976: Punch or Counterpunch?
Two types of bad actors
Journalists have a bias for conflict. And headline writers really have a bias for conflict, as The New York Times and Semafor articles on WelcomeFest showed:
For those who were in the room all day, the jabs at leftist groups did not dominate. And mostly had context and nuance.
But it’s a mostly-boring story to be like “600 candidates, staffers, advocates, and disaffected Democrats got together for a day to learn from candidates who won Trump districts, with a lot of discussion on pragmatism and empathy, to understand how to build more support for Trump-district House challengers zzzzzz snooooore.”
The most-cited person in coverage of WelcomeFest was not a member of Congress. It was Carly Simon, for the You’re So Vain soundtrack to protestors rushing the stage.
Conflict and humor work in stories. But we need to tweak on the “punching left” frame.
Centrists are not simply punching left.
It’s a counterpunch.
National Brand vs. Personal Attacks
There’s a difference between national brand damage and personal attacks.
Sometimes, bad actors do stuff to hurt the party overall. This is a national party brand problem.
These bad actors often come from progressive interest groups or deep-blue enclaves. Like San Francisco renaming schools during Covid or Planned Parenthood’s explanation, still on its website, about Why Planned Parenthood Supports Defunding The Police.
Criticizing these groups to create distance for a centrist candidate or group can be considered “punching left” in some way. Voters don’t trust Democrats, and distance is needed.
But sometimes, bad actors do stuff to hurt individual candidates. This is a campaign problem, and a human problem.
The campaign problem ranges from normal lobbying pressure (candidate questionnaires, etc) to generating bad press to threatening primary challenges.
The modern progressive left, both organized groups and individuals, has gotten very good at waging psychological warfare. From activists flooding Twitter mentions to camping outside their homes to flooding a family business’ Yelp with bad reviews to wealthy radicals pledging to harass politicians and "not give them any peace".
Stanford political scientist Andrew Hall, in Who Wants to Run? How the Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization, demonstrated that the personal challenges and professional diminishing appeal of political office deter moderates more than extremists. The high personal costs of campaigning, and the reduced influence of individual legislators due to centralized party control, make political careers less attractive to moderates. But individuals with more extreme views are better able to persist in the modern environment.
Back to The New York Times on WelcomeFest:
the thrust of the day’s discussion was dismissing the party’s left wing as an anchor to Democratic chances to win national elections. Scattered potshots were aimed at the activist group Indivisible throughout the day, with Representative Jared Golden of Maine, who represents the most pro-Trump district of any Democrat in the House, calling it “a hyper-national organization with a very single-minded agenda.”
Picking that theme up in Politico:
“When you read the documents of the national Indivisible group, they spell it right out, as plain as day, that they’re throwing out the Blue Dogs and New Dems,” said Golden. “Their goal is to divide the Democratic coalition until they are 100 percent in the image of the progressive caucus.”
This gets at both types of bad actor problems: Indivisible is both an anchor on the national Democratic Party brand, and works persistently to make the lives of individual people running for office in red districts worse. We covered some of this in Weak Tea Party, with The Indivisible Cycle:
If you're ordering at the bar and the guy to your left is punching you, then you - or someone on your behalf - punches back, is that punching left? Or counterpunching? Or just defense?
976 days until the haymakers in the 2028 presidential primary.
We need a WAR-inspired nickname for Golden similar to the Moneyball baseball book popularizing Kevin Youkilis as “The Greek God of Walks”