Today’s newsletter by Dan Pfeiffer on how to make the GOP pay for this insanity:
I have seen this movie before, beat for beat.
In August of 2010, in the middle of the effort to pass the Affordable Care Act, Congress went home for a month-long recess. At every townhall and interaction with their constituents, they were bombarded with complaints from voters angry about the pending health care bill. Democrats were shaken. The process slowed as the party brainstormed a response to this backlash. More importantly, a media narrative was born. The Affordable Care Act became polarizing — something to fear. Previously, most Americans paid little attention to the arcane efforts towards health care reform. They learned about it from news coverage of people angrily screaming about the dangers of the bill.
We’ve since learned that much of that energy was “astro-turfed” by Republican groups funded by Right Wing billionaires like the Kochs and the Tea Party Movement. It was as much about the election of a Black president as it was the size and scope of government.
The angry townhalls are back. This time, voters are furious about the chaotic, clumsy, and counter-productive cuts from Elon Musk’s DOGE Commission.
I can guarantee that there has been no astroturfing of these. They are 100% organic grassroots.
Pfeiffer has some ideas about the growing alarm among average citizens:
Democrats need to channel and communicate this dissatisfaction. Back in 2017 when Trump was trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, there were several efforts to organize attendance at GOP townhalls — oftentimes this meant simply publicizing the details of when and where the townhalls were being held. I have no doubt that many of the same Democratic groups that did this in 2017 are doing it again, but this is priority number one. We need support from the highest echelons of the Democratic Party as well as media personalities with platforms.
He points out that Republicans eventually stopped having town halls at all and that means the Democrats have to start having them. He writes:
Democratic presidential hopefuls (of which there are many) should go to places where the DOGE cuts are most impactful like Atlanta, Georgia, Birmingham, Alabama, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina and hold townhalls. They should be real townhalls. Open invitation. Don’t pack the crowd with supporters. Prepare for uncomfortable conversations and protestors. The drama will draw coverage and conversation. Lean into the risk.
Yes! Lean into the risk! Get attention and have some faith that if you are in the right people will see that.
He also makes the point that it’s important to be specific about what’s happening. Some of us are moved by paeans to “democracy” but most people need to see what these freaks are doing in detail and often how it affects real people. Using that list in the graph above can help people focus on specific issues. But he warns that people (including politicians) should concentrate on the issues they feel most passionately about and not sound like they’re parroting polling,
He also makes the case that we should center Musk, who people like even less than Trump. (People have heard the complaints about Trump for a decade already.) Musk is an attention magnet and attention is now the currency of the political realm, for better or worse.
All of this sounds reasonable to me but I suspect there has not yet been enough carnage to really get people’s full attention. But it’s coming. And we should be prepared for it.