Thread by @tzimmer_history

I’d say 5 percent of the blame goes to Biden for constantly evoking “bipartisanship” throughout 2021, opening the door for such criticism.

But 95 percent of the blame goes to Chuck Todd for framing this as anything but a result of complete Republican obstruction. Just bizarre.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1482731305116831744

This is the clearest example of how too much of the establishment media is actively complicit in the Republican assault on the political system in the exact way it was during the Obama years: All Republicans have to do is make functional governance impossible and blame Democrats.

I’m as frustrated as anyone by the fact that some establishment democrats still insist a return to “normalcy” is imminent (any minute now!), when Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate.

But aside from the anti-democratic distortions of the political system without which this Republican strategy of minority obstruction could not succeed, it also relies heavily on the establishment media obscuring or legitimizing it. And the Chuck Todd types never fail to oblige.

While I completely agree that what Todd and people like him offer isn’t serious analysis, I don’t think it’s the result of naivety. It’s worse, more structural and more ideological. It’s a combination of what might be called *performative* centrism and *reactionary* centrism.

https://twitter.com/adamgreen/status/1481712386167955461

A few weeks ago, @perrybaconjr criticized the *performative* centrism by people like Chuck Todd. Performative centrism reacts to a system that incentivizes constant demonstrations of “neutrality” and “nonpartisanship” - “let me show how not liberal I am,” as Perry Bacon put it.

https://twitter.com/perrybaconjr/status/1474024075815174144

It’s a massive problem that goes well beyond journalism: Much like journalists, academic observers, for instance, also get rewarded for being “nonpartisan,” and so the political discourse incentivizes analysts to signal “neutrality” by blaming #BothSides.

https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1417908022123323394

But there is also a more deeply ideological explanation for what Chuck Todd is doing here – something that might be called “reactionary centrism.” I think we must assume that Chuck Todd really has a problem with Biden, and doesn’t see the Republican threat as quite so dangerous.

https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1481747064275021834

I’d argue that white elitism adds an important element: People like Chuck Todd feel a kinship with Republican/conservative elites, and that clouds their perspective of who these reactionaries really are. “How bad could it possibly be – I know these people, they are like me!”

It is precisely because they, as predominantly white men, aren’t affected in the same way as people who happen to be *not* white men that their perspective on the threat of a white nationalist reactionary regime is different.

Let’s call it the “I just don’t have that big of a problem with what’s going on because no one is threatening my position in this political and social order, and so how bad could it be, because after all, I should be in charge, and I will remain in charge” worldview.

The Republican dogma – that the world works best if it’s run by wealthy white men and thus should always be run by wealthy white men - has a certain appeal to wealthy white elites, regardless of party (or, at the very least, is simply less threatening to them).

As a matter of fact, from the perspective of white male elites, regardless of party, it is even reasonable to assume the bigger immediate threat to their status coming from the “Left” – from what David Brooks, in his uncanny wisdom, calls the “leftish agenda.”

https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1482028156915695616

It is true that an agenda seeking to move America from being a restricted, white men’s democracy that left existing hierarchies largely intact to a functioning multiracial, pluralistic, social democracy is a losing proposition for people who have traditionally been at the top.

For reactionary centrists, this change has already gone too far. They want to turn the clock back a little bit, to a time before what they see as the current excesses of radical leftism / wokeism - to when the privileged position of wealthy white elites was a little more secure.

So, while I don’t think Chuck Todd is a Republican, I think his perspective on American politics is shaped by an underlying ideology that makes it just that much more plausible to see Biden’s agenda as “unreasonable” and to blame him for a lack of “bipartisanship” and “outreach.”

If you combine a system that incentivizes *performative* centrism with an underlying ideology of *reactionary* centrism that is so pervasive among wealthy white elites, you get the type of media coverage and expert punditry that remains complicit in the assault on democracy.