The day after Super Tuesday, Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC hosted guest Rachel Maddow to talk about where we are with the stakes of our November presidential election. Rachel said things that I didn't expect, but am so glad she did. I have transcribed Rachel's side of the conversation (read below). Be sure to watch the video for the complete back-and-forth between the two. This is fascinating, frightening, and a little hopeful. And is super important. And VOTE.
Transcript written by me. Excuse any errors. I tried to make it easy to read...listening is a different skill, lol.
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There are two different things going on in the two parties [Democrats vs Republicans]. The Democrats are renominating an incumbent president who’s been a very successful president. Not the world’s most popular president, but successful. Lot’s of bipartisan legislation, all the stuff he wanted to get done he has gotten done.
We have this best in class economic recovery post-covid of all the big countries in the world. Everything he’s set out to do, he’s done. Joe Biden got in there saying, “Listen, I’m going to be the President for everybody and expect all my big legislative stuff to be bi-partisan,” and that is exactly what he’s done. So the Democratic Party is like marching down the middle lane of Normalville, right?
The Republican Party is engaged in a different project. And there is a reason that nobody in the Republican Party cares that the Republican controlled congress isn’t making any policy, say. There is a reason nobody knows what Donald Trumps policy is on Gaza, say. There’s a reason nobody in the Republican Party is contesting what is going on with Joe Biden because they have a different idea what we should be doing on infrastructure. There is just no governing talk happening at all in the Republican Party. It is instead that America is a disaster, America is in decline, America is being laughed at, America is humiliated, and there must be extreme measures taken to fundamentally change the course of the country or we’re all going to die.
Those are just two different things. And what the latter thing is, the reason you’ve been doing these series on autocracy [Rachel says about Nicole Wallace] is that it’s not the project of a governing party, [it is instead] a project of a party trying to get rid of a form of government that we have … and install something else.[Nicolle Wallace talks for a bit, now back to Rachel]
Because the Republican party is engaged in a group decision that they are trying to change what the United States is. Right? I mean, if you want to support the idea of America as a democracy, we are a multi-racial pluralistic society with lots of different kinds of people and economic freedom. And all of the other civil society things that support us being a big complex society…it’s really hard to have for centuries, this pluralistic democracy. There are very few of these in the history of the world and if you don’t want that, if you don’t want everybody to have a say, for us to decide what we’re going to do based on democratically held free and fair elections, then you have a party here [that supports getting rid of democracy].
I mean when Trump used violence and fraud and intimidation to try to throw out election results and stay in power anyway, the response of the Republican Party was not to be horrified. For the most part, the response of the elected and leading Republicans was to figure out how they could help him get away with it. McConnell, when he orchestrated the acquittal of Trump in the Senate so Trump would not be banned from ever holding federal office again because he said the courts will take care of it. The courts will not save us here.The only thing that will save us here is if what I believe is the pro-democracy super majority in this country decides we’re not only going to stand up for democracy in the abstract by saying nice things about it, [rather] we’re going to use our democracy to stop this iteration of the Republican Party to get rid of it. The Republicans sort of have to not be counted on to do this themselves. There was a primary that didn’t work to oust Donald Trump. We saw Republicans on the courts who have lifetime tenure and therefore protected from the kinds of blow back that other politicians might be worried about, nevertheless get in line behind their partisan patrons. The Republican Party will not save us here. We cannot wait for the Republican Party to wake up. Nothing is going to happen inside the Republican Party other than efforts to get Donald Trump what he wants, which is to get rid of our form of government. The only way the country gets saved is if Republicans are blocked by the democratic process because Democrats win instead. That’s the only thing left to save us.
[Nicolle says some words, back to Rachel]I mean, listen. I have always felt like — you know, I’m a liberal and as liberal as they come and always have been. But I’ve always felt like I had more in common with people who care about what happens to the country than people who don’t care, who are checked out, who don’t think it matters. Even if you have radically different ideas. There is nothing in which I agree with on Liz Cheney. If we both fish, I hate the way she fishes [laughter]. It’s absolutely everything. But if you care about the future of our country, that is grounds for us to work together. I do think we have to recognize after Super Tuesday, after Mitch McConnell today, no with Nikki Haley out of the race, and now with the Republican appointees on the courts doing what they have done at the highest court in the land, I really think we need to get clear about the fact the project of the Republican Party is to install a strong man form of government in the United States and get rid of democracy. And that is the project of electing Donald Trump. That is what the Republican Party is for now. And so if you have been part of the Republican Party, you have to recognize that that’s now the new project of your party. You may need to leave that party now in order to work with the rest of Americans who disagree with you on a lot of different things, but want our country to stay a democracy. We are just in that extreme a place.
[Nicolle talks, back to Rachel]
Listen, I feel like the reason I’ve been spending the last year and a half just reading history all the time is because what we’ve learned from history is there is no magic bullet. The courts don’t save you. No individual institution saves you. What people count on, what matters is for us to keep making the case. Explain how authoritarianism works. Explain why a strong man appeals sound great but aren’t a great idea. Explain what happens when democracies that used to be democracies gave that away and were never able to get it back. Just keep talking about what we know is true, and I believe in the American people that we are capable of learning, we are capable of reassessing what we know and I believe we are capable of repentance and redemption. I do.
There is no other short cut.