As #OliverWillis writes, the views of the radical right - which are also the policies of the GOP - are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

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The press likes to frame American politics as "narrowly divided," but the reality is that Republicans' electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and #ElectoralCollege, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020.

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The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes *since 1988* was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

But, as Willis says, Dems "act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters," echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP's platform just isn't popular. Take the #Groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.

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Every one of the GOP's tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP's support for Trump as the 2024 candidate. Trump lost every popular vote he's ever stood for, and owes his presidential term to the antimajoritarian Electoral College, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.

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Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically "normal" center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don't hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself "severely conservative" and McCain "put scare quotes around 'health of the mother' provisions for abortion rights."

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The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about "woke capitalism": on the one hand, it's absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies "woke" (even if they sell Pride flags a couple of weeks a year).

But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually *declared war* on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the *#WSJ* says that "Republicans and Big Business broke up":

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b

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But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who'll pull the lever for *any* Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.

There's an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters.

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The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this "independence." The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointemnts to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That's how you get *incredible* appointments like #LinaKhan at the #FTC and #JonathanKanter at #DoJ #AntitrustDivision and #RohitChopra at the #CFPB.

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The progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.

Likewise, #JaredBernstein, *finally* confirmed as #CouncilOfEconomicAdvisors chair after an interminable wrangle:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/

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And #JulieSu, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8-10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/

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But the Biden admin's unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of #GigiSohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the #FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:

https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5

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It's how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like #PeteButtigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself.

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