Signposts On The Road To Secession

Michael J. Kramer: Curious for your analysis: why don't the Democrats have a simpler message, something like "They want to kill your grandma and your babies; we want them, not to mention you yourself, to live"? Is there a reason that they do not articulate the differences more boldly?

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I’ll answer at a level of generality, because I don’t think most variations on “AAAHHH! They’re coming to kill you!” would be a super effective approach.

Democrats do criticize Republicans quite often, obviously—sometimes in withering terms—but I think the disconnect you’re sensing stems from a root-level difference in outlook between Democratic elected officials and grassroots voters. Most of us want Democrats to treat the GOP officialdom as beyond redemption, whereas most Democratic rhetoric, even the harsh stuff, stems from paralysis and disbelief. They want to say, “come on ref, they’re cheating!” But there is no ref, so they play on, demoralized, while we scream at them to overturn the game board.

Perhaps at some level they don’t want to serve in a world where they alone are responsible for the fate of democracy and governance in America.

In recent days, JD Vance and Eric Schmitt have, in similar language, spat on the Declaration of Independence. I think we’d all like to see Democrats describe it that way and claim the declaration for themselves—Republicans as traitors to the founding—without having to ask permission from a message tester first. We puzzle over why they lack this instinct.

The answer lies somewhere in the neighborhood of fear or denial. They can’t confront the state of affairs we’re in squarely, and are thus unwilling to retool for zero-sum war.

To illustrate, closer to your point about the life-and-death stakes of politics directly, Democrats will try to build bipartisan support for firing RFK Jr., shore up the CDC, protect vaccine access, but it’s much harder to them imagine them waving the bloody shirt over mounting COVID-19 deaths, pinning them on Senate Republicans by name, or investigating who in the Trump administration has skirted the new rules to get COVID boosters for themselves, their children, etc. They don’t like the thought that their job includes bringing these people to disgrace and ruin.

Stuart Stevens offered good insight from a retired GOP attack-dog perspective on The Bulwark podcast Tuesday. I don’t agree with every idea he thought out loud, but his approach strikes me as directionally correct.

“If you support Pete Hegseth, you're not a patriot. So you say that, ‘does that mean you're saying that John Thune is not a patriot?’ Yes. That's what I'm saying.”

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Ian Priest: Does policy even matter? There seems to be a lot of fighting amongst progressives, left of center types and the Democratic cadre about fine tuning proposals, but I think the most obvious take away from the Trump years is you need a loud voice that defines the public narrative, and that nobody really cares about specific policies (fighting inflation with tariffs!?!?). Obama defined the public narrative for a good 8 years and did well, and since then we’ve had milquetoast Democratic leadership that thinks people vote based on white papers, not the stream of inspiration or invective that actually moves voters. How do we convince Democrats and their voters to become more focused on selecting candidates based more on charisma, not policy proposals?

Here’s how I’d put it: ...