I’ve never liked playing the “whatabout” game, even if it’s true. You know, “if a Democrat did that, the outrage would have forced him/her out of office already,” kind of thing. It’s too easy to lament Republicans’ ruthless political savvy in contrast to our usual haplessness, and it makes one feel frustrated and helpless.
That said – you know what’s coming now, don’t you? – imagine a world in which two straight Democratic presidencies ended not just with slight downturns, but with economy-shaking calamities that created pain for virtually every person in America.
Set aside for a second the question of whether Democrats were at fault for the calamity. If the result of Democratic rule was a huge drop in employment and growth, Democrats would get crushed electorally in all but the most progressive parts of the country, and the word “Democrat” would be uttered mostly as a pejorative for decades.
So here we are in 2020 coming to the second straight Republican presidency that ends in tears, misery, mass layoffs and bad economic data for large swaths of the country. And while Republicans didn’t exactly create the problem, their policies and actions exacerbated the problems.
This is not the time to relitigate the Global Financial Crisis (I have been active in the securitization industry since the mid-1990s and I could talk about root causes all day, but that’s not the point of this piece today). The housing bubble was created by a series of misaligned incentives throughout the financial system and was much bigger than any individual segment or policy action. That said, at the very least the blind eye turned by regulators and the ideology of the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress made the impact much worse and made it more difficult to act once the problem came up.
Similarly, the Republicans didn’t invent the virus, but Trump’s ignorance, reliance on advice from authoritarians such as Vlad Putin and attempt to downplay the problem prevented the government from acting with due urgency. His utter lack of decency, incompetence and malevolence, and the refusal of Republicans to stand up to him, have made literal Rick Wilson’s metaphorical maxim that “everything Trump touches dies.”
In the face of this utter disgrace of a president and the craven lackeys who give him power, a functioning opposition party would have an easy time scoring an electoral rout. Then there’s Democrats, too many of whom can’t stop shooting each other over splinters in the eye while ignoring the beams that will collapse the entire house if they don’t concentrate their fire on the real culprit. The UK, while not exactly apples to apples, gives a warning about how an ignorant buffoon can win if the opposition blows itself up.
In coming months, Democrats shouldn’t be debating each other over minor differences. What we should be doing every day is to repeat the facts – Republicans have now left vast damage in their wake. They promised to make things better, and they failed. They need to go.
They promised 4% growth, instead we’re about to get -30%. They promised jobs, unemployment skyrocketed. Why can’t Democrats run ads with Powerpoint slides showing the numbers under Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump? Complicated? The lines tell a powerful story, nobody must be smart to view lines.
Simple message you could fit on a postcard: Democrats create prosperity, Republicans create ruin.
Combined that with draconian social policies, ill treatment of women, crony capitalism, unprecedented corruption, the despoilment of the environment, and so much more. These are the issues Democrats need to pound every day, not berating each other over trivialities.
The big-picture message is something I wish Hilary Clinton had said in a debate when confronted with dumb questions about the Clinton Foundation. If that were me, I would have said, “you know, there are a lot of baseless political attacks about the foundation, but here’s the thing: the foundation has helped millions of people. Every day when I go to my office, every policy I devise – every last bit of it is in the service of making someone else’s life better.
I might not get everything right, every person who volunteers is not always doing it for the right reasons. But every day I get out of bed to make the world better for someone else.
Contrast that with the Donald Trump. Every day he wakes up it’s about how he can squeeze everyone to his own advantage. He has a long history of scamming everyday people, his customers and his workers. He sues everybody to avoid abiding by normal rules. His university, his mortgage company, his charities, his casinos – all grifts to benefit himself and his worship of greed. Never in his sad life has he given a second’s consideration to the welfare any individual person other than himself.
And that goes for the entire Republican party. Every law, every appointee, every regulatory action – it’s all done to figure out how to funnel taxpayer money to themselves and their cronies. And we’ve seen this with the reaction to the coronavirus – Trump for months played it down and called it a hoax when he thought that was to his benefit, he accused heroic and selfless doctors and nurses of wrongdoing to deflect his inactivity, he lied to all of our faces on a daily basis. And as president, the result of this malevolence is causing death. He literally would hire someone to shoot every one of us on Fifth Avenue (and then stiff the hitman) if he thought it would benefit him.”
Simple message: “We care, they don’t.”
It’s unfortunate the Senate map is so tough this year, but Democrats have a chance in 2020 to take control the House, the Senate and presidency. So much is riding on this election, I hope party leaders can put aside petty disputes and relentlessly pound home these simple messages.