I decided it would be amusing to start LARPing as a West Wing liberal, so I published an article in the Houston Chronicle the other day calling on Democrats to endorse Mike Rogers in Michigan, and Republicans to endorse Talarico in Texas. It’s reproduced below.
Both of our major political parties are being overtaken by virulent strains of populism. On the right, MAGA has normalized corruption, misinformation, and open bigotry. On the Democratic side, avowed socialists have been winning primaries, bringing closer to power politicians whose agendas pose a distinct threat to the country’s long-term economic health.
No single factor caused this deterioration. But one contributor has been the tendency of politicians and intellectuals who should know better to place partisan interests above the greater good. We cannot criticize the crazy people on our own side, the thinking goes, without giving the opposition an advantage and helping it gain power.
Escaping this undesirable state of affairs will require leadership, along with concrete steps to build reciprocal trust across the political aisle. Toward that end, I have a simple proposal: Nationally prominent Republicans should reject Ken Paxton and support James Talarico in the Texas Senate race. At the same time, Democrats should reject Abdul El-Sayed and support Mike Rogers. Members of each party should do this in the context of creating a bipartisan movement of politicians, activists, intellectuals, and donors that is both clear-eyed about political realities and optimistic that we can make things better
Luckily, prediction markets and prognosticators consider each race a toss-up, meaning no party would gain a clear advantage from such a movement. If both efforts succeeded, Republicans and Democrats would simply exchange one seat apiece while preventing two unusually bad candidates from entering the Senate.
Paxton is a generationally corrupt politician. In 2023, the Texas House impeached him by a vote of 121–23—a bipartisan majority that included more than 70 percent of House Republicans—over allegations that he abused his office to assist a wealthy donor and retaliated against whistleblowers who reported him. He stayed in office after Donald Trump took an interest in the story and pressured Republicans to vote to acquit him in the Senate
Meanwhile, in nominating El-Sayed, Michigan Democrats have selected a candidate on the party’s far-left edge. He has repeatedly campaigned with Hasan Piker, a socialist streamer who called Mao Zedong “one of the great leaders of this world” and defended Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea as justifiable.
Partisans will find much to dislike about Talarico and Rogers. But neither has revealed himself to be remotely as corrupt as Paxton or shown El-Sayed’s willingness to embrace radical left-wing economic policies and align himself with apologists for authoritarianism.
The parties could continue fighting for control of the Senate everywhere else on the map. Rather than gambling on winning both races and risking the election of both Paxton and El-Sayed, each side would accept one victory and one defeat.
Of course, it would be foolish to expect every Republican or Democrat to sign on to such a plan. But it would take only a few prominent political figures from each side to turn their effort into a major national story.
One problem our politics has faced in recent years has been the difficulty of inspiring moderate and independent voters who are sick of partisanship, corruption, and politicians embracing the most odious figures on the left and right. A Rogers–Talarico bargain could give those voters something to believe in. And because both races are competitive, there is a plausible chance that such a movement could tip each contest toward the more acceptable candidate.
This path would, of course, involve risk. What if Republican-leaning voters in Texas did the right thing and rejected Paxton while Michigan Democrats didn’t, or vice versa? Any political figure who endorses a member of the opposing party while control of the Senate hangs in the balance would be opening themselves up to attacks from within their coalition. Still, some leaders and intellectuals might see an advantage in betting on a future politics that is less acrimonious and destructive than what we have now.
The combination of these two terrible candidates and their being involved in two similarly competitive races creates a rare opportunity. If either contest were a blowout, there would be little possibility of a positive-sum arrangement that placed the interests of the country above those of either party.
Seizing the opportunity now provided will require real leadership. If American politics ever moves in a healthier direction, the nation will be deeply indebted to those who showed courage during an era in which it was conspicuously absent.
To call each race a toss-up might be a bit of an exaggeration, at least in Michigan. On Kalshi, Paxton has a 54% chance as I write this, and El-Sayed is at 62%. So the bargain would very slightly favor Republicans, but it’s close enough that neither side is taking a huge risk here. I don’t see why a few people couldn’t start on this cross-endorsement thing, and then it could snowball. It’s risky at the individual level, but not so much that I would put it in the impossible category. The more people do it, the more cover they have.
In other “Country over Party” news, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs is apparently going to pick James Giles, a Republican former mayor of Mesa, to run alongside her. This is timely, coming on the heels of my article on what has happened to Arizona Republicans. Giles was already a critic of MAGA, so it’s not that radical of a step, but still notable and interesting. Hobbs is running against Andy Biggs, who was one of only 12 members of the House to vote against giving Congressional Gold Medals to US Capitol Police over what happened on January 6. That means he’s at the extreme end of the pro-insurrectionist spectrum, even within the Republican Party. We need more gestures like this.
I’ve never actually watched The West Wing, which ran on NBC from 1999 to 2006, but the show has remained famous for its idealistic portrayal of politics. I just had a funny thought that I should livestream myself watching the show and reacting to it, so look forward to that.
Temperamentally and politically, I’m not really a moderate. I’d like a world much different than the one we have. But I’ve realized that practical politics has to at this moment involve a defense of the establishment, since any attempt to use populism to remake society will take us further away from the kind of country I want to live in. This is because public opinion is really awful, especially if you weigh the views of individuals by intensity, which is what matters most in practice. The median voter is actually better than the more mobilized part of the public, since El-Sayed and Paxton will each underperform for their state. Both Democrat and Republican primary voters are currently behaving irresponsibly because these are the most engaged electorates, and being engaged in politics now increasingly means spending a lot of time on the internet and indulging in false narratives and the kinds of hatreds that often drive mass movements.
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Sorry but acting like AES and Paxton are at all comparable is a huge stretch even from a center right perspective. Notice how you have to say AES campaigned with "X" while with Paxton its "Paxton is X". Theres a huge difference between these two things, especially when you consider that Hasan larps as a Bernie kind of socialist when he does these IRL political interactions.
"The median voter is actually better than the more mobilized part of the public..."
This is the key to everything. Median voters are demoralized, while the cranks are excited.
The only way to reverse this is the second coming of Bill Clinton (without the sex stuff): a moderate Democrat with energy and excitment that appeals to the median voter, and is not afraid to triangulate and throw his own party's sacred cows under the bus to score wins.
Here's to hoping that Mark Kelly or Andy Beshear or Josh Shapiro are up to this!