Frank Bruni: We’re now past Labor Day and into the final, furious eight weeks until the midterm elections. President Trump is only slightly more popular than cyclospora …
Bret Stephens: A.K.A. Ozempic in a hurry.
Frank: … but he decided that his greatest gift to Republicans in tight races isn’t to muffle his demented braying for a bit but to roar incoherently for two nights in a row at a first-ever midterm Republican convention. Bret, is this brilliant counterstrategy, intraparty sadism or an orgy of ego beyond anything that Nero, Louis XIV and Kim Jong-un combined could contrive?
Bret: In theory, it isn’t the worst idea: A political gimmick to rally conservative voters who might otherwise sit out the election. Under some other Republican president, like Ronald Reagan or both Bushes, it might even have helped. But it seems almost purpose-built to damage the prospects of the very candidates Trump desperately needs to win if Republicans are going to hold on to the Senate, especially Susan Collins in Maine and Mike Rogers in Michigan. If those candidates stay away from the convention, they look like turncoats to MAGA voters. If they go, they look like crazies to swing voters.
Frank: I think that at some level — scratch that, at every level — Trump enjoys the bind in which he puts Collins, Rogers and others, because it speaks to his dominance, and nothing turns him on like watching people writhe and quiver when subjected to that. I used to read and watch an embarrassing bevy of serial-killer thrillers, and the profilers and detectives in pursuit of the demon du jour would talk about how he (or, in rare instances, she) was “escalating” or “devolving.” That’s Trump as he draws closer to the halfway mark in this wretched second term of his — a creature of escalating appetite and devolving control who demands constant gratification. How he tops this me-me-me jamboree in Dallas is anyone’s guess.
Bret: You’re probably right. But the thought that gnaws at me is that Trump has frequently done things that sane, rational people think are narcissistic, irrational, malevolent and … it works. Remember when he told the National Association of Black Journalists that Kamala Harris only recently “became a Black person”?
Frank: Yeah, as if she’d been — what? — pastel before?
Bret: Well, he went on to win a larger share of the Black vote than any Republican presidential candidate had in a long time. And he all but pulled even among male Hispanic voters in the last election, despite his copious insults against that voting group. What I’m saying is that there’s a sort of reptilian logic to Trump’s political moves that often works, and usually eludes the kind of people who, uh, teach at elite universities and write for elite publications.
Frank: That may be generally true, but I don’t think he performed as well as he did with Black and Hispanic voters because he insulted them and theirs. I think Democrats had alienated many voters in both groups by making progressive assumptions about them — recall that left-leaning Dems patronizingly foisted Latinx on Latinos who didn’t like or want the term — and had disgraced themselves by pretending that President Biden was completing triathlons and taking Mensa entrance exams for fun. Add to that Kamala Harris’s need to put together a campaign almost overnight and you have a set of circumstances more consequential than Trump’s logic, be it reptilian, avian, mammalian or alien.
Bret: You’re bringing up something I’ve been meaning to ask you about for a while. Remember a few weeks ago when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared, “Woke 1 was crazy,” and then switched the subject? It raised more questions than it settled. For starters, can Democrats really say they’ve put Woke 1 behind them when so many candidates that have the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America are winning Democratic primaries? Second, as our colleague Carlos Lozada astutely wondered, do people like A.O.C. regret Woke 1 because it was wrong or just because it was politically self-defeating? And finally, what exactly is Woke 2, and will Democrats come to regret and repudiate that as well?
Frank: You want answers to all of that in four to five sentences, Bret?
Bret: I have faith in your powers of concision.
Frank: It’s woefully misplaced.
First off, I don’t think A.O.C. quite meant to open the door that she did in such a blithe manner. While we’ve all treated what she said in an ABC News interview with Jonathan Karl as a declaration, she in fact offhandedly mentioned that a “local city councilman” she knows had taken to calling Woke 1 “crazy.” It was an aside that became an unintended headline. Neither she nor her allies were prepared to address the legitimate points you raise, which is precisely why she switched the subject. That said, I’m certain that many of the purveyors of Woke 1 didn’t truly believe half of what they hawked — it was like a mass delirium, expressed in an absurd argot akin to a gang initiation tattoo — and they’re relieved to let it go. I’m not ready to speculate about Woke 2. I’m still recovering from Woke 1.
Bret: A mass delirium that unjustly wrecked more than a few careers. The pseudonymous Lexington wrote a column in The Economist in which he argued that Woke 1 was mostly about race and gender while Woke 2 is mainly about class — witness Zohran Mamdani’s focus on affordability in his run for New York mayor last year — and therefore more in tune with the traditional Democratic focus on leveling the economic playing field.
It’s an interesting thesis, though I’d be more persuaded if so many of the purveyors of Woke 2 weren’t Ivy League graduates living in multimillion-dollar townhouses purchased by rich parents.
Frank: That same group promoted Woke 1 — they weren’t its only champions, but they were a hefty contingent — and what unites Woke 1 and what you, Carlos and Lexington are calling Woke 2 is a heavy dose of self-definition through quasi-revolutionary lingo, more succinctly known as virtue signaling. (So much for my powers of concision.)
Bret: What too many progressives struggle to understand is that what working-class people generally want are safe streets (which means supporting the police), good-paying jobs (even if that means inviting big corporations like Amazon to set up shop in their vicinity), economic mobility rather than equality (which can mean a preference for low taxes), and a flag-waving, English-speaking sort of patriotism. Which … isn’t exactly the message they’re hearing from today’s political left. All of which makes me think that Democrats have a long way to go to recapture their traditional voters.
Frank: They do have a considerable distance to travel, but just as their blinders were a gift to Trump and MAGA, his blinders are now a gift to them, and if he doesn’t succeed in his aggressive attempts to suppress and skew midterm voting, Democrats will be unwrapping that present with jubilation come November. Woke 1 was no crazier than Trump’s behavior over the past year and a half vis-à-vis the working-class people he only pretends to champion. His self-enrichment, his my-tariffs-are-bigger-than-yours trade tantrums, his fiscally and morally promiscuous war in Iran, his attack on health care subsidies, his tax cuts for fat cats — none of that helps the economically struggling Americans to whom he promised relief.
Bret: You’re right. American politics has become a contest in which the parties compete for the title of “Slightly Less Nauseating Than the Other People.” This election cycle favors Democrats, but nothing should make them complacent about the infinitely more consequential race two years hence.
Frank: Seeing as that race is already underway, any preliminary predictions?
Bret: Gavin Newsom as the Democratic nominee versus JD Vance as the Republican, the slick against the sick. Vance wins and I move back to the village in Mexico, Tepoztlán, where I spent much of my childhood. Your prediction?
Frank: I’ll remind everyone that at roughly this point four years ago, the Republican who looked unstoppable was Ron DeSantis. I’ll also note that the new Democratic presidential primary calendar for 2028 potentially increases the influence of Black and Latino voters, and that’s no favor to Newsom — or the kookier colonies of the left. So my shamefully vague prediction is someone other than Vance (I’d say more appealing than Vance, but that’s the entire population) versus someone other than Newsom.
Bret: My preferred Republican candidate is A.B.V.: Anyone but Vance. My preferred Democrat is: Roy Cooper.
Frank: My former governor! And soon (hands clasped in prayer) the first North Carolina Democrat elected to the Senate in 18 years.
Bret: Frank, we shouldn’t close this conversation without making mention of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 this week. Any memories you want to share?
Frank: What I want to share is what you wrote about the anniversary in a gorgeous column earlier this week. Everyone should read it, most of all because it’s a tribute to the resourcefulness and resilience of the New Yorkers who survived that day — and of the city itself, once covered in ashes — and because it ends on such an exquisite note of hope.
But you also beautifully evoke the relationship between a person and a place with this paragraph about your own history of work and play in Lower Manhattan:
Many years of living in a city creates a kind of archaeology of private memory. A street corner, a bar, an office building, a playground, a spot where a favorite restaurant or bookshop used to be — each recalls a buried layer of life, and each has its own circumstances, its web of relationships, its emotional color.
Color me moved.
Bret: Thanks, Frank. To this day, I miss the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop at 5 World Trade. The oddest things take you back and bring you home.
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