How the 'White-Grievance Industry' Helps Republicans Thrive

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Jennifer Rubin from The Washington Post is standing by with a very direct column about where she sees the real fault line in our national politics today. We'll get right to her. Later, we'll look at how an N train shooting victim from Brooklyn is suing Glock. Have you heard this yet? The maker of the gun that the alleged N train mass shooter used. She's accusing the company of purposely marketing to would-be criminals. We'll see if that can stand up in court with a gun law expert, and if it can change anything about our gun laws that way with Congress all gridlock.

We have a quiz later in the show called the truth or a lie, complete with WNYC swag as prizes, plus our climate story of the week and John Schaefer today with a summer outdoor music preview. There is so much. Even if you don't want to go indoors yet this summer, all in our area, and all in one little show between now and noon. Before we dive in with Jennifer Rubin, Michael and Brigid were just talking about this.

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Now, something has happened to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin over the years. If you don't know, we used to have her on the show as one of our conservative voices. Her column at The Washington Post used to be called Right Turn. She had worked at the conservative news organizations: Commentary, Human Events, and The Weekly Standard, all of those. I think she was really offended, if that's the right word, by Donald Trump and Trumpism. Now her Twitter bio calls her a NeverTrump, pro-democracy opinion blogger.

She released a book last year called Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump. She wrote a post this week on her Washington Post blog called, It's time for Biden to strongly attack the white-grievance industry. Hi, Jennifer. Thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jennifer Rubin: My pleasure. Nice to hear a little truck down memory lane there.

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Here's the clip. I'm going to ask you later, for listeners who are not familiar with your work, to do a real brief tracing of your political evolution. Here's the clip of President Biden that seems to have got you to writing this piece. We pulled the clip you referred to. This is from the commencement speech he gave at the University of Delaware last weekend. Listeners, notice the word "forces" that the President uses here twice.

President Biden: Progress in our country has always been met with ferocious pushback from the oldest and darkest forces in America, always. We should not be surprised that these same forces are fighting back again, preying on hopelessness and despair, demonizing people who don't look like them, doing everything no matter how desperate to hold on to power.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden last weekend in his University of Delaware commencement speech. Jennifer, you heard that and you wrote dark forces are not the problem. One political movement encased within the Republican Party is, and you wanted the president to name it. You wished he had named it. Would you do the honors?

Jennifer Rubin: Yes. I think it's incumbent on the president and it's incumbent on people who defend democracy to identify that the Republican Party is now the party of MAGA, it's the party of white-grievance, of xenophobia, of authoritarianism. The longer we pussyfoot around and fuzz up the choices, the more I think Democrats will suffer, I mean, small-d democrats. I think unless the American people are presented with a clear definitive choice.

On one hand, a party may be flawed, may have policies that you don't necessarily agree with, but is more or less within the neighborhood of the truth and is trying to solve problems. On the other hand, you have a cult-like faction that has taken over a political party, and that engages in a performance politics, that engages in race-baiting, that is there to fulfill some primal scream that is felt by millions of Americans, apparently. That is, frankly, a threat to the American Creed, which is based on the notion that we're not a country of one race or one religion, and that the American Dream, the American promise applies to everyone, regardless of race, regardless of religion.

This movement that they have assumed is fundamentally unAmerican. It's akin to the right-wing parties in Europe, Marine Le Pen, for example, and it doesn't come from the American tradition of tolerance, of good government, of decent political discourse.

Brian Lehrer: By centering this faction that you call ultra-MAGA, you also reject a certain kind of larger narrative that we hear a lot these days, that there's a more generalized plague of polarization and distrust. Some sort of floating miasma, as you put it. You don't think that's also going on?

Jennifer Rubin: No. I think the Democratic Party has moved somewhat to the left, but not all that much. The problem is that one party has become radicalized and has rejected the democratic experience and experiment. I think it's unfair and inaccurate to say, well, this is a problem that plagues both parties. Gosh, if Democrats were just compromised more. Gosh, if Democrats weren't so ambitious. Gosh, AOC is as bad as Donald Trump. Oh, man, I think it's a lot of garbage, frankly.

I think the mainstream of the Democratic Party, including President Biden, is essentially a mainstream center-left party. The problem and the dysfunction we have in government, and the violence we have is a result of a party that has become radicalized, and that no longer engages in normal democratic, small-d politics. They are there to incite. They are there to whip up their base. They're there to perform. I think until we address that problem, the checking out of the Republican Party from the normal democratic process, we're going to be stuck in this very scary, very tenuous situation, where in each election, democracy is at risk, frankly.

Brian Lehrer: You call these ultra-MAGA forces a white-grievance industry, but it's not just about stoking racial hatred. You also say it's about nostalgia, interesting word, for a certain kind of masculinity and a certain kind of Christianity, and then denial of the election results and their desire to display an armory of guns also get in there. All these things go together?

Jennifer Rubin: They really do. What the movement is about, and you see this, frankly, in right-wing movements around the world, is a false nostalgia for a country that is not run by "elites", that is not dominated by urban centers, but that is "seeped" in traditional values, that is really based in a religious fundamentalism, and that sees themselves as victims. This really gets to the overarching issue. They believe they have lost something. What they've lost is white dominance in America. What they've lost is the ability to not compete with women for jobs. What they've lost is a sense that they are on top and that they have a privileged position in American society.

I go back to the Jim Crow South. For decades, irresponsible and ineffective government told poor whites that it was okay that their lives were relatively cruddy and they were poor because at least they were superior to African Americans. That sense that they can be swayed, that they can be satisfied simply by dominance over other groups, frankly, has not gone away. That remains. I think that's why you see this assault legally, socially, philosophically on the 1960s, because in the '60s, a lot of this changed. The dominance of white males in the economy, in our political structure, in our culture began to diminish.

We soon reached a place, and one of my favorite authors, Robert P. Jones, writes about this, in which white evangelical Protestants were no longer a majority of the country. They lost that majority grip. That's what happens in a democracy. Majorities change, population shifts. Rather than accept that, and rather than engage in the normal political process, they decided that the better trap was to turn back the clock, try to keep the electorate as close to their preferred base as possible, meaning voter suppression, and to really keep their people in a constant state of fury and resentment. That's the modern Republican Party.

It's not gone away since Donald Trump lost, if anything, it has gotten worse, and they live in a world of, essentially, make-believe. Most people within that sect, within that cult, do not get objective media. They do not engage in rational conversation. They live in a media silo, and they are constantly propagandized by right-wing media, Fox News in particular. As a result, it's very difficult to have a normal political dialogue and debate in a country with people who have checked out, who are unreachable. That poses a real problem.

What do the rest of us do? How do we go forward? How do we reform? How do we solve major national problems when you have a major national party, where I've met some crazy Lyndon LaRouche party, but a major political party that is no longer engaged in normal political problem-solving, and, frankly, doesn't want to solve problems? Wants to make them worse so that their people will become further enraged. That's a huge challenge. That's the ongoing threat that we face.

I think what's needed and what I've advocated is a very broad coalition that defies ideological differences. That is based on a notion that we need to preserve democracy, we need to preserve truth, we need to make revisions in our political structure. That prevent, essentially, this tyranny of the minority that we're going through, where proposals and issues that have 80%, 90% popularity go nowhere because of the filibuster in the Senate, which itself is a minority-based institution dominated disproportionately by thinly populated red states.

We have to put our heads together, frankly, turnout voters in greater numbers, and begin to think about some structural reforms so that we can solve problems and we can reinforce democratic norms.

Brian Lehrer: We have a few minutes left only with Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. How much do you think in building that coalition to save democracy, as you're arguing that it needs to be focused on, how much do you think policy contributes to that effort? Biden started out trying to be the new FDR to fight inequality and middle-class stagnation, but he hasn't had the votes in Congress for a lot of that. Is there a policy piece, in addition to calling out MAGA for what it is, that contributes to the cause, in your opinion?

Jennifer Rubin: Well, I think this is a perennial problem for the Democratic Party. It's a heterogeneous party. It's a big tent party. There have always been conflicts between more progressive elements and more centrist elements. I think President Biden had the poor fortune, but it was his choice, of course, to land in office at a time where we have really deep, really complicated problems, and he had very, very thin majorities. Something's got to give. You either have to get bigger majorities if you want to pursue a more progressive agenda, and there certainly are policy arguments for that, but if you don't, you're going to have to trim your sails somewhat and focus on, perhaps, fewer issues, and ones that have some crossover appeal.

I think he's beginning to do that. You see the added focus on inflation. You don't hear him talking about Build Back Better anymore. You hear him talking much more about kitchen table issues, trying to remind people of the successes he had in job creation and the infrastructure bill. Policy always matters, but, frankly, in a closely divided Congress with the filibuster, his potential for policy innovation and progress is quite limited. That's the lesson I think he's learned, particularly this last year.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, Jennifer, can you talk a little about your own political evolution for people just tuning in? I mentioned in the intro that when you first started coming on the show, it was as one of our conservative voices, when you wrote The Washington Post column called Right Turn. Around two years ago, you dropped the word conservative from your Twitter bio and wrote a column about that. Now you've come to this point where you're telling the Democratic President he's not being staunch enough. How'd you get there?

Jennifer Rubin: Well, in some respect, I haven't changed at all. I've always been a pro-market, pro-democratic, small-d, rule of law individual who believed that America have a strong leadership position in the world. I believed in free trade. I believed in robust legal immigration. None of those have really changed. The party has gone off the rails. I think the more I observed this, the more horrified I became, and the more I saw a critical need to step aside from perhaps some policy differences I might have had with Democrats and to begin to, as I suggested, embrace the notion of a broad small-d democratic alliance.

Now, I think that my views on some issues have in fact changed. I think the growing disparity in wealth in America is politically unsustainable and economically unsustainable. Over the years, I've become more amenable to greater intervention in the economy, and particularly, ways in which the tax code can be used to try to ameliorate these gaps in wealth. The second area which I've changed, quite frankly, very dramatically, is on guns. I think the perennial slaughter of innocents has really changed my view. I find it hard to believe that other people have not been affected by that.

I think perhaps in those two respects, I've evolved in my thinking, but I think, in great measure, I have been the same person I've always been. I'm somewhat horrified, along with others in the NeverTrump camp, that people who I thought believed in these things, apparently don't believe in these things. This was some cover, I suppose, for this very reactionary white nationalist, Christian nationalist mindset.

When the earth changes below your feet, it's time to embrace some new alliances, and to be much more candid and much more forthcoming on the things we need to do to ensure that limited government, the rule of law, all those things that I've always believed in, can survive, because without democracy, without democratic institutions, none of those things are going to be possible.

Brian Lehrer: Well, being open-minded, being willing to change one's mind on the basis of evidence in front of our eyes is certainly the value of this show. Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist and blogger, thanks for coming on today and sharing your thinking about your own evolution and that piece that you wrote about that we focused most of the conversation on. Thanks, Jennifer.

Jennifer Rubin: My pleasure. Always nice to be here, Brian.

 

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