How Mitch McConnell Misunderstands Politics
And a TV appearance, a book recommendation, and observations on White Rural Rage.
A few things before we get to our “headliner,” a piece I recently wrote for The Federalist in the wake of Mitch McConnell’s announced resignation as GOP leader.
Last Friday, I went on Tipping Point with the always insightful and thoughtful Kara McKinney to discuss a new book whose authors blew up the Internet when they appeared on MSNBC (natch) and launched an unhinged frontal attack on white rural Americans. The authors, who were, of course, elite white urban denizens (an acdemic and a journalist) proceeded to excoriate white rural Americans in a way that you could never imagine being done in the mainstream for any other ethnic, racial or social group in America. Even the MSNBC host appeared slightly taken aback.
The treatment of rural whites in White Rural Rage is a pure distillation of what it means to be an outgroup in contemporary society.
Kara and I compared the thesis of White Rural Rage with that of my own forthcoming book, out next month (which you can order now!) which has a rather different thesis.
You can watch the full video here.
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In addition to my own book, I’d like to recommend another book which I recently read. Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities was published in 2023 by veteran journalist Dr. Jack Cashill. Cashill’s book is not thorough systematic treatment of white flight, but instead a in-depth and very personal examination of the decimation of his own white working class ethnic community in Newark, New Jersey in the 1960s and 1970s. It also discusses the devastating effect that leaving Newark had on Cashill’s family and the families of his neighbors as they were compelled to flee communities they had been settled in for decades to the safety of the suburbs.
The story of white flight is often told (Michelle Obama’s autobiography is a notable recent example), but invariably not from the perspective of whites who were displaced. Working class whites, threatened by both clueless, virtue-signaling elite whites and underclass non-whites, were silent victims of much of mid-century urban policy— a group blamed for what amounted to their own ethnic cleansing.
In my chapter of my own book that deals with real estate, I discuss these issues systematically and how they played out nationwide, but Cashill’s book puts the same issue in more personal terms and is worth checking out for that reason.
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I’ll close with my piece on McConnell, and thank you again for reading The Course of Empire.
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Mitch McConnell’s Entire Legacy Is ‘Misunderstanding Politics’
I have many faults,” intoned Mitch McConnell after announcing he would be surrendering his leadership of the Senate GOP at the end of the 2024 term. “Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.”
That McConnell would provide this assessment of his own career was predictable. He was just echoing the take of the average GOP establishment politician or D.C. operative. He was also completely wrong.
In fact, throughout his career, few people understood politics more poorly, and of the many flaws he had as a leader, his misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of politics was perhaps his worst.
Start with the fact that he had an incredible 6 percent (not a misprint) approval rating and 60 percent disapproval among American adults in a recent poll from respected pollster Monmouth (even among GOP voters, he was at just 10 percent approval!) Even politicians who have committed sex offenses have polled better. But while these ratings were particularly anemic even for McConnell, voters’ disregard of McConnell was par for the course. For years, even among the raft of unpopular GOP politicians, McConnell stood out as the most unpopular major political figure in America.
“Oh,” McConnell’s defenders would always say. “You don’t understand. He’s a master of Senate procedure.” These people seem to think that this skill, important though it is, is somehow what “understanding politics” entails. They could not be more wrong.
I've seen the word "rage" thrown around a lot lately. It's a powerful rhetorical device, like calling wrongthink "hate". No one can support hate, right? Better make it a crime. With strict penalties.
By labeling dissent as "rage", it gets immediately discredited. No reason to debate it. One does not debate with rage.
We need a rhetorician of Trump's caliber to come back with a retort.
Enjoyed your piece at The Federalist, Jeremy.
[BTW, WTH is up with the Tyranny of the McRINOs? McCain + McConnell + McCarthy + McSally + McDaniel = McMassive McBetrayal & McMonumental McFailure (h/t The Burning Platform).]
As for "Cocaine Glitch" McConnell -- to paraphrase the Sir Thomas More character in A Man For All Seasons: "It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for 30 pieces of Yuan, Mitchell?"