Thoughts on Stein's civility, Berger's primary, and red-state idolatry of Trump

I have been surprised by the civility that seems to have overtaken politics in our state capitol. I never thought Governor Stein was a left-winger. But I did expect, based upon his strong liberalism in the Senate and the legislature’s entrenched partisan dynamics, that he would settle into the trench warfare we’ve seen for so long on Jones Street. Instead, we’re seeing a cooperative spirit and even a token of personal goodwill, which was unthinkable in the Cooper-Berger era.

This bonhomie has not yet yielded policy results. Lest we forget, the legislature did not pass a budget this year. That, unlike the tone of our politics, represents a continuation of trends under Cooper. But the thaw in relations we’ve seen does stand out notably, and remarkably, as a departure from over a decades’ worth of brutal political warfare in Raleigh. Everyone should welcome the tamping down of rancor.

Most commentary on the emergence of civility in N.C. politics has focused on Governor Stein’s decision to use softer tactics with the Republicans. This is doubtless part of it. But I wonder how much of the change in tone we’ve seen stems from changes on the Republican side making it possible, for better or worse, for Governor Stein to approach his job as somewhat more a consensus builder. I’ll be cynical. Is it possible that Republicans seem so much more amenable to Stein because they have taken so much power away from the governor that they no longer feel threatened by him? Stein is an effective executive. But he also holds an office with dramatically fewer powers than the executive had when Berger went to the mattresses against Roy Cooper and Pat McCrory.

In N.C. politics, there’s always a dark cloud to go with the silver lining.

Berger’s relative civility, however, is striking on its own. The longtime political boss and Sun King of the Raleigh Beltline is facing an aggressive challenge from Sheriff Sam Page. I think, and polling has suggested, that the nativist Sheriff could defeat Phil Berger. What I had expected from this session was for Berger to take MAGA to the extreme edge of radicalism. But though Berger did pass an ugly anti-immigrant bill to appease the xenophobes in his district, he has not been the human flamethrower he was in the Cooper era, or that his political base would presumably like to support. My guess—and I have no inside dish to support this, it’s just an inference, a hunch—is that Berger is seriously considering retirement. That could be why he’s moderated the tone of his politics even in the face of a MAGA primary challenger.

Regarding MAGA. I have been thinking about how Donald Trump plumbs the depths of human turpitude everyday without losing his political viability. Most recently (unless he’s already said something else), he belittled domestic violence, clearly taking the side of abusive husbands against their victims. A UCSF study found that abortion bans—enabled by the Trump Supreme Court—were already making it more likely for women to stay with abusive partners. And here is the President of the United States, the successor to Abraham Lincoln, making light of the plague of violence against women to which he has contributed many times.

But there was another woman-hater on the ballot in North Carolina last year, and he has slunk back to Greensboro as a pariah. Mark Robinson is grotesque—but does he really exceed Trump in bottomless depravity? Robinson fantasized about sleeping with his wife’s sister on a site called Nude Africa. Trump drew a picture of a nude woman and sent it, with an affectionate note, to Jeffrey Epstein. Which one is really worse? And yet Trump bestrides Washington like a thundering colossus while Robinson quickly fades from the scene.

I think we need to think of Trump’s relationship to his base as a form of religious idolatry. He commands unwavering adoration from his voters, who provide endless excuses for his behavior. No devout evangelical would lose their faith if God Himself somehow operated a fraudulent university. Their faith in Trump is similarly fanatical. Red America worships an orange calf.