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Item one: Ever since Richard Nixon used the phrase, it’s been a Republican thing. But the Republicans are the extremists now, and the Silent Majority isn’t what it was in 1969.

Those of you of a certain age will recall the phrase "the Silent Majority," made popular by Richard Nixon—and his crooked, cash-thirsty Vice President Spiro Agnew—in 1969 to refer to those middle-class Americans who weren’t out in the streets making noise about Vietnam or civil rights but sitting quietly at home seeking normalcy, law and order, and someone to save the country from extremism. Pat Buchanan, the old Nazi war criminal defender, has claimed that he placed the phrase before Nixon in a memo and the president seized on it.

Republicans have used it ever since. It was used by Ronald Reagan. It was employed by Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg (when he was running, as a Republican, for mayor of New York). Donald Trump gave it a spin in 2016. Overseas, Tory David Cameron and rightist leaders in Italy and Portugal have taken it up.

No candidate on the broad left has ever, to my knowledge, invoked the phrase. It’s high time that changed.

Earlier this week, you may have noticed, there was a special election in Ohio’s 6th congressional district, which runs from Youngstown to the West Virginia border. The Cook Political Report rates that district R+16, meaning a Democrat wins it about as often as Trump emits an untangled sentence. In 2020, Trump carried it by 29 points.

And Tuesday? The Republican still beat the Democrat—but by single digits. Michael Rulli, the Republican state senator who won the seat, spent $570,000. The Democratic candidate, an Air Force veteran who most recently worked as a waiter, spent $7,000.

What’s this have to do with the Silent Majority? I suspect maybe a lot.

If an amateur Democrat who couldn’t put two metaphorical nickels together can come within nine points of an experienced pol Republican in a district as scarlet-red as the Buckeyes’ jerseys, something is up. And this result is not an outlier. As Aaron Blake pointed out in The Washington Post, there have been six special congressional elections this cycle, and the Democrat has outperformed in four of them, the Republican in just one. In the sixth race, Blake notes, the results (the Democrat won) closely mirrored the 2020 results, but "Democrats swung the results by double digits from the 2022 race for the same seat and flipped the seat blue."

TNR Live: Debate Watch Party

Join us on Thursday, June 27 to watch the Biden vs. Trump debate with live commentary by TNR editor Michael Tomasky and TNR staff writers Greg Sargent and Grace Segers. 

Simon Rosenberg, the high priest of Democratic optimism with his Hopium Chronicles Substack, constantly preaches: Don’t look at the polls; look at election results. We do not of course know whether his optimism about this November will be validated. We do, however, know that he (and pretty much he alone) was correct that the Democrats would hold their own in the 2022 midterms. He was right then, and he’s been right about most of these elections ever since.

So, a theory for you: Maybe, just maybe, there is an army of Americans out there who may not call themselves liberal or progressive but who are anywhere from sort of turned off to massively repulsed by MAGA. And while Trump and Fox News and Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene and all the rest of them spend their days fulminating about America dying and hyping the authoritarian tsunami coming—talk that the mainstream media picks up and that dominates our discourse—there are in fact millions of Americans sitting quietly at home who detest these histrionic harbingers of hatemongering (a Safire-esque turn of phrase for you, since I mentioned Agnew).

They are out there. And they, I submit, are your new Silent Majority.

They’re not all liberal. But they definitely support abortion rights. They’re not rushing to join trans rights groups. But they want people to be treated with empathy and tolerance. They’re not reading gender-bending young adult fiction. But they recoil against censorship. They’re not socialists. But they want the government to do more for working- and middle-class people. They’re not Earth Firsters. But they believe climate change is real. They may still tell pollsters they’re wary of "big government." But new interstates and bridges, and airport expansions, and new light-rail tracks, and expanded broadband access? They’re great with all that.

And most of all: They, just like Nixon’s old Silent Majority, seek normalcy, law and order, and someone to save the country from extremism. But in Nixon’s time, the extremism came from the left, while today it comes from the right. It’s the Trump right that attacks normalcy, on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. It’s the Trump right that is lawless, as evidenced most obviously by the fact that all these Republicans are tripping over themselves to support a convicted felon to be the president of the United States. And it’s the Trump right that is extremist on just about every issue, from health care to foreign policy.

So they sit at home, probably not watching much cable news, not marching in any marches, but just waiting until Election Day to register their opposition to MAGA. And in case you were wondering—yes, Michael Rulli, the Republican in that Ohio district, was MAGA all the way. He ran an ad in which the voiceover said: "On June 11, vote pro-gun. Pro-life. And pro-Trump."

I would love to see the Democrats run with this idea that they are the new Silent Majority. It would infuriate the Republicans, who have assumed for 50 years that it is they who represent "regular America." But with their slavish embrace of a sexual assaulting, classified document stealing, insurrection leading, twice impeached, quadruply indicted, and once (so far) convicted felon, they have waved goodbye to all that. They’re a noisy minority, and they’re alienating Americans by the millions.

Item two: A short Jerry West reminiscence

As some of you no doubt know, maybe because I mention it with a certain regularity, I grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia. This was in the 1960s and 1970s, and I, like every West Virginia boy of the era, was mad for Jerry West. 

I never saw him play for West Virginia University; I’m not that old. (My dad did.) But I avidly watched and cheered for the LA Lakers of the day, and it was kind of amazing to think that that sharp-shooting and suave superstar out in glamorous Los Angeles used to play in that dumpy little Field House on University Avenue and wolf down hot dogs at Freddie’s.

The one glorious day—October 8, 1971; as it happened, my mom’s 49th birthday—something special happened in Morgantown. It was the NBA preseason, and WVU had just built its brand-new Coliseum, the same house where the basketball Mountaineers still play. And so the NBA, I presume at West’s behest, arranged for the Lakers to play the New York Knicks in little old Morgantown.

West, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Gail Goodrich, Pat Riley; Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, Phil Jackson—there they all were, in the flesh. The Lakers won, 115–104. The local hero had a fine game, pouring in 26 points.

I don’t really remember any of that. The main thing I remember is that they let us kids go hang out down in the hallway outside the locker rooms. I was standing outside the Lakers’ locker room. I guess I was waiting for West, but out walked Wilt, and the sight of him was so awesome that I just followed him, and I remember that I walked alongside him, stride for stride, or as close as I could, from the locker rooms up a stairway to the main concourse and out to the bus. We all jammed programs and pens under his nose, and he said, "I’ll sign autographs out by bus." True to his word, he did. And I got West’s autograph and a bunch of others. I remember clearly that Frazier signed from inside the bus, because he was Clyde, and he was just too cool to be standing outside some bus. So he sat inside, probably chilling to Curtis Mayfield or something. But you’d hand him up your program, and he’d sign it and hand it back.

A pretty exciting night for a 10-year-old. 

My other favorite Jerry West story is about how insanely competitive he was. He was playing a round of golf at the Los Angeles Country Club and got so mad at himself he broke a club. He shot a 59 that day. And he broke a club in frustration. I guess that’s why he called his autobiography West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life.

But it sure sounds like a lot of people dearly loved him. God bless ya, Zeke.

Quiz time!

Last week’s quiz: "We will fight them on the beaches." A quiz on D-Day.

1. What was the code name of the D-Day invasion?

A. Operation Thunderclap

B. Operation Jupiter

C. Operation Overlord

D. Operation Sledgehammer

Answer: C, Overlord. Actually, it seems that the landing itself was named Overlord Neptune, and the Normandy invasion overall was called Overlord. Now you know.

2. Which of the following was not a name of one of the five invaded beaches?

A. Juno

B. Sword

C. Silver

D. Gold

Answer: C, Silver. The five beaches were Juno, Sword, Gold, Utah, and of course Omaha.

3. Hitler believed that the invasion would be directed at the point on the French coast closest to England. What was that location?

A. Pas-de-Calais

B. Le Havre

C. Boulogne-sur-Mer

D. Etretat

Answer: A, Pas-de-Calais. The story of the multiple feints and deceptions around the invasion is fascinating—the inflatable tanks and planes arrayed across southeast Britain and so on. Here’s a little 10-minute video on the topic.

4. What was Hitler doing during the early morning hours when the Allies were storming the beaches?

A. Listening to Wagner

B. Telling stories of the old days to Goebbels and Borman

C. Fulminating

D. Sleeping

Answer: D, sleeping. They chose not to wake him.

5. Erwin Rommel, the celebrated German military leader who was in charge of defending the beaches of France, was where on D-Day?

A. At his headquarters in Caen

B. Visiting Hitler at Berchtesgaden 

C. Visiting his wife

D. Sightseeing in Paris

Answer: C, visiting his wife. Oops.

6. Match the D-Day film to the lead actor who starred in it.

Answer: Needle, Sutherland; 36, Garner; Longest, Wayne; Eagles, Burton. As I mentioned last week, Eye of the Needle, which has to do with those pre-D-Day deceptions, is very underappreciated. Sutherland’s performance is chilling, and Kate Nelligan (hat/tip R.B.!) is amazing as well.

TNR Live: Beyond Grants Pass

In partnership with the National Homelessness Law Center

Join us next Monday, June 17 for a conversation about the implications of an impending Supreme Court decision on homelessness policy. With Helen Cruz, resident, Grants Pass, Oregon; Matt Ford, TNR staff writer; Will Knight, decriminalization director, National Homelessness Law Center; Tracy Rosenthal, writer and organizer; and Donald Whitehead, executive director, National Coalition for the Homeless. Moderated by Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communication director, National Homelessness Law Center.

This week’s quiz: "… but I like it." OK, OK, I’m going to see the Stones Saturday in Cleveland. I know; I’m a demographic cliché. So be it. I’ve seen them three times, the last one I think being the Steel Wheels tour, which was what, the late ’80s? It was great and all, but after that one, I thought, OK, I’ve seen enough of the Stones in my life. Then I read about the subsequent tours and watched videos, and it was obvious that they just kept getting better and better as a performing band, and I was kind of being an idiot. And now that they’re of presidential age, well, it will at least be interesting. So off I go, and here we go for a stroll down Stones History Lane.

1. Which bassist has been in the Rolling Stones longer, Bill Wyman or Darryl Jones? (OK, Jones I think isn’t officially "in" the band, so let’s say which has played with the band longer.)

2. Brian Jones was famously never able to write songs (he has defenders who dispute this), but he is said to have written (without credit) the melody to which "mid-period" Stones tune?

A. "Paint It, Black"

B. "She’s a Rainbow"

C. "2000 Light Years From Home"

D. "Ruby Tuesday"

3. What avant-garde director filmed the Stones working through "Sympathy for the Devil," scenes that were interwoven with various pieces of revolutionary agitprop in a 1968 feature film?

A. Luis Buñuel

B. Jean-Luc Godard

C. Kenneth Anger

D. Andy Warhol

4. According to a 2023 Spin magazine assessment, which Stones album is their greatest?

A. Sticky Fingers

B. Exile on Main St.

C. Let It Bleed

D. Beggars Banquet

5. The recording sessions for Black and Blue (1975) involved the Stones auditioning guitarists to replace Mick Taylor, who’d just left the band. Ron Wood came in late and blew the others away, but which other guitarist nearly got the job until Ronnie showed up?

A. Peter Frampton

B. Nils Lofgren

C. Wayne Perkins

D. Mick Ronson

6. Keith Richards actually quit smoking! What year did this happen?

A. 2015

B. 2019

C. 2021

D. This year

He even stopped drinking—well, more or less; he’s off the hard stuff, and it sounds like he no longer gets drunk—last year. What a lightweight. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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