Republicans Hate You

That's it - that's the message.

Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

Republicans in Congress are currently working through the process of passing a giant budget bill that will fundamentally reorient the federal government, taking the combination of malice and incompetence that has characterized the first four months of the second Trump term and solidifying it into law. It’s not an easy task for Democrats to explain to the public what’s happening, since federal budgets are extremely complicated and this one in particular is a kind of fractal nightmare, with equal horror no matter what level of magnification you examine it at.

The message Democrats seem to have settled on is that Republicans want to do a bunch of bad stuff, especially taking away health coverage from millions of people on Medicaid, in order to pay for a huge tax cut for the wealthy. Which is factually true, and a reasonable summation of the bill. But this is a good opportunity to talk about what’s missing, not just in the Democratic message of the moment but in how they approach politics, campaigning, and their opponents.

What Democrats ought to be saying

This is what Democrats ought to be saying, not once or ten times but a thousand times, over and over again until they’re sick of hearing it come out of their own mouths. They want a message that will resonate with the working class voters they’re so worried about appealing to? Here it is:

REPUBLICANS HATE YOU

Allow me to elaborate. If you struggle to pay your bills, if you have anxiety about your economic future, if the cost of housing and college and just ordinary living weigh on you all the time? There is nothing more important for you to understand than this: Republicans hate you. They think you’re lazy, they think you’re stupid, they think you don’t deserve anything better than to be a wage slave working your ass off so they and their billionaire buddies can have more servants and vacation houses and private jets, while they sit around laughing about what a sucker they think you are. They hate you.

I’ll go into detail on what this message accomplishes and why it’s so important, but first let’s consider this in context of what is probably the most abhorrent part of the budget bill: enormous cuts to Medicaid that would lead to millions of Americans losing their health coverage — as many as 14.7 million, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The primary way they will do this is through “work requirements,” i.e. forcing recipients to navigate a bureaucratic obstacle course to prove, over and over again, that they are working and therefore deserving of health coverage.

Work requirements are terrible policy, but what matters is why Republicans want to use them to kick all those people off their insurance. It’s because they hate people who need Medicaid. The same goes for those who might need food stamps or student loans, workers who want to bargain collectively, and pretty much anyone who isn’t lucky enough to be rich. They hate you.

If you doubt, look at this execrable op-ed in the New York Times from a quartet of Trump officials including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explaining why work requirements are necessary because of the fundamental laziness of the American people. While we ordinarily use the term “welfare” to refer to cash payments — especially the TANF program, which has been whittled down so far that it barely exists anymore — the Trump goons no doubt understand that people tend to associate the word “welfare” with black people and black women in particular, which is why they repeat the word no fewer than 18 times in the op-ed to refer to Medicaid.

The purpose is to argue that Medicaid recipients are a bunch of contemptible malingerers, and rather than a fundamental human right, health insurance is something that should be granted to people of modest means only if they can prove that they are morally worthy of going to the doctor when they get sick. “For able-bodied adults, welfare should be a short-term hand-up, not a lifetime handout,” they write. “We believe that work is transformative for the individual who moves from welfare to employment.” So get off the couch, you loser, and if you can show you have transformed yourself into something less pathetic — and don’t ever make a mistake on all the forms we’re going to make you fill out — then maybe we’ll consider letting you have coverage.

Needless to say, wealthy people are not asked to prove their moral virtue before being showered with government benefits. Why do Republicans insist that the system should work this way? Because if you are not rich, they hate you.

Identity is the message

If you’ve ever scratched your head and wondered how the party of the wealthy can win so much support from working class voters, this is why: It’s because they are absolutely relentless in defining Democrats. They know they can’t win on policy, so they use policy as a weapon to define identity. They never stop telling people that Democrats are snooty elitists who look down on reg’lar folk, and sexual deviants to boot. They’ve been doing this forever. How many campaigns have you seen in your life that boiled down to this:

Democrat: I get it. I know you’ve got challenges. Which is why I want government to do these ten things, which I firmly believe will help you and your family.

Republican: That guy is a condescending weirdo elitist freak. He hates God, he hates America, and he despises you and everything you stand for. Don’t you just want to punch him in the face?

That’s how you convince working class people to vote for candidates who are going to screw them over eight ways to Sunday: By making them put identity at the forefront of their minds. When it works, voters don’t even have to like Republicans to decide to vote for them; they just have to hate Democrats.

Democrats need to do the same thing. And no, I’m not talking about policy critiques, the standard-issue “We shouldn’t be cutting services to give another tax cut to the wealthy” line. That too is fine, but woefully incomplete. I’m talking about a message always, always, always grounded in identity, both who Republicans are and who the voters are.

The fact that so many Democrats still don’t understand this after so long is enough to drive you mad. They listen to their polls and focus groups and narrow-minded consultants advising them to focus on “kitchen-table issues,” then produce the most cautious, weak, pathetic campaigns time after time, and they keep losing elections they ought to win.

And there’s nothing about focusing on identity that prevents you from also talking about issues. Look at this ad from the mayoral campaign in Omaha that just happened, in which Democrat John Ewing just ousted the incumbent Republican mayor Jean Stothert:

This exception highlights the rule: When hit with an identity attack, Democrats usually respond with “No no, let’s please just focus on the issues.” The proper response to an identity attack is an identity counter-attack, just as Democrats did here when Stothert started campaigning on anti-trans bigotry. The response to “That guy thinks boys should be in girls sports” isn’t “No I don’t,” it’s “Why does that right-wing pervert want to do genital inspections on your daughter?” Talking about issues is good, but you have to lead with identity.

The “Republicans hate you” message isn’t necessarily going to have an instantaneous effect; the GOP has spent years building their identity attacks on Democrats, and they have an extraordinarily powerful media wurlitzer built to repeat them a zillion times a day. But Democrats have to start somewhere, and there’s no better time and place than right here, right now.

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