More heart and grit
When a Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) or a Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) stand up and call out Republican BS or CEO excess, it’s like a breath of fresh air to liberal politics. Not Jon Stewart brashness, exactly, but not the usual business-as-usual politics that is too easy for the press to ignore.
Nerds. Maybe it’s because we’re nerds, rarely sure enough of ourselves to go straight at the opposition or stand up for ourselves. Democrats wanting to be liked are forever second-guessing themelves. Republicans will settle for being feared. Why else all the posing with guns? On one side of this Lord of the Flies narrative, Ralph and Piggy try to maintain order and improve living conditions on the island while Jack and his spear-armed tribe cohere around fear of the Beast (any real or imagined threat).
The press preferences flash over substance and pays more attention to the former. Digby observed yesterday that the press under-reports Joe Biden’s economic accomplishments because he “hasn’t been entertaining enough for them.”
Piggy wore spectacles. Jack’s “warriors” made spectacle.
Brian Beutler this morning goes straight at “finger-in-the-wind style analysis rooted in little more than the media’s sense that Things Seem Bad For Democrats On TV.” Beutler sees its roots in “the clash between insecure liberalism and kayfabe conservatism.” But the press also reflects “Democratic neurosis and artificial Republican aggression” back to the world, Beulter writes:
A toughness schtick has been integral to every Republican campaign and strategy I’ve ever covered, but it has reached cartoonish levels in the Trump era. It’s visible in their efforts to spare Donald Trump from prosecution, their “don’t make me hurt you” threats of tit-for-tat retribution in response to any measure of accountability, and Trump’s constant lying about polls.
Sometimes it’s so effective at warping political junkies’ sense of what’s what that they retroactively confuse the facade for reality. Ahead of the 2022 election, polls showed Democrats holding up surprisingly well, particularly given the historical pattern of incumbent parties losing badly in midterms. Republicans had just overturned the right to abortion, and fielded Big Lie election deniers for high office in key swing-states. Survey data said Democrats were poised to benefit. Republicans responded with a blitz of propaganda focused on crime (which has fallen under President Biden from its Trump-year highs) and inflation (which was actually elevated at the time). Elite Democrats were spooked; many of them second-guessed their campaigns for playing to the pro-choice, pro-democracy base. The distortion was so severe that when Democrats crushed expectations, observers stipulated that the polls must have been wrong. But the polls were right! The discourse was wrong.
Democrats attributed Tom Suozzi’s NY-03 victory “to his conservative bona fides,” writes Beutler, while Republicans beat their chests and swore they’d win back the seat when the fall campaign shifts, New York GOP chair Ed Cox said, to “Joe Biden and Democrats’ disastrous open-border, soft-on-crime policies.” But it’s so much bad faith and false bravado.
There’s plenty of Republican faithlessness out there, Beutler continues, but it’s not wise to chalk it all up to posturing. “A puffy chest … is not a concrete promise to commit atrocities.” Some may be them playing mind games with Democrats. But when “they promise to purge ‘vermin’ or intern immigrants or cheer Vladimir Putin on as he marches into NATO countries … we should still take them at their word.”
Democrats may in some instances benefit from setting expectations low. They may, in fact, playact at losing to galvanize their voters. But it just as easily risks demoralizing their base while overconfidence invites complacency.
But losing is demoralizing, feeling like you’re losing is both demoralizing and disorienting. When you’re not actually losing, it makes you prone to errors—like changing the theme of a campaign, downplaying issues that benefit your party (abortion rights, democracy protection) in order to increase the salience of issues like crime and immigration that galvanize white reactionaries.
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But even if you can’t see through the nonsense every single time, healthy skepticism of GOP rhetoric and healthy confidence in your own values are available to all of us. They’re more productive than chasing neurotic self-doubt into the fetal position every time a Republican pretends to be triumphant or angry.
Older Democrats, in particular, I’ve observed, fret like abused spouses over what Republicans might do or say in response to liberal statements or policies. They tend to be policy liberals and cautious campaign conservatives, always trying to appeal to the middle without inflaming the right. That is a mistake. For one, because it is not a good look. Voters seeking leaders watch for cues that tell them this candidate or that one will have their backs. They want heroes. How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? They’ll root again and again for an underdog with heart and grit.
The irony of MAGA is that Trump is just an insecure bully who kayfabes confidence (some of his lieutenants are actual authoritarian bullies). MAGA followers are attracted like medieval peasants to promises of protection by their liege-lords while deluding themselves that fealty to cartoonish tough guys makes them American Übermensch. That and AR-15s.
Democrats can do better than feeding delusion. But they’ll need to display more heart and grit. That’s why Raskin and Porter make us cheer.
A good message engages your liberal base, persuades the middle, and alienates the right. It draws a contrast voters can see. Milquetoast doesn’t do that. Drew Westen, author of “The Political Brain,” chuckled when I told him a key lesson I took from his book on messaging came down to this: If you’re not pissing ‘em off, you’re not doing it right.
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