hours of endless entertainment! 

Amid all this horseracing, and all its obsession with Biden's age, you'd hardly realize that his Republican rival, Trump -- who kept a book of Hitler's speeches by his bedside, one of the only tomes he's ever read, cover to cover, or so we're told -- is the same man eager to drag us back to the 19th century. That is, after he cranks up his revenge tour first.

Trump and the Republican Party that he's co-opted so completely are screaming the quiet part out aloud, in ever-shriller tones, about trading America's nearly 250-year democratic experiment for a nakedly dictatorial patriarchy, one that vows to make life a hellscape for anyone who isn't white, rich, and right-wing Christian. This time, they swear, those who resist will pay whatever price is needed to tramp them into the dirt.

But you would never know it, judging by the tepid language that MSM outlets like the New York Times use to report it. The Republican political establishment and its shadowy enablers are merely committed "conservatives" repeating "baseless" accusations about stolen elections, whose nominee's never-ending stream of threats and confabulations are dismissed as so much "bluster," even as his acolytes openly discuss about how to impose their Handmaid's Tale homage on the rest of us.

What's the problem? Well, there's a difference between conservatives, generally defined as persons "favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditionally ideas," per the Oxford English Dictionary, and reactionaries, or those who favor "a return to a previous condition of affairs."  If that's not a succinct description of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, what is?

By that standard alone, Trump and his acolytes can't ever be considered "conservatives," which makes their plotting against the US government more than merely "baseless." How fitting that both terms emerged during the French Revolution. "Conservative" derives from "conservateur," a term used to identify monarchist parliamentarians who opposed the revolution, while "reactionary" springs from "reactionnaire," and in turn, "reaction," a label generally bestowed on those who favored returning to aristocracy, and opposed any sort of democracy.

One of the essential requirements for a functioning democracy is the willingness to properly describe the people and events that drive it. To continually soft-pedal them does us all a grave disservice, thanks to headlines like this one, from the Associated Press: "Trump Hints At Expanded Role For The Military Within The United States. A Legacy Law Gives Him Few Guardrails."

Or, to put it in plainer English: Trump plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, and send out the military to crush civilian dissenters, should they try to spoil his restoration. Falling back on stock euphemisms fails to convey the horrors of such images, should they ever become realities, which is another limitation of horseracing.

<Even then, they must have known (what we didn't):

Der Spiegel (June 2020 cover)>*

<iv.>

We might pay a lot less attention to all these linguistic gymnastics, without having to account for another occupational hazard of horseracing: the "both-sides-ism" that runs right through the darkest heart of it. MSM thought leaders like Paul Krugman are well-known for their audible shudder about coming across as overly biased, though it's fair to ask, when would the reactionary right ever not accuse of them it? 

In covering campaigns, the traditional journalistic model that Krugman, and the great majority of his peers, has been to quote Candidate A ("I think the Mayor is a crossdressing vandal! I've seen the video nasties he keeps on his shelf at home!"), followed by Candidate B's response ("As Evergreen City's Mayor, it's only fair remind to you that neither crossdressing nor video nasties are illegal, in themselves, and I've never even raised a gardening tool in anger!"). 

Let readers make up their own minds, runs the mantra, and call it a day. We've done our job. But it might fair to ask whether that's still an effective approach, in this age of digitally siloed media, whose viewers can cherry-pick whatever suits their point of view, and ignore whatever doesn't.  Thus, Evergreen City's unfortunate Mayor might never get a real chance to make the case for the defense, or vice versa.

Another fair question to raise is whether all this earnest "both-sides-ism" truly serves the public interest. The desire to avoid the tint of bias at all costs has its comical results -- such as the New York Times's November 2017 feature on an avowed neo-Nazi, "who, just like other humans, eats food and likes Seinfeld," the Columbia Journalism Review noted. "As we wrote at the time, the piece was heavy on banality, but failed to capture the evil that its subject didn’t even try to conceal."

What did the writer hope to convey about his neo-Nazi subject, I wonder? "Hey, I have this thing about the master race rising up -- but Kramer's can collecting still kills me, every single time." Yikes! But even Seinfeld isn't who he claims to be, either, now that his other half (Jessica) has gotten caught funding violent counterprotests at UCLA against pro-Palestinian students. But I digress.

Contrast all this cautious hairsplitting with the European and British press, and you'll find a different model at work. Generally speaking, you'll find a less personality-driven, sensationalistic approach at work, and many writers aren't shy about speaking their minds, when the occasion calls for it. 

Consider how the Guardian's Thomas Frank, for example, immortalized Trump's 2020 loss: "Ding Dong, The Jerk Is Gone. But Read This, Before You Sing The Hallelujah Chorus" (11/7/20), or the question that Al Jazeerah posed, of Britain's next applicant for Prime Minister, Keir Starmer: "Is The UK's Left-Wing Labour Party on a 'Rightward' Path in Election Race?" Obviously, I'm painting in broad brush strokes here -- recall how Jeremy Corbyn's supporters protested the shade thrown their man's way, for instance -- but suffice to say, based on my own experiences in the UK, we could learn a thing or two from our European cousins.

Things have reached the point where it's  difficult to tell the difference from parody websites and their counterparts, as The Big Picture blog points out: "The editorializing and horse-racing of the election, where one side poses an existential threat to our entire democracy, has gotten so bad and so predictable that the parody New York Times Pitchbot account often simply screenshots actual headlines from the paper, saying, 'I can't do better than this.'" Enough said about that one.

<"Just Say No, 

While You Can"/Take II:

Image Source: Institute For Strategic Dialogue
Amendments: The Reckoner>

<v.>

Enough of the complaining. Where, exactly, does all this horseracing leave us? Obviously, in a deeper, darker place than any of us could imagined 30-odd years ago or so, when the right wing noise machine began taking shape. For me, ceding that space -- without a second thought -- is the dumbest thing that the American Left ever did.

It still amazes me how so few on the left -- or their more traditional peers, who allow themselves to wear Birkenstocks, with their suits and ties -- grasped the threat posed by such anger mongers as Fox News, the late Rush Limbaugh, and his current evil twin, Tucker Carlson, to name a few. (The latter duo are the spiritual heirs of Nazi propagandists like Lord Haw-Haw, but that's a discussion for a different day.)

I remember the befuddlement that greeted this new phenomenon, one driven by relentless pugilistic windmilling against some starkly-defined "Other" -- atheists, Democrats, environmentalists, feminists, gays, and so on, Needless to say, the names never changed to protect the innocent, with facts and accuracy -- however Fox and company defined it -- taking a back seat to entertainment.

And, whether progressive or traditional, the prevailing refrain sounded something like this: "Ah, it's just a few whack jobs They only appeal to those who already think that way. Who's ever going to watch this stuff? What harm can they do?"

That question's been answered, many, many times, and we all know how that particular movie played out. Still, the far right instinctively grasped what its opponents couldn't accept, or didn't understand -- that changing perception is the key to harnessing public opinion. After all, look how it's working out for them lately.

As I write, we stand on the verge of putting a convicted criminal, serial fraudster, and sociopath back in charge of the same government that he schemed to overthrow, barely three years ago -- and vows to bend completely to his aggrieved ill will, if he gets the chance. This isn't how democracy is supposed to work. Still, going after Fox News, and its acolytes, is a much bigger job, as the fallout of the Dominion lawsuit demonstrates. What can we do about any of this? 

First, start by supporting outlets, that actually do what big boys like the New York Times, or the Washington Post, used to pride themselves on doing -- catching the bad actors with their pants down. Right now, Pro Publica is doing the most significant investigative reporting anywhere.

Pro Publica's series on the corruption of the Supreme Court's far right majority -- a giant salmon here, a luxury RV there -- has thoroughly blown its self-image as some exalted body of legal grand wizards who only float above the rest of us, as they ponder, and rule. More importantly, though, the series ("Friends of the Court") put names to faces, and hard facts to suspicions, codifying the unease that people had long felt about the institution. 

The court's reputation had already sunk to historic lows, long before the series came out. What "Friends of the Court" revealed, however, is that the institution's supreme lack of transparency -- coupled with a taste for living large, and cozy self-dealing -- was far worse than its critics had ever imagined.

Airing these details is the first step in breaking that tired refrain -- "We can't, we can't, we can't do anything about it" --  and putting the enablers on the defensive, until they finally start to address whatever problem is being highlighted. There's nothing that an empty suit fears most, than seeing their career sidelined, or shut down for good, so let's use it to our advantage -- and use it, more often than we do.

My second and third conclusions coincide with one another. As worthy as alternative outlets like Pro Publica are -- or peers like In These Times, Mother Jones, The New Republic, and so on -- we must also recognize, as long as billionaires like Jeff Bezos own newspapers, their coexistence with such established outlets will always be an uneasy proposition, at best. 

Competition is the essence of creative mojo. Just imagine how the '60s rock revolution would have unfolded, if EMI and Decca -- the Beatles' and the Rolling Stones' respective corporate patrons -- had owned the creative marketplace, and simply rolled out more bands like them, assembly line-style. We need to continue pressing for stronger enforcement of current anti-trust law, and stop tolerating market concentration and monopolization as the price of progress -- as the Biden administration is finally doing, for example, by challenging the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

We also need to look beyond the virtual walled gardens that mega-bullies like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg want us to inhabit for the rest of our lives. Their business models center on making us so dependent, that we can't ever imagine living without them -- that is, until we do.

A lot of older school technologies -- whether it's paper fanzines and flyers, or cassettes and CDs -- are still worth keeping around, for just that reason. The more of our lives that we can keep out of their grubby little hands, the better. The catastrophic transition from Twitter to X should serve as an eternal reminder that when you're playing in someone's space, it's never really yours -- though it may feel that way, until someone takes it away, for good. 

Does that make me a Luddite? Far from it. Like millions of others, I'm active on sites like Ebay, or Etsy, because of the outreach opportunities that they offer -- but I'm also thinking about the alternatives, so that we don't stay permanently stuck in those uber-platform ruts.

Otherwise, we'll just continue the endless cycle of embracing those hot, new, seeming quick fixes that end up putting us out of business. "That's the way it is" doesn't have to stay frozen in time, as the Dead Kennedys' frontman, Jello Biafra, told Psychology Today: 

“I was married at one point, went to see my wife's sister in New York. It seemed like every third or fourth thing out of her mouth was how much she hated their mother and how angry she was. I thought, you know, this could be me, but it doesn't have to be me. And I'm going to make sure from this point onward, that it's not me.”

Let's keep that spirit in mind as we try and take back our media, which is one of the keys to taking back our democracy. And maybe then, we won't hear the horse race ringing so much in our hardened, jaded ears -- and we can all (finally) get some sleep! -- The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Before They Fit You For A Bonnet...)

Columbia Journalism Review:
How The Press Covered The Last Four Years Of Trump:
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/coverage-trump-presidency-2020-election.php

Democracy Americana:
What Makes Project 2025 So Dangerous:
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/what-makes-project-2025-so-dangerous

National Public Radio: The Sunday Story:
Media Failings In Covering Trump:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1198909715

Psychology Today; Jello Biafra Is A Chip Off The Old Block:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brick-brick/202011/jello-biafra-is-chip-the-old-block

The Big Picture: Biden Gets Tougher:
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/biden-tough-israel-russia-border

The Big Picture: The Right Has
A Terrifying Second Term Plan Called Project 2025:
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/project-2025-thomas-zimmer-trump

USA Today: Fact Check:
Image Of Trump Holding Lit Match...:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/05/01/image-of-trump-holding-lit-match-is-from-2020/73517702007/

(*See the Der Spiegel link for a more complete explanation of the cover story's title, and how it actually translates.)