"Doing Nothing is Not an Option" Pile-On

Tease: more in my series on “Hidden Structures that Create and Maintain Gross Inequality” to come soon. But this morning I want to pile on to MM’s excellent post this morning titled Doing Nothing isn’t an Option. I thought I would just add a few words as someone who’s been “in the arena” not just as a candidate, but one who - not by choice - was a chosen candidate by the Democratic party institutional “powers-that-be” in two of my races.

First, some confirmation of what Mister Mix is talking about (per Molly Jong-Fast:

Note the highlighted section. when Schumer has lost Democrats who work on the Hill, you know his time is up soon and his effectiveness is minimal at best.

Point. While it may be all they have, Trump Admin surrogates are actively and vocally all in on pushing the line that things will improve in the future if we all just chill out for a bit (from Kevin Hasset to Scott Bessent as a small example). To MM’s point, while the Biden Admin did some really good stuff, this is something they actually truly sucked at - touting their own achievements and tooting their own horn.

They also literally try to bribe Americans with handouts to farmers and the general public because they know it will have a direct impact.

I’ve written about my sports analogy of achieving more wins if one plays on their home field. This is something Democrats are especially bad at (although their focus on healthcare during the shutdown - before they caved - was well done; credit where credit is due). Why? because they want to be perfectly nit-pickingly accurate and careful in what they say and prefer to get into the policy weeds instead of making general accusatory statements. To continue the sports analogy, politics is not just any sport, it’s a contact sport. Timid people need not apply.

Take Medicare and Social Security. Dems should be out there every f*^king day simply saying that Republicans want to cut seniors’ hard-earned healthcare and Social Security benefits that they’ve already paid for. It doesn’t matter if there is no specific legislation currently on the table from Republicans to do this (although the OBBBA does force cuts in an indirect way) and Dems don’t need to provide any details. Just make the other side play defense on our home turf and press the advantage.

Point. In conjunction with the above, and to bolster MM’s point, Dems need to be touting their successes constantly. And by successes, I mean policies that directly impact voters, and to which voters will emotionally react, no matter how small they may seem. Do we really think the public at large had any clue that Dems were able to get rid of bank abuses such as egregious overdraft fees through the CFPB. Or that airlines were required under a Biden Rule to provide cash compensation to delayed fliers instead of future credits that expired if not used? These may seem small, but they resonate with voters because most of u have had to deal with crap like this from large corporations. To MM’s point, expanding rural internet is great, but it was actually used against Biden because the process takes so long that Republicans were able to turn it into an accusation that it was a failure.

Point. Dems need to focus on a mixture of big initiatives and small, concrete, short-term, high-impact, easily identifiable actions that will connect with voters.

Big initiatives include increasing the size of SCOTUS (and perhaps limiting SCOTUS’ reach), statehood for DC and Puerto Rico and getting rid of the filibuster. All critically important, but all fit into “inside baseball” and none of which will likely emotionally resonate with the great mass of relatively uninformed voters. More direct initiatives might be reducing healthcare premiums through the ACA, reining in banks, and reducing excessive “add-on” fees from corporations (Verizon charges me an “administrative fee” and an “economic adjustment fee” that is not included in their stated regular monthly charge).

These are all just small examples - I’m sure there are many more ways for Dems to improve their connection to voters. But the sad truth is that incredible and unbelievable as it may seem to many of us, the Democrats have allowed Republicans to define them as “elitist” and out of touch with regular people. The problem is this is not true from a policy perspective, but absolutely true from an elected official perspective (Schumer and Jeffries, anyone?).

As MM said, doing nothing is not an option.