Since last week’s post, I’ve encountered a couple pieces of commentary that go well with my contention that the Democrats should see Donald Trump’s insane calls to “terminate” the Constitution as an opportunity to continue making their case that the broader GOP is tainted by its continued support for the former president. At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall takes a phlegmatic approach to Trump’s statement itself, seeing it as of a piece with previous things Trump has said and done, but zeroing in on how crucial it is that Democrats draw attention to his remarks:
As long as Republicans don’t abandon the extremism of Trumpism — and there’s little sign that that is anywhere on the horizon — Democrats should keep it front and center, in front of voters at every opportunity. Put simply, they should use it to defeat Republicans just as they used it to defeat Big Lie supporters last month.
What Republicans elected officials think and say is really all that matters. Because the only meaningful metric, the only potential impact of any of this is whether it makes Republican elected officials more likely to lose office.
I like this emphasis on the concrete — Democrats need to use Trump's self-incriminating words in ways that help them win elections, not just to score abstract points against Trump and the GOP.
Marshall also rightly goes on to point out that over the last couple elections, there have been clear indications that a decisive number of Americans care very much about Trump and the GOP’s turn against democracy. Trump may not be president any longer, but he’s vying to be the GOP’s nominee in 2024, while the broader GOP authoritarian assault on American government continues through the present. Marshall reminds us that the GOP has attempted to perform a two-step maneuver, trying to project an image of normalcy while also engaging in extremist politics when appealing to its base —but that reminding voters of statements like Trump’s recent “terminate the Constitution” talk can short circuit this strategy.
As I’ve said before, there’s no point in leaving unused powerful weapons against the GOP — this fight takes everything we’ve got, and all the better if Trump can’t stop indicting himself and the GOP is too cowardly to cut loose this mad captain who’s lashed himself to the party’s wheel.
The importance of opposition to GOP extremism and authoritarianism is a point taken up by Perry Bacon Jr. last week, as he makes a case for the Democrats making repudiation of the modern incarnation of the GOP central to their electoral appeal. He write that the last few elections “have clearly shown that Democrats can win by casting Republicans as a party of bigotry, intolerance and radicalism. They should embrace that approach — and give up on strategies that Democrats wish would work but don’t.”
Bacon points to two competing strategies — class-based appeals to voter and appeals to centrist policy positions — as not having had the same electoral success as what he sees as having worked in recent election cycles: “Affirmatively running as the pro-tolerance, anti-Trumpism party — as some Democrats did, including Biden, right before the election,” which “both galvanizes the Democratic Party base and also wins over people who voted Republican in the past but are turned off by today’s version of the party.”
It is hard to argue with success — but is it enough, particularly for the long-term, or if Trump leaves the scene? I agree with Bacon that a “drumbeat about the terribleness of the Republican Party, particularly on issues around race and identity, is likely to keep many voters from backing the GOP,” but I’m not so certain that the Democrats should not take the logical next step, and articulate an affirmative vision for the U.S. that even goes so far as to tie concrete policies to this vision. As I’ve written before, it seems that the Democratic coalition already embodies a positive idea of America — one that isn’t just opposed to retrograde Republican values, but embraces a countervailing set of beliefs that include racial and gender equality, freedom of sexual expression no matter your gender identity, a baseline government role in promoting economic equality and opportunity, and a commitment to protecting the environment, particularly against the existential danger of climate change. There are always risks when you articulate a more concrete vision, but these seem like risks worth taking. As the GOP grows more extreme, and as the social movements it represents grow more regressive and cruel, it seems to me that the nation is badly in need of a social and political revival that pairs decency and basic human equality with an ambitious vision of the United States’ multicultural, multiracial, and prosperous future. Maybe I’m just tired of playing defense against racists, misogynists, and religious extremists, but I’d like to see the Democrats rally an American majority by articulating a positive vision for the country that might even better expose and break down this right-wing backlash that we’ve been living through — a backlash that would rather end democracy than accept its compromises, and that sees violence as preferable to the ballot box when there’s a chance of losing.
Ultimately, I’m not sure if this is really a disagreement with Bacon, so much as a difference in emphasis. I can’t totally disagree that, “What is actually galvanizing people is anger, not positivity — and issues such as separating children from their families at the border and banning abortions, not ‘kitchen table” concerns’” — but I see the way forward as combining both the anger and the positivity.
I also wanted to note Bacon’s great, corrective description of conflicting visions of swing voters among Democrats:
The image I suspect Biden, Pelosi and Sanders have of a voter who could swing from Democrat to Republican or the other way is a 50-year-old White man without a college degree who lives in suburban Philadelphia, works as a fireman and supports raising the minimum wage but opposes late-term abortions.
Sure, that’s one kind of swing voter. But the kinds of people who have been swinging to the Democrats are White women who have office jobs and college degrees and strongly support abortion rights. And the kinds of people who could swing to the Democrats are people who already have decent jobs and don’t really like all of the spending that the Biden administration is doing to boost the economy, but hate intolerance and bigotry even more.
Not only do I think this is accurate, I think it’s a terrific reminder of how slow politicians can be to adjust to new political realities, even when they’re staring them in face. Bacon’s summation also serves an always-necessary reminder that the time for a generational change in the Democrats’ leadership is now.