"I'M SNEAKING UP ON YOU!"
Um, that's not how you do it, kid.
And yet this is centrist strategy in countless elections: Step One: Loudly and publicly tell Republicans you are actually kinda conservative and tricking those crazy/silly liberals. Put it in ads. Step Two: Loudly and publicly tell Democrats you are actually very progressive and tricking those dumb/thuggish hicks. (Bonus stupid points if you attack the left for acting "more progressive than thou" and in the same breath insist you are more progressive than them.) Step Three: After alienating everyone across the political spectrum, ludicrously conclude that having critics on both sides means "I must be doing something right!"
Yeah, shredding your credibility by announcing how you are going to betray everybody is genius strategy - especially since conspicuously dissing constituencies has been in the centrist playbook since 1992.
Nobody will see it coming.
Rise & repeat - ad nauseam.
Take retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath of Kentucky who announced Tuesday she is taking on Senator Mitch McConnell by disastrously packaging herself as a pro-Trump Democrat. The campaign roll out was so atrocious that it makes Beto O'Rourke's look masterful by comparison. In short, she bombed.
She opened well, looking like she was going to call out Donald Trump's false promises and campaign on economic populism, but then she put the blame on Mitch McConnell for supposedly frustrating Trump's noble efforts when Mitch has actually helped Don a lot. Yes, they initially said mean things about each other, but that was long ago and they have been in sync ever since. Indeed, Trump himself has already tweeted his support for McConnell against McGrath. Again, she began well:
Yeah, shredding your credibility by announcing how you are going to betray everybody is genius strategy - especially since conspicuously dissing constituencies has been in the centrist playbook since 1992.
Nobody will see it coming.
Rise & repeat - ad nauseam.
Take retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath of Kentucky who announced Tuesday she is taking on Senator Mitch McConnell by disastrously packaging herself as a pro-Trump Democrat. The campaign roll out was so atrocious that it makes Beto O'Rourke's look masterful by comparison. In short, she bombed.
She opened well, looking like she was going to call out Donald Trump's false promises and campaign on economic populism, but then she put the blame on Mitch McConnell for supposedly frustrating Trump's noble efforts when Mitch has actually helped Don a lot. Yes, they initially said mean things about each other, but that was long ago and they have been in sync ever since. Indeed, Trump himself has already tweeted his support for McConnell against McGrath. Again, she began well:
"If you think about why Kentuckians voted for Trump, they wanted to drain the swamp, and Trump said that he was going to do that," McGrath said during an interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "Trump promised to bring back jobs. He promised to lower drug prices for so many Kentuckians. And that is very important."
YES! Bread and butter issues! Call out Trump! But then she nose-dived right down into the toilet:
"And you know what? Who stops them along the way? Who stops the president from doing these things? Mitch McConnell. And I think that that’s very important, and that’s going to be my message – the things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done. He’s not able to get it done because of Senator McConnell."
No, they're not getting done because Trump never had any fucking intention of ever helping anyone.
Unfortunately, McGrath's strange framing is complicated by the existence of video of her comparing Trump's election to the 9-11 attacks. And lest anyone accuse me of letting the cat out of the bag and undermining the party, that video is in the Courier Journal article above. I think the CJ has quite a few more readers than I do and I profoundly doubt the GOP does opposition research by reading my blog.
McGrath's statement was transparent pandering and will surely backfire. Lying is always a risky strategy. People dislike being lied to. It's insulting - especially when it is so sloppy. Her apologists are already openly saying, "Keep your voice down! It's a good strategy. We have to fool the rubes." Maybe these apologists are the true rubes and need to keep their voices down.
Constantly saving self-sabotaging candidates from themselves is exhausting and demoralizing. Election day is still a long way away, so maybe she can still pivot from this shitty strategy and people will eventually forget it. But if she sticks with it and doubles-down, it will be yet another boring, slow motion fiasco.
And she has kinda already done so. The next day she did it by explaining how she intends to drive a wedge between Trump and McConnell. (Um, maybe don't do that in public?) In doing so she said she would probably have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court Justice. Constituent outrage instantly intensified and she walked it back hours later acting as if she had not really thought about Kavanaugh much before. If true, this is also damning because senators should think about things like Supreme Court confirmations. Of course, it's not true because she lamented his confirmation in tweets last year.
In short, she pin-balled between very different positions and explanations. Individually, each of them made her look terrible - either stupid or dishonest. She just kept ringing her own bell: Supporting Trump is not a good look. *DING!* Getting caught lying about it is not a good look. *DING!* Her strategizing out loud on the air is not a good look. *DING!* Supporting Kavanaugh is not a good look. *DING!* Saying you had not really thought that much about Kavanaugh is not a good look. *DING!* And then there is the infuriating pin-balling itself on top of all those individual things which establishes a pattern.
And - I cannot stress this enough - campaign launches are things that you plan in advance. They are the one thing in the campaign that you have the most control over. After that, everything gets way dicier.
Amy McGrath's two-day campaign trainwreck is easy to critique, but I am not writing this to duplicate other people's efforts. I'm saying this shit-show illustrates a bigger issue, which is that this is a chronic problem with centrists who are paradoxically honest about being dishonest. A least when Hillary Clinton spoke of the necessity of having “both a public and a private position,” she did it behind closed doors. (Then it leaked.) But pundits and other unofficial surrogates are not quite so discrete.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it is stupid to call voters stupid.
Centrism's fundamental assumptions about voters and government invariably lead to lying and betrayal. It's baked-into their ideology. There's no denying that when their strategists and pundits stupidly trumpet it on talk shows and op-ed columns. "This is how we win," insist the experts who are almost always wrong and candidates who take their advice routinely lose.
Again, lying is a bad strategy to begin with. It's not just unethical, it's stupidly ineffective - especially when you tell the same lies for decades. People see a pattern and start to distrust you. Go figure. You can gaslight your party's hardcore loyalists for a long time, but it rapidly drives away everyone else.
Centrists lie like alcoholics and drug addicts - impulsively, passionately, desperately, and unconvincingly. Any glance at their past or their logic totally torpedoes their story and pointing it out only provokes their anger. Witness their behavior on Twitter. Centrism is a hell of a drug.
Compare this with Bernie Sanders' approach: He's blunt and most people love it. He is an unapologetic democratic socialist and still solidly popular. He must be doing something right. And that something is being honest. He passes the breathalyzer test and that's why we should let him drive - or perhaps pilot. Sanders stands for things and is very direct about it.
We see identical directness in the rising stars of the Squad - Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. We should let them drive because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi certainly isn't leading anything resembling "Resistance."
The little kid yelling in the park was cute, but it's not so cute when centrists do it. And keep doing it.
UPDATE EDIT - 4/15/20:
If you think this post is an unfair generalization about centrists, think again. Despite Amy McGrath's spectacularly disastrous campaign launch, she is the candidate that the national Democratic Party establishment has chosen to throw its weight behind in the Kentucky primary. Why?
Needless to say, they should stay neutral in the primary and not put their thumb on the scale for anyone. Outside help should wait for the general election against the Republicans. But even if they did have a legitimate role to play locally, the obvious responsible move would have been to pivot their support to another, more competent candidate as soon as possible to bury past embarrassment.
Alas, the problem there is the other two top candidates are genuine progressives and the national party would rather lose to McConnell yet again than see either of these progressives get the seat. Charles Booker is a charismatic African American state legislator. Watch his ad. It is honest and heartfelt - the opposite of McGrath. Former Marine Lt. Col. Mike Broihier is another Democratic candidate. Watch his ad too. Both ads look professional, but not artificial. They put compassion in front. By contrast, Amy McGrath's latest stiff ad opposes Medicare for All and free college - two things a poor state like Kentucky could truly use.
But the ad has fighter planes in it and that's all that really matters, right?
My Facebook feed is constantly flooded with sponsored PAC ads for McGrath that act as if Kentucky has already held its primary and she is the party's nominee. Unlike McGrath herself, they don't lie outright: Instead, they simply frame it as a contest between McGrath vs. McConnell. There is no mention of the primary whatsoever. So of course, well-intentioned out-of-state Democrats donate to McGrath.
I think both Charles Booker and Mike Broihier are great candidates who are far more deserving of your dollars. Donate to them. They are honest, competent, and compassionate. Those things are important.
After all, we actually want to beat McConnell this November, right? Rank and file Democrats do anyway.
ADDITIONAL EDIT - 4/26/20:
Mitch McConnell has held his Senate seat since 1985. In every election since, the Democratic Party has run a moderate against him and lost. So save any "This is How We Win" lectures for never.
We are a poor state with dismal voter turn out because we don't offer voters anything to show up for. "Stop the Incumbent" is not a platform, so it rarely performs. It admittedly helped narrowly eject two terrible Republican governors - Ernie Fletcher and Matt Bevin - but they were extraordinarily horrible. But it has yet to eject Mitch McConnell despite his being widely despised by Kentucky Republicans. Nobody actually likes him, yet he has been ridiculously difficult to get rid of because the Democratic Party still has yet to figure out that you have to show up for people if you want them to show up for you.
A THIRD EDIT YET - 05/31/20:
Oh shit. This is a McGrath Facebook ad idiotically drawing attention to her fiasco campaign launch. Her team just cannot stop screwing up. This goes beyond doubling-down on dumb - It's reanimating dumb. When I wrote this blog post almost a year ago, I suggested she might live it down in time. Um, not if she is going to bring it up herself! Thank goodness Charles Booker had since entered the primary.
BELATED FOURTH, POST MORTEM EDIT - 08/04/20:
Alas, Amy McGrath narrowly fought off Charles Booker's primary challenge 45.4% to 42.6%, averting an upset. The national party backed McGrath, but much of the state party surprisingly (but belatedly) backed Booker after he began to surge. The two biggest papers in the state, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, both endorsed Booker. It was close.
Initially, there were no publicly available polls on the Kentucky primary. There were internal polls commissioned by the campaigns themselves of course, but for the longest time the only public one showed Mitch McConnell narrowly leading an unnamed generic Democrat in the general 47% to 44%. Towards the end, there finally was a public poll on the primary that showed Booker eight points ahead of McGrath, but unfortunately the pandemic, early voting, and tardy support made the deciding difference.
And she has kinda already done so. The next day she did it by explaining how she intends to drive a wedge between Trump and McConnell. (Um, maybe don't do that in public?) In doing so she said she would probably have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court Justice. Constituent outrage instantly intensified and she walked it back hours later acting as if she had not really thought about Kavanaugh much before. If true, this is also damning because senators should think about things like Supreme Court confirmations. Of course, it's not true because she lamented his confirmation in tweets last year.
In short, she pin-balled between very different positions and explanations. Individually, each of them made her look terrible - either stupid or dishonest. She just kept ringing her own bell: Supporting Trump is not a good look. *DING!* Getting caught lying about it is not a good look. *DING!* Her strategizing out loud on the air is not a good look. *DING!* Supporting Kavanaugh is not a good look. *DING!* Saying you had not really thought that much about Kavanaugh is not a good look. *DING!* And then there is the infuriating pin-balling itself on top of all those individual things which establishes a pattern.
And - I cannot stress this enough - campaign launches are things that you plan in advance. They are the one thing in the campaign that you have the most control over. After that, everything gets way dicier.
Amy McGrath's two-day campaign trainwreck is easy to critique, but I am not writing this to duplicate other people's efforts. I'm saying this shit-show illustrates a bigger issue, which is that this is a chronic problem with centrists who are paradoxically honest about being dishonest. A least when Hillary Clinton spoke of the necessity of having “both a public and a private position,” she did it behind closed doors. (Then it leaked.) But pundits and other unofficial surrogates are not quite so discrete.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it is stupid to call voters stupid.
Centrism's fundamental assumptions about voters and government invariably lead to lying and betrayal. It's baked-into their ideology. There's no denying that when their strategists and pundits stupidly trumpet it on talk shows and op-ed columns. "This is how we win," insist the experts who are almost always wrong and candidates who take their advice routinely lose.
Again, lying is a bad strategy to begin with. It's not just unethical, it's stupidly ineffective - especially when you tell the same lies for decades. People see a pattern and start to distrust you. Go figure. You can gaslight your party's hardcore loyalists for a long time, but it rapidly drives away everyone else.
Centrists lie like alcoholics and drug addicts - impulsively, passionately, desperately, and unconvincingly. Any glance at their past or their logic totally torpedoes their story and pointing it out only provokes their anger. Witness their behavior on Twitter. Centrism is a hell of a drug.
Compare this with Bernie Sanders' approach: He's blunt and most people love it. He is an unapologetic democratic socialist and still solidly popular. He must be doing something right. And that something is being honest. He passes the breathalyzer test and that's why we should let him drive - or perhaps pilot. Sanders stands for things and is very direct about it.
We see identical directness in the rising stars of the Squad - Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. We should let them drive because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi certainly isn't leading anything resembling "Resistance."
The little kid yelling in the park was cute, but it's not so cute when centrists do it. And keep doing it.
UPDATE EDIT - 4/15/20:
If you think this post is an unfair generalization about centrists, think again. Despite Amy McGrath's spectacularly disastrous campaign launch, she is the candidate that the national Democratic Party establishment has chosen to throw its weight behind in the Kentucky primary. Why?
Needless to say, they should stay neutral in the primary and not put their thumb on the scale for anyone. Outside help should wait for the general election against the Republicans. But even if they did have a legitimate role to play locally, the obvious responsible move would have been to pivot their support to another, more competent candidate as soon as possible to bury past embarrassment.
Alas, the problem there is the other two top candidates are genuine progressives and the national party would rather lose to McConnell yet again than see either of these progressives get the seat. Charles Booker is a charismatic African American state legislator. Watch his ad. It is honest and heartfelt - the opposite of McGrath. Former Marine Lt. Col. Mike Broihier is another Democratic candidate. Watch his ad too. Both ads look professional, but not artificial. They put compassion in front. By contrast, Amy McGrath's latest stiff ad opposes Medicare for All and free college - two things a poor state like Kentucky could truly use.
But the ad has fighter planes in it and that's all that really matters, right?
My Facebook feed is constantly flooded with sponsored PAC ads for McGrath that act as if Kentucky has already held its primary and she is the party's nominee. Unlike McGrath herself, they don't lie outright: Instead, they simply frame it as a contest between McGrath vs. McConnell. There is no mention of the primary whatsoever. So of course, well-intentioned out-of-state Democrats donate to McGrath.
I think both Charles Booker and Mike Broihier are great candidates who are far more deserving of your dollars. Donate to them. They are honest, competent, and compassionate. Those things are important.
After all, we actually want to beat McConnell this November, right? Rank and file Democrats do anyway.
ADDITIONAL EDIT - 4/26/20:
Mitch McConnell has held his Senate seat since 1985. In every election since, the Democratic Party has run a moderate against him and lost. So save any "This is How We Win" lectures for never.
We are a poor state with dismal voter turn out because we don't offer voters anything to show up for. "Stop the Incumbent" is not a platform, so it rarely performs. It admittedly helped narrowly eject two terrible Republican governors - Ernie Fletcher and Matt Bevin - but they were extraordinarily horrible. But it has yet to eject Mitch McConnell despite his being widely despised by Kentucky Republicans. Nobody actually likes him, yet he has been ridiculously difficult to get rid of because the Democratic Party still has yet to figure out that you have to show up for people if you want them to show up for you.
A THIRD EDIT YET - 05/31/20:
Oh shit. This is a McGrath Facebook ad idiotically drawing attention to her fiasco campaign launch. Her team just cannot stop screwing up. This goes beyond doubling-down on dumb - It's reanimating dumb. When I wrote this blog post almost a year ago, I suggested she might live it down in time. Um, not if she is going to bring it up herself! Thank goodness Charles Booker had since entered the primary.
BELATED FOURTH, POST MORTEM EDIT - 08/04/20:
Alas, Amy McGrath narrowly fought off Charles Booker's primary challenge 45.4% to 42.6%, averting an upset. The national party backed McGrath, but much of the state party surprisingly (but belatedly) backed Booker after he began to surge. The two biggest papers in the state, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, both endorsed Booker. It was close.
Initially, there were no publicly available polls on the Kentucky primary. There were internal polls commissioned by the campaigns themselves of course, but for the longest time the only public one showed Mitch McConnell narrowly leading an unnamed generic Democrat in the general 47% to 44%. Towards the end, there finally was a public poll on the primary that showed Booker eight points ahead of McGrath, but unfortunately the pandemic, early voting, and tardy support made the deciding difference.
That poll was not wishful spin: It soberly showed both Democrats losing to McConnell in the general, but with Booker losing by a narrower margin - a six point improvement over McGrath's performance against McConnell. Digging into poll explained why. McGrath's popularity was abysmal - only 24% favorable vs 59% unfavorable with 18% unsure. By contrast, Booker was 33% favorable vs 29% unfavorable with 38% unsure. Those undecideds showed that Booker had potential to improve that McGrath did not. Voters had already made up their minds about her and she has nobody to blame but herself.
The latest poll shows McConnell has a huge seventeen point lead over McGrath - 53% to 36%. That's slightly better than the previous poll predicted. This dismal result is utterly unsurprising, not just for the reasons I gave above but because McGrath's campaign was always founded on the crazy fantasy that she could flatter Trump into endorsing her over McConnell or at least not commenting on the contest at all.
Not bloody likely. That fantasy was shattered immediately when Donald Trump tweeted his support for McConnell after her campaign launch fiasco. The best she could possibly hope for would be that Trump would then ignore the race, but that was never going to happen either. She was/is running as a Trump-friendly Democrat. His vanity would not allow him to ignore it. Trump has a clear preference in the race but it ain't her. And when has Trump ever kept quiet about anything, let alone something he wanted?
Her strategy was a house of cards from the start and to win she would have to keep it standing for a whole year. She could not keep it standing for 24 hours. It was shockingly irresponsible to continue her campaign after the cat got out of the bag and scattered those cards everywhere.
