Why The Party Of Rhetoric Lost

Like many of you, I have been reading and digesting everything I can in order to better understand the results of our last election and the wholesale shellacking that the Democrats received this time around.

I have two pet theories, but both fall under the umbrella of focusing on the rhetoric used by the Democratic Party during elections.

The first theory is pretty simple — using insulting pejoratives to describe your opponents base is counterproductive and stupid. Deploying adjectives like sexist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, intolerant, ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, fascist, Nazi, garbage, etc. will not convince anyone who is actually any of those adjectives to stop being so. I think the rationale for using such divisive terminology is a mistaken belief that it delivers a collective, societal black eye no one would want to incur for themselves. You don’t want to join the Nazi, fascist, racists, sexists, homophobes do you?

Except, guess what? People did want to join them! The Democrats lost swaths of their assumptive base, i.e. Black and Latino males, organized labor, blue collar and lower and middle income voters. This is losing percentages in demographics that at one time could be considered reliably Democratic. Not all of these new Republican voters left the D party to indulge their lesser angels, did they? I personally don’t think so. So what was really happening?

Part 2 of my Rhetoric Killed the Democrats theory -

The Democrats have been the party of talking a good game about “fighting for you” for a long time without delivering the goods.

As an example, they won in 2008 with an emphasis on healthcare and then basically delivered the Heritage Foundation plan largely written with insurance industry input. Any idea of single payer or Medicare For All was effectively sidelined for decades. It took almost 15 years for the “family glitch” to be finally resolved! How many families had their healthcare budget destroyed in the meantime? How long did it take to FINALLY negotiate a pitiably few drugs in Medicare?

They’re the party of labor but they love trade pacts and their 2016 candidate couldn’t support a $15 minimum wage. Our current Senate Majority Leader fantasized back then about replacing every blue collar worker in western Pennsylvania with two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And they wonder why they lost labor? How did that work out? It's the old Maya Angelou trope about letting the mask slip and showing who you are. People take note, and when it's their lives, they remember.

I have to touch on this Ahabesque daydream about picking up moderate Republican voters that Democratic elites continually and incorrectly predict. It hasn’t happened, it didn’t happen, and it will never happen. And no matter how much you repudiate and alienate your own legacy base you will NEVER be the head of some huge, broad, bi-partisan coalition. Republicans are just not into you, no matter how much you try to morph into them. Exactly what votes did Liz Cheney deliver?

Okay, I know your next question is — what did/do the Republicans offer? This was a change election since the right track/wrong track question wasn’t positive and neither was the “are you better off?” question. People were frustrated with the assurances that everything was fine despite inflation, housing, homelessness, crime and their own pocketbooks. In a change election the party not in power just needs to BE as an alternative as people say to themselves “Why not? What do I have to lose?”. Which goes to show that the apocalyptic End of Democracy predictions did not have the sway envisioned by the media and the party. (Hoping of course that it was hyperbole, but regardless, for some reason the populace wasn’t buying the Protector imagery.)

There is a lesson here. People were willing to overlook Donald Trump the highly flawed candidate and even the End of Democracy as we know it if they weren’t seeing an improvement in their own lives. The idea of a Benevolent Despot was preferable!

Democrats need to have an answer to the question — “what have you done for me lately?” when asked by a member of the working, lower and middle classes. Without an answer, or getting strictly lip service about how “they’re fighting for you” and after years of loyal voting with literally no reward for it, some Democrats either stayed home or voted Republican. Our politicians are pragmatic, I suggest that voters decided to be as well — to strip away tradition and sentimentality and put their votes on a strictly transactional basis.

Here’s an idea that IMO would get a lot of traction — announce that Democrats will be fighting to raise the cap on Social Security so that we can stop blaming deficits on the most critically vital safety net there is and cease scaring seniors to death on a regular basis in an effort to lower the surplus population. Plus, it’s a quick and effective way to raise taxes on the wealthier among us without a lot of fuss and bother. Simple. Understandable. Reasonable.

2nd thought — The negotiation of drugs in Medicare is a bad joke due to the pathetically low number of drugs able to be negotiated. Tell the drug companies that the US will not pay any more than the lowest negotiated rate of any other country. Simple. Understandable. Reasonable.

Find some other Simple Understandable Reasonable answers for more issues, run on them, and then if and when you win another election, DO IT!

And finally, change your political marketing strategy to something other than "We're Not Them!"