Michael Conroy/AP Photo
People gather to protest a bill to ban transgender women and girls from participating in school sports that match their gender identity, February 9, 2022, at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.
Over the last week or so, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, has returned to one of her favorite activities: attacking members of her own party. She recently dished to Politico, attacking police reformers as being an electoral liability (as she did immediately after the 2020 election), and boasting about sucking up to her local police department.
The next day, she joined up with Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) to attack President Biden in an open letter, demanding that he keep the notorious Trump-era Title 42, which allowed for accelerated deportations ostensibly on pandemic control grounds. Given the rampant and basically unchecked circulation of the virus domestically, Title 42 was really just a pretext for shutting down asylum entry into the country, and more to the point, for the propagation of bilious anti-immigrant xenophobia based on racist smears.
Spanberger and Slotkin aren’t alone on the Title 42 front. Numerous Senate moderates running this November have broken with the president on the policy, asking for Biden to postpone its expiration. For its part, the White House says it will move forward with the end of Title 42 on May 23, at least for now.
I think Democrats attacking their own party base and leadership seems unlikely to convince many to vote for Democrats. I humbly suggest Spanberger and company attack Republicans instead.
Let’s grant for the sake of argument that far-reaching police reform, or abandoning Stephen Miller’s fascist immigration policy, would be an electoral liability for Democrats, and that moderates are sincerely concerned about that, instead of preemptively scapegoating the left for a defeat they think can’t be avoided. Republicans have a very effective strategy for handling this type of thing on their own side: simply keep quiet about the scandal in question while throwing up distractions. This was how half of Congress got through the Trump years—by saying “I haven’t seen the tweet” so often it became its own reporting cliché, followed by hysterical accusations of Democratic perfidy.
It’s political messaging 101—avoid uncomfortable topics, and stay on your preferred argumentative ground instead. Spanberger, by constantly bringing up the thing she doesn’t like, only associates it with her own party even more, reinforcing Republican ideological frameworks and sparking bitter infighting.
So if a loyal Democrat doesn’t want to pour sulfuric acid into their party’s most sensitive wounds by repeating Republican talking points or trying to beat the GOP in a cop-worshiping contest, what should be done? Luckily, there’s a much more appealing message available.
It so happens that Republicans have recently begun a furious assault on LGBT Americans and abortion rights that puts them squarely on the wrong side of popular opinion. Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, which is very obviously intended to purge all gay teachers from the classroom, has been copied in Republican states across the country. Party elites have been signaling that the Obergefell decision, which legalized gay marriage, is up next on the chopping block, and its most prominent demagogues have brought back classic homophobic smears that LGBT people (and anyone who supports them) are all pedophile “groomers.”
It’s political messaging 101—avoid uncomfortable topics, and stay on your preferred argumentative ground instead.
Meanwhile, now that the Supreme Court has de facto gutted Roe v. Wade and is on the precipice of finishing the job this summer, it’s open season on reproductive rights in conservative states. Texas led the way, but Oklahoma recently passed a nearly categorical abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest. More than 20 other states are certain to restrict almost all abortion should the Court formally overturn Roe, or even if it signals that it’s a dead letter. As Kate Riga argues at Talking Points Memo, given the accelerating pace of conservative radicalization, a national statutory ban on abortion in all states is the likely next objective, and I would not be surprised if they start coming after contraception next.
All this is incredibly unpopular. An Oklahoma-style abortion ban polls at something like 10–20 percent support, while gay marriage polls at about 70 percent support.
I sincerely think running a furious campaign against Republican extremism and bigotry could lead to Democratic victory this year, or at least some measure of success. The GOP is plainly out of its mind on its own propaganda—the political equivalent of huffing paint thinner until you start bleeding from the ears—and has been getting away with everything for so long that they think they can’t lose. Democrats’ total failure thus far to hold any of the principal perpetrators of the January 6 putsch accountable (above all Donald Trump) is only the latest in a streak of impunity going back to the Nixon pardon. If you can get away with trying to overthrow the government by force, why not keep pushing the envelope?
Indeed, an anti-bigotry campaign is virtually the only strategy available to congressional Democrats, now that the party’s conservative wing has killed President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. Congress is broken, the government can barely keep the lights on, and every day a new 34-year-old Trump judge strikes down another part of the administrative state.
The only reliable motivator in politics anymore is dislike of the other team, and Republicans are the most hateable major party in the world. It’s the party of whipping up violent hatred against trans people and bringing back the endemic vicious homophobia of the 1980s. It’s the party of returning to back-alley coat hanger abortions and forcing rape victims to bear the children of their assailants. It’s the party of bringing back measles, mumps, rubella, and polio by ending vaccine requirements in public schools. And if the snide right-wing demagogue attacking public schoolteachers as “groomers” gets his way, it’s the party of ending public schools entirely.
The only way Republicans can win is if their horrendously unpopular agenda is lost in a foghorn blast of propaganda, and neither collaborationist political reporters nor the opposition party makes it clear what the stakes are. But there’s a space for new leaders to mobilize the clear majority of Americans who don’t want to turn back the clock to the 1890s, if someone will only seize the opportunity.
