I spoke with a friend of mine who I knew before he was elected to Congress a few years ago. He's pretty conservative for a Democrat but he's a nice guy and pretty smart and he helps me wunderstand what's going on in Congress. He was reelected and called him to congratulation him and ask him why so many Democrats in his state lost while he won. He said it was because Democrats are seen as leftists and he avoids that label. "But you are part of the left and they advertised you the same way they advertised every other Democrat-- a socialist. He said it couldn't stick to him. "I’m a traditional left. I’m not Bernie. Not Democratic Socialist. Not defund police. Not abolish ICE. Not anti Israel. I am pro-environment, pro-labor, pro-civil rights, pro-police reform, pro-immigration reform-- I am not burn the mother down." That's an exact quote. The problem is that:
a- not a single Democrat who lost in his area is anything like what he just described andb- he's using a Republican worldview to think of "the left."
Many Democrats have that Fox News trap embedded in their minds. They come from a place that "the left" is bad. That mindset ruins the Democratic Party because every decision the leaders make flows out of it. Ted Lieu does not have that mindset. AOC does not have that mindset. Pramila Jayapal does not have that mindset. Jamie Raskin does not have that mindset. Rashida Tlaib does not have that mindset. Andy Levin does not have that mindset. Jamaal Bowman does not have that mindset. Cori Bush does not have that mindset. Mondaire Jones does not have that mindset. Ro Khanna does not have that mindset. Barbara Lee does not have that mindset. Bonnie Watson Coleman does not have that mindset. How do I know? I've talked to every one of them and tried to see if they do. They don't. They see the Democratic Party as a vehicle for the legitimate aspirations of working families and as a vehicle for having the government make things better. That's why I was so sickened yesterday by the House Democratic leadership-- that is so totally imbued with that mindset-- warning the House caucus to not run on core Democratic issues, just to run on the tepid non-messaging that lost the Democrats so many congressional races on Tuesday. An old warhorse who should have been put out to pasture years ago, majority whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), told them that if "we are going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, socialized medicine, we're not going to win," referring to the Georgia Senate runoffs. Why not just play Fox News for them? I'd like to see George Lakoff have a nice straight-forward talk with this troglodyte. In Moral Politics (2002), Lakoff argued that one of the reasons liberals have sucked so bad since the '80s is that they have not been as aware of their own guiding metaphors, and have too often accepted conservative terminology framed in a way to promote the conservatives' strict father metaphor. Progressives have to stop using terms like partial birth abortion, tax relief, socialized medicine and defund the police because they are manufactured specifically to allow the possibilities of only certain types of opinions. Tax relief for example, implies explicitly that taxes are an affliction, something someone would want 'relief' from. To use the terms of another metaphoric worldview, Lakoff insists, is to unconsciously support it." To prevent an even worse catastrophe in 2022, these congressional leaders just have to go. It would be suicidal for the House Democrats to reelect Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn again. The Democrats need leadership that revels, even swims, in Democratic values, not "leaders" who want to hide those values in the attic to accommodate Republican-lite members who represent Republican-leaning districts like Anthony Brindisi and Abigail Spanberger.
