Thread by @RadioFreeTom

In this piece, @Jbarro notes my frustration with people who will not vote to save democracy because they're worried about inflation. I take the point, but I have *always* felt this way about voters reacting to stuff that presidents don't control. /1

joshbarro.com/p/obsessing-ov…

In fact, one of the reasons I became a Republican in the late 70s was that I grew up in a blue collar area where people thought it was the responsibility of the President to find a job for every wage-earner, which isn't the way it works. (And I heard that a lot.) /2

I pleaded with people: You have mayors, state reps, governors. State government. You have to vote at the national level for things of national importance and solve local stuff at the local level. But nope. /3

For all my voting life, I've had almost zero empathy for the "the President better find me a job and fill my tank" voter. Presidents can have a lot of influence over a lot, but even I knew sitting in line in my car in 1979 that gas prices were not Jimmy Carter's fault./4

"But Tom, wasn't that your argument for Reagan?" No. I voted for Reagan and the national GOP mostly on foreign policy, while casting some votes for Dems - one of whom I later worked for - at the local level. (I did not vote for Dukakis, but that's another story for another time.)

I agree with Josh and others that Democrats cannot run on a "save democracy" platform.
I recognize the truth of this, but I can still find it utterly tragic that millions of people will hand power to a sociopath because gas hit four bucks or we ran low on cat food. /5

Also, a lot of the people saying "But the common folks are suffering from inflation!" know full well that the "common folk aren't voting for creeps like Ted Cruz or Paul Gosar because of inflation. That's a rationalization, not a reason. /6

Add to this the utter irony that today's careerist Republican elites will completely screw those "common folks" for a giant tax cut; the only red meat they'll get is Texas abortion bounties and anti-vaccine laws. Lib-owning won't reduce gas prices, but hey, who cares. Owned!/7

Most Americans once cared about their democracy. (Need an example? The Democratic rise from 1974-1976 as a reaction to Watergate.) But no longer. So I guess autocracy it is, as long as there's enough cheap pork roasts at Costco. 🤷‍♀️/8x