I cringed when I listened to Texas U.S. Senate candidate Democrat James Talarico.
I am familiar with that cringe feeling.
I felt it repeatedly in 2024 when I listened to Kamala Harris in her short campaign for president.
I want to shout, "Quit evading. Just answer the damned question."
There are questions Democrats don't want to answer. They know the answer is unpopular with voters, but they are constrained by voices within the Democratic constituency groups. The popular answer is the "wrong" answer in the eyes of well-organized policy groups within the Democratic coalition. Answer "wrong," and the candidate is a sell-out, racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, corporate, Trump-loving, Republican-in-hiding. Answer according to progressive orthodoxy and about 70 percent of voters realize that the criticisms Republican make of you are essentially true -- and voters don't like it.
So candidates protest the question. They complain that it is a "Republican talking point." They minimize and say it is an exception or rare. They say they want to talk about the price of gasoline or something else.
The Talarico instance was a podcast where the host was setting up softball pitches for Talarico to swat. The host shared a bit of negative advertising against Talarico by the GOP nominee Ken Paxton. Paxton sneered that Talarico supported trans women playing in women's sports. They asked Talarico to respond.
Talario avoided the trans-women-in-women's-sports question, saying that trans athletes were irrelevant to the issue of the economy. The host asked again. Again Talarico dodged.
Democrats tap-dance around these questions:
-- Do you support biological boys and men competing in women's sports?
-- Do you support teens having permanent surgery to change their gender and should Medicaid pay for it?
-- Do you support the right of a woman to exercise her choice to have a late-term abortion?
-- Do you support striking union workers -- including workers in public employee unions -- being eligible for unemployment benefits?
-- Do you support deporting people who are here in this country illegally?
-- Do you support giving qualified Black applicants for college admission and employment an affirmative edge to achieve the goal of diversity?
-- Do you support bans on new oil and gas pipelines in the U.S. to protect our climate?
These are uncomfortable questions because each question has a "right" answer from the point of view of a significant part of the Democratic coalition.
My own suggestion is for Democrats to risk disappointing the interest group. It is counterproductive for a Talarico or Kamala Harris to elect a Paxton or a Trump as the price of insisting that trans women are women in every context, or that women have an unconditional right to abort a fetus. Most of the supposed beneficiaries of progressive policies have a more moderate and muddled view of the issue than do the educated, ivory-tower policy advocates. My own view -- from which I expect disagreement from people deeply committed to the various causes -- is that positions that conform to the public's sensibilities are, in fact, the ones that best advance progressive policy goals. The Roe v. Wade formulation did not allow for very late term abortions at the discretion of the woman; it said that in the third trimester the state had an interest in the life of the fetus. Trans women competing in women's sports pits the liberal value of fair play against the liberal value of tolerance, and it hurts the goal of trans acceptance and inclusion. People inclined to support unions don't want to feel like saps for subsidizing people striking against the public.
Each candidate will make their own choices. They should voice their position and then sell it as the best thing for all concerned. But hedging, avoiding, and blaming the question leaves an impression of dishonesty and weakness.
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7 comments:
I don’t disagree. We live in a world with so many different complex issues with details that frankly overwhelm most of us. These hot-button questions seem to have simple answers, but really? For example – “Do you support striking union workers -- including workers in public employee unions -- being eligible for unemployment benefits?”
First – you need to ask who is paying for those benefits? Is it really the taxpayers? Nope – it’s the employers who pay SUTA (State) and FUTA (Federal) as part of the cost of having employees. Benefits are paid from a trust fund.
Next, you have to ask - what’s the history and rationale for Unemployment Insurance (UI) and what has been considered “fair”. It turns out UI it’s over 100 years old, with structure, rules benefits continuously evolving even as recently as COVID with different states deciding what is “fair”.
The general idea is to provide a short-term safety net (26 weeks) for workers who are impacted by employment conditions outside of their control. Then you need to decide whether a voluntary strike (even if for poor working conditions or bad faith) constitutes being “outside of their control”? Try unpacking that in a town hall meeting.
But few people have the patience or interest in those details. That’s for policy wonks, right? They just want to know if those strikers are gaming the system and have their hands in the taxpayers’ pocket, Right? (No – we have a President, Congress and SCOTUS for that).
How do you discuss things where people’s attention spans are now reportedly about 8.25 seconds, and check their phones 1,500 times a week?
Kamala was an empirical experiment on the effectiveness of the deflect and avoid strategy. We all know how that worked out.
Are the Democrats capable of and willing to learn from experience? I hope so, but the recent “autopsy“ fiasco does not bode well.
The question of trans athletes can be addressed by sports organizations. If we ever hope to live long and prosper, voters and legislators need to focus more on the existential issues we face, such as climate change, healthcare, affordable education, housing, voting rights, etc.
Voters focus on what they decide to focus on. Telling them what they “need to” care about instead of what they actually care about is the kind of elite condescension (or possibly contempt) that alienates them, and then they vote for someone like Trump.
Don’t allow trans people to participate in sports beyond recreational activities. There’s not that many trans people in general. Wish Talarico would just go with that. Win Texas and then become president.
Abortion beyond 5 months except for the mother’s health probably shouldn’t happen. Someone please alert Talarico.
There's nothing contemptuous about educating voters in the existential issues we face. Ignoring or minimizing them shows is the worst kind of contempt for offspring. If voters prefer a contemptuous liar like Trump, they'll just have to reap what they sow, which we're doing now.
Barack Obama famously—infamously?—declared in the runup to the 2008 presidential election that he was staunchly opposed to gay marriage, and that on Christian religious grounds. He almost certainly lied through his teeth. The sympathetic mainstream media declined to hold him to account vis a vis earlier public declarations, on that and other subjects.
Perhaps Talarico will be able to obfuscate and fib his way across the finish line where his cultural worldview is concerned. He has the advantage of an opponent who is reptilian, inside and out. Talarico did avow this very week a girlfriend of four years standing, his “rock”, without whom he says he could not have assayed the last six months of electioneering pressure.
For the Democrats’ sake may the putative longtime girlfriend’s anonymity and/or, er, “privacy” be preserved at least through November. It was necessary of course for her [yes, her] own protection that she not be (overtly?) present even at the celebration of his landmark primary triumph over Rep. Jasmine Crockett. Rocks need not be visible….
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