Ten years ago, at a phone bank in Sterling, Virginia, I called registered Dems to whip them (in the political sense) to the polls on 11/06/2012. For the most part, enthusiasm on the other end of the line ran high. When it flagged, I pointed to some trespasses at the top of the GOP ticket.
Three come to mind. One, Mitt Romney’s private sector record as a strip-and-flip, job-slashing pirate. Two, the gross hypocrisy of his smears of the Dems’ Affordable Care Act (never mind it all but cloned his own state-level Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care Act). Three, his running mate’s (Paul Ryan’s) staged photo op in an Ohio soup kitchen where he, Ryan, had never before set foot.
For all that, I barely scratched the surface. And yet I threw more shade than did most of my peers; in effect, I heeded the adage that low blows must be countered in kind.
One night, a fellow whippersnapper made bold to point out I might be flouting the decorum that Democratic bigwigs prided themselves on demanding. She suggested I might want to set my sights higher.
“Sure- and let our side hang high as pinatas, hoisted and then whacked till our candied insides strew the floor and we end up about as low as you can go, anyway.”
I asked if she’d heard of the groundbreaking 2007 masterwork The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. She had. Plus, she was familiar with some of the anatomy that neuroscientist/psychotherapist/pundit/business and political strategist/professor/author Drew Westen had assessed in political contexts.
“Trouble is,” I observed, “Dems sing to a tone-deaf choir. As if rational, meritocratic processes, rooted in the cerebral cortex, controlled voting behavior, they wax brainer-than-thou till the cowed come home. Or don’t.”
“So where in the brain are electoral choices determined?”
“The limbic system. Mainly, the amygdala.”
“OH NO! NOT THE AMYGDALA!”
“And perhaps the cingulate gyrus.”
“Wow! So that’s based on brain scans?”
“Yeah. In the context of specific, posited, experimentally controlled situations.”
In common parlance, most of us call said “system” either “the heart” or “the gut(s).” Generally preferring the latter term, Dr. Westen himself shreds conventional wisdom by pointing out how “even swing voters vote with their guts.”
Typically, Dems take it on faith that Republican firebrands will crash and burn. Doing so, they’ve let the once-fierce party of FDR, “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry Truman, LBJ, and JFK be reduced to what Dr. Westen calls a “party of default”- rarely electable save in the face or in the wake of such misrule as George ‘WMD’ Bush’s. (Or, needless to say, that of the still politically undead Gilded Blond Lord who has dubbed himself “The Chosen One.”)
The backstory speaks volumes. Shelves. Libraries. In 2009, having lost big at the polls, rabid tuskers were on the ropes. Dems fell all over themselves playing nice. That summer, I emailed Dr. Westen to the effect that donkeys (and newsies) were dangerously soft pedaling the potentially GOP-boosting impact of the so-called Tea Party’s vile and violent overtones.
He replied, "I agree 100%.”
As author/podcaster Sarah Kendzior has pleaded at length, let’s stop shunning those who (in advance or in hindsight) tell the truth. In a nutshell, let’s get real. For decades, Biden reached across the aisle into red woodchippers. In the wake of the disgraced folly monger/economy wrecker/fossil fueler/forked-tonged Bush, Biden twice prevailed (as Barack Obama’s second banana). In 2020, Biden faced the far worse-than-Bush Donald Trump, and won the top spot.
All comity broke loose. From Day One, as if to play nice at all costs, President Biden let himself be bullied in his own bully pulpit. While Trump honked, howled, spewed incendiary vitriol at rallies, and lied, lied, lied, Biden let reality fade to the point that, by late 2021, fewer than six in ten Americans had a clue that he, Biden, had been duly elected.
Two years before these words were penned, Trump’s seditious, sore loser spieling had not yet hit home; just about everyone knew the election’s outcome. Even before 1/6/21 (let alone after), Biden needed to tear into Trump-and-cult like a buzzsaw into balsa. He didn’t. Rising above the fray, he opted to go high. But not mighty. (Pity.)
Perforce, days before this year’s midterms, he at last addressed the inconvenient truth: Trump’s cult has been appeased to the point it poses an ongoing threat to our democracy and hence to our country.
Here’s the thing. In a two-party system, nice guys tend to finish second. When one of the two launches a brazen, violent, self-entitled coup attempt (or demonizes, as public enemies, outlets that report facts), it cuts our minimal medium of non-despotic major parties in half. Doing so, it puts us on the ropes. In light of the gallows that turned Capitol Hill into Boot Hill, said ropes palpably include a noose. Not unlike the proverbial bell that tolls, it hangs (and twists in the wind) for thee.