Today’s Edition: Stepping up the messaging fight

August 9, 2021

          On Sunday evening, the Senate voted to close down debate on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, effectively setting up a vote to pass the Senate version of the bill on Monday. We should pause for a moment to recognize the accomplishment of achieving a bipartisan consensus in the Senate, a process that consumed six months. Any sign of activity in a body that has been on life-support for decades is positive news. Now comes the hard part: convincing Democrats in the House to support a bill that includes only one-third of Biden’s ambitious agenda. The future of the bipartisan bill is contingent. Speaker Pelosi has repeatedly said that she will not allow a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill unless it is accompanied by the larger budget reconciliation bill.

          We should expect Speaker Pelosi to stick to her promise—and also expect that she will come under tremendous pressure from Senate Democrats to allow a standalone vote on the bipartisan bill. Meanwhile, Republicans will engage in a negative campaign against Speaker Pelosi that will distort the facts and engage in character assassination. Indeed, they have already begun their efforts. See The Week, “Republicans accuse Pelosi of holding bipartisan infrastructure package 'hostage'.” Speaker Pelosi can take the heat, but Democrats should push back with equal vigor, rather than repeating the placid and sometimes pedantic responses that are the safe haven of Democratic spokespeople. There is an old joke that goes, “What do Democrats bring to a knife fight? Answer: A cheese-and-fruit plate and a nice bottle of wine.” In the coming fight over the budget reconciliation bill, we cannot afford to parry a dagger thrust with a slice of cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto.

          The propensity of Democrats to allow Republicans to control the narrative is the subject of an op-ed by Jennifer Rubin in WaPo, “Opinion | How Democrats win the culture war.” Several readers sent me links to Rubin’s essay with notes that said her opinion reflects their frustrations with the relatively low-key Democratic response to negative messaging by Republicans. As Rubin notes, Republicans succeeded for years in using their disingenuous support for family values as a cudgel to “rail against issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, casting Democrats as anti-family.” In response to the GOP’s current anti-government, anti-democracy message, Rubin offers the following prescription:

          Democrats should flip the script. They should run on “democratic values,” casting Republicans (accurately) as the party that sides with violent thugs and traitors. Democrats defend the Constitution . . . while Republicans support the man who sought to overturn the election. . . Democrats should hammer this home at every opportunity. . . Democrats might not be comfortable engaging in the culture wars, but they can’t afford not to make a clear contrast between the parties.

          Rubin covers more ground than referenced above, and I recommend her op-ed for your consideration. Her point about the deadly effectiveness of GOP propaganda was echoed by Charles M. Blow in the NYTimes regarding the GOP’s current anti-vax crusade. See “Opinion | Anti-Vax Insanity.” Blow notes the inordinate sway that GOP anti-vax disinformation holds over Republicans. As he notes, Republicans who oppose vaccination do so “because of their fidelity to the lie and their fidelity to the liar.” He concludes,

          So, we have a situation in America where people are and will continue to die of ignorance and stubbornness. They are determined to prove that they are right even if it puts them on the wrong side of a eulogy.

          A recent Monmouth University Poll demonstrates the effectiveness of the GOP’s negative messaging. The poll explored the relationship between political affiliation and attitudes towards vaccination. The results are expected and shocking in equal measure. Per the poll,

          Among those who admit they will not get the vaccine if they can avoid it, 70% either identify with or lean toward the Republican Party while just 6% align with the Democrats. . . . Among those who have already received the vaccine, 32% fall on the Republican side of the political divide and 59% are on the Democratic side.

          The above results make clear that Democrats have lost the vaccination messaging war to the GOP, which has succeeded in converting a life-saving marvel of modern medicine into an ideological purity test. As Charles Blow notes, the Republican Party convinced people that they should allow themselves to die as proof of their loyalty to Trump:

          There are people dead today — a lot of them! — who should still be alive and who would be if people in the heights of government and the heights of the media had not fed them lies about the virus.

          If Republicans can convince their followers to kill themselves to “own the libs,” we ought to be able to convince Americans that Republicans are standing in the way of rebuilding America by (mostly) limiting investment in infrastructure to items that could have been built by the Romans in 300 BCE.  We ought to be able to convince Americans that increasing revenue by pursuing tax cheats is a legitimate way to fund the fight against climate change. We ought to be able to convince Americans that Speaker Pelosi is not an obstructionist but a visionary who wants to help secure American competitiveness for decades to come. But all of that takes a coordinated communication effort to parry the lies and deceit that are surely headed our way. Let’s hope that Democratic leadership is burning the midnight oil to prepare for the coming fight. Joe Biden’s agenda hangs in the balance—and with it, a brighter future for all Americans.

Concluding Thoughts.

In another hopeful sign that Trump’s misdeeds will not be ignored, two key players who resisted Trump’s coup attempt have testified before a Senate Committee and the DOJ Inspector General. See NYTimes, “Former Acting Attorney General Testifies About Trump’s Efforts to Subvert Election.” Note that Rosen gave his testimony to a Senate Committee—not the January 6th Select Committee in the House. But we should expect that Rosen will repeat his testimony to the House Select Committee.

          While it remains unclear whether DOJ prosecutors are doing anything to investigate the attempted coup, the fact that both chambers of Congress are doing so increases the likelihood that the DOJ will eventually be forced to act. The NYTimes story reveals new details that suggest that acting Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Clark (not Jeffrey Rosen) was engaged in improper communications with Trump that may go to the heart of any criminal complaint for conspiracy. Per the Times, Acting Attorney General Rosen told the Senate committee the following:

          [Rosen] also discovered that Mr. Clark had been engaging in unauthorized conversations with Mr. Trump about ways to have the Justice Department publicly cast doubt on President Biden’s victory

          In other words, congressional investigators are currently one degree of separation from hearing Trump’s private conspiratorial statements from a possible co-conspirator. While we don’t know everything that happened, I think we can be confident that we don’t know the worst (yet). We should not be consumed with vindictiveness, nor should we be stuck in the past. But our future as a democracy depends on affirming the bedrock principle that America is a nation of laws not of men. In that regard, the continued progress of the congressional investigations should give us hope for the future health of our democracy.

          Talk to you tomorrow!