bonus
BONUS: What Does MAGA Mean for the GOP?
In this special bonus chat, Liam and special guest Mike Cowburn discuss the two party system in America, and how Trump and the MAGA are challenging the status quo.
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Special guest for this episode:
- Dr. Mike Cowburn, a Postdoctoral Researcher for Digital Democracy at European University Viadrina. His new book Party Transformation in Congressional Primaries is out now
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Additional Resources:
READ: Party Transformation in Congressional Primaries by Mike Cowburn
WATCH: All Politics Is Tribal | Lee Drutman + Andrew Yang | Forward
READ: How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
READ: The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform
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And if you like this episode, you might also love:
What Was the Constitutional Convention?
Why Does the President Only Serve Two Terms?
Is the President Above the Law?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of a history podcast recorded straight after our recently published episode, why is American Politics so Divided?
Host:I'm joined now by the guest from that episode, Mike Kalburn, to discuss this a little bit more.
Host:Mike, thank you for hanging on for this.
Mike Kalburn:Thanks for having me.
Host:Yeah, we had a really great chat on the main episode and anyone that's listening to this that hasn't yet checked that out, please do.
Host:So we really got into sort of the weeds of the American political system.
Host:So yeah, it was an eye opener for me just to expand on some of the things that we, we touched on there.
Host:Do you think that America will ever see an end to this two party system of Democrats v Republicans?
Mike Kalburn:So in political science we don't have many laws.
Mike Kalburn:In political science, we tend to leave the laws to the physicists and the kind of the hard scientists rather than the social sciences because people are just so hard to kind of consistently predict.
Mike Kalburn:But one of the few laws we do have is a law is called Duverger's Law.
Mike Kalburn:And so Maurice Duverger was a French political scientist and basically Duverger's law says that if you have single member constituencies elected through a majoritarian system like is had in the United States, also happens in the United Kingdom as a general rule, these systems strongly tend towards having a two party, a two party set of competition.
Mike Kalburn:And that's because there are so few incentives and so few benefits for third parties.
Mike Kalburn:It's very, very hard as a third party unless you have a strong regional base.
Mike Kalburn:So someone like the SNP would be an example that breaks this rule.
Mike Kalburn:If you have a strong regional base, then you can compete.
Mike Kalburn:But other than that, if you have like nationally spread support, it makes very little sense to compete strongly as a third party.
Mike Kalburn:And so my initial hunch in terms of your answer would be to say no, we're likely stuck with this.
Host:I think in America though, they're about as close to it as they have been for a long time.
Host:Because I, I think there's certainly an argument that the Republican Party is at a bit of an impasse where it either has to double down on the Trump sort of MAGA politics and embrace that as the party line, or you're gonna see this split because it feels like MAGA has become such a huge movement on its own now.
Host:I just don't see how that goes away.
Mike Kalburn:I don't see how it goes away either.
Mike Kalburn:And I think at this point we would be fine to call the Republican Party basically the MAGA party, like if you, if you were an anti Trumper or you were, were cold on Trump, you've either, particularly if you're a Republican elite, you've, you've either left con, You've, you've either been pushed out of Congress or you've left of your own free will or, or you've bent the knee.
Mike Kalburn:You've, you've, you've done what people like Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell or whoever have done and said, okay, well, we don't really like the guy, but he gives us a bunch of things that we need and so we want.
Mike Kalburn:And so, yeah, okay, we'll, we'll, we'll do that.
Mike Kalburn:And so, yeah, I don't really, I don't really think that this will be a turn away from it.
Mike Kalburn:I think this will just be a doubling down.
Mike Kalburn:And I think one of the ways that this will kind of continue will be through these kind of restrictive voting access bills.
Mike Kalburn:So we saw in places like Georgia, you know, Republicans making it actively more difficult to vote.
Mike Kalburn:If you were from a group that they, that disproportionately favors the Democrats, and so you, in a, in a free and fair democracy, you would say, well, okay, eventually this party will become too extreme and the voters will kick them out.
Mike Kalburn:Well, if you can come up with a, if you can game the system just enough, then, then you might be better off.
Mike Kalburn:And I'm not saying that that was what made the difference last year, but, but I do, you do see this trend, and I do think this is a deliberate strategy to, to kind of continue this.
Host:Yeah, I mean, you mentioned Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, and I feel like they're, they're the reason why people find it really hard to like politicians because it is that, that thing, you know, why should there be a compromise?
Host:Why should they, why should they allow Trump policies if they're really against them?
Host:And I'm hypothesizing that we don't know that they are, but if they are, you know, I mean, there are people like Mitt Romney who have very publicly, you know, spoken up against Trump, and he's a Republican, of course.
Host:Why compromise?
Host:Why allow that if you know it's potentially not the right thing for your party or for Americans?
Host:It just, it makes people think that politicians only really care about winning.
Mike Kalburn:Agree.
Mike Kalburn:I mean, I mean, I, I agree with the point.
Mike Kalburn:And I, I mean, I mean, I guess there are some other incentives at play here.
Mike Kalburn:So, so Mitt MC.
Mike Kalburn:Romney's daily security budget at this point is, is $5,000 a day because of all the threats he gets from, from Republicans.
Mike Kalburn:He, he declined to endorse Kamala Harris this year, explicitly saying, I have 25 grandchildren and I can't, I can't keep them all safe if I endorse this, which is kind of like a non endorsement endorsement.
Mike Kalburn:But there are legitimate threats to these people.
Mike Kalburn:And so there are a series of incentives that, you know, reinforce this idea of, okay, well, I can either bow out and get out of politics and feel like I've kept my name clean that way by not endorsing him, but it's very difficult to stay in politics and stay in the game and, you know, push back against him.
Host:Yeah, it's, it is a tough one.
Host:I guess.
Host:There is, there is so much nuance in, you know, in politics, and anyone that's watched the West Wing or House of Cards will probably understand that.
Host:You know, maybe you got, you got to give a little bit to take something you want.
Host:But I, I think Trump has really redefined American politics, isn't he?
Host:In that?
Host:It's just, we always used to think about it as Democrats, Republicans.
Host:Now it just feels like it's Democrats or Trump, and he's kind of proven that it's possible to be bigger than the party.
Mike Kalburn:Absolutely.
Mike Kalburn:I think what we see at this point and what I fully envisage for this second Trump administration is the continued redefinition of the party in his image.
Mike Kalburn:We won't see too much in terms of, I think one thing that the kind of Mitch McConnell's and Lindsey Graham's of this world did was that they did manage in his first term to like, actually get him on board with some of the kind of traditional Republican policies.
Mike Kalburn:You know, there were, there were areas like trade that he was significantly misaligned with, you know, traditional Republican positions.
Mike Kalburn:By and large, they made the gamble that, well, he doesn't really care about policy.
Mike Kalburn:And so we can still manage this party through this, this period.
Mike Kalburn:And they got a lot.
Mike Kalburn: at, if anyone else had won in: Mike Kalburn:I think what we're seeing now is Trump really, in what we've seen in terms of his nominations for cabinet positions.
Mike Kalburn:We've seen this deep reliance on the MAGA world and this willingness to kind of abandon what we might think of as Republican Establishment.
Host:Yeah.
Host:And we focused a lot on Republicans in this podcast, probably for good reason.
Host:But I do want to think a bit about Biden here, because as we're recording this, it's just before Christmas.
Host:Biden's sort of still got a month or so left as a lame duck president.
Host:One of the most controversial things he's done throughout his four years came only very recently when he decided to offer a full pardon to his son.
Host:And it really brings into play this idea that actually, you know, there's a very fine line between the professional and the personal agendas of presidents.
Host:And, and you can argue there was many reasons why Biden chose to do that, but I suspect maybe one of them is because he was preempting potential retribution against Hunter Biden once Trump was in office.
Host:I mean, in an ideal world, none of that should ever be playing any part, should it?
Mike Kalburn:I mean, in an ideal world, no.
Mike Kalburn:And I, and I totally agree that the optics look terrible.
Mike Kalburn:It really.
Mike Kalburn:The optics, yeah.
Mike Kalburn:Look really.
Mike Kalburn:Look really awful.
Mike Kalburn:And.
Mike Kalburn:But what I would.
Mike Kalburn:What I find really interesting here is that this.
Mike Kalburn:Is that what I would consider disproportionate focus on this as a media news story.
Mike Kalburn: me thing in the first half of: Mike Kalburn: nd I think what we've seen in: Mike Kalburn:The, the.
Mike Kalburn:And.
Mike Kalburn:And this is.
Mike Kalburn:This is an area that's being obviously super contested.
Mike Kalburn:But this framing comes not only from the.
Mike Kalburn:Whatever we want to call it, the manosphere on the right with the Joe Rogans and the Elon Musk, but actually is the, the kind of central narrative.
Mike Kalburn:If we read the New York Times and these stories, you know, relentless stories about how terrible it is and what an egregious use of power it is.
Mike Kalburn:And I, I'm somewhat sympathetic to both the position that, yeah, this is bad and you shouldn't do it, but also in the specific circumstances, you can see how he got there.
Mike Kalburn:What I think is a more interesting aspect of it is how this is reported and Trump specifically.
Mike Kalburn:We talked in the main show about some of the ways that Trump is able to go through life and not be impinged by some of the ways that other Republicans who've tried to be Trumpy are.
Mike Kalburn:I think this is another very good example of it.
Mike Kalburn:As soon as Joe Biden dropped out of the race, we didn't hear any stories about age or competence anymore.
Mike Kalburn:Even when Trump, from my perspective, demonstrated issues of age and incompetence to even an extent that we see newspapers like the New York Times almost doing this kind of process of sane washing this idea of, like Trump says, this kind of rambling, incoherent, somewhat outrageous stuff, and then the New York Times reports on it in the most kind of generous interpretation possible.
Mike Kalburn:Ah, well, he probably meant this and this kind of thing.
Mike Kalburn:And so I think, for me, the Hunter Biden story is somewhat interesting to understand in terms of information flows.
Mike Kalburn:And I can kind of see both sides of the, The.
Mike Kalburn:The realities of the specific case.
Mike Kalburn:But I'm also not sure that this.
Mike Kalburn:I think the specific case matters for the optics, but I'm not sure it matters terribly for the.
Mike Kalburn:For the actual practice of US Politics.
Host:Yeah, that's a fair point.
Host:And I think, you know, there's no secret that this show probably leans to the left and we're not.
Host:We're not the best mates with Trump.
Host:But you got to say that the way that he's really created this unique set of expectations for himself is absolute masterclass in personal branding.
Mike Kalburn:Absolutely.
Mike Kalburn:And if you think about really who Trump has been for most of his life, and you look at the kind of the businesses he's run and the deals he's done, it's not particularly special, it's not particular.
Mike Kalburn:It's somewhere between, you know, mild failure and, like, mild success, depending on who you ask.
Mike Kalburn:In terms of, like, actual business acumen, where Trump is clearly able to excel is in branding.
Mike Kalburn:The brand of Trump continues to go from strength to strength.
Mike Kalburn:And again, we can have an existential conversation about what that means for US politics, but it's clear that on the surface, that work has been effective.
Host:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Host:And there's going to be so much more to talk about over the next four years, I'm sure, because if there's one thing we can take for certain with Trump, we won't be short of headlines all the time.
Host:He's in the White House, so let's put a pin in that for now.
Host:And, Mike, I'm sure there'll be opportunities to get you back on the podcast in future.
Host:Thank you again for joining me for this and for the main episode.
Host:Anyone listening do check that out right now.
Host:The link will be in the show notes.
Host:Mike, remind everyone how people can get in touch with you directly.
Mike Kalburn:Yeah, so you can contact me on Bluesky.
Mike Kalburn:I'm Mike Coburn, BSKY Social, or you can just go on my website and find all the ways to contact me.
Mike Kalburn:So that's www.mikecoburn that's c o w b u r n.com awesome.
Host:And if you're listening to this and you like what you hear, you can support the show.
Host:Links are in the show notes.
Host:It makes us very happy and helps us keep the lights on.
Host:So do that if you can, please.
Host:Thank you so much for listening and goodbye.
