Basket of Deplorables

It would seem that Biden made the same mistake Hillary made back in 2016 by calling out the MAGA crowd in his Philadelphia speech this past Friday.  I know it is tempting to do, especially in the wake of the January 6 hearings and the continued sentencing of those that were directly involved in the insurrection attempt.  However, it is never worth it to poke the bear.  Best to leave these yahoos alone and focus on matters at hand.  There's nothing they love more than to play the victim.

We've hit the stretch drive of the midterms and things are looking surprisingly good for the Democrats.  They have won House special elections, the most recent in Alaska where Native American Mary Peltola defeated Mama Grizzly herself in a statewide election.  This is the first time in 50 years that a Democrat has done so in Alaska.  There were any number of factors, not least of all Palin's toxic personality.  It is hard to say whether these surprise victories will translate into a larger Democratic victory in November.  538 still predicts that Republicans will regain the House, but that Democrats will win the Senate.  This will at least allow Biden to continue to govern throughout his term.

The White House strategy appears to be to tilt conservatives who are fed up with Trump in the Democratic favor, but that rarely happens.  Many conservatives may not like Trump but it will be a cold day in hell before they vote Democratic.  Besides, he isn't on the ballot.  

J.D. Vance, an ardent Trump supporter, is still polling ahead of Tim Ryan in Ohio.  One would think Ryan would have the edge.  A popular Democratic representative running against a young venture capitalist and author, whose claim to fame is the popular Hillbilly Elegy.  Surely, Ohioans would go with a proven quantity.  But, the state has become so heavily red in recent years that conservatives will vote for an unproven populist over a state representative just because this is where their ideology lies.  This is the real battle Democrats face.  Republicans have become so deeply embedded in their own ideology that they can no longer see beyond it.  They will vote for charlatans as long as they say what they want to hear.

The only recourse for Democrats is to mobilize their own base.  They have to get more Democrats to turn out November 8 than Republicans.  The notorious decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade has helped.  More women are registering to vote in the midterm election than men.  This was one of the reasons Peltola won in Alaska.  Women are also registering in record numbers in states like Kansas, giving Democrats even more hope that they can hold onto the House, if barely, this November.  With two months to go there is still plenty of opportunity for the Democrats to seize the day.

However, all it takes is a rallying cry to get Republicans to the voting booths, and I'm afraid Biden might have inadvertently given it by labeling Trump supporters as "semi-fascists."  Trump is out there sounding the alarm himself, which may not be what Republicans want. His popularity has waned considerably in light of the January 6 hearings.  At best, he may hold sway over 50 percent of the conservative electorate.  However, no one likes to be called a fascist, and the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted for Trump in 2020, so Biden is essentially calling them all fascists.

I personally don't like this name calling.  It just debases the political debate.  To this point, the Democrats have done a pretty good job of avoiding this kind of rhetoric.  Sure, you hear it among political pundits on MSNBC and CNN, but the candidates themselves generally avoid such pejoratives.  The strategy in battleground states has been to appeal to the main common denominators, not lump the Republicans all in one basket.  Fetterman hopes to regain the Pennsylvania Senate seat for Democrats by appealing to the blue collar nature of the state, one that runs through both political parties.  His attacks on Oz have been mostly in regard to his wealthy lifestyle and that his primary residence is in New Jersey.

But, Biden, who also originally hails from Pennsylvania and won the state in 2020, has opted for a different approach.  He wants to call out the shameless nature of Trump-anointed candidates, like Mehmet Oz, hoping this will shame conservatives into voting against them.  An interesting strategy, but one I don't think will help Fetterman.

Even Liz Cheney, who lost her primary to a Trump-backed Republican candidate, wouldn't go so far as to chastise fellow Republicans.  Her venom was primarily directed against Trump himself.  She knows that if she has any political future she has to stand on the side of Republican values, citing Lincoln and Grant in her concession speech.  In other words, she took the high road.

This is what Democrats need to continue to do.  They can't afford to play into Trump's rants the way Hillary did in 2016.  They need to hold themselves high and show the electorate that they are above such petty name calling, and that their goal is to heal the nation.  This is what Mary Peltola did in Alaska.  If she can do it in this deeply conservative and independent-minded state, then Democrats can do it throughout the country.