Democrats: Stop Repeating The GOP's Broken View Of The World

Embrace Your Own Stuff, It's Popular

If a man walked up to you on the street and said out of the blue, “Despite what people are claiming, I do not beat my wife, and in fact I protect her and all women,” the first thing that would likely come to your mind is the notion that this guy is probably some sort of abuser. Yet somehow in the realm of American politics, Democrats think they’re using winning messages when they essentially repeat conservative/Republican propaganda, even with the edges sanded down.

Here’s a post from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that is illustrative of this tendency: “Republicans can’t say that the border is an emergency but then refuse to take action. Democrats will make it clear which party is working to fix our broken border, and which party is conspiring to make the border worse.”

This is supposed to be something of a dunk, a “gotcha” that says “Republicans say they’re tough on border, but when push comes to shove they are not, and Democrats are the real tough guys on the border, vote for us for border toughness.”

But this is a failure on several fronts. First off, its just factually wrong. We have problems at the border and with overall immigration policy that need to be remedied, but the border — southern or northern — is by no means “broken.” Every day, Border Patrol agents are at the border and are constantly apprehending people attempting to make unauthorized crossings.

But the real problem with this statement — and it’s more than just immigration where this is an issue — it reinforces decades of right-wing propaganda about border policies. In the minds of the average Republican voter, when a Democrat is in the White House, our border is a wide open highway where the most savage brown-skinned hordes from across the world are not just given open passage, but also gifted advance access to the American welfare state and apparently the right to vote. None of this is true, of course, but it is what the right believes and it is a major motivator behind their efforts to get out the vote.

It’s morally bankrupt and politically tone-deaf to reinforce this broken framing of events. Talking about the border, crime, and foreign policy in martial terms, or emphasizing the need to “trim the fat” and “cut the deficit” when it comes to budgetary issues, simply reinforces the conservative propaganda machine that has surrounded us from decades. We have heard from the RNC, Fox News, and yes, the New York Times forever and ever about the purported supremacy of this world view, only to see it disproven time and time again at the polls (Republicans have won precisely one presidential election majority in more than 36 years).

Some believe that Democrats have a tendency to do this sort of thing because far too many of them inherently cling to conservative beliefs and are speaking the truth they hold. This could be true, but I think more often than not it’s even dumber than that.

Democratic leaders and many of the people who bankroll the liberal/progressive movement have an almost religious belief in opinion polling and focus groups. I think a lot of this stems from former President Bill Clinton’s political success in the early 1990s and the connection between his wins and molding the Democratic Party to what polls best. And surely, I’m not arguing that Democrats and liberals should hold on to deeply unpopular views that don’t poll well.

But these things should be part of the consideration when it comes to crafting messages and policy, but not the sole determinant. They are inherently flawed and making a message/policy requires some sort of leadership.

When the general public is asked for its position on hot button issues, the vast majority have not spent any considerable amount of time thinking about it. They tend to reflect the world they know and hear about. There’s the rub: A population constantly hearing about issues via a right-wing frame is going to be extremely likely to consider the right-wing position as the “common sense” option, particularly when they hear few dissenting voices making an alternative case.

There is something of a shared mentality among many Democratic Party leaders that we are perennially trapped in 1984, with a red wave of Ronald Reagan conservatism always on the verge of being released. But Reagan is long dead and so are many of his voters. Basing your rhetoric around polluted public opinion as a way of staving off another 1984 is a dead end.

The counterargument is that by adopting a kinder, gentler version of conservative rhetoric, Democrats will nullify conservative attacks on them. But there’s little evidence of this. Both Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden have, from time to time, talked about things like the border being broken and in need of being “secured,” or that we need to approach the federal budget like a family budget and “tighten our belts.”

Surely this has cut off conservatives at the knees, right? Certainly the right hasn’t spent thousands of hours referring to Biden and Obama as “open borders, tax and spend” liberals, right? Yeah. Exactly.

If the right is going to make the same attacks no matter what you say and do, while still activating their voters and polluting the minds of the wider voting public, Democrats should give the country something different.

And in so many cases, different is popular. Most Americans are not xenophobes who think women are second-class citizens, think we need to slash Social Security and Medicare, and who want to repeal Obamacare or safety standards for vital products like food. They recoil at these notions. So while Democrats are too often regurgitating a “lite” version of what the right can inject directly into their veins via Fox News, they leave a lot of morally superior and effective message and policy on the table.

Instead of repeating what hateful people say with no hope of flipping hateful voters, appeal to the majority — the people who voted for Obama (twice!) and for Biden in droves. Those pluralities also backed Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. There are just more of them out there. And they don’t want to hear tired and long disproven Republican attacks.

They want something new and aspirational that appeals to their better angels. They can get darkness and terror and loathing for their fellow human from the other guys. Offer them something better. And its also good politics. As a bonus.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977

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