Early Vetting is Vital

Okay look, I get that folks are afraid. But remember your Dune - "Fear is the mind-killer."

I’m hearing a lot of vacuous angsting about “circular firing squads” from people who should certainly know better. Many otherwise smart people seem to believe that early vetting is bad. Both Matt Bors and Matt Lubchansky have done cartoons on this irrational anti-democratic "loose lips sink ships" panic. Bors’ was in 2016, and Lubchansky's was just last February, thus nothing has changed. 

So take a deep breath and pick your thinking caps up off the ground because this is important.

First and foremost, early vetting is how we avoid getting stuck with a terrible candidate whose weaknesses gets revealed after it is too late. That situation is demoralizing to our side and alienating to the electorate. 

Now, I don’t mean to kink shame, but almost nobody enjoys having to make constant dubious excuses for their candidate. Moral scolds will certainly seize on the word “enjoy” and lecture that elections are not entertainment. I suspect they secretly enjoy making excuses. Maybe they see it as testament to their cleverness. In any case, the rest of the electorate does not share their particular kink and finds it somewhat off-putting. They don’t enjoy feeling like the victim of a bait-and-switch. They are funny like that. And guilting them to the polls only adds insult to injury. Guilt-triped hostages tend to get resentful - especially with repetition. Moral blackmail gets old. Who knew?

Any “serious realists” who cannot acknowledge this dynamic are neither serious nor realists.

Second, early vetting gives campaigns time to debunk slander against solid candidates. Fact-checking takes time. Conservatives play dirty and they love last-minute bullshit. Muting early criticism is a huge gift to them – particularly when you consider the Streisand Effect which dictates that trying to suppress information only gets it more attention. Incidentally, the Streisand Effect didn’t start with the Internet. Everyone has always known that the most effective way to advertise anything was trying to censor it. A century ago, authors loved their books getting "Banned in Boston" because it meant they sold more copies everywhere else. So nobody has any excuse for not understanding this long-established dynamic. 

Suppressing information also looks dishonest. As with the Streisand Effect, it is maddeningly sad that anyone needs this simple thing explained to them.

Also, is once again demoralizing to your troops who don’t enjoy polishing turds. Moreover, it loses potential allies – i.e. undecided voters – and those folks are sort of important to winning elections. Weird how hard it is to win voters’ trust when you are always trying to hush people up. 

I want to expound more on this point before going forward to the next one because it is so important. 

It's a cliché to say "It's not the crime, but the cover up." But what doesn't get said as much is that this rule applies even if there is no crime. It lends credibility to the flimsiest accusations. It's the surest way to make your candidate look guilty, even when innocent. Don't do that.

Any campaign or party operative, official or otherwise, who does so is guilty of political malpractice, if not conscious sabotage. Yet many people seem to sincerely believe that Republicans are incapable of doing their own opposition research and therefore if Democrats can just mute or not mention any uncomfortable information about each other the Republicans will have nothing to use – as if Joe Biden’s creepy behavior had not already been the subject of a 2015 “Daily Show” segment entitled "The Audacity of Grope." 

Ignoring the elephants in the room is not a strategy. Come on. You are smarter than that. 

Additionally, it's ridiculous to expect the press to participate in any cover up. It would not only be professionally unethical, it would defy the media's built-in monetary incentive to generate constant controversy and conflict. You may as well expect a candy company to stop using any sweeteners in their sweets. In short, it's never going to happen and trying is always going to backfire. It makes you look stupid and dishonest at the same time. At best, it makes you look pathetically naïve.

Even considering suppressing dissent to achieve unity is simply ludicrous, which is why it is absolutely bat shit insanity for the DCCC to blacklist any entity that donates to primary challengers. To mix metaphors, it is tin-eared and ham-handed. Jen Sorensen had done a great comic on how utterly dumb this is. The DCCC's move makes the Democratic Party look profoundly undemocratic.  

It’s bad enough that they are overtly opposed to primary challengers: It is worse that they are taking concrete action to discourage them – particularly when it comes on the heels of sabotaging progressive candidates in the 2018 midterms. Indeed, they have a history of this.

After being called-out on such shenanigans, you would think centrists would behave themselves – at least until the outrage blows over. But they cannot cleanup their act even temporarily. Yes, people are creatures of habit and this applies to institutions as much as individuals. But the Democratic Party establishment isn’t even pretending to be on their best behavior. Indeed, they seem to be striving to confirm everyone’s worst suspicions. The only thing missing is mustache twirling and an evil laugh.

And you know what? That behavior is demoralizing. But you knew I was going to say that.

Third, early vetting renders silly, trivial criticisms and micro-sandals stale by election day. This is highly related to the previous reason, but nevertheless separate. Communication is both sending and receiving: Fact-checking takes time, but the electorate needs time to digest corrective information as well. Perspective needs time to sink-in. Non-controversies are strongest when they are fresh and unfamiliar. They then fade when weighed against real issues and the big picture. Last minute fact-checking isn’t as effective as last minute slander. As the saying goes, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” Therefore, the truth needs to get out of bed sooner.

Getting this out of the way early is obviously the smart way to manage any imperfect blemishes. Postponing airing problem areas is obviously irresponsible. We should be proactive rather than reactive and a perpetual defensive crouch is not a good look. Especially not this early.

Suppressing information is a form of procrastination because eventually everything gets out – often shortly before Election Day. And hoping to postpone it past Election Day is not only dishonest, but strategically stupid. After all, how legislatively effective is a president going to be if he or she gets elected but enters office under a cloud of public distrust and resentment? Of course, centrists are not intent on passing any sort of progressive agenda, so I suppose that scenario is actually ideal for them.

The takeaway across all these reasons is that surprises are bad - hence why early vetting is vital and the sooner the better. But there is also a fourth important reason which I have already alluded to a few times: 

Democracy is good.

Criticism is the engine of politics and participatory democracy. Without it, nothing gets fixed. Almost nothing happens without immense public pressure. Yet centrists are temperamentally allergic to any criticism and agitation - both inside the party and out. Remember their bipartisanship fetish and their aversion to protesters making their conservative colleagues uncomfortable in restaurants. And both Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke boosted Republicans during the midterms, thereby undermining the Blue Wave.

Yes, primary-ing incumbents is a direct threat to the chummy establishment power, but they would still disapprove even if it weren't. Whether they are corrupt or not, they just don’t get democracy.

In my book, I write a lot about how conservatives are anti-democratic. Well, so are covert conservatives. Primaries are democratic safeguards. They are performance reviews by the party's rank and file just as general elections are ones by the general public. So, of course well-heeled Hamilton fans are going to oppose primary-ing establishment Democratic incumbents - especially when part and parcel of that process is unflattering intra-party criticism. It all ties together quite tightly.

Election Day is over a year and a half away. Air everything out now for maximum advantage. Revelations are inevitable: We cannot possibly prevent them.

But the longer we postpone them, the worse things will be.