Moocher States And The Fight For The Soul Of The Democratic Party
The Fight Needs To Start Now
(Two things - buy my book and listen to The Scrimshaw Show)
Last week, New Jersey Democrat and general jackass Josh Gottheimer put out a series of tweets and comments which referred to the House repealing the State And Local Tax deduction cap as a victory for states like his own, and (more controversially) a victory against “moocher states”, and all of Twitter lost its mind. And, of course, everyone’s wrong.
Actually, let’s be fair here – everyone is actually half right, but they’re all missing the fucking point.
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Gottheimer is an asshole, and his Moocher State tweet is needlessly divisive, let’s be clear. It’s also not fucking important. Why is it that Gottheimer, who is very clearly playing politics for his voters back home, is scolded for the damage of his quip by red-state and red-district Democrats, but these same people expect national Democrats to accept pro-lifers and conservatives because that’s what the politics back home dictates? Is it because they’re soulless hypocrites? Of course it is.
Gottheimer is playing politics for his voters, who just voted for the GOP Governor’s candidate three weeks ago. For some reason, the same people who preach the tolerance of local circumstances have change their tunes because the message this time is one that hits their ears badly, as if it doesn’t make every Black or Hispanic or Gay Democrat cringe to consider the kinds of people that rural Democrats want to nominate, all in the name of electability. I would be surprised by this, but it’s not surprising.
In the same way coastal elites are mocked for their lack of understanding of rural voters, rural and red state Democrats don’t understand the politics of the Ancestrally R suburbs. In the same way it is hard to explain to someone who has lived their entire lives in New York or San Francisco how the South operates in a way that leaves them with an understanding better than caricature, it is hard for those who have never experienced life in and around (overwhelmingly white) suburban wealth to understand it.
The problem with the Moocher States discourse is it is a fight about the two Americas without having the fight about the right thing. Those in red states and red districts want the rest of the party to understand the world they live in and to bite their tongue when those members have to do what they have to do for the good of electing Democrats, but there is no willingness to similarly understand the world that Gottheimer et al live in and represent. If you actually want to have the fight, have it properly.
The red-state and red-district Democrats do have a point that the national party has failed them. The reason Billie Sutton lost in 2018 is probably that the Democratic Party hasn’t spent a fucking dime in South Dakota since the 2014 Senate race, and even then, it was a drive-by operation. There is no institutional memory, no talented staffers who remember what it’s like to win races there, and no concern. Doug Jones winning – even against Roy Moore – was a miracle, because of the same atrophy that took place inside the Alabama state party. Party building is always promised, and never delivered, because it is a thing that is seen as something to do when there’s nothing else to do – and something always comes.
Where they’re wrong is whether any of this would matter. Maybe Billie Sutton wins, and maybe the GOP have veto-proof majorities in a few less states, such that the rare times we do win red-state Governorships we can actually use the veto, but to think that state party organizations are really going to matter much is delusion. Would we maybe have won Iowa 2 last year if the Iowa Democrats were better prepared? Probably, it was 6 fucking votes, but it’s worth noting Democrats lost close contests up and down California, which has one of the better state party operations. Sometimes the coinflips don’t go your way, it’s how this shit works.
Where those who got all up in arms about the Gottheimer tweet miss the mark is twofold. First, shut the fuck up. It’s one Congressman, who is (I hate to repeat myself here) a jackass. Just let the pitch go, instead of amplifying it. “Coastal elites” have had to swallow a lot worse from conservative Democrats, both now and in the recent past. Get over your feelings. Secondly, and much more substantively, they need to actually put forward a prospective strategy for national Democrats to follow, and they can’t. We need to show red-state and red-district Democrats “respect” and avoid “judgement”, but what is the policy agenda or the messaging agenda they actually want?
Ask some, and they want a less strident appeal to social liberalism, they want to return to 90s policy on abortion, and they want to never talk about gay rights (and, even less so, trans rights). Others won’t articulate a vision, because they want all the same things as the coastal elites but to not admit so, because the theory is that it’s national Democrats having bad vibes that costs votes, not the fact that the Democratic Party is the most stridently pro-abortion rights and pro-gay rights it has ever been.
If you want to water down the Democratic Party’s firm stances on either of those questions, say so. If you want to return the party to the 90s consensus on abortion – Safe, Legal, and Rare – and to put gay rights into a box and never speak of it again, then have the courage of your convictions and argue for it. If you’re not willing to do either of those things, then you’re not actually interested in a conversation about how Democrats can radically do better with social conservatives.
If you want to claim Democrats will lose the Midwest by alienating rural, cultural conservatives, why is it legitimate political strategy to centre the discourse on the 44% of Wisconsin voters, 40% of Michigan voters, and the 40% of Pennsylvania voters who think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, as opposed to the majorities who think it should be legal? Why is it that the benefits of the embrace of social liberalism – Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire all swinging more left in 2020 than Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania – is always ignored? Why is it that the coastal elites are always admonished for advocating for a political strategy that matches their preferred outcomes, but rural, red-state and red-district Democrats are taken at face value in a way that suburbanites aren’t?
At some point the Democratic Party has to accept what it is, and what it isn’t. It has to make a choice, to be a halfway house of anti-Republicanism or a fighting force for a specific kind of America and Americans. If the red-state brigade want to bitch and moan about the Gottheimer tweet, they can do so at their leisure. Starting the fight that Democrats need to have, about which road they want to take, is more important. The next Democratic win will either look like 2020’s trends on steroids, or a throwback map that more closely resembles 2012. The only people who will decide that is the Democratic Party figuring out what it is and what it wants to be.
The Moocher States tweet is a distraction about the fight Democrats need to have. They need to have it now, and my advice to those outraged by Gottheimer is to think long and hard about what they actually want, and why their answers so far are so lacking.