The purpose of this post is to discuss the calls for reaching out to Republican voters that I’m seeing more frequently both here and elsewhere. I am absolutely opposed to trading away any Democratic principles, values or constituencies in order to reach out to Republicans. The proponents of that idea often scold us and tell us that we must tread very carefully so as not to frighten potential crossover votes. They tell us that we must disregard “identity politics” and focus solely on those non controversial issues like economic justice and the failing middle class, important issues to be sure but not the only important ones.
I put Trump voters into 5 categories:
1) The first category are voters who vote Republican reflexively because that’s what they’ve always done. These folks don’t pay much attention, they just vote every two, (or usually just four) years out of the sense of the “duty” to their country that they learned while listening to the wise words of Freddy and Velma. They go in all uninformed and unaware and select the Republican side and feel like they’ve been good Americans. See? John Wayne was a Republican. Charlton Heston said “cold, dead hands” and I really liked him in Been Her Bin Hir Ben Hur. I have a good friend who is in that category. She is the most policy oblivious person you could meet but she isn’t a hateful or unpleasant person at all. She votes Republican because her dad does and her fiance does and will never grasp why she should take some responsibility for Trump.
2) The second category are the people who think that they know what’s going on for the most part but are unconcerned or unaware of what voting for a person like Trump could damage. Included in this category are a lot of cable news addicts for whom it came down to a choice between the lesser of two evils with Hillary Clinton being the greater. Propaganda driven rather than by ideology, I know a lot of folks in this category, including a few lifelong Dems and my little brother. They are also the product of the “both sides” media, created by and steeped in the traditional media’s misplaced quest for “balance”. Just shout “Emails” and they will instantly tell you that the nebulous “scandal” which they couldn’t describe in any detail is far worse than grabbing women by their lady parts or being abysmally ignorant about managing...well, anything.
3) In the third category are people who vote Republican because they get a perverse delight from pissing off liberals. Policy and ideology don’t matter to them, they know little of them, their pleasure lies in seeing liberals gnash their teeth and decry cruelty and racism. They take pride in having been called “Deplorables” and wear it like a badge. It’s just a fucking game to them and if a few people have to suffer or die, well as long as it’s not them or someone they love, (or whatever passes for love in their cold, scaly lizard brains), then no big deal. I have at least one co-worker in this category and though he repeats a lot of FOX “News” and Trump lies, he’s only doing it to get a reaction. Actually, though he doesn’t know it, he engenders far more disgust with his (lack of) bathing habits and his beer can-ashtray breath when he returns from drinking his lunch. Heck if people were less polite, he could stop bothering to vote altogether and just appall us with his third world hygiene.
4) The Evangelical voters. These people vote Republican because Republicans have promised them a Christian Theocracy in which everybody but themselves will be subject to the most brutal interpretations of the Old Testament that they can come up with. They are single issue voters and everything else is okay with them as long as they think they are going to get their wish. They are the most judgmental folks that you might meet and seem to have entirely missed the New Testament apart from a couple of names and hopeful parables like water to wine. They have seen and heard Trump sin and it’s all a-okay, as long as he doesn’t swear too much. They can’t wrap their righteous little minds around the fact that I might exist without wanting to improve my golfing handicap through sex reassignment but as long as Trump changes his harsh language to “Gosh darn it”, then they will be there with their votes and their MAGA candles. I know some, (Jesus bikers mainly) but I never associate with them outside work.
5) Finally we have the folks for whom the cruelty is the point. The racists, the misogynists, the homophobes, the anti trans bigots, etc. These are the people who attend MAGA rallies and drive automobiles into crowds of innocent people or peaceful protesters. The kind that drive 12 hours to “shoot Mexicans”. The cops who stand around and let a bunch of white thugs beat the crap out of a black man with rods and then arrest the victim. The white lady who gets upset at black people for doing (insert normal activity here) in public. The idiots who send money to a grifter to build a border wall, who blame everybody but themselves for their lot in life, who think that they have earned assistance when they need it but that everyone not white, straight, male and heterosexual are “freeloading”. The kind who would re-interpret the poem at the feet of Lady Liberty to mean “wealthy whites only”. I know a few of these at work as well, including one who has made himself poor by defiantly refusing to buy health insurance and then at age 57, producing a child who is severely handicapped and requires 24 hour care with his much younger second wife. This is the guy who sneers at “welfare queens” and “freeloaders” but who without irony and despite his $60,000 a year income, filled out a HUD application in order to buy a house that he couldn’t afford. I don’t have anything witty y to add. My disgust needle is buried and that renders my snark generator not functional. They deny reality when it conflicts with their belief system and that trait by itself makes trying to reach out to them foolishly Quixotic.
Now of course, in this complicated world, nothing is so black and white and obviously there is some overlap but I think for the purposes of this post, that’s a good working outline. For example, many of the third, fourth and fifth groups of people also spend a lot of time with the likes of Hannity, Carlson, Dobbs on FOX and with Limbaugh and Beck on the radio as well. Many in the fifth category attend services with those in the fourth and many in the first are propagandized by friends in the second, third, fourth and fifth. Again, I’m not suggesting that there are hard and bright lines between these groups, nor am I interested in getting into a big fight over it but personally I believe that only people in the first two categories are reachable by us.
The issues that folks are euphemistically calling “identity politics” are issues of civil rights, of equality and of equal protection under the law. It's a stupid term for many reasons but as far as I’m concerned, reason number one is because it assumes that the default state of policy and politics should be centered on concerns of white, straight males and everything else is just extraneous and negotiable. If you think that I should be willing to trade away my right to exist in order to attract Republican voters then you may as well save yourself some time and stop reading right now. The same goes for a woman’s right to free choice in reproductive care, a Gay man or Lesbian's right to marry the person that they love, an African American family’s right to go shopping without being brutally abused by the police.
Take “identity politics” off the table and out of your vocabulary right now because all that it means is that straight white men come first in the pecking order and after that, the rest of us are free to squabble among ourselves for the remaining scraps. No votes are worth jettisoning our just principles for. The largest number of voters such a betrayal would attract is eclipsed, obscured and overwhelmed by the smallest number of voters such a strategy will lose among our own base. If never Trump Republicans want to vote Democratic then fine, more power to them and us but they need to understand that we’re not just about opposing Trump but also about promoting justice, socially, economically and ethnically. WE aren’t joining THEM. As Digby says:
So I hope the NeverTrump troops don't take this the wrong way. But they really need to zip it when it comes to haranguing Democrats about their primary. They particularly need to stop speaking to the Democratic base as if they were a bunch of fools who need remedial lessons in politics from Republicans, the people who couldn't stop Donald Trump from snagging the nomination right out from under them.
So how do we reach out to them? Education. Conversation. Popping the FOX bubble that they inhabit like a giant, pus filled zit. I agree with several posters that reaching out is a desirable thing, what I don’t agree with is the idea that the Democratic base, no matter how abused by such outreach, can be relied upon to come home in the end if once again forced to accept conservative policy proposals. This is the same liberal and progressive base that has been been told to sit down and shut up by the party leadership for much too long. The people who the vaunted and highly overpaid Democratic “consultant” and pundit classes have always sneered at. The people who Rahm Emanuel told to go do something with ourselves that is anatomically impossible. It has been demonstrated over and over again that Republicans are lemmings and they are going to vote Republican no matter what, while Democrats are much more circumspect and much more likely to act on our beliefs rather than out of loyalty. This is both a strength and a weakness for us but it has harmed us in the past , most recently in 2016 and could very well do so again in 2020. Reaching out is a good thing but it is not the panacea for our Trumpian woes. Staying right with our base and reaching out to potential new Democrats is much more likely to succeed.
Now before this turns into a pie fight, yes there may have been a few more PUMAs that sat out 2008 than Berners who sat out 2016, (four percent or so) but the difference is that we won in 2008 and lost in 2016. That comes down to the fact that there were a lot of new voters who were excited about Mr. charisma, Barack Obama in 2008 while Hillary Clinton had been on the receiving end of a decades long, very effective smear campaign, led by the right wing. So effective that many staunch liberals bought into it, (see Susan Sarandon for example, who still defends her Stein vote). Let’s skip all of the purity meta and just stipulate that the dissatisfaction of the Democratic base can be much more a factor on the left than on the right, shall we? My political compass is pretty darned left so let’s not even get distracted by the who is more liberal crap.
The fact is that we must have an engaged, energized and united base before we approach voters on the right. That is the most important thing now. We should not just whisper about LGBTQ rights if we mention them at all, nor should we cringe away from discussions about reparations and a woman’s choice about whether or not to give birth. Remember this: Republicans nominated Trump. Republicans elected Trump. WE didn’t do that. What we did do is fail to prevent it and for many reasons but one of those reasons was not because we failed to act Republicany enough.
So let’s just skip all of the lectures about frightening off Republican voters. I don’t care about Republican voters. Republican voters are the geniuses who put us in the position that we’re in now, I’m not going to kiss their collective asses for that! They knew who Trump was and the ones who held their noses and voted for him against their better judgement are more guilty than the ones who are true believers and who supported him enthusiastically in my opinion. Like the PUMAs of 2008 and the Berners of 2016 who sat out the race or voted Green or even crossed over in protest, I don’t care what frightens them. I have no wish to attract them, mollify them, make them feel better about themselves or find out what makes them tick. They are only redeemable by their own efforts. It’s not my burden to persuade either disaffected Republicans or disaffected Democrats to do what they know is right. Threatening to stay home or worse on election day if I don’t kowtow to their every wish has no power over me. If they can’t grow the fuck up and carry out their responsibility, then again it’s not something that I have any power over or desire to correct.
Everybody here knows what’s at stake. While there is plenty of room for disagreement over candidates and strategies, there should be a few hard and fast principles which we as a party must never jettison or even tap dance around. We face an existential threat and Pyrrhic victories will not save us. My strategy and my suggested strategy to everyone who has made it this far is to reach out to the apathetic and uneducated voter before trying to reach the disaffected Republicans that you might run across. Those will either come to the conclusion that they must vote Democratic by themselves or they won’t. If you can successfully reach the odd Republican voter without compromising who we are as a party, then I say do it, though I think that your time will be better spent educating the never having voted voter. Either way, stop coming at me and telling me that the only way to win is to be the enemy. What good does it do to elect a Democrat in order to address climate change, for example, if in order to appease conservative voters we must nominate a climate change denier?
I don’t care what Republican voters want and I have no desire to attract them. Voting for a racist is itself an act of racism and I have no interest in appeasing racists. There is no excuse. One can’t claim ignorance of Trump’s racism and earn a pass thereby. If some republican voters feel remorse at electing such a disaster, then the best they can do is grow up, suck it up and come over to the good side. But on our terms, not theirs. If I have to read or listen to George Will sanctimoniously lecture me on how to beat Trump when the mighty anti Trump conservative establishment that he represents could not stop him in the primary, I may die of disgust.
In conclusion, it’s important to remember that they created this! THEY are the party that is sick and compromised enough to have nominated the inflamed, orange ass of a baboon for President. It’s not up to ME to change who I am. It’s their burden to understand what they have done and to work to atone for and repair the damage. If some of you want to reach out to the largely mythical crossover voter, then be my guest but this is Daily Kos, where we gather to elect more and better Democrats, not where we gather to pretend to be more like Republicans. Never Trump Conservatives are of course welcome to post here but stop lecturing us on how to defeat Trump. You’ve already demonstrated unequivocally that you don’t know how.