Dirty Fighting

 

The Discourse is full of this kind of thing, complaining about how Democrats aren't sufficiently like Republicans without offering any examples of what "fighting dirty" would be like. Should we be spreading Big Lies and paranoid fantasies?

Or lots of horrible little ones? Should we be ruining ordinary people's lives the way Republicans did to election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, or to January 6 rioter Ray Epps, and even a 10-year-old girl who needed an abortion? (The latter two covered in a post last night from Steve that's absolutely combative enough, but not in any way I can see dirty—the truth is all he needs.)

What's the dirtiest thing Republicans do? 

Raising campaign money by standing for policies they know are harmful, from the fossil fuel industry to the gun industry to the payday loan industry? Should we be doing some of that? Finding ourselves a bunch of rich clients intent on destroying the world and giving them a legislative hand?

I don't think so. I do think we could use some of the partisanship with which Republicans from one interest group loyally stand behind all the ideas of all their interest groups no matter how terrible and indeed unpopular they are. 

We could just leave out the dirty part by not having any dirty policies, but we all need to get on the same page; "centrists" need to learn that the thing Republicans demonize under the name "critical race theory" actually isn't a bad thing (it's really antiracist education) and start saying so in public, and "progressives" need to understand that property taxes in New Jersey really are too high and opiate addiction among white people really is a problem. 

We should start with the assumption that if a substantial contingent of Democrats believes in something, they're likely to have a point. If Tim Ryan could figure out how many working class white people need help paying back student loans—

An estimated 38.6% of the 43 million student debtors in the United States — roughly 16.6 million people — have debt but no degree six years after first entering college, according to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data analyzed by the Hope Center’s Mark Huelsman. (Teen Vogue, for heaven's sake)

—and start talking about it, it would do some good. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found out that most of her constituents want to see more police officers on the street rather than fewer (just police officers who don't kill unarmed neighbors, please), she could talk about that too. 

Unlike Donald Trump talking about abortion, we could be telling the truth, but it would still be fighting. That one useful thing Republicans know is that they're in an army, and armies need unit cohesion.