Meeting the DC Special Interests-Part III:
A Continuation of my Last Post, with a Reflection on the 2024 Elections and the New Year.
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, redistricting litigation, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, Project 2025, Build Back Better, the progressive movement, the 2024 Election Autopsy, the true story about former 2024 VP contender Gina Raimondo, and much more.
With a potential 2nd Gilded Age, it is more important that ever platforms like these cover the DC Special Interests, as we have been doing here:
Back at it for Part III (well, a mini-part III):
The National Rifle Association: The gun lobby was not always as radical as it is today. There was a time when supporting gun rights included support for sensible gun safety laws, which we had as far back as 1934 and 1968.
However, the National Rifle Association in recent decades (especially since the 2000s and 2010s) have been opposed to almost any gun safety legislation. Red flag laws? Somehow, they find a reason to oppose that. Laws keeping guns away from domestic violence perpetrators? Too radical, they might say. God forbid if Americans don’t have unlimited access to assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and bump stocks. What they say is more guns would make us safer.
If that was the case, then the US would be one of the safest countries in the world from gun violence. And yet, with the high gun ownership, that is not the case. It is only in these great United States where mass shootings have become a basic fact of life. There are more mass shootings in this country than there are days of the year. In fact, 80 just this year occurred in schools alone. The tragedy in Madison, Wisconsin is one most communities can already relate to.
No other country deals with this scale of gun violence as frequently or even as deadly as the United States does. Canada, Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland. Finland is one of the few European nations with higher gun ownership rates, and they don’t have these issues. Why? Because these nations all have tougher gun safety laws on the books, which partly comes from the gun lobby being not nearly as powerful, and more importantly as obstructionist, as the NRA is. When New Zealand had its own mass shooting in 2019 in Christchurch, its government took almost immediate and decisive action to tighten gun laws that were already on the books.
Republican-controlled states actually see higher levels of gun violence. It is Democratic-controlled states (in many, though not all cases) that see lower levels of gun violence. Even then, Democrat states face the problem of guns in their state coming from the borders they share with other, less gun safety-minded states.
To be clear, many, many gun owners in the US are law-abiding citizens who also support gun safety laws, even as they simultaneously seek balance in maintaining and protecting their right to bear arms. Just ask Tim Walz, or visit some of these places. Northern Vermont (especially around St. Albans) are big into hunting and related firearm-bearing activities.
The NRA (maybe it should be more accurately called the National Racketeering Association) is an entirely different beast. The NRA is not a group speaking on behalf of gun owners. It is a lobby for the firearms industry, and specifically gun manufacturers who make money off of the production of more assault rifles, more bump stocks, and the like. It is the only explanation behind why every gun safety bill proposed has been attacked from start to finish by the NRA.
One more thing: it turns out the industry is also deeply invested in the Iron River gun trafficking between the United States and Mexico that is fueling the fentanyl crisis.
The “Gerontocracy”: This can be tricky. Age and expertise can offer a lot to government functions and operations (e.g RI Senator Jack Reed). Older legislators often serve as mentors for the rookies getting their hands dirty for the first time in legislative affairs or policymaking generally. However, there has to be a recipe for change somehow.
It does not help that incumbents in elected office are older (a product of the fact that the campaign finance system today makes it almost impossible to unseat an incumbent unless the challenger has wealth himself or herself, or runs in favorable territory where political contests are being decided more not on the candidate, but by party affiliation; along with partisan gerrymandering). Because more than 90% of incumbents are reelected to office cycle after cycle, we see a government that is often much more older than the electorate overall. It can even include someone, such as Strom Thurmond or even the constitutional legend Robert Byrd, who were nearing death. Likewise, those older lawmakers are frequently wealthier than the average American voter.
When the government becomes more unrepresentative of its constituencies, it can be very problematic. The median age of the United States Congress today is around 64 or 65 years. That means the legislative branch is often one not in sync with the struggles younger Americans face today, such as the impacts of the climate crisis, record student loan debt, the affordable housing shortage and affordability crisis, the mental health crisis and its relation to social media, the opioid and fentanyl epidemics, calls for criminal justice reform, and voting rights. A body that isolated from the rest of society is missing the new blood and bright voices that have personal hands-on experience with more contemporary challenges today.
I’m not saying it is easy (I still grapple over the fact that President Joe Biden is one of the oldest Presidents in our history, with a presidential resume hard to replicate, just as there are productive older members of Congress), but the fact is the nation is calling for a fresh start. Congressional Republicans, to their credit, have elevated younger voices in their party, even as Chuck Grassley stays around on Capitol Hill at 91. Congressional Democrats are going to have to do the same themselves for their own political good, and for the good of the country. Let’s learn from the hard lessons of people like Dianne Feinstein.
The stakes of leaving more young voices out of the political process at this time are way too high and far too unnecessary.
And on campaign finance, Co-President-elect Elon Musk has pledged to meddle in Democratic primary contests in 2026 with his personal wealth. Maybe a good time for the DNC to reinstate its ban on outside dark money as it did in 2008?
The Real Estate Industry is also likely to benefit from Trump’s deregulation agenda, as Maiclaire Bolton Smith discussed recently on CoreLogic.
The Courts: This is more about special interests impacting the courts. In the recent state court elections, you can actually see the spending spree records for those elections dwarfing the past 20 years. Especially in the aftermath of Dobbs, record Republican spending flipped the State Supreme Courts in both Ohio and North Carolina (likewise for recent judicial elections in Wisconsin & Michigan).
On the federal level, interests of all types have influenced the direction of the courts. None more so than the GOP-affiliated Federalist Society. It was this group, led by Leonard Leo—who never held elected office, never served on the bench, and never argued a case in court—that fielded judicial nominations at all jurisdictional levels, particularly the US Supreme Court. That includes nominees for the bench considered to be highly unqualified.
Indeed, for this massive project, Leo made his name as a fundraiser for the push to remake the courts in a more conservative direction, fielding support from billionaires like Harlan Crow and the Koch Brothers., and financially assisting judicial nominees and judges as well. It is dark money, after all, that built the conservative judicial system we have today that weakened retiree groups, hamstrung unions, and stripped overtime pay away from employees.
BONUS ROUND
NC Legislature: This is more a needed note about how radical the NC Legislature is. State Democrats won a majority of votes statewide for all legislative contests (House and Senate). With fairer maps, for example, Republicans would have at least 9 less State House seats in what is a 50-50 state. Despite that, NC Republicans still have a supermajority in the State Senate and a near-supermajority in the State House.
Between the unconstitutionality of the unfair maps along racial and partisan lenses, and the recent power grab bill passed into law that blatantly violates the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, the NC Democrats should sue the state all the way up to the US Supreme Court if necessary. Dare our highest court to rule in favor of anti-democratic governance.
Speaking of that Ohio, your redistricting cycle is coming up in the New Year!
Now to the 2024 Elections:
Democrats have to contend with an intriguing reality. The United States is a nation that is ripe to see a rules-breaker, and system-smasher. They are upset with the political status quo. This discontent can be tapped into wisely if Democrats understand the long term roots of it are easily traceable to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s consensus of trickle-down, reckless free trade, and unfettered capitalist economics.
At the same time, the United States is somewhat culturally conservative, or at least in conflict between support for voting rights and same-sex marriage vs. hardening immigration positions and the like. It is true that more devout Hispanic Catholics and Evangelicals shifted to Trump in 2020 and 2024 because of his pro-life, pro-gun, and “pro-family” positions.
The latter I am wondering about, even as I believe Democrats should not abandon its commitment to gun safety, reproductive rights, supporting immigrants, LGBTQ equality, and the rest: should Democrats be more flexible on cultural issues? Should it offer leeway in more Republican areas to run candidates who might be more hawkish on border security, more willing to compromise, listen, and work with hunting groups, or more devout in their religious faith on issues like family and family planning?
Or, maybe some candidates and incumbents are still pro-choice or anti-NRA, or pro-Ukraine and Taiwan for instance, but stick largely to the kitchen table economics that impacts everyone universally (whether male or female, black, white, or brown, straight or gay). “It’s the Economy, Stupid” still holds a lot of water even today.
There is some basis to this playbook. Granted Roe v. Wade was settled, and also less popular than it is now, Democrats had long advocated pro-choice stances nationally. Effective populist pro-labor, anti-free trade, pro-family farm Democrats like Paul Kanjorski, Paul McHale, Tony Hall, Jim Traficant, Jill Long Thompson, Frank McCloskey, John Dingell, David Bonior, Glenn Poshard, Harold Volkmer, Neal Smith, David Obey, and Rick Nolan also built individual brands by holding different views on issues relevant to their local districts, such as guns or abortion, or immigration. Many of these areas are now represented by Trump Republicans instead.
Take it another way: I believe access to abortion is a right people should have, especially considering the impact of draconian laws on the books in the states today and how such measures have to be taken because of rape or a life-threatening miscarriage, as do many voters. But it also is not the top concern for many people relative to the cost of living, rising inequalities, or the feelings of a rigged system generally.
The point being a working class economic message is the Democratic Party North Star. It always has been, and just as important, economic fairness and opportunity is very much linked together with social justice and racial equality, as Martin Luther King Jr. once declared. Democratic success has always come off of the working class image from FDR on, not from Wall Street and Corporate America which often implores the party to avoid economic concerns and overemphasize cultural issues.
The Democratic Party for too long has taken for granted the working class coalition support it needs now from farm, labor, and entrepreneurs, to young voters, immigrants, and communities of color.
Finally, I want to thank all of my readers for what has been a very productive year blog-wise. I hope similar success follows with 2025. I sure have plenty to track from here. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, so enjoy it while you can.
Have a Happy New Year!