Anyone who didn’t see the election of Donald Trump coming, and I include myself in this, probably has to do some kind of reckoning with their failure of imagination or analysis. I know I definitely gave the American people too much credit. They had elected Barack Obama twice, and I didn’t think they’d turn around and vote for a man like Trump. I still struggle to understand how the same nation could elect both leaders in succession.
Here and there, I see hints that help explain this. I found a couple in Dave Weigel’s latest piece on the elections in Kansas’s 3rd congressional district. One of the Democratic candidates, labor lawyer Brent Welder, is backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the woman who just upset Rep. Joe Crowley in a Bronx/Queens Democratic primary. He’s running an aggressively progressive campaign, including a pledge to bring Medicare-for-All. He hasn’t called for the abolition of ICE, but it looks like he’s getting tagged with that by association.
Over the Fourth of July holiday, the problem in translating a Bronx agenda into the heartland was evident as the candidates met voters in the blistering heat. As they watched Democrats march by in Lenexa’s annual parade, a trio of women who lived at a nearby retirement home recalled voting for [former Rep. Dennis] Moore but worried about the ideas coming from today’s Democrats. Expanding Medicare, they said, meant less coverage for them. Abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they said, would mean no immigration enforcement whatsoever.
“Can you imagine if they got rid of that?” asked Carol Paramore, 80. “It wouldn’t be safe. You wouldn’t be able to sit here and watch a parade.”
With all appropriate caveats that this is just the anecdotal opinion of three women, you can see how the use of shorthand slogans works or doesn’t work. Medicare-for-All has some advantages over alternatives like “universal health care,” “socialized medicine,” “national health care system,” or “single-payer health care.” It’s clearer in what it means. Medicare already exists and is popular. It sounds more fair than redistributive. It doesn’t evoke some unprecedented takeover of the health care system by Washington bureaucrats or have the Cold War baggage of “socialism.” But for someone who already has Medicare, the slogan Medicare-for-All can easily be translated as Less-Medicare-for-Me.
For many voters, that alone is enough to oppose the proposal.
The new slogan “Abolish ICE” is interesting because I’m really not sure how many people know what ICE is or what precisely they do. In that sense, it’s much different from “Medicare-for-All.” Polling shows that people are overwhelmingly opposed to the child separation policy, but they don’t necessarily make any connection to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. To them, the president’s retort that abolishing ICE would mean no border enforcement at all makes sense.
Which brings me to the second anecdote from the article:
…Republican voters are paying close attention to the Democrats’ new issues — and are ready to paint the party as out of touch.
“I’m from Kansas City, Kansas, which was invaded by illegals in 1993,” said Michael Kalny, 65, a Republican precinct committeeman in the city of Shawnee. “Go see what type of community you’ve got there now — all Hispanic. That’s just one city. It’s happening across the country.”
I don’t know the history of Latino immigration in and around Kansas City, so I can’t say whether it’s true that there was a major influx starting in 1993 or to what degree the new people were undocumented. But I don’t doubt that there are parts of the city and outlying suburbs that were mostly white in the early 1990s and are heavily Latino today. That this is perceived as an unhappy development by a lot of people we would not ordinarily describe as white nationalists or openly racist is probably one of the top two or three explanations for Donald Trump’s political success.
For these folks, Trump is winning the argument over the border.
In a new Washington Post-Schar School poll, conducted from June 27 through July 2, voters in key “battleground” House districts viewed the president negatively, with just 42 percent approving of his performance. Seventy-two percent of battleground district voters said they were bothered “by photos and stories about children being separated from their parents” by immigration enforcement.
Yet while those voters said that they trusted Democrats on immigration, Trump enjoyed a 17-point lead on the question of border security, and a 16-point lead on “ensuring immigration does not hurt American workers” — an indication of potential Democratic difficulty ahead.
It seems clear to me that “Abolish ICE” is a problematic slogan that is too ambiguous to rally support but simple enough to focus opposition. Some people may not want to hear that, or they may just be inclined to write off the potential support of anyone who doesn’t understand or embrace the slogan. Either way, it’s not going to do the job people hope it will do.
Medicare-for-All is more defensible, and it’s certainly better than the alternatives I’ve seen, but I think we overestimate the universal appeal of egalitarian ideas and how easily our nice-sounding and well-meaning slogans can be turned against us. The Republicans spent decades trying to cut and slash Medicare and then attacked Obamacare for finding savings in the program. I think Democrats are often caught off guard by that kind of breathtaking hypocrisy, but it makes sense if you realize that the GOP will always look to identify the selfish motive in every voter. Nothing makes this clearer than the idea that Medicare-for-All means Less-Medicare-for-You.
Selfishness doesn’t always win out. Racial fear and tribalism don’t always win out. But they’re all powerful forces that can be tapped with immense political effectiveness. When Democrats craft their slogans and messages, they need to keep in mind that “Stronger Together” doesn’t address these selfish motives in the same way that “Make America Great Again” does, and that aspirational language doesn’t necessarily win out against a simple appeal to nostalgia or avarice.
One reason the Democrats want to talk about health care in the Supreme Court debate is because they’re looking for an issue that touches everyone rather than asks them to look out for someone else. This shows that they’re learning, however slowly, they must compete for votes in a country that is meaner and more self-interested than we had hoped.
This is a helpful look at real political dynamics that the Democratic Party needs to manage. I think from a grassroots perspective, we need do more than manage these variables. I think we need to push the party to also support a movement(s) which bring together varying interests in the progressive movement – the intersectionality of our sides issues under an umbrella of a moral movement. Something like what Reverend William Barber is doing with his Poor People’s Campaign – https:/www.poorpeoplescampaign.org .
The possibility that a movement catches fire and changes the culture we live in dramatic ways (i.e. the end of the default free market capitalist thinking permeating all aspects of our society), is not something you address. It is possible. It has happened before with a faith component.
I’m thinking of the Social Gospel movement at the turn of the 20th Century and one of their thought leaders – Walter Rauschenbush.
Even if progressives win, we are still left with a broken culture that actually helped create Trump.
Not to mention more stoopid.
http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/2018/7/8
Honestly, it angers me that twice just in the snippets quoted Weigel manages to spot danger for the hapless Democrats but doesn’t do the same for the GOP.
Maybe “Medicare Plus” or some other “more-sounding” slogan would be good on the healthcare front. As for “abolishing ICE” – that just seems moronic to me. It’s too easy to make it sound as though Democrats want “open borders.” Plus, what would that even mean in practice – where do ICE’s functions go?
it doesn’t matter WHAT policy or slogan the Dems pick, Republicans will attack it and lie about it. T
“…and Justice for all.”
Hits on corruption, harsh policing of POC, even voting rights.
And it’s ‘Murican.
Agree. Medicare for All is a better slogan.
However, a good follow up question to the three retirement home ladies would be: WHO is telling you abolishing ICE means no more border enforcement? If the answer is FoxNews et al. then there never was going to be a chance to reach them anyway and we’re lost chasing Twice-Obama-then-Trump unicorns again.
For argument’s sake, Abolish ICE is a self interested slogan for large swaths of this country. Maybe it is too soon, but could it bring out enough Kansas City/Kansas Hispanic residents to overcome the xenophobic, racist white vote? Likely it will come down to precinct level organizing efforts.
No. Not likely. According to the Migration Policy Instutute, in 2016 there were about 225k foreign born residents in Kansas. Of those about 50% Hispanic of all races and origins. Overall, 88,000 were naturalized citizens. That’s your potential voting pool. Let’s say 1/2 of that pool are Hispanics. My guess is that it is less than that, that leaves you with very few actual voters. My guess if they vote in Kansas like they do nationally, you’re talking 25k voters tops. Not enough to overcome a deficit, and that’s not taking into account for the fact that not all of those votes will go to a Democrat.
What may be even more confusing is that Republicans, led by Trump himself, proclaim loudly at every opportunity that those in opposition to their immigration policies want to open the borders and abandon them. It’s an easy lie that can be told and spread in a matter of seconds but takes a lot more effort to refute; and even after a basic but thorough refutation, the initial impression has already done a certain amount of damage. And just trying to set the record straight burns up a lot of oxygen and precious time both for parties to that discussion.
This was the heart of the Romney/Ryan campaign. If Democrats are still caught off guard by it, there’s no real excuse. We’ve got to find ways to counter this tactic and beat it, because apparently all too often an otherwise well-intentioned but uninformed person of average intelligence has little or no immunity to such blatant lying.
If nothing else, since the dawn of the Trump era it’s finally acceptable to say openly that a politician is lying, but that basically amounts to whining in public without a counteroffensive or preemptive tactic.
I personally think the Abolish ICE “movement” is pretty much dumb because all the functions that ICE does will still need to be done by some agency any way. ICE is a symptom of the problem not the problem itself.
I think it’s good to hear that some people are hearing Medicare for All as less Medicare for them, that’s actually the first time I heard that and it’s good to address right away if possible.
It should be repeatedly stressed that ICE does NOT patrol the borders (that is U.S. Border Patrol, part of CBP), and was only formed in 2003. The slogan doesn’t address that, so Trump et al can lie their heads off.
And yes to your second point — I’d also never heard that “interpretation” of Medicare for All!
To quote Michael Cohen, “says who?” Why do we need a separate internal police force dedicated to doing this? There are functions they do that would might need to continue under another agency, and we can discuss what they should be and what that agency should look like. But the agency as presently constructed is out of control and needs to be abolished.
I continue to fall into the trap of being surprised at just how uninformed Trump followers are. Last 2 days arguing with a bizarre lady from Tennessee online was my latest lesson.
She agreed to debate on facts only, then asked if it was ok if she sent me a link from Fox…
As we moved into the facts of the Mueller probe the one thing that came out over and over was a sheer lack of information and a lack of any kind of curiosity about anything beyond what she’d ‘been told’.
Best never to assume that Trumpers can be educated through any means. They really like knowing nothing.
But they apparently do and probably will continue to stumble into a voting booth and read enough to check (R) because that’s a habit that won’t be broken.
Set them free.
BooMan, with utmost respect, I don’t understand how anyone at this late date can write
when it’s become more clear with every passing week that Trump was elected thanks to a state-of-the-art 21st century program of targeted interference, the likes of which we’ve never seen (because it worked through precise manipulation and control of social media) and that, without it, those crucial districts would not have gone to Trump and Clinton — the popular vote winner by a significant margin — would be in the Oval Office today?
I know there are tired counterarguments about “he should never have been that close” etc. but would he even have been the GOP nominee without the Russians, Cambridge Analytica, etc. (and, the same questions have to be asked about the Brexit vote)?
It’s a Brave New World, and we have to start facing it. As Jonathan Chait (among many) has argued, no matter how crazy this stuff sounds, we must overcome that reaction, because it’s starting to look like it’s what happened.
At the very least, we can’t characterize 2016 as he did in the beginning of the piece.
The Orange Shit Gibbon did little better than Bush, McCain, and Romney did during their runs. The media repeatedly rehabilitated and carried Trump’s campaign and he faced an opponent who had been the focus of a 20+ year right wing smear campaign.
And even after all of THAT, the polls didn’t turn until James Comey, as the FUCKING FBI director, wnet full FoxNews about Hillary’s investigations while burying the investigations into Trump.
I like “Medicare for All”.
“Abolish ICE” is a moronic slogan; it plays right into the GOP’s hands.
Some other good (?) slogans:
With your Vote, Tell Trump:
“Stop Destroying Immigrant Families”
“Stop Destroying the Safety Net for Poor Families”
“Stop Destroying the Justice System”
“Stop Destroying the Environment”
“Stop Ignoring the Constitution”
“Stop Kow-Towing to Putin”
“Stop Destroying America”
Kansas City has been the meat packing capital of the US since there have been railroads. The hispanics are there to slaughter the cows, pigs, chickens and whatever else meat we eat. The whole meat industry accounts for 50% of the economic activity in KS. Mr. Kalny just votes against his own self interests.
I recall hearing this podcast several months ago, about what’s happened in a town in Alabama since a large number of Latinos showed up to work in poultry-processing plants. A couple of economists who studied the overall effect of the Latino influx concluded that they boosted the town’s economy. But that’s something that only comes out by a rather thorough economic analysis, whereas the townspeople respond to anecdotal accounts and some generalized unease at their town being transformed.
Can we be honest with each other? Progressives are also uneasy with seeing big changes in the places where they live, too. It’s just that we tend to label those changes as “gentrification”. We feel righteous about opposing “gentrification”, but when folks who have grown up in a little town in Alabama get upset about changes to their environment, we denounce them as bigots. It’s simple: we’re informed and right, they’re ignorant and wrong. That’s perhaps not the best message for trying to engage people.
Abolish Ice is a slogan from some New York leftie. Sean something or other. He’s posting all over the internet. It’s popular among other New York lefties and some lefties elsewhere. These people live in their bubble and are mostly idiots. Same people that either sat out the 2016 election or voted Stein because the Democratic candidate didn’t pass their purity tests. These people are total idiots when it comes to electoral politics. They gave us Bush and now Trump. They can go straight to hell!
What a ridiculous statement. You can fight for your version of the Dem party, we can fight for ours. If you hadn’t noticed, our messages are being captured and embraced — messages like “Fight for $15” that were being laughed off or mocked two years ago.
You may be right. First time I heard it was from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I bet it has some support in parts of NYC. They may be idiots but what do you do when that is how they see the world? Reminds me of BLM.
That’s a great point. I’m sure these opinions just shifted for no reason…
I obviously had a very strange day because when I see “Abolish ICE” – I think it would make a good climate denier slogan.
When I read about the woman who interpreted Medicare-for-All as Less-Medicare-for-Me, I didn’t necessarily interpret this as reflecting the woman’s ignorance or greed. Instead I remembered reading about people who opposed certain government programs because they felt the primary beneficiaries would be “undeserving”: for example, subsidized medical insurance. The line of thinking is basically, hey, I busted my butt earning a living so I can afford my insurance, so why should I as a taxpayer be subsidizing anyone else’s medical insurance? You can argue until you’re blue in the face that having everyone covered by medical insurance is a highly effective way of controlling costs, but if the person you’re arguing with is fixated on what he thinks is “fair” and who he thinks is “undeserving”, that economic argument will not gain traction. The GOP understands this and crafts its messages appropriately.
It’s great reasoning. You can justify anything with it! For instance, cut off all those over-90s – it’s wasted on them, they’re stealing my Medicare! Or all those bastards in California. More for me! And so appropriate for Medicate too, which I believe is mostly taxpayer/revenue funded, not like social security. So of course it’s all for me!
I honestly don’t know if it’s just all about greed, and the racism stuff is just the rationalization, or it’s all about racism and the greed is just the rationalization.
You miss my point. You mention racism and greed as being the drivers of opposition to Medicare-for-All. I beg to differ. I think there truly are many people who work hard and feel that they deserve better than those they perceive as lazy, unmotivated…pick your term. If you dismiss words like “lazy” and “unmotivated” as simply racist code words, you’re reducing people to stereotypes and not taking them seriously.
. . . words”, but often/largely/frequently/usually/substantially/mostly/routinely [circle all that apply] racist code words.
Kalny … Kalny … what sort of name is that? It doesn’t sound very Anglo-Saxon to me. You say you’re from Kansas City? Really? What about grandpa?
Abolish ICE has the advantage of sounding more decisive than “let’s shore up due process for immigration courts”, and morally it has the high ground. But politically, it’s probably not going to rally voters any better than “path to citizenship” did. It’s been almost 30 years since the door closed on the ability of undocumented residents to become citizens, and by focusing on ICE and visa violation enforcement as a central message, the party isn’t going to be mobilizing that many voters. People who have these issues cannot vote. I don’t think ICE has the resonance with naturalized citizens and the “natural born citizen” adult children of immigrants that liberals think it does.
This is the real problem. Too many in the “Heartland” simply do not see themselves as part of all America, only the narrow “whites-only” America that they inhabit. The GOP certainly gets it that their long tried and true formula of selfish and nationalistic bumper stickers combined with extreme voter suppression and gerrymandering – and, of course, the Electoral College means that American Democracy is now much more likely to end up being a kind of Russian pseudo-democracy than a genuine, truly representative democracy.