Wild Mushroom Pizza with Basil Oil and Gruyère

“It’s time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say. It’s true that if we embrace a far left agenda, they’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. Let’s stand up for the right policy, go up there and defend it.” –Pete Buttigieg 

Mother of God, what a week. I hope you’ve had some sleep, hydration, and food. I hope you’re able to take a minute here and there to rest. I used a dentist appointment to decompress. Yes, let me lie flat in a chair with a bright light in my face and a little pickaxe stabbing my gums but I can’t doomscroll or watch Steve Kornacki write alien hieroglyphics on a white board, so this is soooo relaxing. 

Too many election stories to recount, so I’m focusing on one that conveys a larger lesson for the Democratic Party to of course never learn, because they never do. Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who flipped Virginia’s Seventh District House seat in 2018, won her first reelection battle this week. You’d be forgiven for assuming she’s popping champagne with her loved ones in celebration and definitely not throwing a tantrum and cursing out her progressive colleagues on a Dem Caucus call and accusing them of almost costing her her seat because the GOP ran attack ads calling her a socialist who wanted to defund the police. Alas, you’d be wrong. She’s throwing the tantrum. Such professionalism, much mature! 

I guess she needs to hear this, so I’ll be the one to say it: Of COURSE they called you a socialist in attack ads! Have you been cryogenically frozen for the past twenty-five years? If you didn’t have a plan to combat or neutralize that accusation, then that’s on you, not like, Rashida Tlaib. All you demonstrate with your Karen hissy fit is how unprepared you were. Spanberger got caught with her pants down and doesn’t want to admit it. I’m still trying to make sense of her antics though. Sure she ought to be embarrassed, but at the end of the day, she did win her race. Not only that, she won with a higher margin than she did in 2018. Obviously her Democratic voters weren’t persuaded by the GOP bad faith attacks. Why is this not good news? The only theory I can posit is that she thought her DCCC-dictated, centrist, better-things-aren’t-possible campaign message was going to attract a bunch of Republican votes in her district, and she’s big mad upon discovering it didn’t. As someone who grew up in the Religious Right in a red state, here’s a piece of advice for you, Abigail: 

If you want Republicans to vote for you, put a fucking R next to your name on the ballot. 

While I am the last person who wants to see another Ohio Diner Safari from the New York Times, there actually is an important aspect of Republican voters that Democratic leadership refuses to understand. Republican voters see Democrats – ALL Democrats – as both leftist radicals AND fundamentally dishonest human beings. These concepts are synonymous in their brains and there is no breaking the link. Every time you disavow Bernie Sanders or Nancy Pelosi or promise to “reach across the aisle”, you just provide more fodder for their preexisting beliefs about your supposed lack of integrity. They don’t understand why you aren’t acting like a Democrat and conclude you must certainly be lying. They harbor this fantasy that Democrats are as ruthless and radical as they are (IF ONLY!) and thus, if you promise to implement Republican policy platforms, you must be attempting to dupe them into giving away their power. They won’t be fooled. 

I remember conversations with my parents and grandparents, where I’d point out a prominent Democrat who held a conservative position, like Harry Reid opposing abortion. The responses always ranged from “yes buuuutttt” to “well, I’m pretty sure he’s lying” to “that’s nice, but his support of Insert Other Liberal Issue doesn’t make up for it.” Republicans believe Democrats will close ranks and vote with their tribe at the end of the day, so their individual positions don’t really matter. Of course that doesn’t always happen, but when you point out any one Democrat’s vote that breaks with party lines, they just don’t care. It’s written off as a fluke, and even if you can point to a clear pattern, they’ll always manufacture some reason for why it “doesn’t count.”

If you learn nothing else from my experiences growing up in the Religious Right, learn this: Literally every GOP voter thinks literally every Democrat is a leftist radical. There is not one single thing you can say or do to convince them otherwise. If you are a Democrat running as a Republican-lite, the GOP voters you are trying to peel off will just see you as dishonest and hate you even more than if you ran as a mainstream liberal or progressive. I don’t care how many Planned Parenthood protests or church services you attend, I don’t care how many times you quote Ronald Reagan or the Bible, I don’t care how many times you pinky swear not to overturn the Second Amendment. You have a D by your name, and that is where their analysis stops.

The GOP kept referencing AOC and Bernie Sanders in their attack ads against Biden, and if you were to believe Very Serious Media Men, it’s because “aww, poor little racist sexist Trump just doesn’t know how to run against another old white man like himself.” No. NO. That’s not the lesson. GOP voters really and truly believe Biden is just like AOC and Bernie, and no amount of facts will convince them otherwise. The GOP strategists were smart with their ads. They know that their base thinks Biden is lying when he reaches out to Republicans like John Kasich, so they made sure to reinforce that belief. When Democrats make big overtures to Republicans, they actually alienate the very Republican voters they are trying to entice. Those voters just feel manipulated. It’s almost as if, when conservative voters have a choice between a real Republican and a fake Republican, they choose the real one every time. Funny that!

Joe Biden spent most of his campaign pandering to Republicans. Yet it’s Black voters, liberal Latino voters, Arizona Native American voters, AAPI women, and progressives who are getting him over the finish line. He did not peel off any Republican votes. In fact, Trump increased his share of GOP voters. Biden’s strategy utterly failed. Republicans saw all that pandering as just that: pandering. Insincere. Manipulative.

Democrats, you have to fucking stand for something. You have to possess and be able to articulate and communicate a clear vision of who you are and what you want America to be. You must differentiate yourself from Republicans; otherwise, what’s the point? It does not work to be this big tent party trying to equally represent everyone to the left of I Shouldn’t Have to Press One for English. You have to implement some real values and litmus tests.

At the end of the day, Republicans, unlike Democrats, know what they stand for. Their thinking is, “If you, a Democrat like Abigail Spanberger or Joe Biden, really wanted to represent us Republican voters, well, you’d just be a Republican. But you’re not. You’re a Democrat. So you don’t represent us. And you never will.”

Honestly, they might have a point.