Here’s How Democrats Can Expose the GOP’s Dishonesty About Fascism.
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TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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January 16: Towards a 2028 Democratic Primary Calendar
Don’t look now, but it’s already time for the DNC and the states to figure out the 2028 Democratic presidential primary calendar, so I wrote an overview at New York:
The first 2028 presidential primaries are just two years away. And for the first time since 2016, both parties are expected to have serious competition for their nominations. While Vice-President J.D. Vance is likely to enter the cycle as a formidable front-runner for the GOP nod, recent history suggests there will be lots of other candidates. After all, Donald Trump drew 12 challengers in 2024. On the Democratic side, there is no one like Vance (or Hillary Clinton going into 2016 or Joe Biden going into 2020) who is likely to become the solid front-runner from the get-go, though Californians Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris lead all of the way too early polls.
But 2028 horse-race speculation really starts with the track itself, as the calendar for state contests still isn’t set. What some observers call the presidential-nominating “system” isn’t something the national parties control. In the case of primaries utilizing state-financed election machinery, state laws govern the timing and procedures. Caucuses (still abundant on the Republican side and rarer among Democrats) are usually run by state parties. National parties can vitally influence the calendar via carrots (bonus delegates at the national convention) or sticks (loss of delegates) and try to create “windows” for different kinds of states to hold their nominating contests to space things out and make the initial contests competitive and representative. But it’s sometimes hit or miss.
Until quite recently, the two parties tended to move in sync on such calendar and map decisions. But Democrats have exhibited a lot more interest in ensuring that the “early states” — the ones that kick off the nominating process and often determine the outcome — are representative of the party and the country as a whole and give candidates something like a level playing field. Prior to 2008, both parties agreed to do away with the traditional duopoly, in which the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary came first, by allowing early contests representing other regions (Nevada and South Carolina). And both parties tolerated the consolidation of other states seeking influence into a somewhat later “Super Tuesday” cluster of contests. But in 2024 Democrats tossed Iowa out of the early-state window altogether and placed South Carolina first (widely interpreted as Joe Biden’s thank-you to the Palmetto State for its crucial role in saving his campaign in 2020 after poor performances in other early states), with Nevada and New Hampshire voting the same day soon thereafter. Republicans stuck with the same old calendar with Trump more or less nailing down the nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire.
For 2028, Republicans will likely stand pat while Democrats reshuffle the deck (the 2024 calendar was explicitly a one-time-only proposition). The Democratic National Committee has set a January 16 deadline for states to apply for early-state status. And as the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher explains, there is uncertainty about the identity of the early states and particularly their order:
“The debate has only just begun. But early whisper campaigns about the weaknesses of the various options already offer a revealing window into some of the party’s racial, regional and rural-urban divides, according to interviews with more than a dozen state party chairs, D.N.C. members and others involved in the selection process.
“Nevada is too far to travel. New Hampshire is too entitled and too white. South Carolina is too Republican. Iowa is also too white — and its time has passed.
“Why not a top battleground? Michigan entered the early window in 2024, but critics see it as too likely to bring attention to the party’s fractures over Israel. North Carolina or Georgia would need Republicans to change their election laws.”
Nevada and New Hampshire have been most aggressive about demanding a spot at the beginning of the calendar, and both will likely remain in the early-state window, representing their regions. The DNC could push South Carolina aside in favor of regional rivals Georgia or North Carolina. Michigan is close to a lock for an early midwestern primary, but its size, cost, and sizable Muslim population (which will press candidates on their attitude towards Israel’s recent conduct) would probably make it a dubious choice to go first. Recently excluded Iowa (already suspect because it’s very white and trending Republican, then bounced decisively after its caucus reporting system melted down in 2020) could stage a “beauty contest” that will attract candidates and media even if it doesn’t award delegates.
Even as the early-state drama unwinds, the rest of the Democratic nomination calendar is morphing as well. As many as 14 states are currently scheduled to hold contests on Super Tuesday, March 7. And a 15th state, New York, may soon join the parade. Before it’s all nailed down (likely just after the 2026 midterms), decisions on the calendar will begin to influence candidate strategies and vice versa. Some western candidates (e.g., Gavin Newsom or Ruben Gallego) could be heavily invested in Nevada, while Black proto-candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Wes Moore might pursue a southern primary. Progressive favorites like AOC or Ro Khanna may have their own favorite launching pads, while self-identified centrists like Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttigieg might have others. Having a home state in the early going is at best a mixed blessing: Losing your home-state primary is a candidate-killer, and winning it doesn’t prove a lot. And it’s also worth remembering that self-financed candidates like J.B. Pritzker may need less of a runway to stage a nationally viable campaign.
So sketching out the tracks for all those 2028 horses, particularly among Democrats, is a bit of a game of three-dimensional chess. We won’t know how well they’ll run here or there until it’s all over.
Euclid, brown shoe polish is brown and so are feces, but to compare the two because they are the same color is to confess the inability to distinguish shit from Shinola.
(note: the brief comment posted above is intended to be a reply to the Feb 18 comment by Euclid. It is posted in the wrong location)
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Mr. Lawford continues to seem utterly and completely baffled by the concept of how to compare the actions of MAGA/Republicans and Fascists on a scale of 0 to 10 which is what the strategy memo itself discusses.
If I am asked to compare brown shoe polish and feces on a scale of 0 to 10 I would at first probably assign the comparison a 0. If someone then correctly points out that the two things do indeed share the color brown I would probably then revise my rating to a 0.5 or so in order to indicate that in that one minor respect an extremely slight relationship does indeed exist.
But I certainly would not be so utterly mystified by the task as Mr. Lawford seems to be. Setting aside his rather immature attempt at humor, the logical content of his comment is that “if both A and B are brown, anyone who notes this similarity in comparing the two must therefore be completely unable to distinguish between them at all.”
It is, one hopes, unnecessary to explain at any length why this argument is wrong.
In reality, what Mr. Lawrence is actually attempting to do is to ridicule any possible comparisons of the behavior of the MAGA wing of the GOP with events in Germany in the 1930’s as being so utterly and entirely absurd that only a complete idiot would do so.
Well, Dr. Deborah Lipstadt is not an idiot. She is one of the most respected historians of the Holocaust. The following quotation from the strategy memo being discussed makes a preliminary point and then directly quotes her perspective:
“Since most Americans have absolutely no knowledge about Italian, Spanish and post-war Neo-Fascism only extremely vague images of German Nazi fascism in the 1930’s (images based largely on movies) Republicans easily dismiss any discussion of the issue by arguing that all comparisons of Trump and MAGA with fascism represent absurd accusations that they are engaging in mass arrests, torture and genocide. But anyone with even a limited knowledge of the period is aware that that there are more subtle comparisons that are not so easily discounted. ”
“As the leading historian of the period Deborah Lipstadt has noted:”
“I do think certain comparisons are fitting … it’s certainly not 1938,” when Nazis led the Kristallnacht pogroms throughout Germany. “It’s not even September 1935, and the Nuremberg Laws” institutionalizing racist policies. “What it well might be, however, is [the earlier period around] December 1932, Hitler comes to power on Jan. 30, 1933 – it might be Jan. 15, 1933.”
There is, therefore, absolutely nothing at all absurd or idiotic about discussing comparisons between MAGA and fascism.
Indeed, one would certainly hope that Mr. Lawford would not walk up to Dr. Lipstadt at an academic conference and tell her that she is so stupid that “she cannot tell shit from shinola.” If he would be ashamed to say this to her – as one would certainly hope he would be — he should also be ashamed to say it to anyone else as well.
No one with a minor knowledge of fascism in history would take seriously any of Andrew Levison’s accusation of fascism toward the Republican Party. For example, Levison compares Trump’s claim of a stolen election in 2020 to the Reichstag fire. Does Levison realize that after the Reichstag fire, Hitler had all the Socialist deputies to the Reichstag arrested and sent to concentration camps? Trump did nothing of the sort. Quite the contrary, he allowed the Democrats to gain a Congressional majority. Levison compares Fox News and other right wing media to the Reich Propaganda Ministry. The latter was a government office which monopolized German radio and had dissenting newspapers forcibly shut down. Fox News is a private enterprise which is anything but a monopoly and has no power to suppress its competitors. Soon after taking power, Hitler had 150 leaders of the Storm Troopers arrested and shot without trial. How many Republicans did Trump have assassinated? Did Hitler ever run for re-election?
Would Hitler have tolerated being impeached? I have seen many silly comparisons of Trump and the Republicans to Hitler and the Nazis, but Levison’s takes the cake.
The commenter apparently does not understand how comparing two things on a scale of one to 10 works. One can assign a very low number that indicates there is little or no relationship or one can assign a 9 or 10 to indicate a very close relationship. As the author of the commentary notes MAGA and Trump supporters would assign very low numbers to the comparisons suggested while others would assign higher ones.
The commenter seems to think that comparing two things on a scale of 1 to 10 means that they all are automatically assigned a 10.
This is not how comparing things on a scale of one to ten works.
I hope this simple explanation clarifies the commenters confusion. Otherwise, when a doctor asks him to rank his pain on a scale of one to 10 he will shout – “Are you crazy? I’m not in agony.”