Sorry Democrats, Politics Is Part Of The Job
Always. Be. Campaigning.
The Democratic Party has an outdated and outmoded way of looking at political leadership. The group mindset that dominates the upper echelon of the party believes there are two separate functions. On one hand is policy, which is the day-to-day business of governing and legislating, the purportedly nonpartisan job of running things. On the other hand, there is politics, which is the dirty, nitty gritty marketing part of things that we must collectively engage in every two-to-four years.
This has not been true for a very long time. More than three decades ago in the early years of the 1990s, the notion of the “permanent campaign” became part of the public lexicon following the first election of President Bill Clinton. It wasn’t created by Clinton, but he was the most associated with the idea that politics and policy are the same giant ball of stuff. Clinton was frequently criticized for supposedly always operating in campaign mode, which seems quaint. Let’s not forget, Donald Trump held his 2020 nomination vote literally on the grounds of the publicly financed and operated White House.
In an ideal world, these two things would be separate. Leadership decisions and initiatives ideally wouldn’t have anything to do with crass political action. But we do not have the luxury of living in an ideal, fantasy world. We exist in the real world with all of its filth and grime.
The right learned to operate in eternal campaign mode long ago. Every issue that comes up in society, for better or worse, is analyzed for the role it can and cannot play in advancing the cause of conservatism and the Republican Party. Of course, since this is the right that we’re dealing with, things always go to the most absurd place, and they convince themselves of things like Taylor Swift’s romances being a part of a pro-Biden “psy-op.”
But they are correct to realize that politics doesn’t end on election day or when officials are sworn in to their positions. The campaign never ends. The stakes are now too high for there to be a convenient on/off switch for a campaign apparatus. Election day and the immediate aftermath is a time for acceleration, not deceleration.
The current media environment is a mess of anti-Biden/Democratic narratives that the right has laid down for longer than the time Biden has served in the presidency. They didn’t just come up with the notion overnight that Democrats are open borders leftist extremists who answer only to coastal elites. It wasn’t this calendar year when the right decided that Biden was either too old to live another day or a Machiavellian socialist/communist/Marxist/mafia kingpin. They have always been in the mode of selling these ideas, no matter how detached they are from reality. Some of them work, some of them go too far and are immediately dismissed by the public at large, but the right is always selling something.
Democrats wake up from their slumber in February or March of election years, madly in a panic, looking around as if surprised its an election year again. They slowly crank up the creaky electoral machine as if it had been frozen in amber since November of 2022 (it mostly has) and it spends the summer months ratcheting its way back up to full strength (they hope).
Sometimes it works out just fine. Democrats did great in 2020, outperformed expectations in 2022, and crushed it in 2012. But even when things work out fine, they are more of a mess than they need to be.
The official Democratic Party drives its diehard supporters to the edges of madness every cycle because the public is buried under a pile of right-wing excrement amplified by the mainstream media. There are few, if any Democratic/liberal counternarratives because there isn’t the pressing desire to make it happen. They can’t be bothered to deal with that until the last possible moment, because they’re “busy” governing.
Politics is part of the job of governing. It sucks. Life isn’t fair. Oh well. The presidency on down to the most local official is filled to the brim with “politics.” We’re not in an age (if we ever truly were) where the concept of governing can sit high in the clouds of Mount Olympus above us all, separated from the muck.
Leaders owe a debt to the people who put them in their jobs, to do whatever is legally within their power to make life more tolerable and satisfying for the rest of us. That means a wholehearted embrace of politics is not optional, it is a requirement. Win or lose, its something that Democrats need to finally come to terms with.
If you like this newsletter, please consider becoming a paying subscriber by clicking here to join. I won’t be putting any of my regular columns behind a paywall and they will always be free. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far!
— Oliver
Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977
Exclusive Kal-El Photo
This is the view from my home office most work days. It ain’t bad.
Somewhere along the line Dems seem to have forgotten that politics is about wielding power, not about being policy wonks obsessed with compromise. They beg for Republicans to be a reasonable opposition party that they can work with rather than seeing them as embodying a dangerous political movement that needs to be defeated.
Dems are still riding that “when they go low, we go high” business. They are winning elections by virtue of enough people realizing how horrific Trump & his admin were & will be.
If Repubs had any sense, they would’ve dumped Trump, united around a less controversial, less criminal Repub & could’ve likely beat Dems easily. That’s how bad Dems are with messaging and marketing.
The crazy thing is Dems are doing some decent work & getting good measurable results - but they market so poorly they 1) don’t really tell anyone what they’ve done except a few individual posts & 2) they don’t call out or stop Repubs from taking credit for their work & 3) they don’t use Repubs own words against them. It’s insanity.