From the Cambridge Dictionary:
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What American political parties do is put forth an argument. They say, in essence, our way of thinking is better than their way of thinking.
Pretty simple. What’s difficult is finding and advancing the argument that will appeal to the most voters.
The Democrats (my party, although I’ve never been totally thrilled with being part of that club for the very reason I’m making this…, well, argument here) have failed to put forth an effective, sustainable argument for decades. In fact, we can go back to the presidential race of 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt told the American people they were getting a raw deal, that everyone, even the poorest among us, deserved food, clothing, shelter, a job. That hit voters in the gut; tens of millions of Americans were starving, wore tattered clothes, lost their homes, and were out of work. Roosevelt won in 1932 and won again in 1936, in 1940, and in 1944.
Harry Truman then told voters he’d give them a Fair Deal. That, too, was a gut argument, but it was a tad less effective because the end of the Great Depression and the war meant those tens of millions were back at work, earning and spending scads of money, fat and happy.
The Democrats, for whatever reason, abandoned the gut argument and have gone for the intellectual argument almost every quadrennial election since Adlai Stevenson, notoriously labeled an”egghead” by Dick Nixon, ran twice against Dwight D. Eisenhower and was trounced both times.
Nixon’s party was delighted to pick up on the pejorative. It hit them in the gut. They could say I don’t need any smart guy college boy telling me what’s what! What does he know about real life?
The Democrats, for whatever reason, became a party of eggheads. They say, again and again, “experts tell us,” “researchers say,” “science has proven,” and so on. Dem strategists believe, with all their hearts, that Americans are a rational, thoughtful, inquisitive bunch that’ll carefully consider the pros and cons of the issues and vote accordingly. That they’ll listen to the eggheads.
They’re so wrong.
That argument’ll win the day in a college freshman poli-sci class. It’ll get liberals and progressives to nod their heads at each other in agreement. It’ll even sway newspaper editorial boards. Democratic strategists start believing that the whole nation, everybody — Blacks, Whites, Latinos, straight, gay, university degreed, manual laborers, Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, the rich, the poor, everybody — will vote as though they’re sitting in the freshman poli-sci class and hoping to ace it.
Nixon might have considered Stevenson an egghead, but he was the clever one. He was smart enough to know the single most gut issue in America in 1968 was race. White America was scared to death Black Americans were ready to pay them back for several hundred years’-worth of slavery, Jim Crow, and institutionalized racism. Nixon promised “law and order” and then courted all the southern segregationists who were abandoning the Democratic Party in droves. He won in 1968 and then was re-elected in an historic landslide in 1972.
Twenty years later, Bill Clinton won a couple of terms in the White House largely because he hit the voters in the gut. “I feel your pain,” he said, again and again. They didn’t care that he was unfaithful to his wife; only that he was on their side.
Barack Obama in 2008 stuck his finger in the air and determined Americans were sick of the same old bullshit. He promised them “Change We Can Believe In.” He won and was reelected in 2012.
Clinton and Obama, though, were anomalies. If only my party (I’m not thrilled even writing those two words) had taken its cue from them. The gut wins. The intellectual doesn’t.
Take the once and future president who has swept back into office at the controls of every level of the federal government. He’s broken every rule as well as any number of laws. He’s violated all norms, insulted everybody who doesn’t look, act, and think like him, and baffled pollsters and professional observers. Yet he wins.
Because he goes for the gut.
Groceries cost too much, he says. Inflation is out of control. The homeless are taking over our downtowns. Shoplifters are going wild.
The gut.
That’s what many, many, many Americans believe. He’s simply giving voice to their fears.
I saw this meme again and again during this most recent campaign season:
I don’t have to imagine it! I saw it in real time, in real life! People don’t care about abortion rights until their daughter gets pregnant. They don’t care about LGBTQI rights until their son comes home and tells them he’s gay. They don’t care about the miseries that are driving South and Central Americans up through the border illegally; all they know is they have to pass tent cities of them under viaducts on their way to work — and they don’t like it!
What people care about is the cost of a gallon of gas and the price of milk and eggs. And, by the way, taxes are too high, always too high.
These are gut issues. Most people have little desire to fight for the rights of others. I’ll go one step further: most people don’t care about the rights of others.
Until the Democrats realize the money voters have to spend on a dozen eggs is more important to them than whether or not trans kids can use whichever school bathroom they want, they’re going to lose.
This doesn’t mean Democrats have to abandon the fight for LGBTQI rights. It doesn’t mean they have to drop reproductive rights as an issue. Hell, they’d better not. But if they want to gain back the White House, the Senate, the House, governorships, and statehouses, they’d better start making an argument that hits the most people in the gut.
