Americana

The Second Annual Americana Awards

Last year, I inaugurated the Americana Awards — a list of superlatives, celebrating the best performances in politics, with no actual prizes whatsoever. There was less on the ballot this year, and fewer surprises.

The education gap, which replaced the class gap between the major parties years ago, shaped nearly everything, from Donald Trump’s recovery in the GOP race and Democratic over-performance in state court campaigns to the chart-busting success of Oliver Anthony, Jason Aldrean, and “Sound of Freedom.” Conservatives sometimes won cultural victories where they couldn’t win votes; the boycotts of Bud Light and Target worked, but anti-wokeness didn’t do much for Ron DeSantis or down-ballot Republicans.

Best winning campaign (non-candidate): Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, a coalition that beat the anti-abortion movement in the red state twice. In August, it mobilized to defeat a Republican effort to limit voter-passed constitutional amendments by 14 points; in November, it won again, passing a “reproductive freedom” amendment by nearly the same margin. Republicans, who run all but one statewide office, campaigned against them; Secretary of State Frank LaRose let abortion foes craft the final ballot language. None of that worked, and the abortion rights side twice won hundreds of thousands of votes from people who’d abandoned the Democratic Party.

Best winning campaign (incumbent): Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, winning re-election by 5 points over a Republican who looked like the future of his party. He outspent Daniel Cameron $40 million to $30 million, and benefited from an expensive GOP primary. But to win, he needed to convince more than 100,000 Kentuckians who were voting Republican down-ballot to support a Democrat at the top, as Cameron ran ad after ad featuring his Trump endorsement. Beshear ran on the booming state economy and tripped up Cameron over the state’s abortion ban. (More on that later.)

The race was also a case study of how the GOP’s anti-trans messaging fell flat. “I can’t tell you how many parents that I’ve talked to said their kids weren’t exposed to those things in schools or libraries,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear told Semafor after he won, referring to Cameron’s ads that warned of child gender surgery and sexual material in schools. “They were exposed to that through his commercials.”

Best winning campaign (challenger): Louisiana Gov.-elect Jeff Landry, who won his race without a runoff, and arguably locked it up long before that. Landry was always the favorite to replace Gov. John Bel Edwards, but he and his allies went on the air early, reintroducing himself as a former cop who would countermand liberal DA orders in the state’s biggest urban parishes and make juvenile criminal records public. He coupled that with appeals to Black voters on crime and shared values, winning some Democratic votes as their party’s turnout collapsed.

Best losing campaign: Glenn Youngkin and his Spirit of Virginia PAC, which came within a few thousand votes of capturing both houses of the state legislature. A simpler way to say that: They lost. But they did so while running very close to Youngkin’s 2021 vote and carrying every seat that backed Joe Biden by less than 8 points, a feat that escaped Republicans elsewhere.

Best Campaign Ad: Andy Beshear for Governor, “Unthinkable.” The viewer is locked in from the very first sentence: “I was raped by my stepfather.” Hadley Duvall’s straight-to-camera ad put a face on the state’s abortion ban, which Cameron had defended. It also rattled the Republican nominee, who suddenly said he could support exceptions to the law.

Worst Campaign Ad: Never Back Down, “Trump Attacks Iowa.” On first glance, it’s just a misguided attack ad that had no effect on its target. Trump was bad-mouthing Gov. Kim Reynolds for holding events with other candidates, and NBD’s polling found that he might be vulnerable on that, but it wasn’t all that important to caucus-goers. But why does Trump’s voice sound so tinny? It was an AI reconstruction of a post he’d written, creating a bad news cycle for no good reason. By the end of the year, DeSantis allies had abandoned NBD and were counting on a new PAC to run more effective, error-free ads.

Worst Best Friends: Talkative mega-donors, whose freelance advice and criticism created time-wasting news cycles for Youngkin, DeSantis, and Tim Scott. Thomas Peterffy couldn’t stop gabbing about how flipping the Virginia Senate could launch a Youngkin presidential bid, a take that helped the governor raise money — while helping Democrats sound the klaxons and raise even more. Ken Griffin let it be known that DeSantis had made a mistake by signing a six-week abortion ban. And Larry Ellison didn’t even bother helping out Scott when he needed it most.

Best Bet: Donald Trump’s decision to skip the GOP primary debates. It wasn’t unprecedented, but it wasn’t obvious to everyone that Trump could ignore the RNC-sponsored events. Would he look weak? Would it raise questions about his acuity? No and no: Trump blew off his hand-picked party chair, denied his former vice president the confrontation he craved, and let the other candidates sling oppo at each other while he held rallies. By November, Trump was diverting media outlets from the Miami debate to his own event, down the road; by December, DeSantis was scrapping a donor event around the fourth debate, deep-sixed thanks to low interest.

Worst Bet: Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s promise to “oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard.” The anti-abortion movement’s problems have been overrated; it executed a long-planned strategy to ban and limit the practice everywhere it could after the fall of Roe. But its demand for clarity from GOP presidential candidates was a flop. Donald Trump refused to play along, and Nikki Haley came to SBA Pro-Life’s headquarters to undermine the whole idea, telling the audience that “no Republican president will have the ability to ban abortion nationwide.” The candidates who did embrace a 15-week limit — Tim Scott and Mike Pence — dropped out before any votes were cast.

Best Political Book: “The Squad,” by Ryan Grim. His reporting at The Intercept and his interviews on “Breaking Points” have consistently produced some of the best stories and interrogation of the post-2016, Bernie Sanders-era left. Grim’s book incorporated all of that and built it out, telling the left’s side of campaign and policy fights that was often spun against them in initial coverage.

Best Presidential Biography: “An Ordinary Man,” by Richard Norton Smith, the definitive study of Gerald R. Ford. Smith has been writing the stories of “Modern Republicans” — the post-New Deal moderates who would be swept aside by the conservative movement — for a generation. This is his best work yet, packed with color and insights, dynamiting the caricature of Ford as a dunce who stumbled into power.

Best (Almost) Presidential Biography: “Romney,” by McKay Coppins, built from the senator’s personal papers and many probing interviews with the author. The 2012 GOP nominee is haunted, frustrated, and sometimes catty; Coppins is fair, not hagiographic. It’s a good companion to the Ford book — a class in how Romney accidentally helped create a party that didn’t want him.

Make America Great Again Inc., “Really.” Nikki Haley celebrated when the Trump super PAC put this ad up in New Hampshire: “Someone’s getting nervous,” she posted on X. The content, she’s said, just isn’t any good; it whacks her for negotiating over a South Carolina gas tax that she’d opposed two weeks after the pro-DeSantis Fight Right PAC tried the same thing. It doesn’t help matters that, as president, Trump suggested he might back a gas tax hike to fund infrastructure.

SFA Fund, “New Generation.” Haley’s super PAC, like the candidate, dismisses any criticism of the candidate as sour grapes; she wouldn’t be getting it if she wasn’t surging. “Trump knows that Haley’s the only one who can beat him,” a narrator says, claiming (inaccurately) that Trump isn’t attacking other candidates. The ad also caps off the gas tax dispute: Haley never actually raised it and has promised to repeal the federal gas tax.

Two polls this week found the same trend in New Hampshire: Trump stable in the mid-40s and Haley surging. Trump’s only winning a third of independent voters: 57% of them back either Haley or Christie. He’s holding the lead because, like DeSantis before her, Haley hasn’t cracked into his support from conservatives. Trump gets 56% of those voters, 56% of registered Republicans, and dominates — as usual — with voters who don’t have college degrees. But New Hampshire’s semi-open primary system helps Haley tremendously; overall she’s viewed favorably by as much of the electorate as Trump is. One more plus for Haley: Neither of Joe Biden’s primary challengers has much traction in the Democratic race, freeing up more undeclared voters to consider Haley.

House Republicans spent a year wrangling votes to begin an official impeachment inquiry into the president, convincing swing seat members to support it only after the administration said no to some investigators’ requests. But it wasn’t the most unpopular vote they’ll take. Independents are split on the question, and only a small share of voters who disapprove of Biden don’t approve of the inquiry.

White House. The Colorado Supreme Court threw the GOP primary off course this week, ruling that the Constitution’s insurrection clause prevented Donald Trump from appearing on the primary ballot.

Vivek Ramaswamy rushed to defend him, pledging within minutes to “withdraw” from the primary unless Trump was allowed to run, and challenging the rest of the field to join him. They ignored him instead, coming around to a different position: The court was wrong, but it would be nice to have a Republican nominee not faced with insurrection questions.

“We don’t need to have judges making these decisions,” Nikki Haley told reporters in Iowa on Wednesday. In the Des Moines suburbs, Ron DeSantis predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court would reverse the Colorado decision, then pivoted: “Do we want to have 2024 to be about ‘this trial, that case, this case,’ having to put hundreds of millions of dollars into legal stuff? Or do we want 2024 to be about your issues?”

Even Chris Christie denounced the court ruling. “I do not believe that Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court,” he said on Wednesday in New Hampshire. “I believe that he should be prevented from being president of the United States by the voters of this country.”

North Carolina is entering its teenage years as a swing state. Barack Obama carried it in 2008, Republicans have won it narrowly ever since, and Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign bought more ads there than it did in Ohio.

It’s one of just two swing states that’ll elect a governor next year; Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is term-limited, and Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is running to win it back for Republicans, who’ve controlled a gerrymandered legislature since 2010. Earlier this month, Cooper sat down with Americana to talk about the coming year, and his faith that Joe Biden can and will win the state.

Americana: We’re talking right after North Carolina expanded Medicaid. Who do voters credit for that?

Roy Cooper: This campaign, when it comes to health care, will be about the best of Joe Biden versus the worst of Donald Trump. This is one of the few campaign promises that Donald Trump actually tried to keep! The attack on the Affordable Care Act in 2017 almost succeeded. He almost took away health care from tens of millions of Americans. He almost allowed insurance companies to put pre-existing conditions back on.

On the other side, here’s Joe Biden, helping hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians to get healthcare through the Affordable Care Act, with Medicaid expansion. This is going to be a campaign, I think, of stark contrasts. Our governor’s race is going to be one of stark contrasts. And I’m looking forward to it. I’m approaching this campaign as if I were on the ballot.

Americana: And you think the president can win North Carolina?

Roy Cooper: We’re on the right trajectory here. Trump wins North Carolina by around 3.5% in 2016. He wins North Carolina by 1.4%. In 2020, we’re the third fastest growing state. People are moving in, and they’re moving to blue counties. We can win the state for Joe Biden, as long as they keep us within the sphere of targeted states — and right now we are in the outer planet belt of the solar system of targeted states.

Americana: Do you expect Mark Robinson to be the GOP nominee? How do Democrats run against him?

Roy Cooper: Mark Robinson is an extreme MAGA candidate. He has said that men should lead, and women can’t. He has spewed hate speech against Jewish people, against LGBTQ+ people. He has said that he owns an AR-15, and uses it for target practice, but what he really has it for is if the government gets too big for its britches. This is the kind of candidate that they are running. This is the kind of candidate who ran for governor in 2022 in a number of swing states and Democratic governors were able to win. That’s what’s going to happen in North Carolina. [Attorney Gen.] Josh Stein is going to be able to win this race.

Americana: And how much is his abortion position going to play into this race?

Roy Cooper: So, North Carolina now has a 12-week abortion ban, passed by the Republicans. A number of those Republicans promised to protect women’s reproductive freedom. Yet every single one voted to override my veto. Every single Democrat voted to sustain my veto.

Mark Robinson wants to ban abortions completely, and Republican leaders in the legislature had promised to come back because many of them want to go to a six-week ban, maybe even worse. Now that this ban has taken effect in North Carolina, there are a lot of everyday families who are beginning to go through the trauma of problem pregnancies, and having to think, “Do I need to move? Is my doctor gonna have to let me almost die before they are able to treat me?” This is going to be a big issue, and I’m advising the Biden campaign that we need to lean into women’s reproductive freedom.

Americana: So, how confident are you that Trump will be the nominee? Do you think that Nikki Haley would change things if she were the nominee in North Carolina?

Roy Cooper: Well, number one, Trump’s going to be the nominee. But I’ll tell you this: If for some reason he’s not, I think any Republican candidate that has to go through the MAGA minefield of this primary is going to be badly damaged.

That said, I do feel confident that it’s going to be Trump. This is going to be a rematch where the differences are even more stark than they were before.

Americana: Back to the “who gets credit” question. When I look at state by state polling, I see people pretty happy with their governor, pretty happy with the state, then frustrated with Joe Biden. What explains that disconnect?

Roy Cooper: I think there’s a general malaise because people have had to fight inflation. That’s getting better, but they’ve come out of COVID; their lives are different, their job may be different. And when you’re in a general malaise, you tend to just blame the guy at the top.

The good things that Biden is doing are generational investments, where you’re not going to feel the everyday positives for a while. Most people who are working to put food on the table and take care of their parents and make sure the kids are getting a good education — they aren’t really paying attention to job announcements, or ribbon cuttings. But I think into next year, as more people get their health insurance in North Carolina, as some of these jobs start coming online, and the campaign starts communicating big time with the voters, and the voters start paying attention — which they aren’t right now — I think that stark contrast is going to be pretty clear to people.

Americana: When I talk to voters who haven’t tuned in, the question they frequently ask is: Will they really run Biden? He’s 80 years old. So what’s the answer to that?

Roy Cooper: A lot of people know people, who are older, who are on top of everything. That’s my experience with the president. Not too long ago, I spent more than an hour one-on-one with him, talking about the implementation of all of this federal money in the states. He asked insightful questions. He was on top of all the issues, intensely interested in how we were doing this with CHIPS and infrastructure. He’s been around a while, and he’s the same as he ever was right now. People have underestimated him all of his life. He comes out on top. When he comes to North Carolina, and they let him get on that rope line, and he engages with people, they come away thinking yeah, that’s the President of the United States.

• 24 days until the Iowa Republican caucuses
• 32 days until the New Hampshire primary
• 53 days until the special election to replace George Santos
• 64 days until the South Carolina Republican primary
• 318 days until the 2024 presidential election