Monday, September 12, 2022

We have decided to trust the voters

Brian Beutler, editor-in-chief at Crooked Media, thinks that if Democrats just tell voters the truth, they'll sort themselves out and land on the side of decency and democracy.

Here’s something I don’t know for sure, but believe is true: Ask focus groups for their views on fascism, they will generally answer how you’d hope they’d answer—fascism is abhorrent, dangerous, un-American, etc etc.  
Ask focus groups to choose between various political appeals, including one in which Democrats say ultra-MAGA Republicans are semi-fascists, the general preference will be for gentler messages (reflecting common human distaste for conflict). Recite for them various antics—threatening the lives of judges, law-enforcement officers, and election officials; trying to steal elections; fomenting insurrection—and ask them which are reminiscent of fascism, and they’ll answer correctly almost every time.
[Beutler concludes] Democratic strategists tend to be obsessed with the middle phenomenon, but it's the bookends that ought to drive Democratic politics now. They have the goods on the GOP, the GOP’s defining endeavors in 2022 are fascistic, so let it be known, and people will sort themselves between good and evil. The fact that, deep down, most people wish politics could be a kinder sport is irrelevant.

Click to enlarge.

The UniteHERE campaign in Reno to retain U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Governor Steve Sisolak is taking the route Beutler suggests. Both these candidates stand in the way of the repressive Republican agenda. Here's the door hanger we're leaving when we knock.

We're trusting that if voters hear what our opponents stand for they'll sort out what they want for this state. And it won't be the undemocratic choice to deny  freedom to women and families to make their own decisions. We might as well just shout it.

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