Ezra Klein Pinpoints The One Thing ‘Trumpist Republicans’ Have Found to Win Elections That’s More Important Than Money
New York Times columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein interviewed Chris Hayes this week and asked him to weigh in on his theory of why Democrats are lagging so far behind Republicans in playing the media to their advantage. Klein offered up his theory of the case to Hayes, arguing that Republicans are better at monopolizing people’s attention with endless content – whether it’s positive or negative.
At one point during their lengthy conversation, Klein said, “Money is very powerful when there’s not much attention. But Donald Trump doesn’t control Republican primaries with money, he controls them with attention. And I keep having to write about Musk, and I keep saying he’s the richest man in the world. But that’s actually not what matters about him right now.”
“It’s just how he managed to get the attention and become the character and the wielder of all this attention. And that’s a change over, I think, Trumpist Republicans have made and Democrats haven’t. Democrats are still thinking about money as a fundamental substance of politics. And the Trump Republican Party thinks about attention as a fundamental substance of politics,” he added.
Hayes replied, “I really like this theory. I think you’re totally right to identify that they kind of it’s sort of a sliding scale between the two, which is to say political– politics that has the least attention, money matters the most. Right? So in a state rep race. Right. Money really matters in a state rep race, partly because no one’s paying attention to who the state rep as local media is. Because you can–”
“Buy their attention,” Klein interjected.
“Money can buy their attention. Like you could put out glossy mailers. There’s a lot you can do that you know, the further up you go from that to Senate to president, the more attention there is already. The less the money counts,” Hayes continued, turning toward the recent presidential election:
And you saw this with the Harris campaign. They raised a ton of money and they spent it the way the most campaigns spend it, which is on trying to get people’s attention, whether that’s through advertising or doorknocking. Right. But largely attention and then persuasion.
Now, you can do that at billions of dollars worth and everything is just like drops of rain in a river because there is so much competition for attention. And so what they what they figured out, I think, was that–
“They being Harris or they being Trump?” Klein clarified.
“They being Trump. And I think Musk is that what matters is the total attentional atmosphere. That in some ways it’s kind of a sucker’s game to try to, like, pop in and be like, I got that. Hey, hey. Do you like tax cuts? You like, what do you like? Like all that’s just going to whiz past people. That sort of attentional atmosphere, that’s where the fight is. And that’s what Musk’s Twitter purchase ended up being an enormous, almost like, ah, Archimedean lever on the electorate,” Hayes concluded.
“I think this is right. I think there’s another distinction between Democrats and Republicans here, which is that I think Democrats still believe that the type of attention you get is the most important thing,” Klein replied, adding:
If your choice is between a lot of negative attention and no attention, go for no attention. And at least the Trump side of the Republican Party believes that the volume, the sum total of attention is the most important thing and a lot of negative attention, not only fine, maybe great, right? Because there’s so much attention to energy and conflict. And so you really see this like Kamala Harris.
And once he became part of the ticket, Tim Walz and behind them, Joe Biden, you know, before the changeover, they were just terrified of an interview going badly. Trump and Vance and I mean, they were all over the place, including in places very hostile to them.
Listen to the full interview here.
