"I can live with Donald Trump winning," is what elected Democrats privately admit to New York Times columnist and Vox cofounder Ezra Klein, in discussions that are so far off the record that Klein's notes have been tucked away in that Indiana Jones warehouse.
Klein appeared this week on The Bulwark Podcast with host Tim Miller, where the well-connected operative said, "I've had top Democrats say to me basically something like, 'I don't know why all these Democrats who think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy are acting the way they are. But the reason I'm acting the way I am is because I don't think that.'"
Klein described a typical conversation with those unnamed elected Democrats going like this:
"You don't know how the party can replace him. You don't want to be blamed for any of this. You just stay quiet and walk the calm path to defeat." I think it is clear... People are weighing this set of things. Like, "It would be quite unpleasant for me personally to come out against the president as an elected official in the Democratic party and weighing what will happen if Donald Trump wins," and saying, in a revealed preference way, "I can live with Donald Trump winning." And I've had people say that to me off the record, to be fair.
Translation: "I can live with Trump winning because he's no actual threat to democracy — and only so long as Biden doesn't bring me down with him."
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This is the same Ezra Klein whose Thursday NYT column warns, "Democrats Are Drifting Toward the Worst of All Possible Worlds," thanks to Presidentish Joe Biden's deep denial:
He disagrees with the pessimism about both his chances and his capabilities. He feels he has been underestimated before and is being underestimated now. He thinks the polls are wrong. He thinks the media is biased against him. He believes that his performance at the debate was a reflection of a bad cold and an off night rather than a general diminishment. And in the conversations he is having, and the cheering crowds he is seeing for himself, there is no groundswell begging for him to step aside.
Podcast host Miller is a "conservative" who got his start in national politics as an Iowa staffer for John McCain in 2008, then as national press secretary for the Jon Huntsman (remember him?) presidential campaign in 2012, and later served as communications director for Jeb Bush's "please clap" 2016 presidential primary campaign.
Since then, Miller has gone on to write for the oh-so-conservative publication The Bulwark, alongside other conservative luminaries like Bill Kristol, Cathy Young, and William Saletan.
It's safe to say that "winning" isn't in his vocabulary.
But "GALLING" — in all caps — is.
Miller teased his podcast on X with a dire warning about his "GALLING exchange with @ezraklein about his conversations with Top Democrats who are resigned to Trump."
If you want to hear a blood-boiling perspective on the hypocrisy and cynicism of Democratic elites in the face of the looming Trump threat from someone who speaks in soothing dulcet tones, do I have the podcast for you!
Don't you find it adorable that while elected Democrats are willing to admit, albeit privately, that there's no Trump threat to democracy, Miller and The Bulwark crew still earn their pay selling that same lie to their gullible audience?
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