More Tales of Candidate Selection

Mark Robinson is the latest example.

So, yesterday CNN’s KFile dropped the following: ‘I’m a black NAZI!’:  NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum. The piece starts thusly:

Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, a CNN KFile investigation found.

Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a “perv.”

You know, the kinds of things that a party loves to read the day that the deadline for the being on the ballot hits and on the cusp of early-voting ballots going out in the mail.

Politico added: Email address belonging to Mark Robinson found on Ashley Madison.

Now, it isn’t as if Robinson was thought to be a high quality individual who is just being exposed at the eleventh hour. Rather he was already known to be a highly problematic candidate who was likely to lose the governor’s race, but this just ramps up the weird to an off-the-charts kind of level. I noted, in passing, the following story back in March Via HuffPo:  Mark Robinson: ‘I Absolutely Want To Go Back To The America Where Women Couldn’t Vote’. 

The North Carolina Republican’s longing for the days when women couldn’t vote ties into his history of demeaning women and mocking feminism, especially on social media. He’s claimed that feminism was created by Satan. He’s said that men who identify as feminists are “about as MANLY as a pair of lace panties” and are “weak mined, jelly backed ‘men.’”He’s routinely referred to feminists as “fem-nazis” and, in one particularly colorful post, described those who support equal rights for women as “sexist, hairy armpit having, poo-poo hat wearing pinkos.”

“The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place, is a man who doesn’t know his,” he wrote on Facebook in December 2017.

Channeling the late televangelist Pat Robertson, he has claimed that Satan himself is using “lesbianism and feminism” to destroy traditional families.

And that was just one story.

Robinson in the sitting Lt. Governor of North Carolina, so it is not shocking that he won the nomination for governor. I am insufficiently versed in NC politics to know how he managed to rise to that level. Still, I can’t help but note that this is an excellent example of how the institutional weakness of US political parties and its porous candidate selection process hampers parties from developing in a way that Is in the public interest. North Carolina is either a light red of purple state where a solid Republican should be competitive for the governorship.

Robinson is also an example of Trump’s poor political instincts. All that matters to Trump is how much other politicians kowtow to him. As a result, Trump has said things like this:

Not surprisingly, NBC is reporting Democrats launch new ad push to tie Trump to Mark Robinson following reported porn website comments and CNN that Harris campaign highlights Trump’s past praise for Mark Robinson as CNN report roils battleground North Carolina.

North Carolina is effectively tied in the polls between Trump and Harris. Trumps is up 0.1% in FiveThirtyEight‘s poll average in the state. Nate Silver has the same number.

If Robinson’s woes lead to simply depressing the Republican vote in NC, that could be enough to move the state to Harris. At a bare minimum, this is bad news for the Republican Party and the Trump campaign. And it again illustrated how our candidate selection process can produce truly awful candidates.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, Democratic Theory, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Kylopod says:

    Reposting my limerick from the open forum:

    There once was a pervy black Nazi
    Who thought Jews destroyed Francis Scott Key
    His fiery sermons
    Sound better in German
    It sure beats the four in Benghazi

    8
  2. Michael Reynolds says:

    Robinson in the sitting Lt. Governor of North Carolina, so it is not shocking that he won the nomination for governor. I am insufficiently versed in NC politics to know how he managed to rise to that level.

    I’m going to guess that the racist GOP needed a Black face in a desperate reach for at least a few Black votes, and to counter the (correct) sense that the GOP is KKK-adjacent. A Black Nazi? Exactly what they wanted. Just maybe not a Black Nazi into trans porn.

    14
  3. Fortune says:

    CNN breaks a decade old story the day of the ballot deadline.

    2
  4. Scott says:

    I think these kinds of problems are endemic to the evangelical culture. There is a rot and sickness there that has metastasized into the far right politics of Christian Nationalism. And Trumpism.

    Here is a recent article from North Texas:

    Thousands of DFW churchgoers affected by string of resignations, scandals

    At least five North Texas churches are looking for new pastors after a string of sudden resignations, firings, and arrests.

    The shakeups, which all occurred in a 42-day span, have stunned thousands of churchgoers and elders. In at least three cases, church leaders addressed the changes in heavy sermons.

    Some messages featured tearful apologies or pleas for patience and grace.

    “I think we’re just publicly seeing the tip of the iceberg,” blogger Amy Smith told WFAA. “What that tells you is that it’s systemic.”

    Smith has written or posted about almost every case. Thousands of people read her publication, WatchKeep.

    The posts mostly focus on allegations of wrongdoing at churches across the country. She started the blog soon after helping to expose a scandal at her church in Plano.

    Smith still considers herself a Christian, though she says she is no longer “actively involved” with one church. Her parents have shunned her for her writing.

    9
  5. Matt Bernius says:

    @Fortune:

    CNN breaks a decade old story the day of the ballot deadline.

    The speculation is that this was a last-minute push/oppo dump by folks in the Republican Party who were hoping Robinson would step down for the good of the ticket.

    So much for that.

    Robinson is also an example of Trump’s poor political instincts. All that matters to Trump is how much other politicians kowtows to him.

    Repeating this. So far Trump’s political instincts have brought repeated ruin to the infrastructure of the Republican party at both the State and National Level. Thanks to him, they have lost Senate seats and Governorships they should have won in multiple swing states.

    However, the sunk cost of ego invested in Trump is far too deep for any of his supporters to admit this disastrous aspect of his time as the Party’s leader.

    22
  6. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Scott:

    In the early 80’s I was a business manager for a group of psychologists, a couple of which, were also ordained ministers. Their referral base frequently were from churches, often it was the ministers that were the referrals, quite often for sexual peccadillos that were considered deviant. That so many incidents popped up in a limited geographic area in a short time span, a statistical curiosity, is what’s interesting, not the behaviors that are being confessed too.

    4
  7. CSK says:

    The MAGAs seem to be nearly unanimous in agreeing that this Robinson business is fake news.

    2
  8. Mikey says:

    @Fortune:

    CNN breaks a decade old story the day of the ballot deadline.

    The story isn’t a decade old. The events transpired a decade ago. There’s a difference, genius.

    Also, as Matt B. said, this is Robinson’s fellow Republicans trying to push him off the ticket. Democrats want him to stay exactly where he is.

    14
  9. Fortune says:

    @Mikey: “You know, the kinds of things that a party loves to read the day that the deadline for the being on the ballot hits and on the cusp of early-voting ballots going out in the mail.”

    Either the article is wrong or the timing only benefits the Democrats.

  10. Mikey says:

    @Fortune: Replacing Robinson with an actually viable candidate would absolutely not benefit the Democrats.

    Unfortunately for the NC GOP, Robinson is far too Trump-y to put his party’s welfare above his own ego, so he won’t be going anywhere, despite his party’s last-ditch effort in pushing this story.

    10
  11. wr says:

    @Fortune: “CNN breaks a decade old story the day of the ballot deadline.”

    And your point is?

    5
  12. @Fortune: Of course, if the goal was to help the Democrats, waiting a bit longer would have been the smarter play.

    I won’t pretend to know the motivations of who provided the information (and we really don’t know what the reporting timeline looks like). I will note that the contents of the story are the contents, regardless of when they were revealed and whether there were political motives or not.

    If the story is true, and the reporting looks solid, then it is what it is.

    19
  13. Kevin says:

    What I find truly disqualifying about this isn’t the behavior, not that I’m a fan of it. It’s the complete lack of opsec/shame, and the fact that he (apparently) thought Ashley Madison was somehow legitimate in any way. It’s slightly possible this is all a 15-year-old smear, but that seems unlikely.

  14. Thomm says:

    @Fortune: did the FSB not teach you about sarcasm?

    7
  15. Matt Bernius says:

    @Fortune:

    the timing only benefits the Democrats.

    In what way? Seriously, I would love you to explain why you think this.

    To @Steven L. Taylor‘s point, holding this until later would be more of a benefit in terms of discouraging turnout.

    In terms of polls, Robinson has consistently been at least 8 points underwater (see https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/governor/2024/north-carolina/). Replacing him with a more moderate candidate would have been far more helpful for Republicans than Democrats.

    10
  16. Scott F. says:

    Still, I can’t help but note that this is an excellent example of how the institutional weakness of US political parties and its porous candidate selection process hampers parties from developing in a way that is in the public interest.

    I know this is a well established premise for you, Steven, and one I accept to be basically true. But I think it would be worth exploring whether “political parties” (in the plural) is an accurate read of the US system, at least in 2024. Because this institutional weakness is not reflected symmetrically in the candidates being selected by the respective parties.

    The GOP is represented by not only Robinson and, of course, Trump. They have prominent leaders (read as spokespeople rather than legislators) that include MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, RoJo, Tuberville, and (coming on strong) JD Vance. I’m not naming people with radical political views, but people of questionable character and/or intelligence. Who among Democrats can we name who would belong in the category? Bob Menendez was the only one I could come up with without Google research.

    This strikes me as important data if we are interested in strengthening our political institutions. What are the Democrats doing differently to mitigate their porous candidate selection process? How are the Democrats policing their candidates once they are candidates or once they get elected? How are Republican establishment types influencing their constituents and vice versa?

    17
  17. inhumans99 says:

    @Matt Bernius:

    Also, so what if actions by Republicans to knock their guy off the ballot also benefits Democrats (admittedly parroting what several other have already said in this post).

    It is funny how often it seemed to be someone from the GOP party who would remind folks that politics ain’t beanbag, especially when the GOP could see how many people in the Democratic party were lamenting that our candidate did not have a snowballs chance on a hot day in California to win the election (to become Governor, a Senator, House Rep, etc.), but now I never seem to hear anyone saying that.

    Honestly, I am surprised that this saying has not come back into vogue. Maybe instead of Democrats saying to the GOP to remember that politics ain’t beanbag, they are now saying many of your candidates are weird (or just vile individuals), which seems to be working out just as well or better for the Democratic party.

    1
  18. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Scott F.:
    These GOP candidates aren’t an accident, or outliers, they are representative of the GOP population. Ditto Democrats. Republicans have asshole candidates because Republicans are assholes.

    I look forward to Professor Taylor’s next paper, to be titled, Turns Out They’re All Just Assholes. Subtitled, The Grand Unified Asshole Theory of Republican Politics.

    15
  19. Kathy says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Unavoidable video reference: keep firing, Assholes!

    3
  20. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Kathy:
    Perfect.

    2
  21. Joe says:

    It’s slightly possible this is all a 15-year-old smear, but that seems unlikely.

    I agree, Kevin, it seems unlikely since Robinson was not even a politician when these things were posted. It’s only slightly more likely than Obama getting his birth notice printed in the Honolulu newspaper to substantiate his U.S. birth.

    2
  22. Scott F. says:

    @Michael Reynolds:
    The Democrats have assholes in their population. The party is just much better at not catering to their asshole voters and pushing their asshole candidates to the fringe.

    I was reflecting on a key moment in the 2008 election when McCain stood up for Obama’s character by correcting a constituent who didn’t trust Obama because she thought he was an Arab. McCain got a lot of public praise for that moment. Of course, McCain then lost that election. I think this was an inflection point for the Republican zeitgeist. The Republicans chose not to moderate (as was more traditional for a losing party) and instead chose to elevate their assholery.

    I use “zeitgeist” here because I agree with Pr Taylor’s central premise that party establishments are weak. But, again, the Democrats have managed to avoid giving the keys of the asylum over to the inmates, while the Republicans are leaning in to the crazy and weird. What do “otherwise decent” Republicans or ex-Republicans like our hosts think happened?

    6
  23. Jen says:

    @Fortune:

    the timing only benefits the Democrats.

    Democrats would have benefited from the story coming out in a week or so, after ballots had been mailed out–not a day before. This feels to me like a last-ditch effort on the part of GOP party types who are concerned that this will produce a drag on the top of the ticket, which is deeply ironic considering they are apparently trying to save Trump, who is a loud and proud supporter of this truly terrible candidate.

    The reason we call them “October surprises” is that they usually come in October, when it’s too late to change anything.

    11
  24. charontwo says:

    @Scott F.:

    I do not think the problem is porous selection process, I think instead the party’s core ideology self-selects the pool of people seeking to be Republican candidates. So the pool of would-be Republican pols is tilted towards unprincipled.

    The GOP subscribes to the erroneous notion that Adam Smith favored unregulated dog-eat-dog competition. It’s not a big leap from that to cutting ethical corners.

    Also, GOP pols have been heavily oriented towards grifting ever since Richard Viguerie recognized the monetary possibilities of mail solicitations.

    7
  25. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Scott F.:
    The difference is that Democrats still believe that, when elected, we should govern. We live in reality, and have actual ideals, and believe in responsibility.

    MAGAs never seem to notice that when one of our assholes surfaces – Menendez, Hunter Biden – we drop them. No Democrat came to Bob Menendez’s defense. No Democrat GAF about Hunter.

    5
  26. MarkedMan says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: Add to that: these stories about Robinson are “more” not “new”. TPM was reporting on his problematic online presence starting in March of 2023, and the news that he frequented a porn peep show store was reported last month, and in between was a steady flow of similar stories. But those things don’t get much attention in the Republican media, so it seems it’s coming out of nowhere to people who get their news from such sites.

    5
  27. Jay L Gischer says:

    I have had overnight to consider Mark Robinson’s statements (I’m not discussing his porn use in this comment). I think that we are witnessing context collapse. I think in the context that he said them, the audience would understand them to be hyperbolic exaggerations of his positions, made for dramatic effect.

    Let me note that for me personally, even with that reading, they are still disqualifying. It shows a lack of seriousness, a lack of respect for the office, and for the voters. Not to mention that if one exaggerates one’s positions by saying, “I regret women voting” – there’s no more moderate form of that statement that is palatable to me.

    But to the audiences he said those things, there were probably chuckles. But if you take it out of that context it falls flat, like it’s doing now.

    I’m not saying Steven is wrong. In fact, this probably reinforces his point. In order to get attention from primary voters, this sort of thing is probably necessary. Which makes it a big, big problem. If you had the party pols decide candidates in smoke-filled rooms, they wouldn’t be impressed by this stuff, at least not if said in public. Because they would know it hurts the brand.

    2
  28. MarkedMan says:

    @Scott F.: From Stephen

    this is an excellent example of how the institutional weakness of US political parties and its porous candidate selection process hampers parties from developing in a way that is in the public interest

    It’s also worth noting that Robinson is Lt. Governor. In most states, the person who lands in this role is essentially the Party’s choice. If this is true for NC as well, Robinson didn’t come out of nowhere in spite of the Party, but was instead groomed by them.

    6
  29. MarkedMan says:

    @Scott F.:

    The party is just much better at not catering to their asshole voters and pushing their asshole candidates to the fringe.

    Florida and New York would like a word with you…

  30. Fortune says:

    @Jen: It’s late September, and the expression comes from before early voting.

  31. charontwo says:

    @Scott F.:

    Chait_NYMAG

    This is not a problem of fringe figures operating around the margins of the party. The party’s ability to maintain some distinction between respectable, reality-based figures who wield influence, and conspiratorial maniacs lurking around the margins, has collapsed completely.

    The end of the party’s ability to police its boundaries is generally attributed to Trump’s hostile takeover in 2016. Not unlike the fall of the Roman Empire, though, the decline was more of a gradual disintegration over a long period of time, with Trump’s coronation merely serving to dramatize it. Many Romans continued to think of the Empire as an ongoing entity even after the last Western Roman Emporer was deposed in 476. Many non-lunatic Republicans likewise continue to believe “conspiracy theorist” and “Republican leader” are meaningfully distinct categories.

    And just as the Roman Empire’s slow decay both resulted from and caused its inability to defend its boundaries, the Republican Party is defined now by a near-complete unwillingness to draw lines between acceptable party rhetoric and paranoid ravings. What remains of the party’s once-formidable establishment has been reduced to feebly warning that sounding too crazy in public will have electoral consequences. “Donald Trump likes to call his political opponents nuts, as in “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” so then why is he hanging with the 9/11 conspiracist Laura Loomer?,” complains a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, “Is he trying to lose the election?”

    Trump is obviously not trying to lose the election. The problem is that he is stark raving mad. Appealing to any standard of truth is a hopeless endeavor when attempting to persuade Trump, which ought to be sufficient reason not to entrust him with the vast powers of the presidency. Instead, whimpering appeals to self-interest are the best the party’s establishment can muster.

    10
  32. Jay L Gischer says:

    As to the porn use, I’m not into kink-shaming. But he is. That’s the problem. There’s another, maybe deeper issue, if he was into trans porn.

    The issue there is that means what he knows of trans people is “sexual kink”. That’s his experience. But it has very little to do with the lives of so many trans people. For some it is a kink. For most, it’s a way to have their social existence more congruent with their internal understanding of themselves.

    Which, I would bet, is not an idea that the likes of Mark Robinson has ever entertained.

    3
  33. Scott F. says:

    @Michael Reynolds: @MarkedMan:
    I agree with you both. I’m just trying to push the discussion where I believe it needs to be in order to move the country out of hyper-polarization and in a better direction. And to be completely transparent, I believe that better direction runs through the end of the Republican Party as it stands.

    I keep seeing “it’s Trump” and once he’s gone, the GOP will right the ship. Or “they’re just giving their voters what they want” as if there is no party establishment with any kind of agency. Both these sentiments elide the fact that the Republican Party is a failed institution in a system where failure isn’t inevitable, as the Democrats demonstrate by not failing themselves.

    I believe there are only two viable routes out of our current political dysfunction. One way is Trump and the Republicans win more power and they end democracy by fiat. This is what Project 2025 proposes. The other (preferable) way is much harder – a defeat of the GOP at the ballot box so profound up and down the ticket that whatever exists as influence in whatever remains of that institution reorganizes or dissolves.

    So, I’m going to continue to hang Trump, Robinson, MTG, Gaetz, etc. around the necks of everyone with an R by their name down to the local elections for dog catcher. I’m going to continue to call out Republican politicians’ fear of their own base as rank cowardice unworthy of any respect or deference. No excuses; full agency; damn them all for complicity; guilt them all by association.

    7
  34. Scott F. says:

    @charontwo:
    Thanks for sharing that. Chait’s probably making my point better than I am.

    1
  35. Jay L Gischer says:

    My one pushback on that Chait quote is that Trump is not “stark raving mad”. What he is is entitled by a life of privilege. He thinks he knows best, better than all the so-called experts who are advising him, and he’ll do whatever he thinks is good to do.

    He got this way from being rich from birth. I’ve seen very smart people get this way, too. They are too accustomed to being the smartest person in the room, and decide that they can ignore anything anybody else says.

    It’s possible that Trump has figured out he’s going to lose, and figures he might as well enjoy himself while doing it. And grift a bit more money out of people.

    3
  36. Jen says:

    @Fortune: Yes, I know. I’ve worked on campaigns.

    The point, which you are ignoring, is that a news story timed in a way that still (barely) might allow for a candidate to step down, possibly triggering a court to halt the sending of the ballots, is not a Hail Mary move by Democrats, who are in better shape with Robinson in the race.

    6
  37. charontwo says:

    @Scott F.:

    Further on this from Heather Cox Richardson:

    Link

    Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

    And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

    But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject.

    In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction. They began to suppress voting by Democrats by insisting that Democrats were engaging in “voter fraud.” At the same time, they worked to delegitimize their opponents by calling them “socialists” or “communists” and claiming that they were trying to destroy the United States. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

    And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

    In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

    At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system. Social media poster scary lawyerguy noted that the story about Robinson will divert attention from the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, which diverted attention from Trump’s abysmal debate performance, which diverted attention from Trump’s filming a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery.

    When a political party has so thoroughly walled itself off from the majority, there are two options. One is to become full-on authoritarian and suppress the majority, often with violence. Such a plan is in Project 2025, which calls for a strong executive to take control of the military and the judicial system and to use that power to impose his will.

    The other option is that enough people in the majority reject the extremists to create a backlash that not only replaces them, but also establishes a level playing field.

    The Republican Party is facing the reality that it has become so extreme it is hemorrhaging former supporters and mobilizing a range of critics. Today the Catholic Conference of Ohio rebuked those who spread lies about Haitian immigrants—Republican presidential candidate Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance were the leading culprits—and Teamsters councils have rejected the decision of the union’s board not to make an endorsement this year and have endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Some white evangelicals are also distancing themselves from Trump.

    5
  38. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Sleeping Dog: Men counseling men and women counselling women was a standard of fundamentalism back when I was young. Fundies were not wrong about everything. (Or even most things as related to matters of the spirit and Christianity. But they were headstrong and arrogant, unfortunately.)

  39. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: Translation from MAGAese:
    We don’t care. He’s against trannys and queers and abortion. That’s all that matters.

    2
  40. Scott F. says:

    @charontwo:
    I hadn’t read that from Heather Cox Richardson, but I had seen this from Jonathan V Last:

    No matter how many elections Democrats win, our system cannot survive in the long term with only a single healthy political party. We need either (1) a healthy Republican party, or (2) the GOP to be supplanted by a new, healthy, political institution.

    I can’t see how we get to (1) and history shows that (2) is an incredibly heavy lift.

    So yes, it’s fun to laugh at Mark Robinson and Republican ineptitude. And his continued candidacy helps Kamala Harris. But at the end of the day, the Republican party’s problems are our problems, too.

    Our democracy cannot be safe so long as the Republican party is in disarray.

    I’m drawn to this specific punditry. I’m so bloody tired of the dysfunction, it’s become important to me that we at least try to leverage this moment to break away from the political stalemate we are in. It’s one of the reasons I am so gratified by the Harris/Walz campaign leveraging people’s exhaustion in order to get us to “turn the page.” It won’t be enough to defeat Trump, but leave the Republicans in control of the Senate or the House. Go Big. What other choice is there?

    1
  41. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Scott F.: I honestly don’t think the difference is anything the Democrats are doing differently; the difference is who the Republicans have become. The Republicans are a party of angry people, disappointed about a world that is foreign to their values and experience, and who can’t adapt to it. And I don’t think this is exclusively a US problem. Conservatism all over the world seems to be the same kind of throes. Witness rising fascism on the right in so many places. At its core, conservatism is, finally, about faith in the virtues of aristocracy. When people no longer believe in the virtues of “rule by our (hereditary) betters,” what will arise to fill the void? I have no idea.

    4
  42. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @MarkedMan:

    …Robinson didn’t come out of nowhere in spite of the Party, but was instead groomed by them.

    This does not appear to be the case in this situation. From Wikipedia:

    Robinson attributed the beginning of his interest in American conservative politics to his reading of a book by Rush Limbaugh, after which he “found out that I was conservative and always had been.”[7] On April 3, 2018, Robinson attended a meeting of the Greensboro City Council, where they debated whether or not to cancel a gun show in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Robinson spoke in favor of gun rights, and video of his speech went viral after it was shared on Facebook by Mark Walker.[18][19] Afterwards, Robinson dropped out of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and left his job in furniture manufacturing to focus on public speaking engagements.[7] He was invited to speak at the National Rifle Association of America’s annual convention that year.[20][21]

    2020 campaign
    Main article: 2020 North Carolina lieutenant gubernatorial election
    In 2019, Robinson entered the Republican primary in the election for lieutenant governor of North Carolina after the finance reporting period ended.[22] He won the Republican nomination, clearing the 30% threshold to avoid a primary runoff, defeating state senator Andy Wells, superintendent of public instruction Mark Johnson, former congresswoman Renee Ellmers, and former state representative Scott Stone.[23] He faced Democratic nominee Yvonne Lewis Holley in the general election in November,[24] in a race in which either Robinson or Holley would become North Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor.[25] Robinson was elected,[26] becoming the second Black person elected to the North Carolina Council of State after Ralph Campbell Jr.[27]

    Robinson’s 2020 campaign finance reports contained incomplete information on his campaign contributors.[28] Campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall identified several questionable expenditures in Robinson’s campaign reports, including $186 for medical bills and for $2,840 for “campaign clothes and accessories” (most of it spent at a sporting goods shop); the campaign did not explain how these expenditures were campaign-related.[28] Robinson’s reports also stated that Robinson’s wife spent $4,500 for “campaign clothing” but gave no details.[28] The reports also stated that Robinson withdrew an unexplained $2,400 in cash in apparent violation of a state law requiring all candidate cash payments over $50 to be accompanied by a detailed description explaining of what the money was for.[28] After these expenses came under scrutiny in 2021, Robinson’s campaign blamed “clerical errors”; Bob Hall filed a formal complaint with the State Board of Elections over these and other discrepancies.[28]

    I suppose that one could make the argument that the alleged grifting shows that he was groomed for the job, though. 😉

    3
  43. DK says:

    @Jay L Gischer:

    As to the porn use, I’m not into kink-shaming.

    Yes, it will be hard for Democrats to attack Robinson on this without stepping on the landmine of shaming people for their private sexual peccadillos, a no-no for liberals.

    I haven’t done a deep dive into Robinson’s comments or the porn site in question, nor do I intend to. However, based on my background in therapy, education, and personal encounters with various fetish communities (an inevitable side effect of being queer and sexually active), it’s important to note that raceplay as a sexual kink is distinct from outright racism.

    From what has been reported, Robinson’s comments don’t appear to be sexual in nature, and thus wouldn’t typically be categorized as raceplay. Of course, it’s possible that context was omitted—perhaps for reasons of sanitation and reader palatability, or, depending on your viewpoint, to smear Robinson among his base. Without seeing the full context, it’s hard to say definitively.

    However, just looking at the reported posts, this seems less like a case of misunderstood kink and more like Clayton Bigsby-level cognitive dissonance –weird even within an in-group context, not just weird to outsiders aa most fetishes are.

    But it’s very possible that the journalism here is biased or off the mark. I see no evidence these reporters are competent explainers of sexual fetishes and paraphilias. And it doesn’t seem like they consulted any psycholgists, sex therapists who might have added some nuance to the coverage.

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  44. Jay L Gischer says:

    @DK: Wow, that’s super interesting. Thanks for the info.

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  45. Jay L Gischer says:

    I agree that at least two healthy, viable, parties that are responsive to voters are needed. And the Trump party does not count as one of them.

    I think that what is needed to correct this is a beatdown, electorally. They have to lose, and lose big. They have to be repudiated by the body politic as “we don’t want that”. They have tried to boil the frog slowly, but the fact is, that old saw doesn’t actually work. At some point it gets too hot and the frog jumps out of the pot.

    Honestly, I think this is very similar to why Putin needs to be defeated in Ukraine. If not, he’ll keep doing it. Authoritarians/Imperialists never stop until they lose.

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  46. Beth says:

    @Jay L Gischer:

    I think that we are witnessing context collapse. I think in the context that he said them, the audience would understand them to be hyperbolic exaggerations of his positions, made for dramatic effect.

    Robinson wrote:

    “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

    What context is to collapse. That’s how tons of straight men talk about us. We’re perfectly good to fuck. Perfectly good to rape. Perfectly good to murder. That’s the exact context. We are nothing but disposable whores at best and a convenient scapegoat most of the time. I’ve lived this context my whole life. This was the context that a group of men used to threaten to violently rape and beat me while I was on the CTA.

    Further,

    But it has very little to do with the lives of so many trans people. For some it is a kink. For most, it’s a way to have their social existence more congruent with their internal understanding of themselves.

    Let me tell you,with rage and contempt, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself with Blanchard’s dick. Fuck you and fuck anyone who believes that nightmare.

    Absolutely no one transitions because it’s a kink. You have no fucking clue how harmful and hateful that shit is. The idea that we transition because it’s a kink has harmed so many people. The reason we are stuck with that shit is because cis people have no fucking clue what it is to be trans. You make people’s lives materially harder spouting off that garbage.

    You should absolutely be ashamed of yourself.

    3
  47. DrDaveT says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    MAGAs never seem to notice that when one of our assholes surfaces – Menendez, Hunter Biden – we drop them. No Democrat came to Bob Menendez’s defense. No Democrat GAF about Hunter.

    Democrats are even willing to sacrifice their flawed but otherwise sane and public-minded creeps, like Al Franken. There is zero chance that the GOP would turn on even a proven child molester who could be depended on to reliably vote the party line. See, e.g., George Santos.

    3
  48. DrDaveT says:

    @Scott F.:

    No matter how many elections Democrats win, our system cannot survive in the long term with only a single healthy political party. We need either (1) a healthy Republican party, or (2) the GOP to be supplanted by a new, healthy, political institution.

    Or, alternatively, for the GOP to go the way of the Know-Nothings and Mugwumps, and for the Democratic party to split into its two natural factions, the Progressives and the Liberals. Which would, inevitably, spawn an eventual conservative third party. Labor, Whigs, and Tories. What a concept.

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  49. Because I want to let everyone know that I am not ignoring some of the issues/questions raised, a few quick points that maybe some day I will find the time, energy, and inspiration to expand upon.

    1. As noted above, I think we need at least two real parties, so I have concerns about how the current institutional structures affect the degeneration of the GOP.
    2. Maybe the effects of the porous nature of out weak parties are truly asymmetric and will always be so, leading to bad GOP behavior but normal Democratic behavior. I am not sure that that is true, but that doesn’t change my basic assessment.
    3. I do think that there are ideological forces that mean are influence reactionary populism on the right in the US (and we are seeing it globally as well).
    4. I am skeptical that Democrats/the left are immune from such nonsense, so just because they seem the most normal now, doesn’t mean it will ever be thus.
    5. Keep in mind the structure of the current party system really only dates to 1994-ish (I have written about this before). And while you all may not have liked Bush, Romney, and McCain, they were largely “normal” Republicans.

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  50. @DrDaveT: If we could get some significant electoral reform, then I think we might get a party system as you describe.

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  51. MarkedMan says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker: Thanks for that. I stand corrected.