Doomsplaining is in vogue. There is lots of it. I know a few people already who have relocated to other countries, are planning to, or are exploring their options. The New York Times Editorial Board, never a hair-on-fire bunch, recently declared “the Republic faces an existential threat” from the Trump-led Republican Party and its associated malcontents.
Cultural commentator Stephen Marche declares in The Guardian that the U.S. faces a grave legitimacy crisis. The country today “is, once again, headed for civil war, and, once again, it cannot bear to face it.” The left, he means. The right is already “preparing for a breakdown of law and order.” Meaning, the breakdown the right is fomenting.
Disruption from the ongoing pandemic surely is not helping. The fact that a significant portion of the country is delusional about the Jan. 6 insurrection is deeply unsettling.
A report from Robert Pape at the University of Chicago finds that the fervor of the Trump-ispired “American insurrectionist movement” has not waned as one might suspect a year after the insurrection:
A survey fielded by NORC, at the University of Chicago, discovered the following “that nine percent of Americans…believe the ‘Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency. More than a fourth of adults agree, in varying degrees, that, ‘The 2020 election was stolen, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.’”
Pape explained that “today’s 21 million adamant supporters of insurrection also have the dangerous potential for violent mobilization.” This just adds more worry as we approach the upcoming 2022 Mid-term elections and the 2024 Presidential election.
NORC also discovered that 8.1 percent of American adults share both of these two beliefs. They also asked about membership and support for militias and extremist groups. One million know someone in one of the groups, six million show support, seven million own a gun, and lastly three million have US military service.
Stories like these lead because they bleed (or promise to). The problem for the left is spending so much time (as I just did) focusing on the threat from the right without selling itself. Doomsaying is a downer. Rather than frightening people into immobility, we need to inspire them to action.
Digby posted Sunday on E.J. Dionne’s recommendation that Democrats run on democracy this year. Dionne wrote:
Democrats will face big losses unless they simultaneously win back middle-ground voters and mobilize their disheartened loyalists. Governing with urgency is a good place to start, but overcoming the midterm blues will require more. They must make the election about something that matters. If democracy isn’t worth fighting for, what is?
What is “democracy” to Americans, deep down? What elements do they embrace with heart-swelling pride that speak to their deepest ideals? What elements, if they went away, would they experience as a grievous loss, a serious “hit” to their exceptionalist myth?
Last month, Anat Shenker-Osorio visited with Dr. Volts (David Roberts) to discuss Democrats’ message fails. (They are many.) There is a pattern to how Shenker-Osorio frames messages that state a shared value, identify an enemy threatening it, and propose a path forward together. Rather than make 2022 about Democrats and Republicans, she suggested, progressives need to make the elections about the voters themselves.
Make voters the protagonists in this drama. Inspire defiance instead of fear. We beat back Trumpism in 2018, and in 2020, she says. We can do it again. (She is by nature an optimist, she says.) We need an optimistic message.
Shenker-Osorio summed up for Roberts [timestamp 1:22:00], “If Republicans think they are going to silence our voices and block our votes, they’ve got another thing coming. We showed up and we showed out in 2020, and we’re going to do it again. Not on our watch. Not in our state. Not in our country.”