They’re going to be smeared as socialists no matter what size the reconciliation bill is. The only option here is to pass the bill and play offense.
Damn right.
Democrats are running out of time to prove they can get things done, writes Michael Tomasky at The New Republic. The next few weeks could determine whether they hang onto Congress after 2022, and that was never a good bet:
The party’s moderate gang has proven to be a bigger problem here than the progressives in the caucus, which is interesting, because a lot of the media assumes that it’s the left that is unruly and insurgent and inflexible and ridiculously idealistic. I don’t know how people will vote, but I haven’t heard a discouraging word out of AOC, and Bernie Sanders is being a loyal soldier despite the fact that the bill is $2.5 trillion less than he wanted. How soon some forget: It’s usually the moderates who make trouble. Remember the eleventh-hour preening over abortion coverage in Obamacare, led by then-Michigan Representative Bart Stupak? They nearly killed the bill.
Today’s moderates—first and foremost Joe Manchin, but many others—are going to follow the same script. Why do moderates do this? I think I know the answer: They’re acting on some well-worn assumptions about elections—midterm elections, in particular—that are now outdated. In sum, moderate Democrats are always looking for opportunities to distance themselves from the national party. That made some political sense as recently as a decade ago. These days, however, I think there is no separating oneself from the national party. It’s futile.
Democrats in conservative-leaning districts need to hold them to hold the House. Nancy Pelosi knows that too well. Lose that majority and the debate “isn’t between $3.5 trillion and $1.5 trillion. It’s between zero and zero,” writes Tomasky.
Swing district moderates worry that if they vote for $3.5 trillion, they’re going to spend all of next year getting tagged as socialists in grossly distorted 30-second attack ads. They’re not wrong. But guess what? They’re going to spend all of next year getting tagged as socialists in grossly distorted 30-second attack ads if they vote for $1.5 trillion, too. No one should be surprised if they get attacked as socialists even if they block every dollar from being spent. That’s the nature of politics these days.
Yet, Democrats in many swing districts have not adapted. They think by keeping their party at arm’s length they somehow will be spared having Pelosi, that notorious San Francisco liberal, or AOC-the-socialist hung around their necks like an albatross. Good luck with that.
State senator John Snow, a Democrat from the western tip of North Carolina, was about as moderate as they came. Directly and through groups he funded, Art Pope, North Carolina’s own mini-Koch brother, threw nearly a million dollars at Snow in the 2010 election. One of the two dozen mass mailings targeting Snow, wrote Jane Mayer The New Yorker, was reminiscent of the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988:
“The attacks just went on and on,” Snow told me recently. “My opponents used fear tactics. I’m a moderate, but they tried to make me look liberal.” On Election Night, he lost by an agonizingly slim margin—fewer than two hundred votes.
Specifically, Snow lost by 161 votes in a district spanning 8 rural counties.
Democrats and Republicans once had more diversity of views in their ranks, Tomasky explains. But since the Gingrich years, elections are all nationalized. Politics may be local, but elections aren’t anymore. Cable news has seen to that. Whatever happens inside the Beltway will come back to haunt candidates in congressional districts.
Let it the $3.5 trillion budget bill be something to boast about. Then boast, dammit!
Second, I’d argue that there is far less benefit to distancing from the party than there used to be. There are fewer true swing voters. But there are a lot of potential base voters out there to be registered and urged to the polls. And the best way to get those people to register and vote is, without question, to be able to go to them next year and say: look, I got you paid family leave! Dental coverage in Medicare! Free community college! Child tax credit! I voted for these things. My opponent would have opposed them.
I understand that moderates want to negotiate the number down a little, just so they can go home and say, “Hey, I negotiated it down a little.” But they have to commit to a yes vote, and then they have to go back to their states and districts and spike the damn football. They need to boast about what they voted for, show some pride, and play offense. This applies even to Manchin. He’s a special case because he’s not just in a swing state; he’s in the Trumpiest state in the country. But the people of West Virginia can make great use of the things in these bills as much as people from anywhere else. Perhaps even more so.
The problem is Democrats believe in good government and think others do or should. They behave as if these truths will be self-evident to voters. They won’t. Spike the damn football!
Plus, don’t argue your policies in public. Talk about outcomes.
To refresh:
“When we are walking through the grocery aisle and want to buy brownies,” she begins, “what is the image on the brownie box? The brownie! What’s not staring you in the face? The recipe! … We need to stop messaging our policy and talk about what our policy achieves.”
Then repeat.
It’s the political equivalent of classic speechwriting advice. When you’re done, tell ’em you told ’em.