The below article was originally published on SB Newsmakers with Jerry Roberts
The graybeard political writer, who’s covered the comings and goings (and coming again) of 7 presidents, believes the U.S. political system is durable enough to withstand the current onslaught
As the U.S. prepares to celebrate our 249th birthday on Friday, a record low number of citizens say they are proud to be an American, the Gallup Poll reported this week.
Sadly, the survey shows that the youngest cohort of adult Americans, Gen Z, has the lowest opinion of their nation, while reporting other data that demonstrates, starkly if predictably, demographic fault lines that limn a very un-United States of America.
The new evidence of a national cleaving hardly comes as a surprise, at a time when the U.S. is led by the first president in its history who not even makes a pretense of serving as the kind of unifying figure foreseen in the office by the Founders; rather, the White House is tenanted by an erratic 79-year old, “who, when faced with flames, comes running with gasoline,” writes L.A. Times political columnist Mark Z. Barabak.
“Instead of a steady hand or the consoler-in-chief,” the graybeard political writer said in a recent piece, “we have a political arsonist residing in the White House.”
On this week’s edition of “Newsmakers TV,” Barabak returns to join the genial host in a vigorous, early round of Fourth of July punditry that examines the implications for a liberal democracy of an autocratic president who seems singularly determined to poke every wound, pound every bruise, and pick every scab in the body politic of America, in furtherance of his own authoritarian project.
With a well-earned reputation for good faith journalism and inveterate optimism, even the congenitally sunny Barabak in recent columns has sounded notes of pessimism about the direction of the country, given the relentless aggressiveness of Trump’s MAGA government and the fecklessness of Democrats in failing to respond as an effective opposition party.
“We can hope for the best,” he concluded a June 9 column about Trump’s moves to militarize the response to garden variety demonstrations in Los Angeles, protesting his brutal round-ups of alleged immigrants and people who happen to be brown. “But this will probably not end well.”
In our conversation, however, Barabak recalled past decades of covering the rise and fall of both parties as they moved into and out of the political wilderness, amid the self-corrections, checks and balances, and shifting voter preferences inherent in the U.S. system of electoral politics.
“There is nothing that the voters can’t remedy,” he said, pointing to the 2026 mid-term elections as a crucial pivot point that offers Democrats the opportunity to break the fever of Trumpism by capturing at least one house of Congress.
In our conversation, Barabak also discussed the dance-of-seven-veils political performance of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the need for the Democrats to break out of the mold of traditional campaigning — along his reporting for some good news stories he found on the beat, from a heroic, populist food program in the Bay Area, to the Marin County voters selecting a Black member of their Board Supervisors, for the first time in state history.
Check out our discussion with Mark Z. Barabak via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast is available on Apple and Spotify, and on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
Barabak may simply be naive. It is clear that Trump is working to destroy the right to effective democracy. Only a few months into this term his Project 2025 folks are implementing plans to reduce participation and eliminate votes from progressive districts. They are destroying the ability of “truth” to be spoken by eliminating neutral third party agents (like Inspectors General and courts) while suppressing statistics that would show what Trump policies are doing to the general public and by simply lying in an overwhelming and consistent voice. Trump has floated the idea of running for another term which is not legal but in light of his attack on birth right citizenship and the Supreme Court’s culpability in allowing him to exercise unfettered executive functions, who would stop him? So the belief that we can simply vote them out of office is questionable.