Democrats – Sheila Kennedy

The Institutional Party

I often quote Talking Points Memo, which is one of the most reliable–and intelligent–sources of political reporting on the web. A few days back, the site’s Morning Memo had a very good essay on our era of distrust, which it preceded with what I think was an absolutely perfect characterization of the deluge of diagnosis and advice in the wake of the election as “variously half-baked, hyperbolic, histrionic or merely silly.”

I couldn’t agree more. We’ve been inundated with un-self-aware pontifications and nit-picking, which I’m sure soothed the angst of those issuing these pronouncements, but that generally were–as the essay accurately noted–half-baked, hyperbolic, histrionic and (usually) silly.

The essay then turned to a subject that didn’t fall into any of those categories–widespread public distrust. (A subject I addressed in my 2009 book, “Distrust, American Style: Diversity and the Crisis of Public Confidence.”)

A key reason that many people are Democrats today is that they’re attached to a cluster of ideas like the rule of law, respect for and the employment of science and expertise, a free press and the protection of the range of institutions that guard civic life, quality of life and more. On the other side, say we have adherents of a revanchist, authoritarian politics which seeks break all those things and rule from the wreckage that destruction leaves in its path. So Democrats constantly find themselves defending institutions, or “the establishment,” or simply the status quo. Yet we live in an age of pervasive public distrust — distrust of institutions, leaders, expertise. And not all of this distrust is misplaced. Many institutions, professions, and power centers have failed to live up to their sides of the social contract.

In short, Democrats are by and large institutionalists in an age of mistrust. And that is challenging place to be.

It sure is. The essay pointed out that defending an institution shouldn’t include defending flawed examples of that institution. A free press, for example, is a vital institution in democratic systems. Democrats largely agree that it’s critical to support the press rather than tear it down. But that has often meant supporting and protecting flawed examples that routinely shortchange them on basic fairness. (The New York Times is a good example. Its coverage of Trump served to normalize a distinctly abnormal–and dangerous– candidate.)

When it comes to the establishment press, I think Democrats need to get used to running against the press. I don’t mean that simply because it’s good politics, though it probably is in many cases. I mean it because in many cases the way establishment press covers political news is very much part of the problem. You can criticize and yes even bash bad news coverage without in any way questioning the centrality of press freedom. A lot of people really seem to think they’re the same thing. They’re not. It’s stupid and wildly counterproductive to think otherwise.

But often it’s not as simple as that. The country needs an at least relatively disinterested Department of Justice. It needs scientists and clinicians studying and safeguarding public health. It needs a robust press and all the other infrastructure of civil society that together make up the soft tissue of civic freedom. If one side is saying “Burn it down!” and another is saying “We’re rootin’ tootin’ mad and we have many questions!” well then it’s definitely going to get burned to the ground because there’s no one taking up the defense. So often it’s not that simple.

Adding to the complexity is the fact that different institutions require different approaches. The essay references the people who lament every latest Supreme Court travesty because it reduces faith or trust in the Court. But–as most observers have come to recognize– the current Court is thoroughly corrupt. “Respect for the Court’s decisions and the Court itself is a problem to be solved, not a rampart or castle wall to be reinforced.”

Being the party of institutions in an age of distrust is an inherent challenge. It’s at the heart of why Democrats often think and talk in ways that don’t connect, break through to big chunks of the electorate. Democrats aren’t going to stop being the party of institutions because they want the rule of law; they want elections where votes are counted; they want real medicine over quacks. This is the foolery of those people whose response to the election is to fire Democrats’ voters. That’s not how anything works. But being a party of institutions and expertise in era of pervasive distrust is, again, an inherent challenge. You don’t surmount that challenge without giving the issue some real time and thought.

Yep.

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A Perceptive Anallysis

When I began this blog 15+ years ago, it was with the intention of exploring issues of public policy–delving into the details of American policy debates, and providing illustrations of one of my repeated mantras, “it’s more complicated than that.”

I really, really want to return to those discussions, but they’ve been eclipsed by an election that threatens to substitute a theocratic/autocratic administration for a system that–despite all of its flaws–has steadily moved us toward a more humane and inclusive society.

Rather than delving into the pros and cons of a universal basic income, or the age at which citizens should be able to access social security, or similar issues, we are faced with an angry, fearful cult determined to withhold any and all social or democratic benefits from nonWhite, nonChristian Americans–including even the acknowledgment that they are Americans. It is not hyperbole, unfortunately, to say that November’s election will determine whether the American experiment will continue.

Because that statement isn’t hyperbole, the hysteria of Democrats is understandable. But “understandable” doesn’t mean that the hourly assault of text messages and emails begging for money isn’t incredibly annoying. It doesn’t excuse the desperation and exaggeration accentuated by the weird typefaces and pulsating underlinings.

I don’t get messages from the GOP, so I am unable to compare the tone of their solicitations to those I do receive, but recently, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo considered the differences–differences which, in his analysis, mirror differences in Democratic and Republican psychology.

He considered what’s behind “Democrats’ tendency to freak out, even in the face of the most limited kinds of disappointing news in polls or other markers of campaign performance?”

Democrats are almost always worried they’re going to lose the race while Republicans are all but certain they’re going to win. This is a consistent pattern more or less unconnected to the objective indicators. The same reality is embedded in campaign fundraising emails. Most Democratic ones could be summarized as “all hope is lost; send money for us to have any chance” while most Republican ones are essentially “send more money for us to destroy the bad people.” We see it in campaign tactics. It’s pretty common, especially at the presidential level, for Republican campaigns to claim they’re headed for a runaway victory as a way to overawe and demoralize their Democratic opponents. Again, it would simply never work for Democrats to try the same for reasons that are probably obvious.

Marshall concedes that this year has given Democrats rational reasons for concern. The stakes of this election are higher than they have been in decades.

Trump already showed us who he was as President and the current version of the man is more focused on vengeance and more prepared, largely through a more built-up cadre of lieutenants, to exact that revenge. There’s also the unforgettable fact that Donald Trump has twice over-performed the polls. Why would we think it couldn’t happen again? But with all of this, over the last four or five days a very fractional shift in campaign polls convinced a lot of Democrats that Kamala Harris had botched her campaign and was headed toward defeat. By way of comparison, consider that the Trump campaign spent almost the entirety of the 2020 race behind by between five and ten points and it never seemed to occur to Republicans that they’d lose. 2016 was at least a bit similar. There’s clearly a difference between these two groups.

Marshall points to research showing that over the past several years, authoritarian Americans have migrated into the Republican Party, while most non-authoritarian folks became Democrats or Democratic-leaning Independents. Today, one party is primarily centered on power and certainty, while the other is centered on process and doubt.

As he says, people don’t gravitate toward certain ideologies over others based on rational analysis.

They appeal or don’t appeal to people with certain mindsets which are based on experience, upbringing, certain kinds of acculturation… It’s no surprise that the kind of electoral/political sorting we’re describing would create one community with an overflow of these tendencies just as Republicans have an overflow of focus on power, certainty and even violence.

The next time I get one of those text messages proclaiming that “everything is lost”–or at least, will be lost unless I immediately remit ten dollars to candidate A or organization B–I need to remember Marshall’s analysis.

I can also remind myself that, in only a few more days, depending on voter turnout, I can either return to policy discussions…or proceed to document the effort to end the American experiment.

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Family Values

What are “family values?”

To hear Republicans describe them, family values are a traditional, a backward-facing insistence on sexual “purity” (for women) and heterosexuality: mom in the home watching the children (no pre-school or day care), gays in the closet, no access to abortion. Occasionally, there will be a nod to the importance of dad’s fidelity, but that gets awkward these days, given GOP allegiance to a male sexual predator.

Democratic policies illustrate a very different approach to valuing families.

For one thing, Democrats emphasize job creation, so that families can adequately care for the children they may–or may not–choose to have. (On that score, the GOP’s performance has been dismal: during the DNC, Bill Clinton noted that, since 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs. Fifty million were created during Democratic administrations, one million under Republicans. This jaw-dropping statistic turned out to be true, albeit slightly misleading.)

Even if you discount the importance of a robust economy to the health of the American family, a glance at the policies pursued by the parties confirms that Democrats are far more family-friendly. Nicholas Kristof recently made that case. Calling Republican efforts to paint themselves as the “pro-family” party “chutzpah,” Kristof wrote

Children are more likely to be poor, to die young and to drop out of high school in red states than in blue states. The states with the highest divorce rates are mostly Republican, and with some exceptions like Utah, it’s in red states that babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers (partly because of lack of access to reliable contraception).

One of President Biden’s greatest achievements was to cut the child poverty rate by almost half, largely with the refundable child tax credit. Then Republicans killed the program, sending child poverty soaring again.

Can anything be more anti-child?

Well, maybe our firearms policy is. Guns are the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers, largely because of Republican intransigence and refusal to pass meaningful gun safety laws.

It’s because of the G.O.P. that the United States is one of only a few countries in the world without guaranteed paid maternity leave. Republicans fought universal health care and resisted the expansion of Medicaid; that’s one reason a child in the United States is three times as likely to die by the age of 5 as a child in, say, Slovenia or Estonia.

Kristof also noted several of the anti-child policies advanced in Project 2025, including ending Head Start–which has been a lifeline for low-income children– and dismantling the Department of Education.

Banning abortion and requiring women to give birth whether or not they can afford to feed and clothe a child is hardly “pro family”– even ignoring the fact that when women with dangerous pregnancies cannot access adequate care, they often die, leaving existing children motherless. And Republican extremism on abortion and birth control has led to obstacles to in vitro fertilization–for some families, the only avenue to producing those children Republicans want women to keep turning out.

Kristof also recognized the importance of the economy in supporting families. If marriage rates are important–and he agrees that they are–the evidence of economic influence is compelling.

Union membership among men raises their marriage rates, for example, apparently because they then earn more money and become more stable and appealing as partners. But Republicans have worked for decades to undermine unions.

And while marriage is important, so is access to divorce. Before easy access to divorce, large numbers of women were trapped in violent marriages that terrorized them and their children. (JD Vance is on record counseling women to remain in such marriages.) As Kristof notes,

One careful study by the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers found that the introduction of no-fault divorce in America was associated with about a 20 percent reduction in female suicides, at least a 25 percent reduction in wife-beating and an apparent decline in husbands murdering wives.

Which raises the question: can an anti-women party be pro family values?

In this policy arena–as in so many others–the fundamental difference between today’s GOP and the Democratic Party really does get back to dramatic differences in values. That’s why calls to “bridge our differences” and “achieve compromise” ring so hollow. If the debate is about the best way to achieve result X–say, feeding hungry children–then we can absolutely come to some sort of mutual agreement. But when one party wants to feed children and the other party doesn’t, compromise isn’t likely.

Americans aren’t divided over policy; we are divided over values–and not just family values.

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A Rising Tide

A few nights ago, I cohosted a fundraiser for Jennifer McCormick, the Democratic candidate for governor of Indiana. I also had the privilege of introducing her to a large and enthusiastic crowd of attendees. As I said in those brief introductory remarks–and as I have previously noted here– this year, the Indiana Democratic Party is running an absolutely first-rate statewide ticket—a ticket that is an immense contrast to the Indiana Republican Party’s all-MAGA theocratic nightmare.

I first admired McCormick when she served as Superintendent of Public Instruction—a position that I will note gave her responsibility for managing half of the state budget. Jennifer came to that position with deep experience as a public school superintendent. She understood not just the importance of public education to the quality of civic life, but also the critical importance of an educated populace to successful economic development.

Her experience as Superintendent, serving in a Republican administration alongside our Republican super-majority legislature, also taught her something many others of us have come to understand— the current Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party. MAGA Republicans are a cult, and they are the enemy not just of public education, but of racial and religious inclusion and civil liberties— values that Jennifer and I support.

Those very American values require a vigorous defense of public education, the restoration of women’s reproductive rights, protection of workers’ right to unionize and demand fair wages, and an accountable and fiscally responsible state government.

Too many non-MAGA Republicans have simply gone along with the party’s transformation, despite displaying some level of discomfort. Instead, like many other former Republicans (including yours truly) Jennifer McCormick acted on the basis of her values, and left the GOP.

Every opinion survey I’ve seen confirms the fact that the values I share with Jennifer are also shared by a majority of Hoosiers. I am absolutely convinced that if she has the resources to get her message out, she will defeat MAGA Mike Braun.

And that brings me to a point I’ve previously emphasized: the greatest asset possessed by Braun and his merry band of theocrats is the defeatism of Indiana’s long-suffering Democrats. Several commenters have posted here about the relative lack of communication they have seen thus far from the Democratic ticket. The obvious reason for the imbalance is access to resources. Those shiny television ads touting Republicans like Jim Banks (while ignoring his offensive assaults on women and gay folks) are funded by the billionaires and their superPACs who stand to gain financially by a GOP victory. When Hoosier Democrats send their donations to campaigns in other states, where they think those dollars will make more of a difference, they play into Republican hands.

There is cause for hope, however. The recent change at the head of the national ticket, and the enormous outpouring of money and volunteers and enthusiasm for Kamala Harris has invigorated state-level tickets, too. (Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be as much misogyny as we saw when Hillary Clinton was the nominee–actually, women candidates may even have an advantage this year. Female voters may yet save America…)

Our fundraiser the other night raised close to our admittedly ambitious goal, and other scheduled events promise to match or exceed that amount. The Democrats running statewide in Indiana don’t need to match the millions that will be available to the GOP candidates who are wholly-owned by the plutocrats; they just need enough to communicate their positions to the voters. (And unlike state legislative candidates, statewide candidates cannot be gerrymandered by our self-serving legislators, which is a huge advantage.)

A timeless political theme is also appropriate here: it’s time for a change.

Indiana has been run by Republicans for some twenty years, and during that time, our economy has sputtered. We have a lower quality of life than our neighboring states. We have repeatedly failed to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens. We’ve stripped women of their most fundamental right–the right to control their own bodies. Republicans in Indiana consistently work to benefit the haves and just as routinely ignore the needs of those who have little. They criticise “welfare” while offering welfare to upper-middle class parents via vouchers, and welfare to businesses promising to locate here. (Evidently, it’s only “welfare” when it goes to “those people.”)

If you agree with me that it is definitely time for a change, donate to Jennifer. And vote Blue up and down the ballot.

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How Awful Are Hoosiers, Really?

Consider this a follow-up to yesterday’s “Extra” post.

I have written before about Indiana Democrats’ self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. A recent conversation with two very savvy political observers reminded me–again!– how incredibly unhelpful those negative attitudes are.

It’s a conversation I’ve had repeatedly. Acquaintances who are committed Democrats refrain from donating to Hoosier Democratic candidates because “they can’t win in Indiana.” Rather obviously, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy–if these candidates lack sufficient resources to compete, they will lose. (During that recent conversation, when I reminded my friends that Obama had won Indiana, one responded “Yes, but he put significant resources here.” Yes–with sufficient resources, Democrats can win Indiana. Duh.)

This year, as I have documented, the Indiana Democratic Party has nominated a statewide (non-gerrymander-able) slate of truly excellent candidates. They are capable, moderate, and–unlike their GOP opponents–sane. Meanwhile, the Republicans are running a ticket of out-and-out White Supremecist theocrats, men who are personally repugnant supporters of an exceptionally far-Right agenda: anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-public education, anti-environment…candidates who enthusiastically support positions that survey research confirms are at odds with the positions of most Hoosiers, Republican and Democrat alike.

So why, you might ask (I’ve certainly been asking) do people who clearly recognize both the merits of the Democratic candidates and the threats posed by the Republican ones still insist that Indiana voters will opt for the Republican ones?

During that last discussion, I finally came to understand the roots of that belief. (I’m slow.)

These same people–people who care about their neighbors, who understand and worry about the current assaults on the Constitution and civil liberties, who recognize the nuanced nature of policy disputes–apparently believe that a significant majority of Hoosier voters are ignorant and hateful.

Too many of my Democratic friends view all Hoosier Republicans–especially but not exclusively rural Republicans– as uneducated and politically unsophisticated, resentful of social change and suspicious of anyone who isn’t a White Christian. They see all Republicans as MAGA bigots, mired in a Fox “News” universe, dismissive of information inconsistent with their prejudices, and they conclude that efforts to inform or persuade them are useless. (This belief actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the Democratic candidates lack resources to communicate their positions, many Hoosier voters will lack accurate information.)

I’m willing to concede that this picture of a committed racist rube accurately describes the base of today’s GOP–the MAGA folks who form the core of what has become Trump’s political party. But I refuse to believe that all Hoosier Republicans are cut from that same MAGA cloth. There are people who are relatively uninformed, but not hateful–many people who would reject the premises and promises of Project 2025 if they knew what those premises and promises really were.

The Democrats who are writing off Hoosier voters rather clearly believe that providing sufficient resources to disseminate accurate information widely around the state is a fool’s errand. They believe that the super-majority in our deplorable state legislature is an accurate representation of unenlightened, racist and misogynistic Hoosier sentiment–after all, those voters elected that super-majority. (They forget the substantial effects of gerrymandering and vote suppression.)

The only thing that would change the minds of these dismissive observers of Indiana politics is an election that upends their smug conclusions–but their unwillingness to fund their preferred candidates adequately makes such an election result infinitely more difficult.

I’ve been working with both the McCormick and McCray campaigns, and I can report that both are well-organized, strategically sound, and–most important–right on all the issues that matter. I am absolutely convinced that–with adequate funding–they can inform voters statewide of the enormous differences between them and the GOP’s Christian Nationalist ticket, and that adequate dissemination of that information would lead to victory.

I guess it’s up to those of us in Indiana who are politically “unsophisticated” to step into the breach. Those of us who care deeply about women’s access to abortion, civil rights for our gay friends and neighbors, support for public education, and the other immensely important rights threatened by today’s far far Right GOP candidates need to contribute as much as we can so that the good guys have enough to communicate their message.

They don’t need as much as their opponents; they just need enough.

Unless, of course, my “sophisticated” friends are right, and a majority of my fellow Hoosiers are contemptible.

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