Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Competitiveness
Catch the damn ball!!!
This post is about political football.
A game of actual, American football can turn drastically on a few key plays. One of the most obvious examples is when the offense turns the ball over. This could be either a fumble or an interception of a pass. While fumbles are essentially random and uncontrollable, much to the surprised of coaches and almost all football fans, interceptions are something the defense actually can create through good play.
But the key is to actually catch and not drop the ball when it is thrown to you.
When a player misses an opportunity for an interception, fans of that team are disappointed. An astute football fan is more dismayed because he realizes both how rare the opportunity is as well as how big the impact of catching it could be for the outcome of the game.
Recently we have witnessed several opportunities in the political realm for Democrats to proverbially catch an errant pass offered up by the Republicans.
Instead of securing the metaphoric interception and stealing the opportunity, they have squandered it entirely by either ignoring the issue, engaging in the exact thing they were being accused of doing, or simply copying the Republican’s own policies.
Here is a partial list of those recent missed opportunities:
Character - Never in modern American political history has there been a bigger opening on the issue of character than Trump has created. Yet, the Democratic strategy seems to be simply to assume the electorate sees it as obviously as do diehard Democrats and leave it at that. Were they afraid making it a strong political theme would leave them vulnerable to hypocrisy charges? Or were they just taking it for granted despite the clear polling showing how this was a weakness? Perhaps they were thinking, “That didn’t matter when George HW Bush tried it on Clinton; so it won’t work now.”
War and militarization and intervention abroad - I had hoped that the anti-war left would find new live once Trump came into office. I would have liked to see an ironic arms race of sorts where each party tried to out pacify the other. Instead we saw a rallying support when Trump dropped a bomb on Syria and tepid objection when he assassinated Iranian military leader Soleimani. Then there was pushback to his plan to exit Afghanistan. The best they can claim is raising concerns about Trump’s apparent provocation of North Korea, but that only amounted to “his words are sloppy and this is dangerous”. During Biden it has been back to business as usual but without a coherently demonstrated plan. While I support the general cause of help for Ukraine in fighting Russia and certainly support Israel against Hamas, Biden in particular and the Democrat leaders generally have been all over the map on what to do with little offered on why to do it. To say they are allowing matters of national security to be hijacked by politics is a severe understatement. It is anti-leadership at its worst. There is perhaps no issue more complex as this one. There are no good simple answers, but at least simple answers would be answers.
Tariffs and free trade - Bill Clinton and Al Gore are underappreciated for their accomplishments in the 90s regarding NAFTA specifically and the case for free trade generally. They did the right thing more often than not from both a policy standpoint and a political standpoint. In the face of strong opposition (internally and from Ross Perot, et al.) they captured an issue that was otherwise firmly Republican. Trump was Ross Perot without the private business success or the policy charisma. Yet the Democrats folded up completely. As Trump masterfully (or serendipitously) began stealing away blue-collar voters, Democrats were caught flatfooted. They offered mild resistance during Trump’s presidency, and then continued and extended his policies once back in office. This is one where they clearly are playing the “us-too-but-more-so” copycat game. Once they realize the voter base they are fearful of losing is already gone, not incredibly important electorally, and not worth sacrificing the clearly correct economic position on, they will be ready to steal this away from Republicans.
Immigration - It is very sad how far American politics have drifted from what is the ethical and economical place that used to be our political center. Where once the debate was on how we could best harness the benefits of immigration, we now must beg for the populace to consider what benefits it brings. Obama gets a lot of blame here. He was the deporter-in-chief before it was cool. Rather than make a case for expanding immigration and championing ideals like the Dreamers, an issue he left out dry, he set the tone for a policy of no policy whatsoever. Predictably leading into and during the Biden administration the mixed messaging and horrible management has made the immigration issue simply the chaos-at-the-border issue. These are NOT the same thing. Yet they are for many (most?) American voters.
If Harris can pull off the Hail Mary and win, I have little hope for what her administration will bring on any of these issues. She won’t be Trump in name, but she largely will be Trump in policy. At least she will be when she even has a policy to speak of at all.
