A Tale of Two Primaries

Plus: Keeping it simple at the Trump/Biden debate.

Fresh off his appearance with Tim at last night’s founding-members AMA, Bulwark contributor and former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger announced this morning he’s endorsing Joe Biden for president:

“Donald Trump poses a direct threat to every fundamental American value,” Kinzinger, who voted for Trump in 2020, says in the 90-second spot. “He doesn’t care about our country; he doesn’t care about you. He only cares about himself. And he’ll hurt anyone or anything in pursuit of power.”

“There’s too much at stake to sit on the sidelines . . . Now is the time to unite behind Joe Biden and show Donald Trump off the stage once and for all.”

Biden responded: “This is what putting your country before your party looks like. I’m grateful for your endorsement, Adam.” Happy Wednesday.

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Westchester County Executive George Latimer speaks to supporters after winning his race against Democratic incumbent Representative Jamaal Bowman in the 16th Congressional District of New York's Democratic primary. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Political Suicide Squad 

JVL often says that parties can only be as good as their voters allow them to be. And last night in New York and Colorado we witnessed a study on how dramatically voter incentives differ in America’s two major parties, as currently constructed.

In New York, the fire-alarm-pulling, Hamas-rape-denying, 9/11-conspiracy-mongering, max-bench-pressing congressman Jamaal Bowman got absolutely thrashed by George Latimer in a race defined in part by Bowman’s attack on Zionists in the wake of the 10/7 attack and in part on his generally outlandish/offensive personal conduct.

Latimer, a local county executive with deep ties to the district, was a strong challenger to the sitting congressman in his own right. But he’s also a more conservative candidate than the district might have otherwise put forth, and he blundered his way through issues like the Trump tax cuts. It didn’t matter. Dem voters can tolerate policy disputes, but not crazy.

The story was very different in Colorado’s 4th district Republican primary. That’s where Lauren Boebert—the carpetbagging MAGA D-lister who was escorted out of a Denver theater last year for vaping and groping her date at Beetlejuice the Musical—won her primary by about 30 percent over a divided field of contenders.

Given her myriad flaws and empty set of features and the fact that she moved into the district from the other side of the state following the most embarrassing public sex act since Hugh Grant’s divine oopsie, one might think that the Colorado GOP could have found someone else to rally around. But no: This party only rejects sitting members of Congress if they oppose Trump’s coup or if their extra-curricular activities allow the strategists to center their campaign on aggressively homophobic innuendo.

But more interesting to my eye than what happened in CO-4 was the Democratic primary in the state’s 4th and 6th state legislative districts. There two sitting legislators dubbed the “Colorado squad” were kicked to the curb by Democratic primary voters who preferred more mainstream alternatives.

The campaign against these defeated legislators—Tim Hernandez, a rose-emoji police “abolitionist” who would not condemn Hamas, and Elisabeth Epps, a progressive who likened herself to Cori Bush and was formally reprimanded by the Democratic House speaker—was brought to my attention in a conversation with Gov. Jared Polis and other members of Democratic leadership prior to our interview in Denver on Friday. Polis seemed encouraged that the party was holding its own extreme flank accountable and cited it as evidence that the party was not being overtaken by the extremes in the same way the Republicans have. Last night’s results validated that view.

There were other elections yesterday; naturally, the Republicans didn’t elect the craziest son-of-a-bitch available everywhere, nor the Democrats the most unobjectionable moderate. Open-seat races in CO-3 and CO-5—and down in South Carolina’s 4rd district—saw Republicans siding with relatively traditional candidates over wild-eyed loons. A pair of normie moderates triumphed over Trump endorsees in Utah’s primaries for Senate and governor as well.

Altogether, as Semafor’s Dave Weigel noted, Trump endorsees might’ve had their worst primary night of the year. Meanwhile, several squad members avoided primaries by behaving more responsibly than Bowman and Bush.

While the bag is a bit mixed in open primaries, there is one trend that is pretty clear cut.

When it comes to sitting members of Congress, Republicans are only at risk if they veer too far to the middle or if they cross Donald Trump, while Democrats are in danger of being primaried from the center if they go too far off the deep end. The latter is a much healthier incentive structure if we want our democracy to start to function again.

Our elected officials should be afraid they will be thrown out if they behave like a–holes, or are corrupt, or start dabbling in kooky conspiracies. And they shouldn’t have to look over their shoulder anytime they cut a policy deal with the other party.

Unfortunately, with the Republicans, the inverse is the case. In order to survive, advancing conspiracies about 2020 is the minimum ante. And working together with Dems, at least on hot-button issues, is a recipe for an annoying challenge from the MAGA base at minimum.

As a result, Bobo is headed back to Congress, while MC Bowman packs his bags.

—Tim Miller

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Keep It Simple, POTUS

This morning, just a short note on simplicity.

We live in intense and complex times. But as Winston Churchill wrote in his history of the First World War, The World Crisis, “Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.”

A successful presidential campaign takes all the complexities swirling around an election and makes a few simplicities emerge.

Here are three simplicities that Joe Biden can and should highlight in tomorrow night’s debate.

One: January 6th was a dark day in our history. Donald Trump was responsible for January 6th, did nothing as the assault unfolded on January 6th, and intends to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists.

Two: Reproductive rights are fundamental rights. Trump was responsible for overturning Roe, and a second term would feature further assaults on our freedoms.

Three: Standing with Ukraine and against Putin is both right and important. Trump will abandon Ukraine and is pro-Putin.

January 6, 2021. February 24, 2022. June 24, 2022. Three moments of simple and clear choice. On all three of these, Biden stands with a majority of the American people. Trump is on the other side.

I know there are many other issues Biden will have to discuss tomorrow night. I know there are many other tasks he has to accomplish in the debate.

But if at the end of the debate these contrasts stand forth in their clear simplicity, I believe Biden will defeat Trump this November.

 —William Kristol

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Catching up . . .

• WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange returns to Australia a free man after pleading guilty to publishing U.S. secrets: CBS News

• Biden to pardon military service members dismissed for their sexual orientation: Wall Street Journal

• From Trump’s immunity to abortion, the Supreme Court’s most controversial decisions this term are about to drop: Politico

• Russia opens secret trial of U.S. reporter accused of espionage: New York Times

• Three female GOP state senators who filibustered S.C. abortion ban lost their primaries: NBC News

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Quick Hits: Julian’s Out

What to make of yesterday’s news about the release of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, who agreed to plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act and was sentenced to time served?

On the one hand, Assange was a contemptible figure, someone whose simplistic “transparency uber alles” philosophy and lackadaisical workflow—get classified docs, dump ‘em online without even bothering to read through them first—regularly endangered U.S. troops, foreign nationals helping us in dangerous places, and even WikiLeaks’ own leakers. That’s to say nothing of his ridiculous whitewashing of world dictators and closeness to Vladimir Putin specifically: He once said there was no need for WikiLeaks to operate in Russia because in Russia dissenting voices like Alexei Navalny were already tolerated. Oh, and he might have handed Donald Trump the 2016 election.

At the time of his arrest back in 2019, Andrew wasn’t shedding many tears for the guy:

It was this agenda that made Assange so useful to America-hating governments the world over, from his salad days of leaking sensitive documents about the Iraq war to his willingness to mule Russia’s hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign into the public eye in an effort to destabilize the 2016 presidential election. Everything was to be revealed—everything, at least, that didn’t happen to be in a foreign language: Domscheit-Berg admitted that WikiLeaks focused on the United States because “None of us spoke Hebrew or Korean” and “It wasn’t easy to gauge the significance of a document even when it was written in English.” Assange styled himself a courageous ideologue because he knew his way around a computer; what he really was was a dupe.

Then again, there were reasonable concerns that the U.S. charges against Assange—which involved him publishing sensitive information stolen by others—could have a significant chilling effect on press freedoms.

In the New York Times, Charlie Savage argues Assange’s plea deal averts the risk of the maximally chilling outcome:

The agreement means that for the first time in American history, gathering and publishing information the government considers secret has been successfully treated as a crime. This new precedent will send a threatening message to national security journalists, who may be chilled in how aggressively they do their jobs because they will see a greater risk of prosecution.

But its reach is also limited, dodging a bigger threat. Because Mr. Assange agreed to a deal, he will not challenge the legitimacy of applying the Espionage Act to his actions. The outcome, then, averts the risk that the case might lead to a definitive Supreme Court ruling blessing prosecutors’ narrow interpretation of First Amendment press freedoms.

Over at The Atlantic, James Ball writes that yesterday’s outcome is one in which the Justice Department and Assange “have both now lost”:

Assange has forfeited a decade of his life, and has had to plead guilty in court to a crime that he undoubtedly does not feel he committed. The Justice Department, for its part, wasted endless hours and dollars on an ultimately inconsequential fight. It has in the process made the world’s most powerful government look small in the very worst ways—appearing petty and vindictive, by bringing the immense power of the state to bear against one annoying man.

In an extremely volatile and polarizing election year, that petty use of prosecutorial power is perhaps the scariest precedent of all.

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