Seems like Matthew McConaughey is auditioning for the role of the next Mike Rowe. He pitched his "centric" vision on the Russell Brand Show the other night, equating the conservative reaction to Trump's 2020 defeat to the liberal reaction to his victory in 2016. Try as I might, I don't recall Team Hillary challenging the results or Obama refusing to meet Trump at the White House or putting up roadblocks to his transition team. Nor, were there any attempts to overturn close results in state legislatures and federal courts, as we have seen with Trump's dubious legal team. Yes, liberals weren't happy Trump won but they didn't go into denial, as Matty is suggesting, threatening to take up arms in protest as many in Magaland are now doing.
To this point, All Right Matty has tread a thin line in giving motivational speeches across the country and peddling his books, most recently Greenlights, in which he offers his Texan wit and wisdom. The proud Austin boy, who first made his mark in Dazed and Confused, reached the summit of his thespian career in Dallas Buyers Club, winning a coveted Oscar for best actor. Along the way, he starred in one rom com after another until even he got sick of them, pleading with the studios to give him a shot at something more serious.
Unfortunately, the real Matthew McConaughey isn't much different than the one you see in his rom coms. He's a guy with a relatively limited intellect, who tries to make up for it with a folksy manner that viewers can readily identify with. Playing both ends against the middle, he's become a popular motivational speaker but I have to think audiences can't recall a single thing he said that is worth remembering.
His little foray into post-election griping is just what Trumpists want to hear - setting up a false equivalence they can later use to justify all their whining and moaning in the aftermath of Trump's defeat. Matty also likes to use nicknames, tagging the malcontents in the Democratic Party as the "illiberal left." I'm not quite sure what he means by this, as the ones being illiberal right now are the malcontents in the Republican Party, who refuse to acknowledge Biden's win more than one month after the election. To date only 20+ Republican members of Congress have accepted Biden as President-Elect.
In fact, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wouldn't even comment on whether Congress was preparing for President-Elect Biden's inauguration on January 20. Instead, the Senate congressional panel blocked a resolution acknowledging they were preparing for the swearing-in ceremony. It's as if there might still be a few tricks left up their sleeve to overturn the results despite now having reached "safe harbor."
Seems these guys have been watching Season 5 of House of Cards, and are trying to figure out if they can pull a stunt like Frank Underwood did to upend Will Conway, the apparent winner in the mythical election. To quote Woody Allen, "life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television."
That's been the case throughout Trump's tumultuous tenure. His administration has literally looked like they have been faking it these last four years as they try to overturn any piece of "illiberal" legislation with an executive order. In most cases, their efforts were shot down by federal courts. The "illiberal left" managed to flip the House in 2018, putting up a roadblock to Trump and his buddy Mitch, but that enthusiasm didn't spill over into 2020. Much like 2016, Democrats across the country decided to go with an establishment nominee despite more appealing liberal candidates. The "illiberal left" was forced to swallow its pride and accept Joe and Kamala even if it meant putting their legislative dreams on hold for another four years.
Steve Schmidt summed it up pretty well last night on Amanpour & Co. when he said that the current Biden coalition is very fragile with all sides claiming victory. There really is no direction a Biden administration can go except down the middle, if he wants to hold onto this coalition in 2024. It's like the old Stealers Wheel song Stuck in the Middle with You.
The only problem with this "centric" vision is that we end up going nowhere. If we turn to the left, the Lincoln Project Republicans will hop off the bus. Turn to the right and the Illiberal Left will abandon the party and put forward their own candidate(s) in 2024. What we are left with is a watered-down Third Way, which has long been mentioned in politics, but has yet to achieve the kind of "social democracy" its more liberal proponents imagined. They still get the term backward.
Unfortunately, Russell didn't put up much resistance to Matty's poor choice of words or false equivalences. He played along with the affable actor, happy to have him on his show. Nothing much would have come of it except that McConaughey is getting a lot of play in conservative circles, much like Mike Rowe has done in recent years with the success of his "Dirty Jobs." It seems Matty's ultimate goal is to run for governor of Texas, at least that seems to be the betting line in the Lone Star State. His kind of "centric" view might play well in this evermore "centric" state, but I don't think would make much of a splash in Austin, which he calls home these days.
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