Molly Jong-Fast talks with Eric Boehlert of Press Run about how the hangover from the Trump years is lingering.
“Everything has to be a churning drama” now, says Boehlert, and, judging from the press stories, losing a big local race in Virginia basically marked the end of the Democratic Party—even as “COVID is coming down unemployment is down and the stock market is at 36,000.” When Obama lost Virginia and New Jersey in 2009,” he notes, The New York Times did not publish 10 stories the next day and The Washington Post website didn't have 16 stories up—we are so over the top.”
As to Glenn Youngkin, Molly says “the guy is Trump. He’s just dressed up as Jeb Bush.”
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“I don’t know who talked to Trump and told them to sit it out, but he did,” says Boehlert, and “there’s no way that’s going to work” next year: “He is not going to sit on the sidelines. He’s just absolutely not. He’s an egomaniac and whoever was responsible for keeping him under lock and key deserves a medal because he stayed away and that’s the only reason they were able to win. Do I think they’re going to be able to do that for the next 12 months? Absolutely not.”
Plus, Molly talks with Harvard Prof. Lawrence Lessig, who says, “I don’t like to gloat” a decade after his book Republic, Lost warned where American democracy was headed if we didn’t pass real campaign finance reform. “But the truth is it’s actually much worse… a thousand times worse today.”
And Emily Atkin of the newsletter HEATED talks about why the Glasgow climate summit “should’ve been covered like insurrection, but it’s super-not.”
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