Sunday reading - Dems should embrace fear over stability and results

In between a lot of hoops this weekend, I found this excellent article from Crooked Media's Brian Beutler on how DC Dems still aren't doing enough to take on another type of Madness in 2022.

Read @brianbeutler on the travesty that is "Democrats deliver." That slogan is universally recognized as sucking, but to develop anything better Dems would have to acknowledge *that their opponents are trying to destroy democracy*, which would be impolite. https://t.co/qC9N5JsjET

— David Roberts (@drvolts) March 19, 2022

Beutler notes that "2022 is better than we had under Trump in 2020" isn't a relevant message to many voters when Trump isn't in power or on the ballot in 2022.

...This isn’t a presidential election; if it were Democrats could probably just point to Donald Trump and most voters would know exactly whom to vote for and why. Under current circumstances, they’re going to need to be able to point to good things they would do, or bad things they would prevent or undo, if they keep their concurrent majorities, and they can’t do that by pointing backward to their mixed record of advancing bread-and-butter legislative initiatives in this Congress.

That’s why a kitchen-table issue campaign, even a combative one, will be evasive of or oblivious to the real flashpoints in American politics. For instance, this new ad from Alex Lasry is worthy for painting Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) as an extremist.

Now I am highly skeptical on Lasry, as the son of a billionaire NY hedge funder isn't exactly someone that should be trusted to demand the change we need in this country. But I will say that beating Ron Johnson this November won't have a lot to do with policy - it's going to be a fistfight where cementing images (whether through facts or misinformation) and gut feelings will be more important.

Beutler goes on to say that while Johnson and the GOP are awful enough on policy, voters are largely going to ignore that and ask what Dems have done when they have been in "charge" (even though a rigged Supreme Court, screwed-up Senate rules and a couple of crooked Dem Senators really haven't left them in charge). And while things are clearly better than they were at the end of 2020, it's nowhere near enough to win over low-info/mis-info voters or bystanders who care about many other things ahead of politics.

Plus, a lot of voters won't directly see the effects if GOPs win Congress in 2022, since Biden will be able to block anything that gets out of Congress.

Ron Johnson absolutely wants to repeal Obamacare and tax the poor, and phase out Social Security and Medicare, and voters deserve to know all that. But in the unlikely event that Republicans take both the House and Senate and pass bills to do those things on a partisan basis, Biden will just veto them, with panache. Democrats have been giddy since Johnson admitted he still wants to repeal Obamacare, and since Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) released the new GOP agenda of soaking poor and retired people. But Democrats have run on health-care, against regressive right-wing economic policy, in every midterm since Obamacare passed, and it succeeded only once, in 2018, when Republicans had actually come within a hair’s breadth of repealing Obamacare, and probably would’ve if they’d retained their majorities. The same strategy got Democrats crushed, twice, in 2010 and 2014 when the threat to health care was abstract. Even though Republicans at the time were foaming at the mouth about Obamacare, and Paul Ryan was brandishing a GOP agenda every bit as radical as Rick Scott’s.

So Beutler says that Dems need to have spectacle that grabs people's attention, and to play a little "divide and conquer" themselves. This includes using the power that voters have given them to tell the truth about what kind of destructive BS Republicans will do, and publicly investigate the crookedness and sedition that they have already done.

What actually will change if Republicans control Congress? For starters, they’ll engage in reckless procedural brinkmanship, taking hostages like appropriations deadlines and the debt limit, and using them to mug Biden who (if he learned anything at all from 2009 - 2016) won’t negotiate with them. It isn’t “policy” that makes the case for Democrats, it’s a tried and true Republican commitment to harming America when the president is a Democrat for political gain. They will launch bad-faith investigations or even impeachment inquiries (over Hunter Biden, or whatever the new Benghazi happens to be in 2023) and, most critically, they will gain the power to steal the next election.

“Democrats Deliver” doesn’t speak to any of that. Neither does picking apart a GOP policy agenda that Republicans will simply lie about and claim they don’t support. To clarify the stakes for voters, short of a new slogan, Democrats could subpoena Kevin McCarthy and other congressional Republicans who possess evidence about Trump’s failed coup; when they resist the subpoenas Dems could run a “WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?!” campaign about the urgency of defeating a party that would coverup crimes and corruption. But in the real world, Democrats have reportedly taken that option off the table. They could devote more investigative resources to more Republican corruption scandals, and haul Merrick Garland up to the Hill to explain why two Trump-loyal prosecutors held over from Bill Barr’s DOJ have been given free rein to harass Democrats and their families for the purposes of creating propaganda for the GOP, while the statutes of limitations on Trump’s crimes lapse, and others go uninvestigated.

Too many DC Dems believe that "governance" means "keep things as stable as possible". It's a strategy that works in relatively low-stakes times, but not in 2022, when Republicans have already tried to reverse the last presidential election, and will certainly try to do it again in 2024 if given the chance (at both the state and federal levels).

We also know that Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly said it was OK for Donald Trump to withhold aid to Ukraine against Russian aggression, and that GOPs like Ron Johnson have openly spoken Russian talking points, and was given plenty of social media help by Russians to win in Wisconsin in 2016.

In addition, Johnson amplified lies and misinformation about COVID that have been proven false time and again. It should never be forgotten that Johnson (ab)used his power in the Homeland Security Committee by having hearings on horse paste quackery instead of the plot that culminated on January 6, 2021.

Many took ivermectin instead of a vaccine — some left or refused to go to a hospital to take this and die at home.

People lied about this for a full year. And for what? Social media followers? Substack donations? They will never face a single consequence.https://t.co/4gbhi5GoA3

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 20, 2022

All of this seems pretty relevant today, doesn't it? And will resonate with voters IF IT IS HAMMERED INTO HEADS NOW AND CONTINUOUSLY.

A message of "Dems got things done" isn't going to work when a lot of Americans aren't seeing things be different enough, and are not feeling great about the way relative inertia, even if it's the Republicans (and a handful of crooked Dem Senators) that are causing those concerns.

People vote with their guts and their emotions, and telling the truth about what a fascist wreck Republicans would make of things in both DC and Madison is what will break through. Being nice, positive and "going high" isn't going to be enough this November, no matter how true it is. That strategy got killed in 2010 and it shouldn't come back any time soon.