Faculty lounge thinking

"Oligarchy" is more precise,

"King" is simpler.

Elissa Slotkin, a U.S. senator from Michigan, is in the news for having offered up political advice to Democrats generally and to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez specifically. Use language that motivates people, she said. Don't try to give a political science lecture.

She was referring to the "oligarchy rallies." Accuse Trump of trying to be king, not the leader of a new political system, oligarchy.

It isn't an issue of dumbing things down, she argues. It is a matter of using simple, clear language that connects with people emotionally, especially the non-college voters of all races and ethnicities who have been abandoning Democrats. We decide that we don't want a government run by a wealthy and connected class of people mixing private and governmental power, an oligarchy. We feel resentful of an all-powerful king.  

Go with the emotional connection.

Slotkin's advice parallels that of Democratic strategist pundit James Carville who says that Democrats should abandon the language, tastes, and policies of university faculty lounges. He argues that Democrats are led by advocacy nonprofit groups, by congressional staffers, by media pundits, by privileged elitists who defend positions that are out of touch with most Americans. They defend positions -- now swept into the idea of "woke" -- that come across as theoretical and extreme.

A gender theory professor might assert that sex is exclusively a cultural artifact, a social convention, and therefore biology-based distinctions based on the false notion of "sex" are profoundly mistaken and discriminatory. Most people, in their general experience, think sex is pretty darned real.

Similarly, people might understand the distinction between "equity" and "equality" in a Power Point slide deck in a DEI training presentation, but home from the seminar, wonder if maybe the organization shouldn't just hire the person who can best do the job.

I had that experience personally. I was a multi-decade member of the board of my Southwest Oregon Planned Parenthood affiliate. We had a three-hour DEI training on equity hiring. After the presentation the director of operations said she had misgivings about a recent hire. One candidate for a maintenance position was Black, had several years of experience, and good recommendations and work history. He was hired instead of a second candidate, a Hispanic, with limited work experience and a troubled job history with time missing from drug and alcohol use and lack of reliable housing. She semi-apologized for having hired the Black man, who was a victim of racial prejudice, sure, but he did not have as many problems as did the man with substance problems and unsettled living conditions that contributed to his lack of work experience. The second person, she said, needed the extra consideration to give him equity in hiring. That got murmurs of assent and praise.

I sat silently wondering if maybe the operations manager's real task wasn't to hire the person who could best help the organization carry out its own mission.

I was later gently asked to leave that board by the board president and CEO. Planned Parenthood is the "tip of the spear" in progressive advocacy, they explained, and I wasn't keeping up.

On issues of abortion, gender, immigration, racial equity, climate, rights of people to camp on sidewalks, gun rights, land use planning, protection of endangered species, plastic straws, microaggressions, and similar issues, Democrats have a set of orthodox, acceptable positions. Those positions are enforced by policy advocates who pounce on apostasy. 

Democrats need not admire or respect Trump. I certainly do not. He is endangering American democracy. But Democrats can observe and learn from him what works politically. He abandons GOP orthodoxy when it is unpopular. He is credited for his courage and independence for doing so. He told anti-abortion extremists that he would not ban all abortions; he told trickle-down free-trade Republicans that he disagreed with them; he said he would not cut Medicare or Medicaid.

Policy advocates brag about "holding politicians' feet to the fire." The result is politicians with damaged feet. They appear to be agents, not principals. They look obedient and weak, pushed around by people with extreme views in their own party. Who can trust such a person? Trump looks crazy and opinionated, but he doesn't look like he lets his party push him around. It makes him look like a strong leader.

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