Which Side Is Itching for a Civil War Again?

By Jim Geraghty

Monday, August 29, 2022

 

Sure, a future second American civil war seems like a ridiculous thought.

 

And yet, some governors and aspiring governors do feel entitled to call for the expulsion of citizens who don’t share their political beliefs — such calls have been heard in the not-too-distant past, and they’ve been heard again recently.

 

Back in 2014, then-New York governor Andrew Cuomo took it upon himself to decide who was and who wasn’t a New Yorker, and decreeing that those with certain political views should leave the state: “These extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”

 

Now, think about it: There’s a big step between, “Those who think differently from me are a bunch of idiots,” and, “Those who think differently from me are a bunch of idiots and they shouldn’t be allowed to live here.” And there’s another big step between some random schmuck’s running around saying that people of certain beliefs have no place in their home state, and the governor’s declaring that people with certain beliefs have no place in his state.

 

Andrew Cuomo eventually made his sterling character, sensitive touch, good judgment, and keen wisdom abundantly clear. And Cuomo’s replacement, Kathy Hochul, apparently shares the same outlook. On Monday, she declared at a campaign rally, “And we are here to say that the era of Trump, and Zeldin and Molinaro, just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, okay? Get out of town. Because you do not represent our values. You are not New Yorkers.”

 

Once again, the governor believes she has the moral, if not legal, authority to declare who is and who is not a New Yorker; in her mind, your status as an authentic New Yorker is proven by certain “values,” not a place of residence in the state. (If only she applied the same litmus test to state taxes: “Your honor, I am exempt from paying New York state taxes because the governor herself decreed I am not a New Yorker.”)

 

Keep in mind, Hochul’s opponent, Lee Zeldin, was physically attacked by a man with a knife, shortly after her campaign called upon supporters to “stalk” Zeldin. Maybe she meant he should get out of New York because he’s not safe there as long as she remains governor.

 

Indeed, with sterling past leadership such as Eliot Spitzer, Eric Schneiderman, Anthony Weiner, and Cuomo, who wouldn’t want to be a New York Democrat? Their leadership over the past two decades has been so corrupt, sordid, and shameless, that any movie made about the state party would have to be directed by Roman Polanski.

 

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, newly nominated Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist said of past supporters of Ron DeSantis, “Those who support the governor should stay with him. I don’t want your vote. If you have that hate in your heart, keep it there.” Apparently, Crist isn’t interested in earning the votes of the 4,076,186 Floridians who voted for DeSantis in 2018, or the 54 percent of Floridians who currently approve of the job DeSantis is doing.

 

Are you starting to see a pattern here? Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” crossed a key moral threshold. For most of modern history, political candidates denounced other political candidates. “Don’t vote for the other guy. He’s a crook, an extremist, a lunatic, a moron, etc.” But Hillary’s comment was a denunciation of voters who supported the other guy: “If you support my opponent, you’re a crook, extremist, lunatic, moron, etc.” Until then, candidates had typically refrained from denouncing their opponents’ supporters, on the theory that you should never willingly cede potential votes.

 

Those who vote for the opposition are American citizens. They’re moms and dads and grandparents and brothers and sisters. In many cases, members of the same family, neighborhood, groups of friends, and teammates don’t vote the same. You don’t have to like them, and you don’t have to agree with them. But you must respect them as fellow citizens because they have the same rights that you do. Your political beliefs don’t elevate you to some higher plane of consciousness or more advanced state of humanity.

 

Do Democratic officials who think and speak like this want to start a civil war? Not necessarily, but they are starting to casually declare that people who think differently from them don’t belong in “their” states. Those who can’t anticipate the kind of trouble this can stir up have a remarkable lack of foresight. We’re already living with the challenging consequences of “The Big Sort.” What happens when people start thinking that Republican voters in blue states or Democratic voters in red states deserve to be ostracized and driven out? What happens when Americans start thinking they’re entitled to live in a community or state of political homogeneity?

 

When you’re a governor, you’re the governor of everyone, even the voters whom you vehemently disagree with and who didn’t vote for you. It’s the same with legislators. If a citizen shows up at a House member’s district office and says that their Social Security checks stopped arriving, the staffer isn’t supposed to ask whether they voted for their boss or not. It’s right there in the title, “public servant.” You serve the public, not just members of your own party.

 

So no, I can’t stand it when some Floyd R. Turbo out there talks up a second civil war, or wild-eyed activists in the Texas Republican Party put a call for a state referendum on “Texas independence” in the state-party platform. Some of us have lived through Waco and Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City, and the elders among us remember the Weather Underground and “Days of Rage.” There have always been some yahoos calling for a revolution. Most days, they never amount to much — which doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of killing people or committing outrageous atrocities.

 

But those yahoos don’t control any levers of government — at least, not yet. Cuomo did, Hochul does, and Crist is still a congressman.

 

Not Every Piece of Bad News Is Someone Betraying You

 

Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor of Fox News Channel, has a new book out, entitled Broken News: How the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back. In an excerpt in Politico, Stirewalt offers this useful anecdote about the dynamics within Fox News, and the difference between the election analysts who wanted to get their assessments right and the election analysts who tell the audience what they want to hear:

 

Sean Hannity, in particular, would bring [Dick] Morris on to say that the red wave was a Krakatoa-sized tsunami that would change politics forever. They, and some other analysts who I previously thought were more principled and smarter than Morris, used the same routine for the 2012 presidential election. That time they made preposterous claims not only that Mitt Romney was obviously going to win, but that it would be by a landslide. The best I could say for Romney in that cycle was that he had a path to a narrow victory by picking off a couple of Blue Wall states if he could turn things around in Ohio, where he had been sucking wind all summer. But a landslide? Pish posh.

 

That 100-seat [GOP House pickup] number in 2010 was just hype to juice ratings, and Ailes had to know that. Right? He was messing with the new guy. Right? . . .

 

The lesson I learned was that Hannity, Morris and the rest of the crew of the crimson tide were certainly engaging in wishful thinking, but certainly also motivated reasoning. The story they were telling was good for ratings or the frequency of their appearances. They wanted it to be true because they wanted Republicans to win, but keeping viewers keyed up about the epochal victory close at hand was an appealing incentive to exaggerate the GOP chances. It was good for them to raise expectations, but it wasn’t good for the party they were rooting for.

 

There are at least two wings of Fox News: one that wants to give it to their viewers straight, whether it pleases the audience or not, and another that wants to give their audience whatever they want to hear, and/or will bring in the biggest audience. And keep in mind, Fox News is not the only television-news channel that experiences this tension.

 

This doesn’t mean that the election analyst who gives you bad news is always right, and the election analyst who gives you good news is always wrong. It just means that when someone tells you something you don’t want to hear, it doesn’t mean they’re trying to sabotage your side. (As Stirewalt notes, the party in the lead still wants their voters to think the race is close so as to keep their grassroots motivated and prevent anyone from taking victory for granted. When Dick Morris predicted a GOP landslide that would never happen, he was actually hurting Republicans a little bit.)

 

The political landscape today clearly looks slightly better for Democrats than it did a few months ago, when the outlook was so bleak that even Democratic senator Patty Murray of Washington felt the need to start running television ads.

 

Chalk it up to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the decline in gas prices, the reemergence of Trump after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, some subpar Republican nominations in statewide races, Biden’s scoring some legislative wins, or some combination of all of these. But Biden’s approval rating is still low by historical standards and the right-direction/wrong-track numbers remain terrible. Americans generally feel like their lives and economic conditions are lousy. And this usually points to big losses for the incumbent party.