Petty & Polarizing Progressives

Since when is it cool to be so petty?

Spending any amount of time on social media this past week would have allowed plenty of posts, tweets and memes to surface on your timeline about the Trump verdict. As someone who mostly follows Democrats and has Democratic posts recommended to me online, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see how ruthless Democrats were as the guilty verdicts were read. What did surprise me was the realization that this level of pettiness is now so prevalent in our Party that it’s essentially become part of said Party’s personality. 

Take the now-infamous “BBBBBB.”

When personally attacked by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Jasmine Crockett responded with an insult of her own for MTG: “I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling. If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”

Welcome candidate and friend Adam Frisch running in Colorado’s third congressional district has a word for this type of back-and-forth: anger-tainment. Funny enough, it was Adam’s former Republican opponent Rep. Lauren Boebert who attempted to restore order when the body reconvened: “I just want to apologize to the American people,” Boebert said. “When things get as heated as they have, unfortunately, it’s an embarrassment on our body as a whole.”

It’s always strange when you find yourself agreeing with a MAGA member of Congress, but she’s right. 

America has been feeding its guilty pleasure of reality show-worthy politics since at least 2016, but the past few years feel exceptionally full of personal jabs, particularly as we plan to elect a President again in November: Trump’s campaign seems to thrive off of personal attacks, whether he’s coming after Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” or one of his former Republican opponents – or their spouses. 

And while it can be entertaining, we have to ask ourselves what the consequences are for our democracy. 

Independent voters are the largest bloc of voters in America. And while most independent voters caucus with one of the parties most of the time, there are reasons why voters identify as independent in the first place, and it’s not just so that they can choose which primary election they’d like to participate in. 

Voters are growing weary of extremism and consequently worrying about its effects on our nation’s democratic and civic health. Further, highly-engaged voters – including those of us who work in politics – are much more inclined to play into partisan politics, particularly as the level of political hobbyism has skyrocketed. Coined by Welcome-recommended academic Eitan Hersh, these political hobbyists spend more time sharing and re-sharing partisan hot takes than they do volunteering or engaging in real life, leading to this entire new class of hobbyists who are increasingly part of the problems with partisan politics. 

As moderate Democrats, we’re not often known to be the punchy pundits, but that doesn’t mean we lack passion. Petty shots from Democrats in safe seats or candidates with a cult-like following make for great entertainment/anger-tainment, but (lucky for us) Washington isn’t headquartered in Hollywood. The average American will likely hear of the most inflammatory things being said or done by partisan political leaders because the press will always cover those red meat moments. 

But as more Americans choose to register or identify as independent voters, I wonder if the political pettiness and partisan profligating is pushing them into that camp. Perhaps politically moderate, perhaps just completely turned off by the extremists in both parties trying to out-clown each other.

I myself have fallen into the trap of throwing shots online in the past, but I learned a valuable lesson in allowing the wrong emotions to guide your words, and I’ve gained a new sense of awareness for the simple truth that most people don’t play into the same political middle school-isms that we on the “inside” do. 

Further, political anger-tainment is single-handedly creating its own ecosystem – with merch included! We write often about how the progressive faction of the Democratic Party “created an ecosystem that has empowered a nimble, talented group of political entrepreneurs,” and this is evidenced by moments like Crockett’s viral “BBBBBB” becoming a fundraising email subject line complete with a trademark of the phrase submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But instead of using the funds to defend frontliners and “protect democracy,” one could ask whether or not Crockett could have not fed into the hype machine to begin with to instead create a healthier democracy as a depolarizer. 

Moderate Democrats aka Depolarizer Heroes have a huge role in our politics: reject extremism, stay normal and meet people where they are not only geographically but also ideologically. When we choose the hero route and play the long game, we may not get the credit, but we do get the (much more valuable) long game results. Depolarizing peacemakers are comfortable with conflict, but it’s the type of conflict that produces results – not the type of conflict that widens divisions.

Ask former Alaska state representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, who helped organize a coalition of moderates to turn a red state’s legislature purple. It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t flashy and it was very hard, but it helped reduce polarization for the state’s House chamber in the same election year Trump was elected President. 

When leaders in our Party participate in activities that are inherently polarizing, it doesn’t even need to be partisan in nature; it’s just yet another factor that contributes to the political divides we so often lament about. 

Most registered voters (54%) say that “personally insulting political opponents is never fair game” in politics, and the more we get in the mud with the fringe, the dirtier we get. We all love to quote former FLOTUS Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high,” but how often do we put it into practice? Because, better yet, when they choose the fringes, we Win the Middle.