A typically-incisive recent piece by John Stoehr has helped shake loose an idea that’s been stuck in my craw for a couple weeks now, as if it were a good samaritan performing the Heimlich on a hapless diner with a bit of choice steak lodged in his throat. After referencing the ongoing discussions around popularism and the $10 million question of what electoral strategy or policies have the best chance of winning the Democrats power in 2022 and beyond, Stoehr comes down firmly on the side of those arguing that policy just isn’t as important as people think in determining elections. Instead, he says that the particular crisis of democracy we’re in right now is uppermost in Democratic-leaning voters’ minds:
The biggest coalition in the country’s history did not vote for Joe Biden because it wanted his party to enact its policies, however good those policies may be. It voted for him to save America from a leader of an authoritarian collective threatening to assimilate everyone into a police state predicated on preserving the superiority of white Christian men. When democracy itself is in danger, policies become secondary.
What was so startling was how strongly I both agreed and disagreed with his formulation. Because as much as I’ve been alternately startled, outraged, and dismayed by the Democrats’ refusal or inability thus far to press the case to the American people that GOP authoritarianism is a deadly threat to this country, and agree that defense of democracy should be the party’s highest priority; and as much as I agree that fury at Trump and his American authoritarianism was key to Joe Biden’s win, I don’t agree that a focus on saving democracy will be voters’ highest priority in 2022.
Now, I’m not saying that continuing fear and loathing of Donald Trump doesn’t motivate Democratic voters. In a New York Times article on the Virginia’s governor’s race that Stoehr cites, some Democratic voters are clearly being energized to vote out of repugnance at the prospect of a Trumpist candidate, Glenn Youngkin, winning power in their state. There are also Trump-adjacent policies, such as vaccine and mask resistance, that also scare the living daylights out of Democratic voters, and that seem to have helped motivate them to turn out in sufficient numbers in California’s recall election to basically replicate Governor Gavin Newsom’s overwhelming victory in the last gubernatorial race. So the evidence, and common sense, say that Democrats shouldn’t shy away from reminding voters that the GOP is now the party of Trump, with all the associations of white supremacism, corruption, authoritarianism, and incompetence the man and his presidency convey.
But it’s not sufficient for Democrats to place anti-Trump sentiment at the center of their appeal. I think you can see hints of the danger of doing so in the Virginia governor’s race, where Democratic Terry McAuliffe has gone all in on tying Youngkin to Donald Trump. I will say upfront that there’s evidence that this linkage is a strong motivator with the Democratic base — the Times piece noted above provides examples of this. However, my worry is that this sort of appeal can come across as desperate to voters who aren’t so strongly anti-Trump, and perversely, start to suggest a lack of confidence on the Democrats’ part if they fail to actually provide an affirmative reason for voting for the party. At the same time, a focus on Trump can misguidedly take the place of making a broader case against the larger anti-democratic corruption of the Republican Party itself.
But even if Democrats articulate the anti-democratic turn of the GOP, this in itself would also be insufficient as the focus of their electoral case, for some of the same reasons that Stoehr and others have used to argue against relying too much on policies to sway voters: because talking about democracy, or threats to democracy, is in and of itself simply too abstract to resonate with many voters. Instead — and now we get to the insight that coughed out of me when I read Stoehr’s piece — making the case to Americans that both policies and democracy matter to their individual lives infuses both with a power they don’t have on their own, makes concrete what would otherwise be ungrounded. One way of putting it is this: why should Americans care if the GOP is taking their votes away, if casting those votes isn’t perceived as having an impact on their lives? Abstracting voting rights from the individual and collective power that those rights represent when turned into laws and policy would be a noble but perverse appeal, separating votes from the actual, concrete results that can follow.
The necessary fight against Republican authoritarianism is equally a fight for a democratic future on multiple fronts beyond defense of the franchise: on the economy, on the environment, on civil rights. The best way to energize voters based on GOP efforts to suppress their votes, or not have those votes count as they should, is to also articulate and fight for concrete democratic visions of our economy and society that can result from casting those votes. While it’s true that voters may be alternately unmoved or unaware of how specific Democratic policies have benefitted them, it is also true that a broad enough array of policies that promote economic equality and benefit Americans in a variety of ways would collectively give them a reason to vote for Democrats. If Democrats passed debt relief for college loans, and crowed about this fact, would this really not rally grateful debtors to reward the party? If Democrats expanded child care credits, and talked endlessly about this, would this really not appeal to families of all classes? And it’s not just that voters would reward Democrats for what they’d done; more than past performance, it’s future promises and visions that weigh the most when citizens mark their ballots. And this, in turn, gives vital power and substance to the Democrats’ fight against Republican authoritarianism, which would take away both the power of Democrats’ votes and the many specific policies that would benefit not just Democratic voters, but the great majority of Americans of both parties.
Fighting for the right to vote necessarily involves fighting for a more broadly democratic America — otherwise, the benefits of the right to vote would end with putting Democrats in power simply to make sure the GOP doesn’t fuck voters over (which is essential, but hardly everything). The logic of voting rights (the morality of the franchise, the general understanding that it is so important) is that it is more than a negative right to protect yourself — it is the key to creating something that reveals itself to be a democratic society, whose limits are as broad as the imagination of the people who participate in it.