Can Biden Convince America the GOP Is a Threat?

By David Corn  May 10, 2022

President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 4, 2022. Evan Vucci/AP

Since the start of this year, when I’ve been asked—and I’m asked often—about the Democrats’ prospects in the November elections, I’ve tried to be reassuring. The questioner is usually a Dem or a lib, and I’ve said that if Uncle Joe and the Ds get their acts together, there’s a chance—perhaps not a great one, but a chance—they can sidestep the shellacking that tends to hit the party controlling the White House in a first-term midterm. That is, if they immediately pull together a strong narrative about the Covid response, the infrastructure bill, and rising employment, while clearly and sharply slamming the Republicans for saying no to lowering drug prices, adding dental coverage to Medicaid, and providing universal pre-K and paid family leave and saying yes (more, please) to Donald Trump, just maybe they can survive the inflation-and-CRT blasts from the GOP and hold the House. Then I realized, I’ve been saying this every week for months. And another precious week has flown by.

Narratives—it’s a cliché, but it’s true; they count. The Democrats need a helluva compelling story to beat back the historical tide that is poised to sweep their narrow congressional majorities out to sea. And there’s only one fella who can tell it. Yet Joe “Saving the Soul of America” Biden, who devoted decades of his life to the gentlemanly pursuit of forging bipartisan legislation, has not been eager to write a script casting the Republicans as bad hombres. As Steve Benen noted recently, last month, while referring to congressional Republicans and their efforts to subvert Obamacare, Biden called them “good folks.” Some Democrats were peeved by that. Rightfully so. From the D perspective, these folks are hardly good. They have supported an insurrectionist-inciting leader, blocked climate change action, undermined voting rights, rigged vote-counting systems, launched a divisive and absurd CRT panic, politicized a pandemic (which led to a massive number of preventable deaths), backed party comrades who hang out with neo-Nazis and QAnoners, targeted LGBTQ people, stepped up their efforts to limit women’s autonomy, and accused Democrats of being soft on pedophiles. Not “good” at all. Unless this is all made clear, Biden can start now hiring all the extra lawyers the White House will need when the Republicans take control and mount scores of revenge-seeking congressional investigations.

Look at recent headlines and tweets: “Republicans In Michigan Have Replaced Election Officials Who Certified Biden's Win,” “McConnell says national abortion ban ‘possible.’” “Arizona GOP Senate candidate calls for condoms to be banned in all states.” “Marsha Blackburn, US Senator, has proposed a plan wherein birth control should only be legal for married couples.” It’s getting even uglier out there. There’s a Republican war on democracy, a Republican war on women, a Republican war on unwed couples. Oh yeah, the Republicans also want low-income Americans to pay more taxes. If this isn’t a break-glass moment for the Democrats, what is? A win for the GOP in either congressional chamber will reward the party that has stuck by a man who tried to blow up the American political system, and it will boost the chances for a Trump comeback. Hair on fire time? It began—or should have begun—months ago.

Last week, Jonathan Lemire in Politico reported that—guess what!—Biden and the Democrats are “scheming” to turn the midterms “into a contrast with Donald Trump and the Republicans.” You don’t say. Scheming? That’s like saying a drowning man is scheming when he starts to swim. For evidence that Biden was warming up to hurl powerful fastballs at the GOP, Lemire pointed to a speech the president gave on Earth Day, when he said, “This ain’t your father’s Republican Party...This is a MAGA party now.” But Biden will need much more zip on the ball than that. In clear and sharp language, he and other Democrats must depict the GOP as a threat to the issues and values that voters in key districts and states care about.

Two weeks later, Biden did ratchet up his rhetoric a bit: "This MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that's existed in recent American history.” But the president has to say this like he means it. And for this sharp-distinction strategy to work, he and the Democrats must repeat the message a gazillion times between now and Election Day. Trump and the Rs are good at this. They have a simple coordinated message: The Democrats are raving far-left fascist/socialist (take your pick) loonies in league with antifa, Black radicals, and pedos who are destroying the nation. And they pump it out constantly. Just about every campaign fundraising email I get for Trump and other Republicans promotes one basic talking point: The radical commies of the Democratic Party who stole the 2020 election and who hate America are coming for you, they must be stopped, and I will save you and our country. And, oh yes, inflation!

I don’t want to suggest that the Democrats should fully adopt the demagogic fear-mongering tactics of the right. But marketing is marketing. Any sales job is easier when the idea at hand is simple to communicate and easy to comprehend. Given the hyper-clutter within today’s information (and disinformation) ecosystem, it can be tough to break through. The words, the tone, the manner of delivery of any message must be spot-on for it to fully register. If Biden and the Democrats want voters to see that Republicans endanger the wellbeing of most Americans, they must act as if they truly believe this. A speech here, a slap at the GOP there won’t do that. It cannot look as if the Democrats are only now banging this drum because they fear losing seats. Trump has demonstrated the effectiveness of repetitive and simplistic (and fact-free) slogans that hit a nerve. Democrats don’t have to match his vacuity, cynicism, and disingenuousness, but they need to realize the value of steady, consistent, and clear messaging.

There are external events that can still shape the midterms: the findings of the January 6 committee and its hearings (due to start next month); the outcome of the war in Ukraine; inflation and the Fed raising interest rates; a change in the pandemic; the reaction to the Supreme Court on an abortion decision, and, of course, unforeseen actions. Yet what Democrats can control is how they convey the moment and the threat. To show they are serious and sincere, they must start doing this yesterday.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Slow Horses. Regular readers of Our Land know that I still grieve the loss of John le Carré and the end of his oeuvre. I long for any content that appears the least bit Carré-ish. Consequently, the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses was irresistible bait. This spy thriller, based on a 2010 novel of the same name by Mick Herron, stars the always-engaging Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, a too-long-in-the-tooth intelligence veteran who oversees an MI5 unit of agency castaways and screwups called Slough House. Leave a briefcase full of classified documents on the tube? Mess up a security exercise at an airport? You wind up at Slough House, pushing paper and doing little of any value, under the eye of the bitter, slovenly, and overly lubricated Lamb, whose goal in life appears to be to make his useless wards feel even more useless than they are. Oldman is wonderful as the ultra-curmudgeon who has not had a fuck to give for God knows how long. Into Slough House enters River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), grandson of a legendary MI5 old-timer (Jonathan Pryce) and a once-promising agent until he committed a very public error and ended up in Lamb’s Siberia.

The kidnapping of a British Pakistani student by right-wing nationalists who vow to behead him sends MI5 into a tizzy, as it races to save the young man (who happens to be the nephew of a Pakistani intelligence official). Cartwright and his colleagues at Slough House are keen to join the effort, though Lamb reminds them, in not too polite a fashion, that their job is to do nothing. Especially during an emergency! Of course, Cartwright and the lot do not fancy sitting on their duffs and find ways to enter the fray. It’s that old British pluck. In the course of things, it comes to pass that the kidnapping is not exactly what it seems, and, no surprise, the complication is connected to a backstory involving Lamb and Diana Taverna, the No. 2 of MI5, played intensely by Kristin Scott Thomas. (Has Helen Mirren aged out of such a role?) Watching Oldman and Thomas duel with each other is a delight.

There’s more action—guns and blood—than the usual le Carré, but the main subject matter is similar: cynicism and accountability. There’s far too much of the former, and precious little of the latter. The show’s creators don’t hide their aim to emulate le Carré. After dust has settled and justice has been only minimally served, River’s granddad has to explain to him that good deeds will not be rewarded: “Even the best spies have their time in the cold. Smiley was always coming back from redundancy.” Slow Horses approximates that le Carré feel without fully capturing it. But what better source of inspiration than the work of a master? Just by striving toward the le Carré standard, the producers have honored his memory and created an engaging spy show. Best of all, the series ends with both a resolution of the main narrative and a shocking cliffhanger for season 2 that renders the already intriguing Jackson Lamb far more intriguing.

“Spinning Away,” Brian Eno and John Cale. I was on a flight to Los Angeles and—you hear this all the time, but I swear it’s true—a baby wailed the entire trip. Every second of it. The kid was even crying in the boarding area before we departed. It was a stunning accomplishment, in a way, to maintain that level of howling for over six hours without passing out. His face was beet red from the bawling. I counted myself fortunate that I had brought with me noise-canceling headphones that I had found heavily discounted on a neighborhood listserv. Still in the box. Never used. Before the flight, I had downloaded several of Brian Eno’s ambient music albums because I had recently discovered they offered the perfect music to play while one is working. No distracting lyrics—just melodic sound that creates its own space. The shrieks of the tyke could barely penetrate, as one Eno album flowed into the next. I was in a Zen-work zone. Then an unfamiliar song appeared. With words. It sounded like the Talking Heads. But there is no Talking Heads song I have not heard before. (Trust me on that.) I checked my phone. It was a collaboration between Brian Eno and John Cale (of the Velvet Underground) called “Spinning Away.”

Was this something new that I had downloaded without notice? I investigated further. It was a track from an album the pair had made in 1990 called Wrong Way Up. This perplexed me. I had no knowledge of this disc. How had I missed a joint project of two of my favorite musicians? I was not in a coma in 1990. This was years before I had kids. I had no explanation. Yet somehow this lovely and haunting tune had eluded me. (I also missed the version Sugar Ray recorded for the soundtrack of the 2000 movie The Beach.) And I don’t know how it ended up on my phone. Magic? I wondered how many times in the past 32 years I might have played this song had I been aware of its existence. Making up for lost time, I hit replay over and over. Many Eno songs lend themselves to that, such as “On Some Faraway Beach.” (I’ve done entire workouts just listening to that one on repeat.) Well, it’s never too late to discover a piece of art. So in case this never made it on to your playlist...

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April 23, 2022: Amusing ourselves to autocracy; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special OAN edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.