Nov. 3, 2021
One year ago to the day, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump for president.
Ever since then, we’ve not been able to see the political forest for those three trees. The trees block almost everything. Sunlight. Civil discourse. Congressional legislation. Climate change.
What they don’t block is the political right and the Republican Party from seeing the forest very clearly. They like what they see and they know how to use it.
The evidence lurks behind the trees.
The statewide elections Tuesday in Virginia and New Jersey resulted in landslide proportion shifts away, in only one year, from two blue state presidential victories. If it were only one state, the post-election analyses might cling to state-specific issues – a lackluster Democratic gubernatorial candidate and school-related hot button issues in Virginia and covid mandates and property taxes in New Jersey.
Those issues mattered, of course, but the all-encompassing reality for Democrats and the political left is that they face the prospect of checkmates to every move.
They stand for stasis. No matter what they touch, they have little to show for it. It goes well beyond the stalemate in Congress over Biden's Build Back Better plan, now tied to a $1.75 trillion framework on spending and climate change (see Fox News' contorted analysis). Not a single Republican will vote for it, but the prevailing message is that the Democrats can’t get it done in the face of resistance from two Senate Democrats.
The Democrats tout the “unprecedented” victory of issuing subpoenas to Trump’s aides and allies to deepen the investigation into the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol. Then even further, the “unprecedented” contempt of Congress finding against Steve Bannon. Other than paper votes, the Democrats are stalled by legal proceedings before they produce anything that benefits the voting public. Trump himself is the target of innumerable civil cases and threatened criminal prosecutions against him that are also tied up for the foreseeable future in appeals and the painstaking clatter of due process in the hands of a man and entourage who have beating the system down to a fund-raising science.
The painful irony is that the political right and Republicans don’t need to get anything done. They are the loyal opposition to the uncertainties of progress. The groundwork has been laid for the political right and Republicans to say anything about anything with impunity. For instance, that critical race theory is rife in public schools or that the 2020 Presidential election results are suspect or that paid family leave is a bad idea, if the Democrats are proposing it. Countering the propaganda comes off as defensive.
Climate change? Prove it and by the way, your proof can’t be trusted.
Covid vaccines? Your science and data keep changing. Can’t trust that, especially if you’re a parent.
Presidential elections. If Biden won in 2020, why does almost half the country not trust the results? A poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) finds that that the vast majority of viewers of conservative-leaning cable TV believe Trump's claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him (82% of Fox News, 97% of OANN, Newsmax Viewers Believe Trump's Stolen Election Claim: Poll). As for the future, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds that only 33% of Republicans say they’ll trust the results of the 2024 elections if the candidate they support loses. Even among Independents, only 68% say they’ll trust the results if the candidate they support loses.
No wonder states with Republican governors and GOP-controlled legislatures can conjure up voting integrity issues from the 2020 elections even though Republicans fared better in those elections than Democrats except for the presidential race. Voter suppression laws are needed to ensure that phantom voter integrity issues seem real.
If you’ve seen The Queen’s Gambit or Searching for Bobby Fisher or any other chess movies, you can appreciate the dramatic epiphany when players can see the whole chessboard and not just the chess pieces in front of them. The political right and Republicans see it. They’re masters. Trump is a grand master. The political left and Democrats, even when they’re allied on issues or legislation, play the game at a rudimentary level. Checkmates appear to be inevitable.
I saw the frustration if not the inevitability in David Plouffe, Obama’s former campaign strategist, Tues. night on the MSNBC’s election night coverage. “The national environment ended up being really terrible tonight for Democrats,” he said as he seethed, and focused on the ominous swing in white women without college degrees. Exit polls had them going for the GOP candidate by 75 percent, he cited — a nearly 20-point increase from Trump’s share a year ago. He characterized the trend as a “nightmare scenario.”
A few days before the election, Plouffe tweeted about the political right and the GOP:
More than 20,000 followers liked it and 4,500 retweeted it.
Combine his election night appearance and his pre-election tweet, and the checkmate scenarios appear even to the casual observer.
The Dems try to move the ball. They fumble. The right pounces. Critical race theory, Defund the Police, Black Lives Matter become an assault on America as we know it.
There are no refs.
Vaccinations, mandates, masks, remote schooling, and event cancellations to keep neighbors, fans, teachers and classmates safe become an attack on personal freedom and liberty.
The bedlam at the Capitol on Jan. 6 becomes the persecution of a president whose rightful election victory is an elaborate cover up. Add to it that the drip, drip, drip of prosecutions of cult-driven insurrectionists is soon to become a vendetta by a partisan Justice Department that just won’t let it go.
Those who are trained in wielding the power of propaganda, big lies and deny, deny, deny counter-offensives don’t surrender in politics any easier than they do in chess when on the cusp of checkmate.
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3 comments:
Jack: I'm not sure how I got on your list, but I figured I would see what you have to say. "The political left and Democrats, even when they’re allied on issues or legislation, play the game at a rudimentary level. Checkmates appear to be inevitable." So how would you recommend that the Dems and the Left play the game at a more complex, comprehensive level. I agree that some of the so-called "wins" by Dems don't mean much to the average voter.
Not sure either, but welcome and thanks for chiming in. I'm in no better position to figure out the counter-strategy than those closer to the action. But I will say this, and I may elaborate in a future blog: The Dems need to show it, not say it (as is often said about journalism). Roll out programs, don't merely legislate or advocate. The more visible and meaningful, the better.
Jack, I enjoyed the blog, and I had the same question for you as Elliot above. I do believe Biden has to play a stronger role in unifying the Dems because all the infighting is making them look very weak!
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