My first instinct was to be snarky about attending Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement of General Don Bolduc, a Trumpian candidate for US Senate in New Hampshire this past Sunday. But I was snarky when attending Donald Trump rallies in the Summer of 2015. How did that turn out?
Unlike early Trump rallies which are burned into my brain, I hope this Tulsi event was so insignificant, it drifts from my head ten years. But with Tulsi recently substituting for Tucker Carlson on Fox, dumping on her past association with the Democratic Party and now campaigning for Bolduc and other MAGA extremists; this may represent a political watershed where the foreign policy extremes of the American left and right have fused together. This unites both wings of the Paranoia Style of American Politics, merging the “Blame America First” Soviet/China/Russia apologists on the left, with the 1930’s “America First” conservatives that dabbled with Nazism and has reincarnated into the MAGA movement.
Of course, Tulsi does not bring any Democratic voters with her (she got 3% of the New Hampshire’s Democratic Presidential Primary vote in 2020 and-see below-she’s not taking those votes with her.) But she does provide short-term value in the mid-terms for the MAGA movement, validating GOP narratives of Democratic wokeness and intolerance. Far worse, she is a powerful propaganda tool for Right in their Trump-inspired effort to undermine 75 years U.S. policies that led to global stability for generations of Americans. Specifically factions, of the GOP are rallying to cutting off Ukraine funding and forcing Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia that will embolden Putin to continue attacking former Soviet satellites. At the same time, it signals to China that Taiwan can be invaded with little consequences. (That kind of talk makes me a warmonger in Tulsi’s mind.)
While Tulsi deserves much of the ridicule of Democrats and mainstream media types give her, she is a damn good communicator. Watch her deftly rebuff a cute seven-year old’s challenge to Tulsi’s laissez-faire position on China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority. Not every politician can defuse a bomb like that.
Tulsi connected with this conservative audience as effectively as addressing Bernie Sander’s supporters, who she endorsed for President in 2016. And it was an audience that, relative to the hundreds of political events I’ve attended, reeked of normalcy. Brentwood, NH is just a 30 minute drive from me, so these were literally “my people”. Sure, the crowd had conservative vibes, we were in an evangelical church. But they looked like my neighbors or people I encounter daily. There were no hateful (anti-immigrant) or conspiratorial signs to mock. The standing room-only crowd of about 400 had a smattering of MAGA hats and a few people wearing “Tulsi” shirts. I saw one BIPOC.
Waiting for the candidates, I overheard conservations about vacation spots, kids soccer, the beautiful fall day and, of course, politics. One woman said—surprise—that she didn’t trust social media, others described themselves as political independents—a common refrain in a country where most people do not affiliate with a political party. I overheard plenty of conservative tropes like “I want less government…everyone needs to come together”, or Populist truths like corruption and the need to “follow the money”. But nothing remotely close to “where we go one, we go all” QANON gibberish.
Against this backdrop, Tulsi Gabbard, an anti-war pacifist; who is a Lt Colonel in the National Guard and Iraq combat veteran; former Democratic candidate for President and Congresswoman from Hawaii, took the stage. First, she warmed up the crowd with some good old fashion Populism that anyone from Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump would use to warm up a crowd unhappy with the status-quo.
“We are lacking leadership…in both parties. We have this powerful cabal of this permanent Washington that are more interested in themselves in gaining more power, than they are at doing what’s best for the American people… We have a media who won’t do their jobs as journalists to ask the tough questions and give answers to the American people because they don’t want to be unpopular in their crew,” Tulsi said.
“That puts the onus on us…on ‘We the People’…to go back to our roots and really bring back to the forefront the vision that our founders had for us. Of ‘We the People’. Of a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We’ve lost it. And those in power are using their power,” she said.
Then Tulsi segues into the narratives conservative audiences expect today:
“The party that is in power today in Washington, is a party that is controlled by so-called woke fanatical ideologues who not only don’t take their oath to protect and defend the Constitution seriously…they have taken it and thrown it in the trash…“I never would have imagined that in my life, we’d be at a point where something as fundamental as freedom of speech, I really wonder if it will be there when these kids (in the audience) grow up,”
“To live in a time when we have people who believe truly in their heart of hearts that it is OK to twist and turn what they believe to be the truth for their own political ends is a very dangerous thing. Because this mind set of, ‘you know what, the ends justify the means’. And in their minds, them staying in power is the ends. The end is not supporting freedom and upholding the Constitution. The end is their political power, because they are the only one who know what’s best for us” she said.
Tulsi saves her best/worst demagoguery to change the hearts and minds of this middle America audience, to abandon the policies that has brought (relative) peace and prosperity to them and their families for 75 years. And she was succeeding…
“As we sit here, President Biden continues to push us closer and closer to the brink of nuclear war. This is the existential threat that we face…We’ve got to the place where people in the news and politicians are talking in such a cavalier way about use of nuclear weapons. As if a nuclear war is one that can be fought and won.”
She then harkened back to Presidents Reagan and Kennedy and their “wisdom and leadership” that prevented nuclear Armageddon, before playing her own Armageddon card. “We’re in a place where next month we may not be able to have those conversations,” she continued.
“You’re either going to put the interests of the American people and peace in the world at the forefront, or you will be the reason for our doom…We need strong leaders in Washington to stand up to this permanent Washington Establishment. Funded and paid, ah, who pay their allegiance to the military industrial complex, to Big Pharma to big corporations,” Tulsi said.
Most Americans casually following current events, so the details of Biden showing “wisdom and leadership” trying to warn the world that Putin was going to invade Ukraine, has faded. Just as last nine months of Biden threading the needle between Russian aggression that could spark a (nuclear) war with NATO; and Russia threatening nuclear war, is not fully appreciated by everyday Americans. (But they do appreciate the connection between high energy prices and Biden’s actions in Ukraine.) Tulsi tells a compelling story, first weaving popular themes that resonate with many Americans, then offering affirming rhetoric the audience cares about (in this case, CRT and wokeism) before drawing them into whatever Apologist/Isolationist fusion this paranoid jello of rhetoric forms into.
But there were some in the audience that were more than casually informed, and they weren’t buying what Tulsi was selling. Ironically, they were 2020 Tulsi supporters and campaign volunteers wondering why Tulsi was campaigning for someone (Bolduc) who advocated escalating the Ukrainian with NATO intervention in the first days of the Russian invasion. Even Fox News called out Bolduc, knowing this would ultimately cause the very nuclear war we are all are trying to prevent.
But Bolduc and Tulsi didn’t take questions, leaving Tulsi’s supporters shouting, looking for answers, from a distance as she exited the building. (Another bipartisan tactic politicians use).
The lesson here is simple, and because it involves our politics today, it is potentially catastrophic. It’s another version of, “A lie travels around the world, before truth gets its shoes on”. This is how Americans are being manipulated by what was once the fringes of our politics, trying to convince us to embrace policies that we could never have imagined would be legitimate just ten years ago. What will people be selling in 2024 and beyond?