Jane Coaston on Democrats, Republicans, and Freedom

Jane Coaston is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times who describes herself as having “libertarian tendencies.” Coaston appeared on Reason‘s Just Asking Questions podcast during the 2024 Democratic National Convention to discuss the Democrats’ rebranding as the party of freedom while the Republicans are being pulled more and more to the right. In September, Coaston joined Crooked Media as host of the daily news podcast What A Day.

Q: What do you think of Democrats talking the language of freedom?

A: I think it’s rhetorically intelligent. It is very smart to be the people who are like, “We are normal moms and dads who love football, freedom, and faith, and we want to keep your freedoms intact. And these other strange people over here don’t want to do that.” That does not mean it is accurate.

I think that they’re going to continue using this messaging. I also think that the Norman Rockwell-esque version of freedom—from want, from fear—what that looks like is so appealing to people.

Q: Do you think Democrats will be able to pull off this rebrand successfully? People have proven that they have weirdly short memories with regard to COVID-19 when Democrats were the party of meddlesome people telling you how to live your life. Have we just totally forgotten all of this?

A: Yes, we have. If you go back to after the Spanish flu epidemic in the United States, what you see is 1919, 1920—gone. People didn’t want to talk about it. People didn’t want to think about it.

I think something else that’s coming up here is that a lot of Republicans responded to COVID by being like, “We’re going to run the fucking craziest person you’ve ever heard of in your entire life. Like Blake Masters. We’re going to have him record an ad in the desert massaging a German gun and then shooting it into a ravine and then that’s an ad.”

Republicans could have run someone who responded to COVID by talking about the need for limited government and the need for thinking through the impacts of policies on kids and what that would mean. That’s not what happened.

I do think that [the Democrats] are going to be able to move away from COVID because everybody wants to move away from COVID.

Q: There’s something quite disturbing about the types of things that a lot of this New Right feels the need to attack. For example, no-fault divorce or in vitro fertilization. There’s a bunch of issues that Republicans could ostensibly be running on right now, and instead they’re choosing to go after some of the most batshit things that nobody was asking for. But I wonder if Roe v. Wade actually being overturned now leads them to wonder what other things could possibly happen that before seemed unthinkable.

A: There is a sense of, “Is everything on the table?” Because you can always find somebody—Clarence Thomas might have said it in a dissent—you can always find somebody who’s prominent enough to be like, “Yeah, actually we should make marriage equality illegal again.” There’s always going to be somebody.

Q: What is a question that you think more people should be asking?

A: I would like people to be asking themselves: What can I be doing outside of politics that would benefit my family, my life, and my community? How can I be a less political entity?

Something I’ve really enjoyed is when you get to know someone who has very different political views from you, but you are—on this other subject—really pretty in kind.

Jeffrey Blehar, who writes for National Review, also hosts a music podcast. I’ve gone on to talk to him about Nine Inch Nails and Jimi Hendrix, and someday I will get the Bob Marley episode.

Social media is inherently flattening; people just become their politics. No. Go get really excited about [something]. I will never make fun of people who are super into anime or something like that. Go do that! What is something you can do to make yourself less politicized? Just, I don’t know, get a hobby.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

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