Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) had to cancel an event. Here's a write-up from Roll Call. Short version: she's getting death threats. Shocker. How can I be so cold-blooded about this? This is what politics are, particularly today. She didn't call for violence, but Trump has a history of calling for violence against anyone who protests him. I wrote about it regularly during the GOP primaries. Also, his supporters are really, really racist. So, of course they're going to make death threats. Will they actually do it? Probably not, but violence against outspoken African-Americans is kind of an American thing. Also, um... the events were scheduled in Alabama and Texas. No further comment necessary.
Anyway, the topic for today is a simple reminder. Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster coined the term, "negative partisanship," in this paper. Essentially, partisanship is no longer so much about liking one's own party as it is about hating the other party. Donald Trump is the perfect exemplar of negative partisanship. He is hatred personified. Racial hatred. Misogyny. He is the vessel of Republican hatred of Democrats, and every out-group represented by Democrats. Democrats, in turn, hate him for some combination of his racism, his misogyny, or his partisan hatred itself, and that spurs more Republican hatred of Democrats and attachment to Trump. Infinite mirrors, reflecting hatred.
Maxine Waters called for confrontation. The result? Death threats to the point that she canceled her events. How many Trumpkins want her assassinated? There is really no way to say, but keep in mind that Trump himself worships Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Saddam Hussein, and authoritarian dictators generally. He constantly praises them for their "toughness." Yesterday after that shooting was the first time in my memory that Trump ever acknowledged a role for a free press in society, finally deviating from his fascist rhetoric about how the press is the "enemy of the American people." One of his main campaign slogans in 2016 was a demand to imprison his opponent.
The Republican Party is not a "normal" small-d democratic party engaged in good-faith debate, and Donald Trump, if he could have his way, would stamp out all dissent. That's why he praises every other world leader who has done so. Maxine Waters calls for confrontation, and cancels events because of death threats. Yup. This is where we are now.
But make no mistake-- the negative partisanship we observe is not symmetric. Waters didn't call for violence, as Trump regularly has, and that asymmetry is not about ideological purity. Sorry Grossman & Hopkins, but when the GOP circles the wagons around a tax-raising, trade war-starting, Putin stooge, this ain't about fidelity to the principles on those sacred tablets handed down from Mount Vernon by Saint Ronnie.