Jonah Goldberg

I think it's all stupid.

But if you're going to establish the principle that for partisan purposes, you're going to punish networks that voice criticism of the president, and you don't think that in the next Democratic administration, and I think there will be one, there's not going to be enormous pressure, even on a sane Democratic president, to go hammer and tongs at right-wing talk radio?

which is wildly disproportionately partisan to the right.

That's what I'm talking about, about trying to find a balance again, you know, rather than this tit-for-tat culture.

But as long as both parties think they are only answerable to their most committed base, and the most committed base really doesn't like their own party, they just hate the other party more, it's very difficult to figure out how you have a president approach politics as if they're presidents of the entire country.

And

The structural reforms I'm thinking of would require getting our system back to the place where we have competitive elections in a lot of places and the deciding voters are the swing voters, independent voters, the median voter rather than the fringe voter.

So I have a sort of a disheartening answer and an upbeat answer.

The disheartening answer is I think it's very hard to get to the Democratic primaries with that message.

So you would have to, in fact, downplay that message to a certain extent to get in the process of getting the nomination.

But once you had the nomination, I actually think that would be a fairly winning message.

You know, that was Joe Biden's message.

It was a return to normalcy after the Trump years.

And the problem is he didn't deliver on it because he made a deal with the hardcore base of his party and didn't try to govern as a majority party president.

And the first legislation, I think, that came out of the House, Democratic controlled House, was to nationalize elections, which everybody's freaking out about right now.

Right.

And so, look, I think I've talked to Rahm Emanuel about all this stuff.

I'm not a massive Rahm Emanuel fan.

I have my disagreements with the guy.

But the thing I like about Rahm Emanuel is that he's actually willing to have a real argument with the left-wing base of his own party.