Brian Cox is one of Hollywood’s go-to guys when they need to convey something hard-edged and world-weary.
The actor best known at this point for his portrayal of the distinctly Murdoch-esque media magnate Logan Roy on HBO’s “Succession” brings a stubborn muddle-through-it-ness to every role. (If you don’t believe me, check out his line reading of the iconic McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle.) And he never appeared more over it than in the final season of “Succession.” Cox’s Roy was burdened by a trio of failchildren, who wanted to inherit the world he’d created without any of the tradeoffs and sacrifices he had made. Roy had come from poverty in Scotland and spent a half-century swimming among sharks, developing a suitably tough skin as a result.
Knowing that handing off the mantle to any of these soft-bellied siblings meant dooming his life’s work, Roy let slip one of the most devastating parental assessments ever captured on television.
“I love you,” he said, “but you are not serious people.”
The Democratic Party has the same problem. The party’s consultant class is made up of a similar stock of second sons — or at least second-son types. Upper middle-class scions who went to the right schools, schmoozed at the right parties, and waited their respective turns for their time in the spotlight. Their tactics reflect the values of the supposed meritocracy, leaning heavily on credentials and painting their candidates as inevitable. Their speeches and slogans are frustratingly mannered and overwhelmingly diplomatic, promoting wonkish policies that won’t stir the blood of any American who hasn’t used “summer” as a verb.
Compare that to Donald Trump. We’ll admit that the president didn’t exactly get it out of the mud. He inherited a real estate business and was bolstered by a “small loan” of a million dollars from his dad. But there are quite a few steps between Queens slumlord and leader of the free world that only he could have walked. Trump parlayed his general cattiness and charming sleazeball persona into a career in television. Playing on his uncouth, reality-TV rep, he painted himself as a truth-teller at campaign rallies across America.
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Far from the neutered language of the Democratic McKinseyites, Trump threatened the people his audience had been trained by television to hate. At rallies with ranks swelled by cultish millenarians envisioning the bloody overthrow of a pedophilic cabal, Trump essentially asked, “What if we locked up the baddies? Hell, what if we killed ‘em?” It’s not shocking that it played better than tax breaks for small businesses and endorsements from the Cheney family.
Democratic consultants responded to their 2024 defeat with an “Any Given Tuesday” defense, marvelling at the mind of the median voter and promising to do better next time. This might be more forgivable if it hadn’t been their second trip to the woodshed. In light of recently released emails about Trump from late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, it’s incomprehensible.
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Those emails, calling Trump the “dog that hadn’t barked” and saying he “knew about the girls,” might well have kneecapped Trump’s successful coopting of the conspiracist right. The emails, in the possession of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for four years, are currently tearing a hole through Trump’s movement. A simple control-F of those files by Merrick Garland — himself a sad reminder of what Democrats think winning looks like — could have upended the last election and saved us all the misery of Trump’s second term.
Why didn’t it happen? Well, that wouldn’t have been polite. It wouldn’t have been decent. It might have seemed partisan.
Trump’s opposition is made up largely of gladhanding Fauntleroys, who don’t have the stomach to run the type of campaign necessary to counteract MAGA’s nationalist bloodlust. They’re still living in the afterglow of President Barack Obama’s dominant campaigns, unwilling to admit that going high when your opponent goes low just gets you a punch in the gut. To crib a bit more from Logan Roy, the Democrats may be smart, the Democrats may be good, but they are not killers.
