Sunday Strategy: Democracy Protection And Democratic Messaging

How To Win The Fight That Matters

She would always scoff.

Anytime anyone ever said that Donald Trump was a fascist, my mother - my Canadian, (mostly) NDP voting mother - would scoff at the notion. "He's obviously a scumbag," she'd say, "but come on now, he's not a fascist." No matter what happened - at least, until January 6th, that is - she would staunchly refuse to ever think of him as one.

She wasn't ignorant of how terrible the GOP were, or how terrible he was, either - she knew it all, mostly against her best wishes. She knew about the corruption and the racism and all of it, but what she also thought at every step was that he can't be a fascist, because people would stop that. My mother wanted to believe that there was some large number of Republicans who would abandon Trump, because they would be unable to put up with his personal odiousness even to accomplish conservative things. They know better than to support someone like that, she would always say. She never said it this way, but her reluctance to accept Trump and the GOP as fascists, as opposed to merely odious conservatives, stems from a belief in America itself - fascism isn't a thing that can happen there. It was a thing that happened in the past, and despite being a woman who has an interest in American history, and the less savoury aspects of it, she could never wrap her head around the idea of Trump as a fascist, no matter how much he showed it.

And, no matter how true it might be, neither will the American people.

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I'm not here to argue with anybody about whether or not the GOP are a threat to American democracy or not. I'm not arguing about this, because whether they are or not is irrelevant to the point I'm about to make. Democrats need to stop making this supposed threat to democracy a cornerstone of their messaging, because plainly, nobody believes you. Nobody would ever believe it, because it would ruin the idea of America as this glorious country where everyone can put their differences aside and sing kumbaya. The logical consequence of believing the other side are fascists is thinking that the voters who voted for that party enabled that fascism - a difficult pill to swallow for anyone who knows anyone who voted for Trump or the GOP. Put aside the shame in being in a country where 74-odd Million voted for a party you believe to be fascist, but when it's your brother, your sister, your father or mother, the best man at your wedding or just the friend you hoped would do that for you, it hurts more. I've said this before, but one of my close friends supported McCain in '08 and cast his first Presidential ballot for Romney in 2012, and that's fine. Had he voted for Trump once or twice, I have no idea if I'd still be able to call him a close friend, because I believe the GOP to be a party beyond repair, and beyond legitimate difference of opinion. They are, plainly, fascists. But I understand that it is harder to get to that view if you'd be simultaneously condemning people you love.

The first goal of Democrats has to be to win the House in 2022 at this point, because a retained House - and a bolstered Senate majority, which a national environment where Democrats hold the House would entail - would be able to do quite a bit even without Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema. This has to be the goal - keeping the House, winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, and then using the 2 extra years of a trifecta to add DC and Puerto Rico as states and raise the minimum wage to $15, in addition to whatever else the party prioritizes. This window exists, even if the chances of it take a hit every time someone talks about how the GOP winning another election is the end of American democracy. It might be true, but if the voters don't believe it, then it just sounds insane.

Joe Biden won an election, and in so doing, won two states with total GOP control in Georgia and Arizona. It is not unreasonable to look at 2020 as an example where American democracy held up - where the President lost and officials in his own party didn't back him when he tried to claim that black was white. Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp may have ended their careers in the name of American democracy, and so the claims that the GOP will steal 2024 ring hollow. Democrats then won two Senate seats in Georgia in a runoff when they had never won a runoff before, and because of these two things, the claims about some impending doom seem like exaggerations. Yes, January 6th happened, but everyone has just moved on from it.

I get the appeal of this sort of messaging, I do, but it fails for the same reason the Clinton and Biden campaigns touting their bipartisan endorsement records failed. Theoretical threats of some potential future damage cause people to roll their eyes, as we saw in 2016. The repeated Democratic threat that the GOP would get rid of people's health insurance didn't cause voters to move away from the GOP, but the actual attempt to repeal Obamacare did move votes. It's why Rob Portman voted for DOMA in the 90s and flipped on gay marriage when his son came out to him, also, because it took the clarity of real consequence - and not theoretical consequence - for people to change their minds. "I've voted for Democrats my whole life, but I'm willing to give Trump a chance," was a common refrain in 2016, because people didn't think they had anything to lose. When they realized they did, some of them came back, even if only for one election cycle.

If Democrats want to win, they should take a page out of the GOP book. Campaign on the popular parts of our agenda and then just pass the democracy-protection stuff with the majorities gotten by prioritizing other things. The GOP doesn't campaign on an end to Roe, and yet they appoint anti-Roe judges. Democrats would do well to campaign on the checks, whatever infrastructure bill they ask, whatever else they manage to get done, and on Biden steering the country back to normal. If they focus on the accomplishments of Biden, they can keep the House in 2022, but if they message in the cul-de-sac of protecting democracy, they'll lose it. People don't want to believe that some of the closest people in their lives are enablers of fascism - or worse, cheerleaders for it - and a Democratic strategy that ignores this will deserve to lose.