THE DEPLORABLES REVISITED OR BARBARIANS AT THE GATES
There is nothing the rabble fears more than intelligence. If they understood what is truly terrifying, they would fear ignorance. Goethe
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. Will Rogers
American voters have not confronted so grave a choice since 1860. Mark Danner
The most important thing about this election, by far, is that it could decide who will control the Senate. Our main concern right now is about which party wins control. If you want a Senate that's going to reject anything that comes out of a Biden White House, feel free to consider the Republican candidates. Otherwise, come on ... [D]on't...turn the Senate over to Mitch McConnell. Gail Collins
A week to go in another of a seeming endless series of existential must-win elections. It never seems to get any less critical. The counter-enlightenment just won't go away. But the Democrats and the Independents (few as they are) are not taking it seriously enough - just another mid-term which comes every four years and almost always goes against the party controlling the White House. This election is far more than that, and the Democrats better get their act together, if it is not already too late (in many states early voting has begun and absentee ballots are out). The candidates which the Republicans have put forward are breathtakingly appalling. They have outdone themselves, which is saying something for a Party which in the past has foisted upon us such notables as Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, John Ashcroft, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Kris Kobach and has presently succeeded in dumping on us Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, Elise Stefanik and the like. The new lineup includes such worthies as Doug Mastriano, Blake Masters, Herschel Walker, Don Bolduc, J.D. Vance, Mehmet Oz, Lee Zeldin, Mark Finchem and Kari Lake. If I've left others of this ilk out, please forgive me. Maybe it's no coincidence that election day comes so soon after Halloween.
Democratic Strategy
The Democratic attack should be four pronged: 1) elaborate on what President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have accomplished (with virtually zero support from Republicans) for the benefit of all Americans (stay away from identity based appeals); 2) emphasize that Republicans have offered no solutions to today's problems, such as inflation and crime, but only complain about them and recite the time worn and failed mantras of lowering taxes (mainly for the rich) and reducing regulations (see the British example and the demise of former Prime Minister Truss); 3) point out what a Republican majority in the House and Senate would mean for abortion rights, voting rights, environmental issues, Medicare, Social Security, health care including costs of pharmaceuticals, Supreme Court nominations, church-state relations, costs of education and rational gun regulations, and publicize Senator Rick Scott's agenda as well as the refusal of Republican Congressional leadership to present a platform; 4) play the January 6 card and the attempt by the Republican Party to overturn the election (and the Government), reject the rule of law and ignore the will of a majority of the electorate.
Control Of Congress
Democrats need to emphasize foremost that this election is not only about electing individual Senators and members of the House, but also about determining majority control of the House and Senate, and that such control will have greater impact upon the nation's and the individual voter's well being and future than the acts of an individual member of Congress. If Republicans hold the majority, even a moderate Republican member will be bound to vote with the Republican caucus, and is thus a danger to the country. The same goes for state and local elections. More and more we see that gerrymandered federal and state election districts determined by malapportioned state legislatures impact on the outcome of elections.
Getting Out The Vote
The effectiveness of the foregoing, notwithstanding its merits as a campaign strategy, is nevertheless totally dependent for its success on getting out the vote, particularly the young vote. Ultimately, the Party most successful in getting its base and those likely to be receptive to its program to the polls is going to win, particularly in a mid-term election.
The Republican Party And The Politics Of Extremism
Finally, it would be remiss not to remind voters of the parallels between the goals and ideology of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and those of Putin's and Orban's governments and other European far right parties, with their preoccupation with the denial of individual rights, the denial of gay rights including same sex marriage, ethnocentric policies and the primacy of the State; and even those of the National Socialists as they came to power in Germany in the early 1930s.
The Republican Party leadership today is not made up of conservatives but of radicals/revolutionaries who are not interested in maintaining and improving the current and long standing system of government, but only in destroying it so they can take it over and run it themselves autocratically, based on their supposed superior thinking.
The Party can be looked at as consisting of two groupings:
a. white, non-college graduate, rural males who want to push down and keep down those who they perceive as beneath them (these are the racists and ethno-centrists and misogynists) and who blame the "elite" in power for the elevation of such perceived inferiors to equal status and which elite they wish to overthrow;
b. the intellectual elite, who feel that their intellectual and philosophical and management superiority is not recognized or accepted by the currently empowered establishment, and who want to take over themselves as autocrats who cannot be questioned. They (people such as Peter Thiel and those at the Claremont Institute) represent the contemporary version of the counter-enlightenment - the autocracy of a self-proclaimed intellectual elite (as distinct from the 18th century autocracy based on birth and wealth) promoting the efficiency of the tyrant driven by narcissism and ego and desire for power for the sake of power. Shades of Ayn Rand.
What we have is group (b) manipulating group (a) to overthrow constitutional republican government and relying on obscenely wealthy oligarchs to fund their efforts. That is today's Republican Party. They are aiming at a permanent takeover, a one-party state, not unlike Putin's and Xi's.
This may be too heavy a load for a campaign presentation, but it puts the critical importance of this election (and the next one) in historical perspective.
What The Democrats Have Accomplished
In two years President Biden and the Congressional Democrats have pushed through a $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus package, a trillion dollar infrastructure bill, a generous tax credit for parents that brought child poverty to historical lows, legislation that allows Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices and to cover more drug costs, the biggest investment in clean energy in history, a technology bill encouraging computer chip manufacturing and including tax credits encouraging the building of factories that manufacture batteries and solar panels, a veteran's health bill, a gun safety bill and expanded health care subsidies, as well as new taxes on corporations that buy their own stock and a new 15% minimum tax rate for corporations earning more than $1 billion a year.
State unemployment is at all-time lows in 11 states and below 3% in 17 states. The U.S. economy added more jobs, including 700,000 manufacturing jobs, during Biden's first 20 months in office than it did during the first 37 months of the Trump administration, that is, before Covid put the economy into a coma. Wage growth is robust (overall labor income per working-age adult, adjusted for inflation, rose 3.5% from January 2021 to July 2022). The latest report shows that GDP for the third quarter increased at the annual rate of 2.6%. The U.S. budget deficit has been sliced in half for fiscal 2022.
Notwithstanding the Republican's constant clamoring about deficits and their willingness to shut down the Government if the debt limit is increased, the federal deficit went up in every single year in the Trump administration. It went up before the pandemic; it went up during the pandemic; it went up every single year on his watch.
If the Democrats can maintain and expand their majorities in the House and the Senate they can push for a more expansive child tax credit, subsidies for child day care, paid leave, funding for free community college and universal pre-K, codification of abortion rights, the right to purchase contraception and to marry whom one chooses, expanding and safeguarding voting rights, installation of more like-minded judges, addressing racial discrimination in policing (not defunding the police), gun safety legislation that closes background check loopholes and sets a minimum age of 21 for purchasing guns, and legislation that confronts climate change, all of which are opposed by the Republican Party (just for good measure they voted against capping the price for insulin). A more robust majority in the Senate would enhance the chances for an increase of the corporate tax rate to 28% (certainly justified by the bonanza profits accruing to oil companies and other wealthy corporations that are jacking up prices to reap more profits which they use to buy back stock and pay dividends to their wealthy shareholders), a global minimum tax rate and an increase in taxes on the richest Americans which Republicans have opposed.
Republicans Have Offered No Solutions To Inflation, Crime Or Immigration Problems
On inflation, the primary target on which they have focused, Republicans have said little about what they would do, and what they have said - like forcing cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, extending and making permanent Trump's 2017 tax cuts, otherwise due to expire in a couple of years (which overwhelmingly benefitted the wealthy), and repealing the 15% corporate minimum tax - would make the problem worse. They want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at a time when millions of seniors are struggling to pay their bills, and repeal the authorization for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. They would repeal the $2,000 cap on prescription drug costs for seniors, the $35 a month cap on insulin and the savings on healthcare premiums of $800 a year for millions of Americans under the Affordable Care Act. And, of course, they are still determined to repeal the Affordable Care Act itself. The Republican plan (if it can be called that; it is really just the old familiar dogma that tax cuts-in the teeth of all the evidence-trickle down and pay for themselves and that government spending is what causes problems) will only make inflation worse, not better. The markets agree. Look at what happened in Great Britain when Liz Truss announced an economic plan that looks remarkably like what the Republicans are proposing. On September 23, before Liz Truss's demise as Prime Minister, Larry Kudlow, former Director of the National Economic Council from 2018 to 2021 in the Trump administration , said: "The new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy's Commitment to America plan". We know how that worked out in Great Britain. The same disaster is waiting in the wings here if we elect a Republican Congress.
Although deficit spending may have had some inflationary effect early in the Biden administration, one cannot ignore the social benefits of such spending during the pandemic emergency. Today's inflation has been triggered more more by snarled supply chains, pent-up consumer demand, shipping industries that were slow to return to peak production and bottlenecks in refining. Tight energy supplies and ensuing gas price increases are far more attributable to the war in Ukraine than any domestic energy legislation. Inflation is a global problem that is worse in Europe and Great Britain than in the United States.
On immigration, another principal target of attack, the most they can come up with seems to be their "build the wall" slogan and their demonstrably false argument that the Democrats want open borders. They ignore the fact that what is needed is bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform, which is indeed sorely required, but in which they have steadfastly refused to participate.
The Republicans other main focus is on violent crime, which is of great concern to all, and rightly so. But what is the Republican plan? From what I can see, it is mainly an attack on bail reform programs, promotion of Willie Horton-like memes and reiteration ad nauseum of the "law and order" mantra. There is room for reasonable differences on bail reform programs, but that is not the solution to the crime problem. A more useful tool, at least for homicide cases, would be more effective gun ownership regulations, which is anathema to Republicans. Constant winks at, and outright encouragement of, acts of violence and disrespect for the law by the Republican leadership set the wrong example - see January 6 and the Republican response to it, Donald Trump's other violations of statutes and established rules which encourage criminal behavior, and the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband. Ultimately crime is more directly related to poverty and inequality.
Republicans talk big about crime, but here is the reality. Republicans are worse at controlling crime than Democrats. Examples: in 2020 Oklahoma's murder rate, the most reliably measured form of violent crime, was almost 50% higher than California's and almost double New York's. According to Paul Krugman, murder rates rose at roughly the same rate in Trump-voting red states and Biden-voting blue states. Homicides rose sharply in both urban and rural areas. Levels of both homicides and violent crime as a whole are generally higher in red states. So, while concerns over the recent crime surge are valid, the right-wingers who talk tough on crime don't seem to be any good at actually keeping crime low. Even after the 2020-21 surge, serious crime in New York, in fact, was still lower than it was when Rudy Giuliani was mayor.
Since we are addressing Republican myths, here is the reality about the Republican claim that rural America (the bedrock of Republican support) is not receiving its fair share of resources. The truth is that rural America is heavily subsidized by urban America. Less urbanized states receive far more from the federal government than they pay in. In a normal year the most urbanized states are usually net contributors to the federal budget.
And, getting back to crime, except in New England, homicide rates in 2020 were generally higher in more rural states.
Republicans Will Be A Destructive Force If They Win Control Of Congress
To begin with, Republicans are threatening to oppose increasing the debt ceiling, which would force the United States to default on its sovereign debt obligations, unless President Biden reduces government spending by cutting such programs as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, recklessly jeopardizing payments for military salaries and safety-net benefits for low-income individuals, as well as roiling bond markets, and resulting in widespread government layoffs.
Republicans will push for a federal anti-abortion law, limit voting rights, cut back on environmental regulations, promote polluting industries and limit and make more costly health care coverage. They have vowed to dismantle the economic and social welfare architecture the Biden administration has constructed. Take a look at Senator Rick Scott's Rescue America Plan. Scott runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Under his plan Republicans will dictate what can be taught in public schools to conform to the dictates of their white supremacy base, do away with diversity programs, build the wall and minimize legal immigration, reduce the government workforce by 25%, sell government buildings and assets, move government agencies out of Washington or shutter them entirely, protect the nuclear family which means eliminating same sex marriage, eliminate abortion rights and deprive LGBT persons of their rights, eliminate separation of church and state, carry out an isolationist foreign policy, cut taxes and never propose any tax increases, make all Americans pay taxes even if they have minimal income, make all government programs, including Medicare and social security, lapse after 5 years unless re-enacted, and require an annual balanced budget. The fact that this borders on insanity doesn't make it any less appealing to the Far Right which is running the Republican Party. This is what we will face if Republicans control Congress. This should concern everyone, not just Democrats, which is why it must be brought home, not only to Democrats who are thinking of sitting out the mid-terms, but also to non-partisans who are not committed to either Party. Once elected, Republicans in Congress vote as a monolith. Whatever the merits of the individual, he or she will be compelled to vote the Party line. When one votes for a Republican, one is not voting for the individual but for the Republican program in its entirety. In that Party there is no room for deviation from the dictates of the extreme right Freedom Caucus.
It is telling that the Republican Party did not adopt a platform at its 2020 National Convention. Their policy agenda is so unpopular that they are reluctant to have voters, other than their base, know what they really stand for, except for the off the wall extremists like Scott. Thus Kevin McCarthy spoke in broad generalities when he announced the Part's agenda for the 2022 mid-terms, because he knows that the positions of his base, to which he is bound, would be unacceptable to that uncommitted part of the electorate whose votes the Republicans need if he is to become Speaker of the House.
More specifically, this is the wish list we would get with a Republican controlled Congress:
repealing all new taxes on large multinationals like Amazon and a tax on stock buybacks as well as repealing increased spending on the IRS which was enacted to raise revenues by cracking down on companies and high earners that cheat on their taxes;
passing further tax cuts, including extending some of the reductions for businesses and individuals passed in 2017 under Trump that are set to expire over the next few years;
reduction of expenditures on safety-net programs like Medicaid and supplemental nutritional assistance and reduction of future spending on Medicare and Social Security for some beneficiaries;
unwinding some of the spending from the newly signed climate law, challenging future regulations and reducing federal regulation of new drilling projects;
thwarting judicial nominations;
pushing for a national ban on abortions;
watering down the Biden's order providing student debt relief;
stalling President Biden's equity agenda focused on minorities, poor women, disadvantaged and marginalized communities through congressional investigations;
restructuring or scaling back entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, most prominently by allowing Medicare and Social Security to "sunset" if Congress did not pass new legislation to extend them;
diminishing the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to regulate the finance industry.
Rejection Of The Rule Of Law
The substantive policy differences noted above are reason enough to vote for Democrats in the mid-term elections. An even more overpowering reason to vote Democratic is that of fending off the Republican attack on the fundamental principles of the American republic - a blatant attempt to destroy 250 years of democratic government and impose in its place an authoritarian one party state governed indirectly by wealthy oligarchs through autocratic leaders.
Republicans have always been inclined to substitute the authority of a wealthy elite for written law. They consider that a code of laws applicable equally to all persons as contrary to the rule of select individuals. They prefer to be judged by the decree of a "superior" elite rather than by definite laws, drawn up by the dictates of reason. They see themselves as purveyors of temporal and divine authority, although the founders of our nation were never in favor of an official religion and in fact had a hatred of arbitrary tyranny and a contempt for organized religion.
As pointed out by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books, "American voters have not confronted so grave a choice since 1860." The parallels of the Republican Party with the governing elites in Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea and Hungary are striking. They all represent a backlash against the enlightenment principles that are the backbone of the American experiment. If the Republicans prevail it will be the end of the experiment with the America of the future becoming an ever more authoritarian place where government maintains the right to intervene in personal decisions, even the most intimate - except when it comes to firearms, in which case anyone, young or old, sane or unbalanced, can go about as heavily armed as a combat soldier.
If any election cried out to be nationalized - to be fought not only on the kitchen table issues of inflation and the price of gas but on the defining principles of what the country is and what it should be - it is this November's.
Under this threat, Democrats must unite and make crystal clear to voters what is at stake. Americans must be given a persuasive reason to vote. This election is about safeguarding the country they know and the freedoms and rights they cherish. This is how the issues need to be presented:
If you don't want a government that can force you to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term - vote;
If you don't want a government that can deny you contraceptives - vote;
If you don't want a government that can tell you with whom you can make love and whom you can marry - vote;
If you don't want a government that will do nothing to protect your child from a troubled teenager with an assault rifle - vote;
If you don't want a government that can ignore the people's voice at the polling place - vote;
If you don't want a government that will do nothing about rising temperatures and the danger they pose to all of us - vote
Finally, how can one vote for any member of a Party in which a majority of its House members (as well as a significant number of its Senate members) voted to overturn the certified 2020 election results; a Party of which many members treated the January 6 attempt by a violent mob to overthrow the government of the United States and hang the Vice President as a normal tourist crowd; a Party whose candidates in large numbers refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election and refuse to commit to abide by election results in their races in 2022 unless they win. We are about to go down a slippery slope. We need to stop before it is too late, and this is the primary message that Democrats need to get across to their own base and to those not tied to any Party.
