With the 2018 midterms mostly behind us (Mike Espy still has a shot at a Senate seat), it’s time to think about 2020. I’m of the opinion that Democrats should run un-apologetically Populist Left campaigns even in the reddest of districts because this energizes the Democratic-leaning base and provides a clear alternative for Independent and Republican-leaning voters who might not be so happy with the current state of affairs. When I saw Richard Ojeda’s statement on abortion I just had to share it in a diary to point out why I think it’s a great template for the sort of messaging Democrats should use across the country.
1. Take a stand that frames your opponents as the monsters that they are.
Ojeda opens with his support for a woman’s right to choose then immediately starts framing his opponents as wealthy hypocrites who won’t ever suffer the consequences of their disgusting policies. Sound like any Republicans you know? Ojeda goes on to mention “crude instruments” being used in “back alleys” if anti-choice advocates get their way before pointing out that their policies are “non-comparing them to the Taliban and Boko Haram before calling out several Republican hypocrites by name.
2. Do NOT accept Republican’s framing of the issues.
The main reason Ojeda issued this statement is because he has described himself as “Pro-Life” and he rejects the conventional definition of that term as opposing abortion. Many before him have pointed out that Republicans care more about the rights and well-being of fetuses than they do about people but I’m not aware of any other attempts to take Republican’s disingenuous marketing terms away from them like this. It’s one thing to call out Republican hypocrisy when the genuinely-appealing values they claim to stand for don’t match their policies — this makes them look like liars to anyone who bothers to check; it’s quite another to assert you’ve got a better claim to those same values — this creates confusion that will prompt people to look closer, if they look close enough they’ll probably discover the Republican scam. We can definitely do this with Jobs and Healthcare; we could probably also do it with Voting Rights, Guns and Immigration.
3. Pledge Allegiance to the Working Class
Everyone reading this website already knows that Democrats tend to support policies that help poor and marginalized people. Unfortunately, this just isn’t as prominent a piece of the Democratic party’s brand as it used to be and we need to work to change that. I’ll leave the reasons why Democrats aren’t universally recognized as the party of the working class alone for now because it’s a complex and contentious topic. The key point is that we should always and constantly be taking sides in class conflicts and taking every opportunity to paint rich people and large companies as exploitative plunderers who get away with far too much. If some of them happen to be major Democratic donors and threaten to “cut the money off” like Stephen Cloobeck did, just call them out on social media and suggest a boycott. Rich Americans are a minority and the scale of their political influence should reflect that — especially within the Democratic party.
4. Make it Visceral and Make it Personal.
This could probably be two separate points but I think they compliment each other and I want this diary short enough that people actually read it. Ojeda’s statement is visceral because it’s full of emotional triggers and he’s not subtle in deploying them. It’s personal because it’s visceral and because he connects so much of the statement to Republican’s horrid policies that cut funding for schools, healthcare and economic opportunities. It’s also personal because he names Republican hypocrites by name increasing the chances they’ll get asked about things they’d rather not talk about which connects to my next point.
5. Never Stop Attacking
Republicans are good at attack politics — probably because they have to be. It’s difficult to defend most of what they’ve done in office over the past few decades. I think some Democrats are reluctant to engage in attack politics because they’d rather focus on what they’re offering voters but Ojeda’s statement makes perfectly clear that you can do both at the same time. The simple formula of, “I’m in favor of X, my opponent voted against it because he wants to profit off your hardships” can be very widely applied and supported by easily-verifiable facts. A lot of voters don’t do much research though so it’s crucial to make the case for them and make it often. There’s almost always a lot to attack Republican candidates for and we’re competing with the right wing propaganda machines so there’s no upper-limit on how much we should attack.
Ojeda’s full statement is below. He is running for president but I’m nowhere near convinced he’s the right candidate to support and that’s not what this diary is about. I do hope he gets a lot of exposure though because we need people like him, Andrew Gillum and Stacy Abrams shaping the Democratic brand into a stronger, more aggressive version that’s going to undercut Republican messaging and expose them as the monsters that they are.
There has been some confusion about where I stand on the issue of abortion access so let me clear this up. I wholeheartedly support a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body. Full stop. Throughout history, rich women have always had access to the care that they want or need and they always will. It’s only poor and working class women who have died in back alleys or been forced to use crude instruments like coat hangers. These laws that are passed only control the bodies and medical decisions of poor and working-class women because those in power have not trusted working class women to make their own decisions. Especially since working class women are disproportionately black and brown. Well guess what, they might not trust women, but I do.
I will stand against non-scientifically based 20 week bans and other arbitrary barriers like forced ultrasounds. I will stand against allowing the Hyde Amendment to keep poor women from having access. I will never support a judicial nominee who would stand in the way of access for all women regardless of class or race. And as President, I will immediately reinterpret the Helms amendment to end the inhumane exclusion of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. A woman raped by the Taliban or Boko Haram should not be forced by the callousness of our government to bare her rapist’s child.
But I’m also calling bullshit on the idea that opposing abortion makes you pro-life. If you just want to keep working class women from making their own decisions, you might be pro-birth but you’re not pro-life. I have always considered myself pro-life because I want to reduce the number of abortions by making birth control accessible, by quadrupling the funding for Planned Parenthood, and by making sure that those who would start families have jobs and childcare so that they can afford to raise their kids.
It was not easy or popular to stand with working class women and with Planned Parenthood in West Virginia. But I did it any way. When an anti-working class abortion amendment was put on the ballot, I didn’t run and hide and try to keep quiet. I gave a floor speech about how I almost lost my own wife during childbirth. And how I would never, never take away a family’s ability to make their own decisions. I did it because it was right and because all of these rich men in the Republican Party are hypocrites. They all run around saying how they’re against abortion until their mistress gets pregnant. Right Tim Murphy? Right Congressman Desjarlais? Right Mr. President?
Just like with everything else, they want one thing for themselves and something else for the working-class citizen. They strip public school funding and send their kids to private school. They send the sons and daughters of the working class off to die in foreign wars but their kids don’t sign up. They want privacy and choice for them and their own families, just not for you. That’s not pro-life, that’s the same elitist attitude these so-called leaders have about everything, and I will never sit quiet when our working-class citizens are under attack.
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