Ron Brownstein
speaker
109 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Ron Brownstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Because you have Nixon's victories in 68 and 72 show real fissures in the Democratic coalition that had dominated the previous decades. And Carter seems to pull it all back together, you know, with just enough support among working class whites in the North and especially white evangelicals in the South. But in office.
Carter and then Biden can't hold this coalition together either legislatively or unpopular support. And after their four years, they get routed. So the scouronic argument is that the presidents we consider the most successful and consequential in American history are what he calls repudiating presidents who come in immediately at this hinge point after the last president of the previous cycle,
Right. So they come in at the moment when the previous regime has been the most discredited. So they have the most leeway to change direction. So he cites Thomas Jefferson in 1800 after Adams. Andrew Jackson in 1828 after Adams Jr., Lincoln in 1860 after Buchanan, Roosevelt in 1832 after Hoover, Reagan after Carter.
So that's what, I mean, by the way, that's what's ironic. I mean, I think there's a lot of reason to view Biden's experience as analogous to Carter's. However, there's a lot of reason to question whether Trump can seize the advantage created by that to the extent Reagan did. I mean, there's just no evidence in Trump's
history, and certainly even in this transition, that he is capable of speaking to a broad enough audience or has the instincts to do that, to take advantage of the opening that Biden has left him. But I would say, Tim, that I am sympathetic to the point of view that the opening that is there is similar to what was there after Carter.
Yeah. I mean, Skowronek says, you know, the repudiating presidents get so much power because they basically are able to point to their predecessor as the embodiment of a failed regime. And and this he wrote this in 1993. They hearken back to the past, often a mythic past. to say that America has to recapture those values in order to get itself going again.
And the Trump-Biden kind of sequence has a lot of similarity. Now, of course, the big difference is that objectively, the country is not nearly in as bad shape now as it was when Carter left office. So for Trump to argue that Biden has left him this big steaming pile of crap is a lot less credible than it was for Reagan.
But when you're talking about a guy in Biden whose approval rating fell under 50 percent in summer of 2021, never got back over 50%, is leaving with his lowest ratings ever. See how we're transitioning into your... Leaving with his lowest ratings ever, you've got to say, I think in scouronic-ish terms, and it's a great book, people should read it.
It's called The Politics Presidents Make, that Biden has left Trump a lot of room to consolidate a bigger coalition than he's ever had The difference is I don't think Trump's political instincts and his agenda are as congenial to doing that as Reagan's was.
Yeah. I mean, I think the politics for Bass, the mayor, is pretty unequivocally bad. I think Newsom has looked better and, you know, has been more dynamic in responding to this. You know, one of the things I said about Trump won, I said repeatedly, was that Trump governed as a wartime president with blue America rather than any foreign nation as the adversary.
And we were just talking about whether Trump has the vision and the emotional bandwidth to take advantage of the opportunity that Biden has left him, where you have voters way outside the traditional Democratic coalition who feel that Democratic governance did not give them what they want.
Right. Way outside the traditional Republican coalition. Sorry. But what do you see from his instincts? I'm, you know, the water argument that, you know, somehow the, the, the North South issues. Yeah. The smell. I mean, you know, that is not a serious argument.
I mean, there's no urban water system in the country or fire department in the country that has a record of success trying to fight a fire of this magnitude. And as I've read, you probably interviewed people. I mean, you know, basically every time we've had a fire of this magnitude in an urban setting, the water has increased. you know, largely run out.
You know, the question of forest management, you know, Trump kind of had a point. He did have a point. The state is investing a lot. The Biden administration and the infrastructure bill invested a lot, but he and Johnson and Republicans are A, really want to talk about anything but climate change, given that, you know, where we're headed on that.
Doug Burgum's confirmation hearings this week where he said any attempt to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is misguided because it just means people are going to be buying it from Russia or Venezuela. I mean, like L.A. is burning, dude. I mean, like, you know, you're just ignoring what... And Asheville did get flooded. These things did happen, much as they are inconvenient for you.
But I think withholding aid from blue states, as he was threatening to do during COVID-19. is a limiting, I think for his voters, it's fine. I mean, they want him to be at war against blue America, because as we said, the core of his coalition is alienated from all the ways America is changing, and that is embodied in the blue states.
And I think for a lot of his kind of casual voters, they're more focused on their own economic situation than what happens. But by and large, treating blue America as an adversarial force to be occupied is is going to do more in the end to limit and expand his reach.
And I think, again, example A of why, even if Biden is creating the same opportunity for Trump that Carter created for Reagan, Trump is less likely to be able to seize it.
Look, 80% of the investment tied to the Inflation Reduction Act, tied to all the big three bills, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure bills, 80% of that total investment has gone to Republican held congressional districts. And they seem very determined to make it go away.
I mean, there was no question this administration was going to try to do whatever it could to support fossil fuel industries. The question was whether they're also going to try to kneecap the alternatives, and I think they will probably do both. It's starting to look.
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