Jon Meacham: Midterm Shift Was a Message Against Political ‘Bullying and Thuggery’; ‘People Got Tired of the Show’

EXCERPT:

MEACHAM: “So it’s possible to overread what happened, but it’s also possible to under read it. And I think the the right place is it was a message against the thuggery, the bullying, the autocratic tendencies. It was a message against swagger and it was a message saying, get to work on the substance. Right. We’ve been dealing with a lot of swagger and a lot of taunting. And I think this is something that if — if I were in the vice president circle, I would be bringing up this morning. This — the politics of taunting, the politics of a kind of professional wrestling entertainment, I think people are willing — they were clearly willing for nearly a decade to put up with it if the substance could be delivered on, right? And here’s what happened is the Republican Party went over to, right? They weren’t delivering on substance where people don’t understand why we’re at war in Iran. There’s clearly the economic questions. And then at that point, the theater, the smash mouth tactics, the idea that the rule of the strong has to be predominant, that begins to sound tinny. It begins to fall flat.”