Responding to you-know-who’s big bill
Will he disappear if we say his name three times? Just asking.
I’m not used to considering advice from Susan Del Percio, but we’re clutching at straws here. She suggests Democrats may not be able to stop the Demogorgon’s budget bill in the U.S. Senate, but the fight can be useful for undercutting our GOP antagonists.
Del Percio provides a greatest hits version of the bill’s worst features, then some advice. This is Campaign 101: “In politics, one of the first things you want to do is define your opponent before they define you.”
Then what? “They should hammer the GOP on easy targets. Take, for example, the FAA.” With Memorial Day over, Americans with the nerve “will be taking to the not-so-friendly skies.“
Elon Musk is already damaged goods and effectively sidelined. He’s gone back to Tesla with his tail between his legs. He and DOGE took their chainsaw to public health and safety with Trump’s permission. Trump must own the results:
DOGE’s mission was supposed to be efficiency. So why didn’t it start by fixing the FAA’s antiquated computer equipment? Instead, it moved first to layoff staffers across the embattled agency including specialists in roles related to aviation safety.
Obviously, the FAA’s troubles did not begin with Trump. But Democrats should focus on what’s happening now. This Trump administration is treating people and our air travel safety like a formula on a spreadsheet. With recent polls showing American confidence in air safety is dipping, air safety is a simple and easy talking point.
And yes, that is just one small example. But there are many, many others. If Democrats can’t find a leader right now, they should at least find a message. For my money Michigan’s freshman senator, Elissa Slotkin, has nailed it when talking about her “war plan.” The former CIA analyst says the way to change her party’s “weak and woke” is to go with a “no-bullshit” approach. That’s exactly the energy Democrats need to harness as the humidity descends on the Hill.
If the FAA seems a stretch, find other elements to hammer away at. Recall that Sarah Palin turned “death panels” into a near ubiquitous Republican talking point against the Affordable Care Act through sheer force of wink-wink repetition. That non-feature of the bill was invented from a passage in the bill so obscure that when Jon Stewart asked former New York lieutenant governor, Betsy McCaughey, to flip to it in the copy she brought to the show, she couldn’t.
But just as Frank Luntz turned the estate tax into the “death tax,” Democrats can do the same here. Twist actual harmful features of the bill into caricatures as extreme as Beetlejuice and repeat them three times to the twelfth power (without the winking).
I just wish I had confidence that Democrats on the Hill could muster that level of message discipline.
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