Democrats Can Win Elections... But They're Lousy At Politics

Just Because You Win A Battle Doesn't Mean You've Won The War

I often criticize the Democratic Party for its failure to execute a coherent media/communications strategy, and in the course of doing so the most frequent push back I receive is the fact that the party has won elections. After all, President Joe Biden won in 2020, President Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012, while Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote as they were denied the White House. There are also the midterm election victories in 2006 and 2018, so what’s the problem?

But my counterargument is that those victories, particularly in 2008 and 2020, while clearly significant and legislatively consequential, are not the overall war. You can win a battle, decisively, and still lose the overall war.

I think that Democrats have an annoying habit of powering down after these electoral successes in a way that allows the right to make gains in public sentiment and raw political power that nonetheless allow them to advance just at a time when they should be in retreat. The right understands that the battle over political power in the United States is a long slog, and that even when they lose in spectacular fashion they still retain the power to set the stakes and parameters of the wider conflict. Much to their favor.

After John McCain lost to Obama in 2008, the biggest thumping at the presidential level since 1996, the right spent the political equivalent of about two weeks wondering how they lost. Then they got over it and began a concerted campaign to undermine Obama. The right was practically handing out tri-corner hats and yammering about tea bagging people before Obama had even gotten comfortable behind the Resolute desk.

At the same time, Obama essentially began winding down the campaign machine he had steered to victory and wasted his time cajoling Republicans to support the stimulus and health care reform. They responded to his olive branch by calling him a socialist, a foreigner, and a tyrant. Then we got 2010 and a Democratic disaster.

By a similar token, after Biden defeated Trump, while his administration’s legislation has been far more progressive and expansive than Obama’s, Biden and much of the Democratic leadership nonetheless have taken their feet off of the gas pedal. As Republicans filled the air with nonsense narratives about an “open border” and “Bidenflation” and disappearing the gigantic mess that Trump left behind, the party ceded the rhetorical ground to them.

This is just disgustingly bad politics, and it can live in perfect harmony with good, progressive legislation and policy (as Biden has largely done in office).

Of course a compliant and complicit media plays a huge role in this dynamic, but begging and pleading with the press to “do better,” while well intentioned, is a fool’s errand. We have to go to war with the broken and often corrupt mainstream media we have.

What would “good” politics entail in these situations? If we haven’t learned a single thing from Donald Trump, it is this: Never shut up. Of course we’re tired of hearing his bloviating and whining, but because of his super-sized ego he always believes he has the best and brightest take on everything under the sun. It really doesn’t matter that he is wrong about that, and table for a second the notion that his noxious message turns off many.

In this clip from “Patton,” George C. Scott as General George S. Patton crows about defeating Germany’s Erwin Rommel, because he read Rommel’s book about tank tactics and is now using it against him:

Democrats and liberals need to learn to never shut up. Every day they should be burying reporters under an avalanche of punchy press releases, social media posts, video clips, viral legislative proposals, soundbites, media availabilities and the like. And the content for those messages is almost mind-numbingly simple.

Tell the public how much the other guy sucked, will suck, and continues to suck, and also tell them what a great job you did and how, if they keep backing you, what a spectacular job you’ll keep doing.

For Donald Trump this means nonsense like his stupid “wall” and ranting about windmills that kill birds. But for Democrats and liberals this means real, concrete things.

Trump let COVID run wild. It killed hundreds of thousands, it tanked the economy. Biden successfully deployed vaccines and passed a slew of legislation that has cut unemployment and sparked a manufacturing boom.

Trump presented a disgraceful image for America in the world. Bowing to dictators and laughing with autocrats. Biden has advocated for American values and locked arms with America’s democratic allies.

Trump’s border wall was a ridiculous joke that doesn’t work. He abused migrant families and stole their kids. Democrats back immigration reform. They don’t demonize these families. They praise their contributions to collective American success.

And so forth. Just because you steal what works for Trump doesn’t mean you have to lie or come across like a buffoon.

But the key is never shutting up. Never powering down. Never allowing the right to have unfettered access to the microphone, leading the press to uncritically regurgitate their nonsense.

Sure, it stinks that the media has largely abdicated its rule in adjudicating the objective truth and can only be bothered to report every story as if it has two, equally viable, “sides.” But we can either allow the right’s story to be the only one that is told, or Democrats/liberals can be fierce advocates for reality, never shutting up about how bad things are with the right, how bad things could get with the right, and how much better they have been for more people — even including the super rich — under more progressive leadership.

The bottom line, is don’t let the fact that you win an election allow you to think you’ve cracked the code. It’s one thing to win when the memory of George W. Bush’s murderous march across the Middle East is still top of mind, or when Trump is yammering about injecting ourselves with bleach to prevent COVID, it’s a whole other matter to win the less flashy, yet just as important, battles in between.

Those skirmishes are what truly sets the table for the wider conflict. Wining those smaller, yet cumulatively important conflicts, makes it easier to enshrine the vaunted progressive policy that Democrats profess to care so much about.

If that’s the goal, which means more than slapping the band-aid of a (necessary) election win on top of a large festering wound (conservatism), then you have to get in the mud and do politics. All the time.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977

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Kal recently had a visit with Nori, my friends’ Shih Tzu. They played a lot but Kal has a lot of “only dog” energy when Nori is around and acts like I’m ignoring him because another dog is stealing focus. As an only child myself, I can sympathize.