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      Biden privately admitted feeling ‘tired’ amid concerns about his age, book says

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      Amid relentless debate about whether at 80 Joe Biden is too old to be president or to complete an effective second term, an eagerly awaited book on his time in the White House reports that Biden has privately admitted to feeling “tired”, even as it describes his vast political experience as a vital asset.“His advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name,” Franklin Foer writes in The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future.“It was striking that he took so few morning meetings or presided over so few public events before 10am. His public persona reflected physical decline and time’s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist.“In private, he would occasionally admit that he felt tired.”Foer does not cite a source for Biden’s reported private remarks but his book, according to its publisher, Penguin Random House, is based on “unparalleled access to the tight inner circle of advisers who have surrounded Biden for decades”.The Last Politician will be published in the US next week. On Tuesday, as the Atlantic published an excerpt on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Politico noted tight security around the release and anxiety in the White House.The Guardian obtained a copy.Biden’s age has been a constant of coverage since the former senator and vice-president entered the race to face Donald Trump in 2020. At 77, Biden beat Trump convincingly and became the oldest president ever elected. If Biden wins a second term next year, and completes four years in power, he will be 86 when he steps down.Republican candidates to face Biden have relentlessly focused on his age, with rightwing pundits piling in – despite the fact the clear Republican frontrunner, Trump, is 77 years old himself.But public polling has long showed concern about Biden’s age among Democratic voters. This week, the Associated Press and the Norc Center for Public Affairs showed 77% of respondents (89% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats) saying Biden was too old to be effective if re-elected.In the same poll, only 51% (and just 29% of Republicans) said Trump’s age would be a problem if he returned to the Oval Office.Foer, a former editor of the New Republic, a progressive magazine, does not shy from the issue. But he does stress how Biden’s massive political experience – he won his US Senate seat in Delaware in 1972, chaired the Senate judiciary and foreign relations committees and was vice-president to Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017 – has given him unique strengths in the White House.Citing the Inflation Reduction Act and other attempts to address the climate crisis, Foer says Biden is not guilty of governing in the short term “because [he] will only inhabit the short term”, a failing of older politicians.In something of a backhanded compliment, Foer writes that Biden has sometimes muffed public remarks not because of the challenges of age, but because of “indiscipline and indecision” seen throughout his career.In the same passage in which he reports Biden’s admission to being tired, meanwhile, Foer says the president’s “wartime leadership”, regarding supporting Ukraine in its fight against the invading Russian army, “drew on his weathered instincts and his robust self-confidence”.Regarding Ukraine, Foer writes, “the advantages of having an older president were on display. He wasn’t just a leader of the coalition, he was the West’s father figure, whom foreign leaders could call for advice and look to for assurance.“It was his calming presence and his strategic clarity that helped lead the alliance to such an aggressive stance, which stymied authoritarianism on its front lines.“He was a man for his age.” More

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      Eminem demands Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music on campaign trail

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      The rapper Eminem has demanded that Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music.In a letter reported by the Daily Mail, a representative for the rapper’s publisher told counsel for the Republican presidential hopeful that Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, objected to Ramaswamy’s use of his compositions and was revoking a license to use them.The letter, dated 23 August, became public weeks after Ramaswamy, 38, a financial investor and politics newcomer, mounted an impromptu performance of Lose Yourself by Eminem at the Iowa State Fair, bemusing many Republicans but securing a measure of internet renown.Ramaswamy also grabbed the spotlight last Wednesday, at the first Republican debate in Wisconsin. His angry and blustering performance, including clashes with other candidates and a claim that “the climate change agenda is a hoax”, harvested significant media coverage.The Guardian has reported on how Ramaswamy’s claims to be a political outsider stand in contrast to deep links to rightwing donors and influencers, including Peter Thiel and Leonard Leo.Ramaswamy’s love for rap, and for Eminem in particular, has been widely reported. When he was a Harvard undergraduate, the future biotech entrepreneur rapped under the name “Da Vek”. He also told the Crimson, the Harvard campus newspaper, Lose Yourself by Eminem was his personal theme.“I consider myself a contrarian,” Ramaswamy said then. “I like to argue.”In its letter to the Ramaswamy campaign, Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI) said it “will consider any performance of the Eminem works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date forward to be a material breach of the agreement for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies”.In a statement to the Mail, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy referred to another Eminem song: “Vivek just got on the stage and cut loose. To the American people’s chagrin, we will have to leave the rapping to The Real Slim Shady.” More

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      Rich Men North of Richmond singer condemns Republicans after song used in debate

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      Oliver Anthony, the writer and singer of the mega-hit Rich Men North of Richmond, hit out at Republican candidates for president who discussed his song in the debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday.“It was funny seeing my song at that presidential debate. Because I wrote that song about those people, you know, so for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up. It was funny kind of seeing the response to it,” the Virginian said in a statement on Friday.A stark lament over the plight of the working class, Rich Men North of Richmond is top of the Billboard Hot 100, the first song by an artist with no chart history to make No 1.The song has been championed by many on the political right as a populist anti-big-government hymn and criticized by some on the left for its attacks on welfare recipients.In Wisconsin on Wednesday, an excerpt was played at the start of the Republican debate. One Fox News host, Martha MacCallum, said Anthony’s “lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government and of this country. Washington DC is about 100 miles north of Richmond.”On stage stood seven Republican current or former governors and congressmen and one venture capitalist.McCallum said: “Governor DeSantis, why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?”Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor running a distant second to Donald Trump, said: “Our country is in decline. This decline is not inevitable. It’s a choice. We need to send Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline.”However, on Friday, Anthony released a 10-minute video, shot in the cab of a truck as heavy rain fell, in which he rejected that answer and denied that he was a conservative figure.“The one thing that has bothered me is seeing people wrap politics up in this. I’m disappointed to see it. Like, it’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them.”He added: “That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden. You know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song’s written about the people on that stage and a lot more, not just them.”It was hard, Anthony said, to “get a message out about your political ideology or your belief about the world in three minutes and some change. But I do hate to see that song being weaponized, like I see. I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own. And I see the left trying to discredit me, I guess in retaliation. That’s got to stop.”He said the response to his song had crossed party lines and that he welcomed a diverse audience.“If you watch the response videos on YouTube, it’s not conservative people responding to the song. It’s not even necessarily Americans responding to the song. I don’t know that I’ve seen anything get such positive response from such a diverse group of people. And I think that terrifies the people that I sing about in that song. And they’ve done everything they can in the last two weeks to make me look like a fool. To spin my words. To try to stick me in a political bucket.”Anthony also answered criticism from leftwing sources about lyrics which refer to welfare recipients and depicts some as obese with poor diets.“I do need to address the left as well,” he said, “because they’re sending a message out that … Rich Men North of Richmond is an attack against the poor.”“I do understand there may be some people who misunderstood my words in Rich Men North of Richmond. But I’ve got to be clear that my message … references the inefficiencies of the government because of the politicians within it that are engulfed in bribes and extortion.“The words say that there’s, ‘People on the street with nothing to eat and the obese milking welfare.’ That references a news article I read earlier this summer, that adolescent kids in Richmond [Virginia] are missing meals … because their parents can’t afford to feed them and they’re not in school.“And meanwhile, I think like 30% or 40% of the food bought with welfare EBT money is … like, snack food and soda. I think 10% spent on soda. And I want to say like 20% or 30% spent on junk food.“And that’s not the fault of those people. Welfare only makes up a small percentage of our budget. You know, we can fuel a proxy war in a foreign land” – seemingly a reference to aid to Ukraine – “but we can’t take care of our own. That’s all the song’s trying to say. It’s just saying that the government takes people who are needy and dependent and makes them needy and dependent.” More

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      The protest song that’s taken America by storm hits too many false notes | Kenan Malik

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      There is mean things happening in this landOh the rich man boasts and bragsWhile the poor man goes in ragsThere is mean things happening in this landSo runs the opening verse of John Handcox’s classic 1930s song There is Mean Things Happening In This Land. Handcox was a tenant farmer and union organiser in Arkansas during the Great Depression. His family, like thousands of others, had been made destitute, crushed between the droughts that afflicted the dust bowl and the ruthlessness of east coast bankers and of the old plantation owners, the white oligarchy that had retained its power in the south after the civil war.I don’t know if Oliver Anthony knows of Handcox. A jobbing country singer from Virginia, Anthony’s video of his song Rich Men North of Richmond has gone viral over the past week, clocking up more than 20m views on YouTube, rising to the top of the streaming charts and becoming an anthem for conservatives from Marjorie Taylor Green, the reactionary Republican congresswoman from Georgia, to the rightwing political commentator Matt Walsh, all viewing Anthony as a righteous figure, whose “rawness” and “authenticity” speak to real Americans.In some ways, Rich Men North of Richmond echoes the themes of Handcox’s song, giving voice to a sense of a world divided into rich and poor, and of ordinary people as menaced by those in power. It also shows the degree to which the working-class tradition that Handcox helped forge has decayed, politically and culturally.Handcox was not simply a singer or songwriter. He was first and foremost a union activist, and it was out of his activism that his music flowed. He stood in a long line of working-class troubadours. From The Ballad of Joe Hill to This Land Is Your Land, much of what is now called the Great American Songbook emerged from grassroot struggles, songs created to organise, inspire and console. Some names in that tradition are well known – Paul Robeson or Woody Guthrie. Others, such as Ella May Wiggins, a millworker murdered by a militia during thenotorious Loray Mill strike in 1929, and Sarah Ogan Gunning, a nurse and midwife from the mining country in Kentucky, are largely lost to the collective memory.All helped create a movement in which music became a central strand in the struggle for justice and betterment. It was a tradition that, long before the civil rights movement, was committed to interracial solidarity. Not only were African Americans, such as Robeson and Handcox, an inextricable part of the working-class folk scene, but there was much cross-fertilisation across blues, gospel and folk.Handcox was an organiser for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), helping stage a major strike of cotton pickers demanding better pay in 1935. The strike was met with ferocious violence from planters, militias and the Ku Klux Klan. The union was crushed, and Handcox, blacklisted and threatened by lynch mobs, was forced to flee, joining the thousands who had formed a great exodus out of the dust bowl, the raw horrors of which were captured in Dorothea Lange’s photographs and in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.Handcox would have understood Anthony’s lament in Rich Men North of Richmond about the precariousness of working-class life. But where he was committed to collective action and unionisation, Rich Men North of Richmond expresses individualised resentment. It is a resentment not towards bosses or the capitalist class, as in the old songs but, as has become fashionable today, towards a nebulous political elite, defined as much by its cultural alienness as by its economic power.A boss who is culturally familiar seems less threatening than a member of the cosmopolitan elite. Anthony even gives a nod towards conspiracy theories about paedophiles (“I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere”). It is a resentment, too, not just towards the elite but also the undeserving poor, towards benefit recipients and welfare scroungers: “Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare”. For Anthony, “if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”. Only for some is the precariousness of life to be condemned.All this has turned the song into a conservative hymn, “the protest song of our generation”, as Walsh has described it. Most of those who laud Rich Men North of Richmond as being, in Greene’s words, “the anthem of the forgotten Americans”, have also long campaigned to deny those forgotten Americans their dues. They oppose unionisation and Medicare and abortion rights, view tax cuts for the rich as more important than support for the poor, and despise welfare payments as “money stolen”. A century ago, they would have condemned Handcox and Wiggins, Robeson and Guthrie, as treacherous “reds”, cheered on the strike-breaking militias, and probably joined them, too.It is a common theme on the right that when people take collective action to defend their interests, they are the wrong kind of workers. It is only when workers lament without resisting that their voice is deemed “authentic”. Yet, the decline of radical struggles, the neutering of labour movement organisations and the abandonment of working-class issues by many sections of the left has allowed the most grotesque of reactionaries to shamelessly pose as friends of the downtrodden.“I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay.” Anthony’s plaint rings down the decades. But as long as disaffection is shaped by a politics that abases working-class hopes, and is directed as much against the undeserving poor or the culturally different as against employers and politicians who seek to crush unions and impose austerity, rich men, whether north and south of Richmond, will remain in power.“The way they’re treated is a sin, / So I’m gonna get organised”, Sarah Ogan Gunning sang in her 1937 recording I’m Goin’ to Organize, Baby Mine. It is an attitude, and a defiance, as necessary today as it was almost a century ago. More

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      Rich Men North of Richmond punches down. No surprise the right wing loves it

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      In Rich Men North of Richmond, Oliver Anthony, a bushy-bearded former North Carolina factory worker, sings passionately about working hard for “bullshit pay”.Armed with just a guitar and his powerful voice, he identifies the source of the problem: “rich men north of Richmond” – federal politicians – who “want to have total control”. The song laments homelessness – “folks in the street ain’t got nothin’ to eat” – and a national suicide crisis: “Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground / ’Cause all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.”So far, so resonant: the song has collected more than 12m views on YouTube alone, and on Tuesday afternoon, it sat at No 3 on Spotify’s Top 50 – USA list.But things start to feel a little less empathetic when Anthony starts complaining about “the obese milking welfare”, reasoning that “if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”. We can all agree that politicians have caused many of America’s problems; it’s harder to argue that our country is being destroyed by short, overweight chocolate enthusiasts. He also rails against taxation, which he says means “your dollar ain’t shit”.The supposed welfare abuse sounds like a rightwing talking point, and Anthony doesn’t appear to have considered that the nefarious fudge rounds might be feeding the very people he mentioned with nothing to eat. But Anthony claims to “sit pretty dead center” when it comes to politics, according to a video filmed in his car the day before the video was released. “I remember as a kid the conservatives wanting war, and me not understanding that. And I remember a lot of the controversies when the left took office, and it seems like, you know, both sides serve the same master.”Still, a reference to politicians “looking out for minors on an island somewhere” – apparently a reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to elite figures – has also prompted speculation that Anthony could be nodding to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory positing that Democrats and Hollywood stars are drinking the blood of children. In the car video, Anthony claims child trafficking has become “normalized”, though what he’s referring to isn’t clear.It’s no surprise, then, that the song has been an enormous hit among the loudest rightwingers: Kari Lake, former candidate for Arizona governor, calls it “the anthem of this moment in American history”. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it “the anthem of the forgotten Americans who truly support this nation and unfortunately the world”. The far-right activist Jack Posobiec can’t “even remember the last time a new song hit me like this”.The rightwing commentator Matt Walsh, meanwhile, claims the “song is raw and authentic … Everything around us is fake. A guy in the woods pouring his heart over his guitar is real.” Wait till Walsh hears about Bon Iver in 2007, or Ed Sheeran busking in a train station, or pretty much anyone at a New York open mic on a Wednesday night.Still, these politicians and provocateurs have helped Anthony rise from obscure singer-songwriter to darling of the right in record time – sparking questions over how authentically viral his rise has been.On Twitter, Jason Howerton, who advertises himself on LinkedIn as having “helped grow media companies and political influencers grow their social media footprint exponentially”, has been a major proponent of Anthony’s work, sharing the musician’s life story in a thread, offering to finance an album – which the rightwing country singer John Rich apparently agreed to produce – and announcing the musician had just joined Twitter. It does feel remarkable that Anthony decided to share his life story on YouTube a day before releasing a video that went viral.But Howerton denies any claims of astroturfing – in which powerful figures orchestrate supposed grassroots campaigns – and, as Chris Willman writes in Variety, there’s no clear evidence of it. And whether or not it was promoted by outside forces, the song has clearly struck a genuine chord with listeners. There are many unknown performers who can work wonders with just a guitar, and who are equally deserving of a platform, but there is no denying Anthony’s voice packs a punch.Compared with the likes of Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and the rightwingers sharing his song, he also seems to have a modicum of empathy. Granted, the standards are incredibly low. But it’s difficult to imagine any of those figures offering listeners a sign-off like Anthony’s: “I hope wherever you are in the world listening to this, and whatever it is that you’re trying to do with your life, I hope that you succeed.”It would be nice if he’d apply that apparently heartfelt philosophy to his own lyrics. Winston Marshall, formerly of Mumford and Sons, compared Anthony to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie – but if either of them ever recorded a song mocking the poorest of the poor, it’s been lost to history. If Anthony wants to keep moving upward, he should aim his punches in the same direction. More

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      Losing Our Religion review: Trump and the crisis of US Christianity

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      Christianity and the “powers that be” have weathered two millennia, their relationship varying by time and place. Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to the cross. Emperor Constantine converted. Henry VIII broke from Rome and founded the Church of England. In the US, the denominational divides of protestantism helped drive the revolution and provided fuel for the civil war.In his new book, the Rev Russell Moore opens a chapter, “Losing Our Authority: How the Truth Can Save”, with the words “Jesus Saves”, followed by a new historical tableau: January 6 and the threat Donald Trump and the mob posed to democracy and Mike Pence.“That the two messages, a gallows and ‘Jesus Saves’ could coexist is a sign of crisis for American Christianity,” Moore writes.Heading toward the Iowa caucus, Trump runs six points better among white evangelicals than overall. As for the devout Pence, a plurality of white evangelicals view him unfavorably.Moore is mindful of history, and the roles Christianity has played: “Parts of the church were wrong – satanically wrong – on issues of righteousness and justice, such as the Spanish Inquisition and the scourge of human slavery.” He is editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, a publication founded by Billy Graham. Losing Our Religion offers a mixture of lament and hope. In places, its sadness is tinged with anger. In the south, the expression “losing my religion”, popularized by REM in a 1991 song, “conveys the moment when ‘politeness gives way to anger’,” Moore explains.Moore’s public and persistent opposition to the election of Trump set him apart from most white evangelicals and would lead to his departure from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).“The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking ‘foreigner’, who is probably not all that impressed by chants of “Make America great again,” Moore wrote in spring 2016. “Regardless of the outcome in November, [Trump’s] campaign is forcing American Christians to grapple with some scary realities that will have implications for years to come.”He was prescient. Graham’s son, Franklin, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize Trump. At the time, Moore was president of the SBC ethics and religious liberty commission. His politics forced him to choose. He opted for Christ and his convictions. He joined a nondenominational church.His new book is subtitled “An Altar Call for Evangelical America” but it aims for a broader audience. It contains ample references to Scripture, but also to the journalist Tim Alberta, Jonathan Haidt of New York University, Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, and Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, a liberal group.Of white evangelicals, Moore quotes Jones: “Their greatest temptation will be to wield what remaining political power they have as desperate corrective for their waning cultural influence.” Welcome to the culture wars, and to what Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic has called the coalition of restoration.Against the backdrop of rising Christian nationalism and January 6, Moore reads the writing on the wall. He is troubled by the shrinking gap between Christian nationalism and neo-paganism. “The step before replacing Jesus with Thor is to turn Jesus into Thor,” he observes. Moore found the presence of prayers in “‘Jesus’s name’ right next to a horn-wearing pagan shaman in the well of the evacuated United States Senate” disturbing, but not coincidental.The Magasphere and Twitterverse bolster Moore’s conclusions.“President Trump will be arrested during Lent – a time of suffering and purification for the followers of Jesus Christ,” Joseph McBride, a rightwing lawyer who represents several insurrectionists, tweeted last March. “As Christ was crucified, and then rose again on the third day, so too will Donald Trump.”Caesar as deity. We’ve seen that movie before. McBride, however, did not stop there.Hours later, he tweeted: “JESUS LOVES DONALD TRUMP. JESUS DIED FOR DONALD TRUMP. JESUS LIVES INSIDE DONALD TRUMP. DEAL WITH IT.”Three-in-10 adults in the US, meanwhile, are categorized as religious “nones”. Only 40% of Americans call themselves Protestant. The Wasp ascendancy has yielded to Sunday brunch and walks in the woods. “The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they took the last train for the coast,” as Don MacLean sang. For some, Trump rallies present a variation of community and communion. A younger generation of evangelicals heads for the door. The numbers tell of a crisis of faith.“We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the “church itself” does not believe what the church teaches,” Moore laments.Predation, lust and greed are poor calling cards for religion. Unchecked abuse within the Catholic church left deep and lasting scars among those who needed God’s love most. Moore notes the Catholic church’s fall from grace in Ireland and posits that “born-again America” may be experiencing a similar backlash, as a powerful cultural institution lacking “credibility” seeks to “enforce its orthodoxies”.Against this backdrop, Catholicism’s boomlet among younger continental Europeans is noteworthy. Recently, hundreds of thousands converged on Lisbon to hear the Pope. The same demographic helps fuel the resurgence of the Spanish far right. Tethering the cross to the flag retains its appeal.That said, Jerry Falwell Jr’s posturing as Trump-booster and voyeur didn’t exactly jibe with Scripture. The ousted head of Liberty University, son of the founder of the Moral Majority, allegedly paid a pool boy to have sex with his wife as he watched.“What we are seeing now … is in many cases the shucking off of any pretense of hypocrisy for the outright embrace of immorality,” Moore writes.America barrels toward a Biden v Trump rematch. The former president is a professional defendant. The country and its religion sag and shudder. Moore prays for revival, even as he fears nostalgia.
      Losing Our Religion is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      The year that broke US politics: what 1968 can tell us about 2024

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      Spiritual messages made the Rev Billy Graham famous, but it was a different sort of message that he transmitted to Lyndon B Johnson in September 1968. Earlier that tumultuous year, the president announced on live television that he would not run for re-election. The race to succeed him pitted the current vice-president, Hubert H Humphrey, against a previous VP, Richard Nixon. An anti-establishment third-party candidate, George Wallace, a segregationist former governor of Alabama, was attracting unexpected support, amid backlash to Johnson’s Great Society reforms.Graham’s message to Johnson came from Nixon and contained an unorthodox proposal. If elected, Nixon offered to make a variety of conciliatory gestures to Johnson, from avoiding criticism to meeting him for consultations, even crediting him with a role in ending the Vietnam war, once it was finally over.This is one of many revelations in a new book, The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968, by Luke Nichter, a professor of history at Chapman University in California.In sum, Graham promised “everything Nixon could do to give LBJ a place in history”, Nichter marvels. “Imagine something like that leaking out. It’s incredible.”It also continued some surprisingly conciliatory behind-the-scenes behavior between ostensible rivals, much of it mediated by Graham. In his diary, the evangelist quoted Johnson: “I don’t always agree with [Nixon] but I respect him for his tremendous ability.” Graham asked if he could let Nixon know. LBJ said yes. The incumbent was hardly as supportive to his own vice-president. As Humphrey said: “I’ve eaten so much of Johnson’s shit in this job that I’ve grown to like the taste of it.”The 1968 election unfolded during a year of seemingly endless challenges. In Vietnam, the Tet offensive convinced many Americans of the futility of the war. On 1 March, Johnson stunned the public by dropping out of the race. On 4 April, Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis. On 6 June, another assassination rocked America: the New York senator and Democratic presidential contender Robert F Kennedy, whose brother, President John F Kennedy, had been killed just five years before, was shot dead at an LA hotel. Race riots erupted, from Newark to Detroit and Washington. At the Democratic national convention in Chicago, demonstrators and cops squared off.Yet in his 15 chapters, Nichter manages to upend conventional wisdom.“This is a lesson about the essence of history itself,” he says. “It’s never really over.”As Nichter explains, the traditional 1968 narrative posits that Johnson stayed out of the picture; that Humphrey rode a late surge based on his call for an unconditional bombing halt in Vietnam; and that Nixon employed questionable methods to win, from a “southern strategy” targeting racist white voters to trying to sabotage peace talks in Vietnam.Nichter questions this entire account, often on the basis of evidence he uncovered, whether in Graham’s diaries or in a conversation with a former Humphrey adviser, Vic Fingerhut. He even spoke to Anna Chennault, the Washington socialite at the heart of the Chennault affair, in which she was accused of encouraging the South Vietnamese to avoid peace talks, based on promises of better treatment under Nixon.“I sort of assumed it was true,” Nichter reflects. “A lot of people have reported it over the years.” Yet, he says, “the first thing I noticed right away as a red flag was that nobody I talked to actually interviewed Chennault or the South Vietnamese. I’m not a journalist, but a historian. I’m trained to look at dusty records in archives. But all of this didn’t make sense.”Nichter does have extensive experience in the subject area, not only as the author of multiple books but as the editor of the nixontapes website, where the public can access 3,000 hours of secret recordings. A member of the Freedom of Information Act advisory board, Nichter has conducted hundreds of hours of research in the US and Vietnam, calling the latter one of the friendliest destinations an American can now visit.The Year That Broke Politics germinated from a conversation with Walter Mondale in December 2017. Between 1977 and 1981, Mondale was vice-president to Jimmy Carter. In 1968, he was Humphrey’s campaign co-chair. To Nichter, he hinted that LBJ had leaned toward Nixon.The following February, Graham died at 99. Nichter traveled to the evangelist’s alma mater, Wheaton University, outside Chicago. He gained access to Graham’s diaries, a trove of information about conversations with presidents from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. Nichter calls the diaries “a potential whole new window on the entire American presidency”, with “content that’s not in the National Archives or any presidential library”.Graham enjoyed relationships with all four principals in the 1968 campaign – Johnson, Humphrey, Nixon and Wallace – while professing an apolitical stance. When Johnson decided not to run, Graham asked if he could let Nixon know in advance and got the OK to do so. When Nixon wanted to send Johnson his September proposals, he entrusted Graham with the message.At the chaotic Democratic convention, while protesters and Mayor Richard Daley’s police fought outside, Graham reportedly had a fateful behind-the-scenes influence, talking the Texas governor, John Connally, out of being Humphrey’s running mate, promising a cabinet role under Nixon. Had Connally accepted Humphrey’s offer, it “might have been enough to deny Nixon a victory, divide the conservative vote [and] balance the ticket geographically”, Nichter says.By the fall, Humphrey was struggling. On 30 September, in a speech in Salt Lake City, he promised to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. Although this speech is widely credited for Humphrey’s revival, it didn’t close the gap in the polls, Nichter says. What proved more persuasive, Nichter finds, were appeals to traditional Democratic domestic issues from jobs to social security, and a get-out-the-vote push from organized labor that siphoned blue-collar voters from Wallace.These late moves by Humphrey narrowed the gap, but not enough. Nixon, once vice-president to Dwight Eisenhower, completed a remarkable comeback. On the campaign trail, he had promised to essentially continue LBJ’s Great Society programs. Nichter notes that many of Nixon’s policy achievements – visits to China and the USSR, the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency – were initially considered under Johnson.As for Wallace, he showed surprising strength, topping out at 23% in the polls, making the ballot in every state and finding support among disaffected working-class white voters that set a precedent for future populists.“His 1968 message was more sophisticated,” Nichter says. “Race was folded into a broader set of grievances. He got a little Trump-like: anti-elite, anti-media, anti-establishment. He never used the words ‘drain the swamp’. If it had occurred to him, he probably would have.“I think all populist candidates on both sides of the aisle, Democrat or Republican – more recently, clearly Republican, because of Trump – have brought Wallace’s rhetoric [and] message [to] target voters [from the] blue-collar, lower-middle class.“Trump is the most aggressive to go after them. The most fascinating takeaway for 2024, the thing to watch for, is who is going to be the preferred candidate of this voting bloc.”
      The Year That Broke Politics is published in the US by Yale University Press More

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      Why are Black rappers aligning themselves with the right? | Tayo Bero

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      Scrolling through Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I came across a clip of rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing a face I never thought I’d see on his platform: Ice Cube.As in Fuck Tha Police Ice Cube.“What planet am I on right now?” I found myself thinking.In a two-part segment, Ice Cube and Carlson commiserated about cancel culture and cast doubt on the safety of the Covid vaccine. “It was six months, kind of a rush job and I didn’t feel safe,” Ice Cube said about his widely-publicized resistance to the Covid shot. He also claimed that he’s been banned from appearing on the talkshows The View and Oprah because he is too much of an “independent thinker”.It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well. He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.Kanye campaigned for Trump, and both Lil Wayne and Kodak Black publicly supported the former president after being pardoned by him on his last day in office. In 2020, Trump even brought a supportive Lil Pump out to a Michigan rally (where Trump introduced him as “Lil Pimp”), while Da Baby was also very vocal about supporting Trump’s second bid last year.We can try to excuse this behavior or dress it up as “opening a dialogue” or “crossing the aisle” as much as we like, but that is not what this is about. So what do these rappers have in common with rightwingers who wouldn’t otherwise touch them with a 10ft pole?Shared values.In discussions about money, gender identity, public health and a variety of social issues, rappers and rightwingers have a lot more in common than you’d immediately think. Many people from both groups share hypermasculinity, conservative Christian values, and a distrust of social institutions (justified or not); and on this common ground sits a messy and dangerous alliance full of people who ordinarily would hate each other, but have come together to make vulnerable people their enemy.Ice Cube, for example, is a well-documented anti-vaxxer, and has expressed bigoted views on gender identity, as have many of his colleagues like Da Baby, Boosie and others.And when it comes down to the raw cents and dollars, modern-day wealth solidarity between mainly Black rappers and powerful conservatives isn’t entirely surprising. Ownership in hip-hop is whiter than ever and the nature of the music itself has become increasingly capitalistic. Rap is no longer the embodiment of African American resistance it once was. Now, it’s a hyper-commercialized cultural assembly line that’s somehow been re-designed to glorify the very issues it once pushed so hard against.That’s why society’s current obsession with Black billionaires and one-percenters as “success stories” constantly falls so flat. The notion of building individual wealth as a means of collective liberation is as sinister as it is stupid. We know that Black wealth hoarding can’t save us and that recreating the violent architecture of capitalism – but with Black people in the positions of power, of course – does nothing for the plight of everyday African Americans. Still, hip-hop legends like Jay-Z continue to peddle this demented lie because that is the very function of capitalism: keep the poorest in society busy providing cheap labor while they chase an impossible dream.Then there’s the pseudo-intellectual bunch, who mask their self-serving motivations as elevated political awareness. Say what you want about Democrats and what they have or haven’t done for Black people in America, but Kanye West campaigning for Trump wasn’t some stroke of genius – it was one of the most self-hating and objectively stupid moves that a person in his position could have made back in 2016. But Kanye’s thirst for relevance, combined with a pathological desire to be contrarian and his new hyper-religious bent, made him the perfect kind of Trump-loving troll.As many rappers gain inordinate wealth and power, they’re increasingly exposed to the ways that all of that can also be a gateway to political influence and social dominance. These men don’t want a better America for Black people, they want one where their worldviews are advanced, regardless of which enemies they have to sleep with in order to make that happen.And while Black voters obviously don’t owe loyalty to any one political party, some rappers do function as community leaders in many ways, and they always have: that’s why their allegiance to the right needs to be called out now. The custodians of rap as an art form have a duty to be responsible with their platforms. And when I say responsible, I’m not talking about respectability politics and pearl-clutching about raunchy lyrics. I’m talking about the stuff that materially affects Black people’s lived experience, like what kind of politics to adopt, and why.What’s perhaps most fascinating about all this is the fact that many rappers are willing to align themselves with white supremacists not in spite of their marginalization, but because of it. I don’t blame Black people – burned by decades of generational disenfranchisement and then walloped over the head with the illusion of meritocracy – for trying to keep their place at the top no matter who they have to play nice with.But romancing fearmongering xenophobes isn’t keeping us at the top, it’s digging a pitiful hole to the bottom, a new low from which Black people as a community will not recover if we don’t put a stop to it now.
      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More