In the aftermath ofthe 2016 October Bomb, the terrible performance of Tom Perez (despitea promising start) as chairman of the DNC and the sad-too-seespectacle of Chuck Schumer, as Senate Minority Leader, trying to sellus the idea that adulating Trump is the way to contain the worsetendencies of the Alt Right, it’s time to examine some ideas as weget closer and closer to the Midterms.
1. Whenever I seepolls and focus groups of Trump supporters, I feel that somethingdoesn’t fit in the picture. Just compare the fiction-basedcommunity, that consume news from Fox News and other internetdelirioius sources, in opposition to the reality-based community,that (despite the media bias for the bombastic and episodic insteadof for the real issues) consume news from the mainstream sources andsometimes even from think tanks studies and journalisticorganizations like ProPublica. While the latter agonized with theimages of children separated from their parents as they reached theborder to plea refugee status, in the period April-June, Trump’spopularity didn’t suffer a dent and even had a slight bump by May(https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html).And, as you can see, the Kavanaugh story has suffered a similar fate.Now, when you see some Trump supporters, you can appreciate thedistorted way they have received the news about these two episodes.But before we can venture a proposal to solve this problem, we haveto have an answer to these questions first:
a) Trump tapped theAlt Right to be his base. Before Trump, some may have supported theTea Party, but a significant part of them, considering the RepublicanParty too soft for their taste, didn’t even vote. For these people,even their own health-care and economic interest could be sacrifizedif only Trump destroyed the lives of the people they hate, brownimmigrants being at the top of that list. This group will never bepersuaded.
Now, as much as theAlt Right was useful to him, Trump couldn’t win with the Alt Rightalone. So he engaged in a Right-wing populist message directed to thepoor white affected by Nafta and by those affected by the inaction ofDemocrats to provide an alternative (like the coal miners of WestVirginia), always weak, always soft, always defeated. This group,even though they don’t care much about what Trump is doing toimmigrants to please his base, care about their health care andeconomic opportunities and so can be won by a Left-wing populistmessage like Bernie’s. But they won’t trust a establishmentcandidate who always speaks as if he were giving historical speeches.And here Bernie meets the expectations too. This is the group thatcan be persuaded.
But is this clearamong our candidates or they are still afraid of saying somethingthat could offend the first group?
And why is thisdistinction so important? Because conflating both groups may be thesource of terrible strategic decisions. For instance, I have beenhearing some Democrats advocating for sacrifizing immigrants toplease the Alt Right in order to get concessions in other issues. Bydoing so they evidence extreme mediocrity or willingly ignorehistory: Both Bush and Obama made concessions in advance to thesegroups when immigration reform was on the table only to discover thatthey took the concessions and redoubled their demands. Worse, unlessyou take the Alt Right out of the picture, they will push thepolitical debate much more to the Right than the Tea Party evendreamed. And, thanks to them, every Supreme Court new opening willhave to be filled with another Kavanough.
You can’tnegotiate with the Alt Right.
b) In 2016 pollsterswere deservedly ridiculed for making predictions far away from thefinal results. I suspect that their sampling was not incorporatingthe effect of Trump bringing the Alt Right to the electoral pictureand alienating moderate Republicans, something which was notconsistant with previous years.
If so, has this beencorrected? Are our frat boys playing electoral guru aware of that orthey are creating the second part of their opposition research “TheMysoginist in Chief”?
2. Said this, whatis the strategy with respect to the Alt Right?
The Alt Right willpush politics to the Right with an unprecedented fury. It is alreadydoing it. So, despite the happy smiles of the cool kids playingelectoral guru, winning in 2018 and 2020 is not enough. And thisvictory could be much narrower than expected due to the extension ofthe Obama economic recovery that Trump has claimed as his. Worse,even if we win in 2020, in 2024 the voters won’t remember theobstructionism of the Alt Right and will punish the Democraticpresident. Many kids jumping back and forth, playing to be campaignmanagers, waiting for election night in order to have their so-longwaited celebratory pajama party (pillow-fights included) will neverbe bothered by this serious, boring strategic issue.
So, unless you getJohnson-Goldwater kind of results in the next two elections, resultsthat catastrophic that an insurgency inside the Republic Partyagainst the Alt Right has some hope of success, we have to dosomething to prevent the Alt Right from taking a permanent seat inelectoral politics. We know that gerrymandering is the source oftheir power as it allows them to dominate the primaries. Based onSupreme Court decisions about DeLay’s Texas gerrymandering and theone more recent about Pennsylvania’s gerrymandering, we couldpropose a bill to introduce redistricting standards. And though theconstitutionality of this bill could be successfully challenged, thenwe would at least have a product, a bill on which to base a push fora constitutional amendment. And then we have their main motivator:immigration. If you takeimmigration out of the picture thanks to passing immigration reform,it’s very likely that the Alt Right will crawl back to theirtrailers to brew their hatred the way they did before Trump tappedthem as his base. But as they have tasted victory with Trump aftermany years of apathy and cynicism, nothing short of this will takethem out of the picture. And yet, none of these two issues could havea chance as a stand-alone issue. So, they have to be part of apackage, of what I called then a New New Deal (though others havealso claimed that name since them for other proposals). And this NewNew Deal has to speak to a wide base inclusive of the white poor(So yes, this means fuck identity politics).
3. But then, whatare we going to do with the cool kids who are convinced that thepriorities are the confederate monuments, forced apologies fromcelebrities, the walls of love that are actually made of cloth andall those things that are considered cool?
You can convoke themand convince them that in times when segregation anddisenfranchisement are coming back through the back door of incomeinequality, where thousands of immigrant lives are being destroyedevery day, we have much bigger fish to fry. And what if they stillinsist that our campaign should have prison reform not as a componentbut as the main message, with them at the front, and threaten to grabyour mic if you don’t please them? Then you have to tell them tofuck off because you can’t look weak.
And what about theother kids who like to play with VAN and tell others to memorizescripts the month before elections? Don’t they look adorable atthat? Give them a cool videogame and send them where they don’tmake more damage (And I could elaborate some other day about this,from my experience as successful canvasser although in campaignsthat seem to have been designed by the creator of American Pie ortaken from a bizarre dream).
What I want tohighlight here is that we have to insert electoral campaigns in amore wider picture. It’s not a coincidence that the parameters ofthe debate have been consistently being pushed to the Right while thecool kids have fun at knocking door and reciting their memorizedscripts while unions’ power decline and the progress made from theNew Deal to the Civil Rights Movement is dismantled. And this is whythe Democratic Party has to sponsor leaders, some of which will beyour future candidates. Let me bring here once again the example ofHector Perez Garcia. Perez Garcia worked closely with the Kennedy andJohnson campaigns and Johnson rewarded him with numerous concessionsto the Chicano community. Compare that to those Hispanicorganizations that now and then throw a tantrum (like the tantrumsthrown by La Raza against Gore and Kerry for not advertising enoughin Telemundo), never get results (immigration has suffered setbackson every legislative or regulatory front), and whose strategy is eveninformed by comedy shows (I’ve written before about the call to thesad way the immigrant strike was inspired in the comedy A Day WithoutA Mexican) while the Democratic Party makes no serious attempt toimprove their poor performance, to sponsor the next Hector PerezGarcia, to bring them to the big picture. And the best example ofthis misery is that Hispanic organizations, to this day, have notcreated an immigration reform proposal (Politics is marketing and inpolitics, policy is your product. Marketing without a product is ajoke); that’s why we should not be surprised that Trump calls formerit-based immigration as something opposed to family-basedimmigration creating a false dichotomy or that Hispanic leadersabsurdly react by calling to center the immigration debate onabolishing ICE (which sounds childish to the Average Joe’s eardespite the fact that ICE should be seriously reformed as part of animmigration reform proposal) or by calling to pass a Clear Dream Act(ignoring the fact that that makes the rest of undocumentedimmigrants fair game for the Trump administration and that that wouldtake out of the negotiation the most presentable face of the case forimmigration reform: The Dreamers. Worse, this myopic approachneglects to see that when Trump begins to unleash the hounds againstthe rest of immigrants, these are logically going to feel betrayed bythe Democrats who participated in a deal of such nature). That’swhy we should not be surprised that, when it comes to negotiation,these leaders want to invoke the contributions immigrants make to theeconomy (useless in terms of negotiation) instead of what they planto offer in an immigration reform negotiation in exchange for legalstatus for undocumented immmigrants (For instance, a fine destined tofund a retraining program for native born workers displaced by tradeor automation; or hours of volunteer work in American organizationsto counter the misconception that immigrants resist to integrate tothe mainstream culture). And because immigration is fundamental todefeat the Alt Right, even if you are a person who don’t give adamn about brown immigrants, immigration reform should be of yourinterest.
In a DemocraticParty that nowadays is filled with cool kids and frat boys whobelieve they are smart enough to fool you each election by tellingyou each election that that election is the most important of ourlifetimes, that mediocrily rushes before each election to adapt itsmessage to the junture as defined by the Right in the previous years,strategic thinking is urgently needed. And that strategyshould inform the messaging, the way the leadership is sponsored andconnects with that big picture, the way we assemble alliances, theway we see our relationship with the media, and the way we provideresults in terms of policy to prevent the widespread disappointmentwith the political class that has made possible for many people toplace their hopes on the shoulders of the charlatan the media turnedfirst into a reality show star and then into President of the UnitedStates.
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2018 · 7:39:18 PM +00:00
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Alfredo Martin Bravo de Rueda Espejo
General answer to the cool kids offended by my style and without arguments about the ideas presented in the article:
You and all the other idiots who share your affected sense of esthetics are the best example of my criticism. Despite cries about formats and writing styles, the only serious question you present is something I myself have mentioned in previous entries. Winning the House is important in terms of impeachment but unless you inflict a Johnson-Goldwater kind of defeat, you won’t have the numbers in the Senate to move an impeachment forward. Hasn’t the Kavanough show been a prelude of what a political trial could be unless we get enough numbers on the Senate or the Republican Party rises against Trump? 2018 is important but it’s value is significantly reduced if other conditions needed to proceed to impeach Trump don’t happen. On other issues, Trump has pretty much passed all he wanted.
And I have just checked, just in case. Mediocrily is a word and can be used in a sentence but if you invoke such ridiculous charges in a political blog, is that all what your political ideas are about?
Now, I copy and paste the article from my word processor and Daily Kos formats deletes the space between some words but that is not my fault and should not be a issue with any adult interested in the ideas, whether he agrees or not. And, if you can’t read beyond 140 characters, that’s not my fault either.
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2018 · 7:49:33 PM +00:00
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Alfredo Martin Bravo de Rueda Espejo
GENERAL ANSWER TO ALL THE COOL KIDS OFFENDED BY MY STYLE AND HAVE NOTHING TO ARGUE ABOUT THE IDEAS PRESENTED IN THE ARTICLE:
You and all the other idiots who share your affected sense of esthetics are the best example of my criticism. Despite cries about formats and writing styles, the only serious question you present is something I myself have mentioned in previous entries. Winning the House is important in terms of impeachment but unless you inflict a Johnson-Goldwater kind of defeat, you won’t have the numbers in the Senate to move an impeachment forward. Hasn’t the Kavanough show been a prelude of what a political trial could be unless we get enough numbers on the Senate or the Republican Party rises against Trump? 2018 is important but it’s value is significantly reduced if other conditions needed to proceed to impeach Trump don’t happen. On other issues, Trump has pretty much passed all he wanted.
And I have just checked, just in case. Mediocrily is a word and can be used in a sentence but if you invoke such ridiculous charges in a political blog, is that all what your political ideas are about?
And yes, I prepare my articles in my word processor and paste them in Daily Kos. If the Daily Kos format deletes the spaces between some words, that is not my fault. And, if you can’t read beyond 140 characters, that is not my fault either. Instead of trying to discredit the article on ridiculous grounds, why not present your ideas, if better than mine, and engage in a constructive dialogue instead of proceeding like a pathetic troll?
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2018 · 8:00:54 PM +00:00
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Alfredo Martin Bravo de Rueda Espejo
Some censor in Daily Kos has sent me warning about a Tip Jar comment that I didn’t made because it’s automatically generated by the system. And now I am not allowed to comment. So I can’t defend myself from these idiotic attacks. One of them is even suggesting that I am not for voting in 2018, what is ridiculous because what I am saying clearly, for anybody willing to read, is that winning in 2018 is not enough.
And yes, probably I am a fool trying to share ideas, to engage in a an adult debate, and my previous entry should have been really “My last try”. It’s sad to see the mediocre level the debate can reach though.
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2018 · 10:15:54 PM +00:00
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Alfredo Martin Bravo de Rueda Espejo
I had to use the Update tool because every time I tried to enter a comment, I got a message saying that I was not allowed to post messages. But these comments say a lot that your frivolity (if you are serious about ignoring the ideas in the article because for you stylistic and esthetic issues are more important) or dishonesty (if you use those stylistic and esthetic issues as an excuse).
We got Trump for a reason...