Can Democrats Grow a Pair?

If they can't punish the GOP for ignoring the insurrection, they should find another line of work.

For decades, we’ve seen a “toughness gap” between the parties--Republicans are just better at slinging crap, stigmatizing opponents and mobilizing resentments. 

Why do Democrats have so much trouble going on the offensive? This is a particularly important question now, with democracy on the line.

Part of the answer is that at this moment in American history, Democrats are just more moral and responsible. It was the reverse for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Democrats were the party of Southern segregationists and Northern corrupt bosses. Now, despite some problems with smug intolerance for differing views, they are the party of decency and honesty--at least in comparison to most of the GOP.

So lying shamelessly is not an option. If they imitate Republicans, they’ll lose their souls without winning more elections. The good news is that Democrats don’t have to. There’s a ripe orchard of low-hanging fruit to pick. 

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to know how to do it. For someone like me who grew up in the rough-and-tumble of Chicago politics, it’s exasperating. Too many Democrats seem to have forgotten the old saw that “politics ain’t beanbag.” It’s football, with eye-gouging at the line scrimmage. But contact sports are out of fashion among Democratic elites.

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So lying shamelessly is not an option. If they imitate Republicans, they’ll lose their souls without winning more elections.

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To the extent that they think in the sports and martial metaphors that have long dominated American politics, Democrats are always playing defense. In historical terms, this is admirable. Democrats defend the gains of the New Deal and the women’s, civil rights, voting rights, LGBTQ and other movements against the depradations of the American rightwing. Punishing enemies? Bombing Republican candidates from the air (and on social media)? Making the opposition pay for unpatriotic votes? Not part of the game plan.

Playing offense is apparently reserved for Republicans. The last midterm election in which the party in the White House gained seats was 2002, when the GOP ran ads linking Democrats to Osama bin Laden. Just imagine what Republicans would be doing now if it was Black Lives Matter that had stormed the Capitol.

Recall that the harshest and stickiest anti-Trump ads of the 2020 cycle were made by the apostate Republicans of the Lincoln Project. Analysts disagree on how important those ads were to Joe Biden’s victory but it was a weird state of affairs. For months, conservative anti-Trump Republicans kept up the morale of liberal Democrats. Everyone knew that Democratic media consultants just didn’t have the chops to make these ads.

This bugged me throughout 2020 and it’s bugging me again now. I understand the importance of positive, substantive campaigns. That’s how you win and govern, as Biden is showing. But too many Democrats have lost sight of the fundamental nature of politics. 

A few days after he was sworn in as president in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt went over to the Georgetown home of retired Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to enjoy a little bootleg champagne on Holmes’ 92nd birthday. (Can you imagine Biden smoking dope with Stephen Breyer after his inaugural?).

“You are in a war, Mr. President,” the legendary jurist told the new president. “And in a war there is only one rule, ‘Form your battalion and fight!’”

There’s another FDR story that’s relevant, though it’s not about him. It’s about the Democratic Party in the early 1930s. 

The DNC employed a talented publicist named Charlie Michelson, known as “The Ghost.” Michelson got up every day and hit Herbert Hoover with a two-by-four. 

Charlie Michelson

As Michelson later explained in his book, “The Ghost Talks,” he first spread the idea of  ‘Hoover Carts’--old cars with the engine and windows stripped out that were pulled by mules. The idea was to dramatize how Hoover was making everyone poor. 

Hoover Cart from the 1930s

“Hoover Carts' didn't stick too well. Nor did "Hoover Flags" (pockets turned inside out) or "Hoover Blankets" (newspapers to keep warm). But one day the Ghost was in Central Park and saw hobos living there in shanties, as the homeless were all over the country. He went back to his office and coined the term ‘Hoovervilles.’” 

Empty pockets were known as “Hoover Dollars,” or, flapping inside-out, “Hoover Flags.” 

Roosevelt had limped to the nomination on the fourth ballot in 1932 and his chances for the presidency were seen as no better than even money.  “Hoovervilles” helped him win in a landslide.

Central Park Hooverville with Central Park West in the Background in 1932. NY Daily News

Up in New Hampshire for the primary last year, I asked Tom Perez, chair of the DNC, why he wasn’t using the party to slam Trump. He said he thought that was the job of the liberal press, which struck me as strange.

I understand why Biden would not want to sully himself in the scrum. And I see why gestures of bipartisanship are helpful in a negotiation.

But political parties are supposed to have a different role than presidents. Parties are supposed to be partisan. They’re supposed to fight while their leaders stay above the fray.  And if they don’t want to dirty their hands, the least we can expect is for Super PACs to fill the breach. 

We've seen some recent efforts along these lines. An anti-Trump super PAC called MeidasTouch recently made an ad featuring testimony and TV appearances from Capitol Police officers who describe being attacked during the 1/6 insurrection. This group bought $185,000 in airtime on Fox News, which then refused to run the ad.

The kerfuffle generated the usual social media outrage but not much else. While the ad was better than nothing, the images of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy were too generic to sting. National ad buys like this are more about gratifying anti-Trump voters --and getting them to open their wallets--than actually scaring Republicans.

To do the latter,  the DNC or deep-pocketed super PACs would need to make customized, local ads individually targeting each of the 175 GOP House members and 35 GOP senators who voted against the 1/6 commission. These 210 ads--mostly on social media-- could be identical except for the beginning and end, which--to pack a “Ghost” punch--would all include a jujitsu attack on Republicans as anti-police.

Imagine a former Capitol police officer beaten during the insurrection saying something like this:

"My fellow officers and I had Congressman Smith’s back--but he didn't have ours."

Ads like this won’t flip those hardcore Trumpist seats. They won’t make Republicans stop worrying about primary challenges from Trumpsters. But they would give Republicans a taste of what James Carville had in mind when he said Democrats must “make the Republicans own the insurrection every day.” 

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"My fellow officers and I had Congressman Smith’s back--but he didn't have ours."

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McConnell circulated the Carville interview among his colleagues to convince them that--despite the non-partisan nature of the commission-- Democrats aimed to politicize it. The best option now for Democrats is to prove McConnell right.

The argument that doing so will undermine congressional investigations into 1/ 6 is silly. McConnell will say that anything produced by Democrats is political.

After all, when Democrats gave the Republican negotiator, John Katko, everything he wanted for a non-partisan commission, Republicans (to Katko’s horror) still said it was a partisan exercise and rallied against it.

If that’s the GOP’s default position, it’s time for Democrats to bring out the howitzers.

But they haven’t. McConnell’s bet that Democrats are wussies is paying off. So far, Democrats haven’t named and shamed those who are giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists. What gives?

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If that’s the GOP’s default position, it’s time for Democrats to bring out the howitzers.

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A Democratic member of Congress told me last week that Biden doesn’t want a big fight over getting to the bottom of the insurrection. He thinks it’s a distraction from his agenda.

This may be the first time since the 2020 election when I think Biden is wrong. Forget distraction. Think air cover.

Accountability can be inconvenient. But without it--without any price attached to turning a blind eye to insurrection--the malevolent forces afflicting American politics will only grow stronger. It's time to push back. Hard.

If Democrats don’t know how to exploit this issue they should find another line of work.