What's It Going to Take to Get Chris Christie Onstage at the DNC?
Biden needs the Big Fella.
Spring Break! Woo! I’ll be kind-of, sort-of off next week. Not fully and there will be at least one Triad, maybe two. But it’ll be a reduced JVL presence across Bulwark products. Say goodbye to these, Michael!
Also: I was really impressed by the quality of the comments section yesterday. Great job, fam. On our best days, this newsletter is like a reddit thread where the OP is interesting, but then the discussion among readers adds a bunch of additional value.
Thank you. When you’re great in the comments I take it as a personal act of kindness and I’m grateful to all of you.
Oh, and one more thing: We’re going to be live in DC on May 15. It should be a bonkers show: Me, Sarah, Tim, George Conway, and Cletus von Ivermectin (speaker not confirmed). What could possibly go wrong?
It’s Wednesday, May 15 at 7pm and tickets are $50. (There’s a virtual ticket that’s $15, but I’m not sure how that works?)
You can get tickets here while they last. Nota bene: These things usually sell out pretty quick, so don’t sleep on it. Come and hang out! I’ll do the voice so you can watch Sarah’s disapproval live and in person.
I’m sorry—one more one last thing: I did the Secret show with Mona this morning and we ripped the mask off of cable news. It’s good episode. You can listen here.
(And even if you’re not going to listen, check out my photo caption game.)
1. Republicans for Biden
Sarah always emphasizes that we are building an anti-Trump coalition, not a pro-Biden coalition and this is 100 percent correct. Here is a partial list of groups Biden needs to turn out if he’s going to win:
Progressives who think he’s a “war pig”
College-educated Republican leaners in the suburbs
Hispanic voters who think the economy is bad
Married Republican women with college degrees
And he needs these hostile or semi-hostile groups in addition to all of the bread-and-butter Democratic constituencies.
Point is: This is an all-hands-on-deck moment in which Biden is going to need different messengers to target different parts of the anti-Trump coalition. And you know what messengers would help him with three of those groups?
Republican officeholders who believe that Donald Trump is an existential danger.
I went on a mini-tirade last week arguing that Kamala Harris should be having dinner with the Pences once a month and openly trying to earn their votes. But there are lots of Republicans who should be on the target list: Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mike Gallagher, H.R. McMaster, Nikki Haley, John Kelly, and Chris Christie are just the start of the list.
Biden and Harris should be going to every one of them, personally. They should thank them for their service and for keeping their honor. They should tell them that they don’t expect them to be Democrats and that they respect their conservative commitments. But that they’re going to work hard to earn their support over the next eight months.
The end goal should be getting one or more of these Republicans on stage at the Democratic convention in Chicago, where they could deliver a message like this:
Thanks for the gracious reception. I know, I’m not one of you. I don’t like Donald Trump, but I’m still a Republican and you guys are Democrats.
But here’s the fact: Here, in this arena, we’re all Americans first. Which is why I can walk safely through this crowd. Which is something I wouldn’t have been able to do at the Republican convention last month.
That fact—that the Republican party has been infused with lawlessness—is one of the great tragedies of our time, because the truth is: We need two healthy political parties in America. We need the yin and the yang. And Donald Trump has made the Republican party sick. He’s like a cancer. And for the country to survive, he needs to be cut out of our politics.
That’s why, for the first time in my life, I’m voting for a Democrat for president. I’m voting for Joe Biden. And it’s not because I agree with him about everything. Or even most things. But because he’s a good man and I trust him to defend our Constitution.
I’m still a Republican. I’m still going to vote for Republicans in the other races when I go to the polls in November. But the truth is, I’m not here to speak to you guys tonight. I’m here to speak to the millions of Republicans across the country who feel exactly the way I do. I’m here to tell them that they’re not alone. That they don’t have to be afraid of a Biden presidency. That in the long run they’ll actually be helping both the Republican party and America by helping to excise the cancer that is Donald Trump.
I’m here to tell my fellow Republicans that the only way to make our party something we don’t have to be ashamed of is to get rid of the lying conman who came in and took it over. As weird as it is to say this, it’s the truth: Joe Biden is the best friend the Republican party ever had, because he’s the guy who will help us Make Republicans Good Again.
You don’t have to squint to see this, right?