INSURRECTION: WHEN LYING AND DUMBING DOWN BY T***P AND REPUBLICAN LEADERS HAVE FATAL CONSEQUENCES

 

The last two times our Capitol building in Washington D. C. was taken by force of arms: 1814 by the British, 2021 by a mob incited by the President of the United States.

As a Democrat, I'm happy that the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair, Tom Perez, has been replaced by Jamie Harrison, who ran (and lost) against Lindsey Graham in the South Carolina senate race in 2020.

Because here's our problem. These elections should not be close. We should have gained a net of 6 Senate seats last cycle and gained- not lost 12 seats- in the House. But we didn't, because there has been a complete failure of both imagination and coordination on the part of the DNC and every single candidate who ran for an office in Federal government, including Joe Biden.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/27/why-did-democrats-bleed-house-seats-top-analyst-offers-surprising-answers/?fbclid=IwAR1M7TN6kdeaAb4I1sUKixkLlGUZRmiCYTjCxJNZJewqBFYbwDnSXm3P7IY

The Republican Party is now the party of voter suppression and wild absurd lies during campaigns. Just look at the ads they ran in 2020 and the Georgia senate races runoff. If any of the crazy accusations had even a kernal of truth, I don't remember it.

They attacked our candidates as being controlled by Chinese communists. They said that electing us would end up closing hospitals and taking away their doctors.

They ran ads claiming that once Democrats got the power we would defund the police- and they ran a fake 911 call with an automated response telling the caller with a dire emergency there would be no one coming to help. Their ads clearly implied that Democrats support criminal illegal immigrants and urban black thugs and are sending them to your suburbs to kill you. And you will die waiting for a non-existent police force to respond because Democrats closed all of the police stations and fired all of the police officers.

Crazy? Yes. But millions of Republican voters think that is the gospel truth.

They didn't imply- they outright said that we hate America.

They claimed that socialism brought to you by Democrats would destroy American and curtail freedom.

They said Democrats are for opening the borders to a floodgate of illegal immigrant criminals. That Democrats have recruited illegal immigrants to vote. That we are the causes of election fraud and we'll fight any valiant Republican effort to stop the millions of imposters who show up at the polls with fake ID's in the names of legally registered (but, unfathomably, not voting) voters to put Democrats in office.

That Democrats would pass the awful job killing Green New Deal and raise your taxes $65,000 a year to pay for it. (The print ad I got in the mail from the Perdue campaign didn't explain where they got the $65,000 number from.)

And in the face of all of those pernicious, blatant, ubiquitous lies, the DNC and our candidates had..... nothing. Other than Raphael Warnock's great "Puppies" ad, which ran before the first attack ad by scary Stepford wife Kelly Loeffler, I can't remember a single coordinated campaign to debunk the lies and unmask the liars.

And not a single Democratic ad- ever- included a portion of a Republican attack ad, then unraveled it for the absurd bushel of poppycock it was. That would have been effective, but apparently the imagination of the DNC and candidates for Federal office didn't reach that far.

We should have had a coordinated national campaign to rip those lies to shreds.

I'm glad we have a new DNC Chair, Jamie Harrison. I just hope he isn't the lackluster incompetent Tom Perez was at failing to realize the next campaign starts NOW. And it should involve national ads that destroy the caricature of Democrats that Republican voters sincerely believe. Our ads should include snippets of their ads- like a vaccine against their toxic disease. At least Harrison, to his credit, intends to run a 50 state campaign. And hopefully, we'll run competitive races in every Congressional district and in every state's legislative race no matter how "red" the state or the district was in the last election.

Because those voters aren't animatronic robots. They are humans with the same bodily functions, needs, family concerns, and aspirational goals as the rest of us- get a decent job, pay their bills, provide for their family, have a fulfilling recreational life. And for the most part, they aren't evil- just gullible. And susceptible to authoritarian demagogues and those who appeal to their worst fears and impulses. But they are not irretrievable as human beings. I have lived in the deep South for over 47 years, and there is no doubt in my mind that even the worst racist or the worst bigot I have encountered would stop and help pull a car load of black or Hispanic human beings out of the ditch. And offer them water and use of a phone. But they lack the capacity- so far- to relate their personal experiences to their national prejudices and understand that they don't jibe.

Our ads should include both regular actual human beings- like the Lincoln Project's ads with former Republicans who saw the light- and celebrities beloved by Republicans (Dolly Parton would be a good one, as would Garth Brooks). Former Republican elected officials or people connected to them- like John McCain's widow Cindy McCain- with stature- locally and nationally- should be involved, speaking out loud to their Republican friends, telling them they have been lied to. Telling them the truth. Making it ok to not be a bigot. Making it ok to see a "Democrat" as a human being with the same goals as they have, and just possibly a more efficacious means of accomplishing them.

And those ads have to run at least once every week from now until election day 2022. During football games. Jeopardy. Daytime soap operas. NCIS. News shows. On Fox (yes, Fox). Not all of the time. Just often enough to slowly but surely erode the confidence that Republican voters have that the caricature is true.

We need to unmask and defang the lying liars. Or, as Ezra Klein pointed out in the New York Times last week, we will lose in 2022, and we will deserve to lose.