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Across the aisle, obviously, a different ethos has prevailed. Republicans have adopted an aggressive, freewheeling politics that tends to center anything sufficiently lurid, enraging, frightening or energizing: Socialism, the caravan, Ebola, Doctor Seuss, critical race theory. The list goes on and on. Outside of an effort to launch assaults along fault lines of race, gender, sexuality or age, theres no consistent set of real-world issues or policies being addressed.

Where Democratic politics is characterized by a rigid left-brain approach that evaluates a list of issues and tries to prioritize each one in accordance to its presumed salience, the GOP in recent years has been pure right-brain: Emotion leads, everything else follows. One sides tactics are highly structured. The others are postmodern, assuming that any narrative can be forced into political relevance, mostly by dint of being shouted about.

If it were true that politics was about a small set of core policy issues, the Democratic approach would be clearly and unambiguously superior. After all, in many respects, it is the only party even attempting to tackle such concerns. In 2020, the Democratic Party platform ran for 92 pages and touched on every traditional policy issue in the country. Infamously, the GOP did not even produce a platform, instead releasing a one-page resolution professing uncompromised loyalty to Donald Trump and his aims, whatever those may have been.

But election results do not suggest that Democrats have a smarter approach. The party has run slightly ahead in most recent elections, but hardly by a margin that suggests they have a powerful fundamental advantage and certainly not enough to consistently overcome the structural hurdles facing them in the Senate and Electoral College.

In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won the House solidly, but there was no evidence that the partys singular campaign focus on maintaining health coverage for preexisting conditions was transformative. The suburban-urban coalition that delivered the election was the same one that rallied against Trump in 2016 and 2020. In 2020, the country faced no shortage of real-world policy problems, most notably the Covid-19 pandemic. Characteristically, Democrats were convinced that the pandemic would define the election and focused campaign efforts around it. But while the policy-laden Biden defeated the policy-absent Trump, head-to-head polls barely budged throughout the year, and, in the final total, Trump achieved essentially the same vote share as in 2016.

More than anything else, the 2018 and 2020 results and the freakish stability of Trumps approval rating throughout his presidency suggested that the main subject in U.S. politics since 2016 was not any policy issue, but Trump himself. A large number of Americans strongly supported the man; a somewhat larger number loathed him. Everything else in their voting behavior seemed to flow outward from that.

And yet most Democrats specifically avoided making their campaigns about Trump, refusing to accept that he could be a more salient issue than the traditional set of policy concerns. Perhaps as a result, down-ballot Republicans substantially outperformed Trump himself.

Trumps centrality to voters broke all the assumed rules. Here was an all-consuming political force, one that largely washed out the electoral effects of tumultuous real-world events. It was attenuated from specific policy proposals and only indirectly linked to anyones day-to-day material wellbeing. It was a topic defined mainly by moral and emotional narratives on both sides. Yet, Trump shaped political reality. Few felt, or feel, indifferent.

Democrats face a dire midterm in 2022. If the partys business-as-usual strategy keeps falling flat, it might be time to reflect on the success of the GOPs political postmodernism. Democrats should consider that politics, rather than being about a short list of predetermined issues, can really be about anything at all. Political narratives dont have to stick to tried-and-true positioning around health care, immigration or taxes. They just have to tell a good story.

Plenty of potent civic sentiments are available. The desire to defend community and democracy whether against creeping disease, conquering foreign despots or far-right insurrection reaches across countless demographic groups. Support for fundamental values like fairness and patriotism is shared as widely as any policy preference. From civil rights and racial injustice to prohibition and abolitionism, American history is packed full of intrinsically moral causes that galvanized the public, both quickly and slowly. Nor should negative sentiments be written off. Nobody likes a crooked politician, and public fury over injustice or graft has driven many votes in the past. And few emotions motivate people as well as fear like the fear of unelected judges eliminating basic reproductive rights.

Some Democrats seem to have figured this out. Barack Obamas successful campaigns leaned heavily on themes of inspiration and forward progress, dovetailing with his own oratory and the gravity of his personal presence. In the 2020 Georgia Senate runoff, Jon Ossoff successfully hammered David Perdues perceived corruption, a tactic Democrats have ample opportunity to wield against Trump and his allies.

Democrats that are newer on the political scene also seem more comfortable living in this reality than party elders. It isnt just congressional lefties like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. John Fetterman, who just swept to victory in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, has noted that voters make up their minds based on a visceral feeling and he has notably avoided efforts to pigeonhole him as a progressive. Even some relative moderates, like Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 presidential campaign and Beto ORourke in the 2018 Texas Senate race, have overperformed expectations with campaigns built more around memorable personas and emotionally evocative narratives than fine-tuned issue positions.

None of this is to say that theres a single right way for Democrats to stave off disaster in 2022. There is no formula here. Issue polls can give hints about the sort of political stories that might catch on, but they ultimately cannot predict the future. Audiences often dont know what theyll respond to until they see it. Whats more as is obviously true in other mediums, but can be strangely overlooked in political campaigns presentation is often as important as content. Embedded in genuinely emotive language or evocative imagery, even standard talking points can suddenly become inspiring or thrillingly combative. Whos surprised Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow went viral simply for standing up for herself and her values? But a lot of Democratic campaigning focuses on matters like highway funding or drug pricing, which seem practically lab-constructed to repel any kind of emotional response outside of boredom.

Ultimately, politics has been around a lot longer than issue polls or even public policy. The standardization of national campaigns into a mechanical, poll-driven enterprise has not produced obvious benefits for the Democratic Party. For most of history, politics was an intuitive art, not a mechanical science. Democrats should remember this and going forward, pursue a little more artistry and a little less math.

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Opinion | Why Dems Ought to Take a Cue from the GOP and Get Angry - POLITICO

In 1980, because I was an idealistic conservative eager to do my bit for democracy, I volunteered for my local Republican Party as a poll watcher. When polls closed, election officials asked us to gather around as they opened the backs of the machines one by one and tallied the votes.

We could all see what was happening, and we all gave our assent that the totals were correct.

It was a glimpse into the ordinary yet extraordinary system weve devised over decades and centuries to ensure that elections are performed honestly and securely. Each state has developed its own procedures, but theyre all broadly similar.

The results of each polling location are delivered to the precinct and then on to the canvassing board. Election administrators are observed by partisans of both parties, and the results are often counted more than once.

Our voting systems have not always been perfect the most glaring flaw being the disenfranchisement of many African Americans until the mid-20th century but we corrected that. Over time and in most places, weve conducted free and fair elections every two years.

Today, that stability is at risk.

Across the country, candidates who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election are seeking office to prepare the ground for the next election. Pardoned Trump ally Steve Bannon is encouraging MAGA-ites to run for local posts with authority to count votes. Bannon uses his popular podcast to tout taking over the Republican Party through the precinct committee strategy ... Its about winning elections with the right people MAGA people. We will have our people in at every level.

At least 23 candidates who deny the outcome of the 2020 election are running for secretary of state in 19 states. Among those are battleground states that Joe Biden won narrowly: Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. Trump has endorsed candidates in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan, the only time in history that a former president has bestirred himself over races so far down the ballot.

Were seeing a dangerous trend of election deniers lining up to fill election administration positions across the country, Joanna Lydgate, chief executive of the States United Democracy Center, told The Guardian. States United also tallies 53 election deniers seeking governorships in 25 states, and 13 election deniers running for attorney general in 13 states.

Additionally, death threats and intimidation from MAGA extremists have caused one in five election administrators to say they will leave their posts before 2024. The most common explanation is that too many politicians were attacking a system that they know is fair and honest and that the job was too stressful. A February survey of 596 local election officials found that they spanned the political spectrum: 26% identified as Democrats, 30% as Republicans and 44% as Independents. A majority said they were worried about attempts to interfere with their work in future elections.

While MAGA types are beavering away, attempting to stack election boards and other posts with election-denying zealots, what are other Americans doing? The clock is ticking.

Democrats are likely to have a tough election in November not that widespread Republican victories will cause election deniers to reconsider their belief that the 2020 race was stolen. But while Democrats are likely to lose seats in the House and Senate, local elections may not be so lopsided, particularly if the craziness of some candidates is highlighted.

Kristina Karamo, for example, the Trump-endorsed secretary of state candidate in Michigan, claims that she personally witnessed fraudulent vote-counting in 2020, that Trump won her state (Biden won it by 154,000 votes) and that left-wing anarchists attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Some Republicans, it should not be forgotten, continue to uphold election integrity; a handful of honest Republicans saved the country from a potentially disastrous constitutional crisis in 2020.

If past is prologue, Democrats will probably pour money into unwinnable races. Remember Amy McGrath? She was supposed to dethrone Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Democratic donors gave her $88 million. Remember Jaime Harrison? He was going to defeat Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Donors shoveled $130 million his way. Harrison lost by 10 points. McGrath lost by nearly 20 points. The list goes on. Beto ORourke, anyone? (Republicans do this, too. Just look at the money wasted in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs district.)

This year, donors are spending millions to unseat the execrable Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sigh. Trump won Greenes district with 75% of the vote. This. Wont. Work.

Democrats, Independents and sane Republicans should focus instead on critical local contests that will determine who counts the votes in 2024. Those unsexy races for local positions and administrative posts like secretaries of state could make the difference in 2024 between an election and a coup.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the Beg to Differ podcast

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Are Democrats up to the job of preventing the next coup? - Chicago Sun-Times

In yet another bid to pin a horrific mass shooting on the opposition, Democrats and their media allies now claim replacement theory is a core value of the modern GOP.

Replacement theory, which inspired Buffalo shooter Peyton Gendron, imagines a sinister cabal of Jewish financiers and leftist politicians is undermining Americas white majority to win elections for Democrats and transform the country.

No less than The New York Times sounded the alarm: Its straw-grasping article, for example, falsely smeared New Yorks Rep. Elise Stefanik because of her criticism of Bidens immigration policies. Then it had to reach to Arizona Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers a fringe figure censured in March by other Republicans for her bizarre statements.

The real bte noire here is Tucker Carlson, who the Times and others insist amplifies these ideas on his Fox show. Funny: The shooters manifesto fingers Fox as a tentacle of that same anti-white conspiracy.

And the larger claim that US demographic change boosts Democrats has been standard among Democrats for years. Left-liberal analysts John Judis and Ruy Teixeira made the case in their influential 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority. Civil rights attorney Steve Phillips argued similarly in his 2016 best-seller Brown Is the New White. Sen. Dick Durbin felt comfortable saying just last summer, The demographics of America are not on the side of the Republican Party.

Heck, Joe Biden in 2015 stated that, starting in 2017, fewer than 50% of the people in America . . . will be white European stock and adding, thats a source of our strength.

The kicker: Of late, black, Asian and especially Hispanic voters have started pulling the GOP lever in droves as Democrats tilt ever-more left on crime, the economy and divisive social issues.Hard to explain that if the GOP is so wedded to stifling the political dreams of minorities.

This demographic shift has national Dems headed into an electoral wood-chipper in November. Hence the lefts desperate seizure on this hideous crime to try scaring voters back into the fold.

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The ironic twists to Democrat claims that the GOP backs 'replacement theory' - New York Post

In 2006, Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, had an expletive-laden shouting match on the steps of the Democratic National Committee.

Emanuel was pleading for more money from Dean to pour into competitive congressional races. That year, Democrats had a unique opportunity to seize control of the House for the first time since 1994. President George W. Bush was unpopular, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were descending into their respective quagmires.

But Dean had a different idea. Elected on a promise of revitalizing and rebuilding the 50 state Democratic parties, Dean invested funds into state legislative and local races in hard-to-reach red states to the delight of those state party chairs.

On Election Day, Emanuel got his wish of a Democratic-controlled House led by its first woman speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). As for Dean, Barack Obama exercised his presidential prerogative and ousted him from his party chairmanship in 2009.

That long-ago shouting match, together with the release of a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito overturning Roe v. Wade, highlights an important difference between how Democrats and Republicans think. The Alito draft, if it stands, represents the culmination of a decades-long charge by Republicans to overturn Roe.

Beginning in 1980, the Republican Party adopted a pro-life plank in its platform. This was the beginning of a decades-long quest. In 1982, the Federalist Society was established. Its purpose was to return to an originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, a view that had no room for rights, including abortion, not specifically enumerated in the document. Replacing the American Bar Associations gold standard endorsement by which prospective judges once were measured, the Federalist Society became an essential seal of approval that Republican presidents needed when it came to nominating federal judges. Lists of prospective candidates were drawn up by the society, and the organization achieved its goal by not only supporting the current Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican presidents but adding hundreds of its approved judges to the federal courts.

During his term as president, President Trump slavishly adhered to the lists submitted by the Federalist Societys president, Leonard Leo. Leo told others it was easy to come up with names for Trump because there were decades of conservative lawyers in the pipeline. Of the six names that Leo submitted to Trump, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett made the cut. Taking pride in his ability to confirm these judges, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)says, If you prefer America right of center, which I do, and youre looking around at what you can do to have the longest possible impact on the kind of America you want, it seems to me you look at the courts. While McConnell boasts about his judicial confirmation record, he would be the first to acknowledge that he had plenty of help.

Democrats think very differently. Instead of planning for the long term, Democrats think in the moment. Once the Alito decision was leaked, the outrage was palpable. Outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) shouted, I am angry because we have reached the culmination of what Republicans have been fighting for, angling for, for decades now! Her colleague Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said she was pissed.

Demonstrations erupted outside the homes of Supreme Court justices, and spontaneous marches were held in cities around the nation. Standing in front of a Planned Parenthood office, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) captured the anger of his fellow Democrats: Wheres the Democratic Party? Why arent we standing up more firmly, more resolutely? Why arent we calling this out? This is a coordinated, concerted effort. And yes, theyre winning. They are. They have been. Lets acknowledge that. We need to stand up. Wheres the counteroffensive?

That counteroffensive is lacking because Democrats, unlike Republicans, have not built the organizations needed for long-term victories. The Federalist Society is only one example of how Republicans have constructed apparatuses designed to reshape American life in the long term, even if the immediate results were not apparent. Besides the Federalist Society, in 1992 the Susan B. Anthony List was formed. Following the victories of several female Democratic senators and Bill Clinton that year, this organization was established with the purpose of electing more pro-life Republican women into office.

Another example of long-term Republican thinking is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Formed in 1973, ALEC describes itself as dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets, and federalism. ALEC writes proposed bills and encourages conservative state legislators to copy their formulaic texts and push for their enactment. Should the issue of abortion be referred to the state legislatures for adjudication, expect ALEC to write bills strictly limiting abortion with the goal of having it adopted in as many states as possible.

Until Democrats start thinking long-term, they will be reduced to being a party prone to primal screams and symbolic votes, while Republicans accomplish goals they have spent decades working assiduously to achieve.

John Kenneth White is a professor of politics at the Catholic University of America. His latest book is titled What Happened to the Republican Party?

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Democrats think in the moment. Republicans think in decades - The Hill

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images (Getty Images)

Veronica Escobar watched in horror as then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used his power and influence to keep a Supreme Court seat vacant for 293 days in 2016 and 2017, because Barack Obama was the one trying to fill it. At the time, Escobar was a local government leader in El Paso, Texas, with eyes on a congressional run. Surely, she thought, this state of politics wouldnt still exist by the time she made it to Washington.

Now, Escobar is a U.S. Congresswoman, and shes joining a growing chorus of voices demanding to expand the Supreme Court. At one point I just made the decision that there was no going back from the depths of the lack of integrity that was sustaining the court, Escobar told Jezebel. I think it is absolutely reasonable given the circumstances. And I think, in fact, it is absolutely necessary, given the fact that we now have a Supreme Court willing to do anything to achieve its political ends.

On Thursday, Escobar and other Democratic lawmakers welcomed nearly a dozen state-level abortion rights groups to the battle to expand the Supreme Courta policy proposal once considered unthinkable. It is unconscionable that we wouldnt see leaders at the administrative or at the congressional level, do everything they possibly can to protect the real people, pregnant people, women and families, particularly black folks, people of color, people trying to survive on low incomes in tough places like Missouri, Pro-Choice Missouri executive director Mallory Schwarz told Jezebel. They have the power to do something. Right now, its unfathomable that they wouldnt.

The Senate, notably, failed to codify the right to abortion access and provision for the second time earlier this month.

Polling shows a plurality supports court expansion. The Judiciary Act of 2021 has 56 co-sponsors, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) who signed on this week. By contrast, the Senate bill has only two co-sponsors alongside Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA): Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tina Smith (D-MN).

Schwarz said the post-Roe reality in Missouri is not sustainable. We know the courts wont save us, with the way the courts are stacked in our own state and now at the federal level, Schwarz told Jezebel. We dont have the luxury of time.

Schwarz knows she and her organization must take the long view. We know that were playing a long game. We know that were not going to flip enough seats in 2022 or 2024, just like we knew that in 2020, to end our veto-proof supermajority in the next five years, maybe 10, she told Jezebel. There are actions that our leaders can take. And if they dont take them, they need to know that they are choosing not to help those most in need and most at risk when the Roe decision is overturned.

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Democrats, Abortion Rights Groups Say It's Time to Expand the Supreme Court - Jezebel