What Democrats (and Republicans) Privately Say And Publicly Avoid

I have to acknowledge that while I don’t think my positions on most things have changed over the years, the stridency and general jackassery of what I say and how I say it has. Nearly dying changes your perspective on things. Going to seminary does too.

On the downside, it sometimes now puts me as the turd in the punchbowl among friends. Really, more and more these days, I feel more isolated and alienated from a lot of online friends who all rush in the same direction with the same idea or talking point. It reminds me of when I was running RedState. I was surrounded in the profession, if you will, by a lot of people who had built up a lot of online friendships and blogger gatherings were sort of family reunions. I never really felt like I fit in. I don’t mean it disrespectfully, but I have a wife, kids, a great job, and a front porch — and I just gave up trying to be known by an online persona.

Increasingly, on Twitter, I feel the same way with the conservative activist crew. I’m just over here doing my own thing. Take it or leave it.

On the upside, I find I’m able to have conversations with Democratic strategists and operatives I would have never been able to have in the past. We can agree to disagree on pretty much everything from culture to politics to finance, but still have civil, respectful conversations and pick each other’s brain on stuff.

What strikes me about a lot of these conversations is how much, privately, Democrats and Republicans agree on some key things headed into 2022 and 2024.

What is also striking is how many of these same Democrats cannot say publicly what they think privately because the Twitter horde has way more impact on their side than on my side. A comparison would be how Trump could mean tweet someone and his supporters would pile on. But on the left, that can have some pretty negative ramifications when it is the angry progressive horde trying to cancel a Democrat.

It will not surprise you to realize a lot of mainstream Democrat consultants realize they have a problem with AOC, Cori Bush, and the whole squad. Yesterday, Cori Bush said she pays for private security, but America needs to defund the police. It came as Bush was being hailed by Chuck Schumer and other senior Democrats for leading the effort on the eviction moratorium. The Democrats put in a lot of post-election effort to claim none of them wanted to defund the police. They elevate Cori Bush’s stature. Then she monologues about how she’ll pay for her private security while denying American taxpayers a police force.

Democrats privately are willing to acknowledge that the squad poses a bigger threat to them than Marjorie Taylor Greene and even Trump do for the GOP in 2022. Trump is not on the ballot, Greene is not being praised by Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell, the media has not made people like Greene a standard-bearer for the congressional GOP like they (and Democrat leaders) have elevated AOC, Bush, etc.

On top of all of that, Democrats are willing to acknowledge their polling isn’t great, they really haven’t figured out a fix, and they share a bubble with the media so they can’t really diagnosis and course correct when the nightly news and Twitter zeitgeist affirm everything.

Compounding the problem, Democrats are fretful about the suburbs. Trump may cause the GOP problems in some suburbs, but by and large suburban voters have not connected him to the individual Republicans running in a particular district except in some cases. For example, though David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lost their runoff races in Georgia because 427,205 Republicans who voted in the general didn’t show up in the runoff, Democrats and Republicans are both mindful there was a six point swing back to the Republicans from white suburban voters in the runoff once Trump was not only the ballot.

Democrats also concede that in swing district suburban counties, the CRT stuff and woke stuff are having an impact. This doesn’t even get into the economy and inflation, which they all seem to have convinced themselves is “transitory,” to use the Biden Administration’s word. But they know it could have a real impact. It is hard to understate the seething resentment in the upper middle class that their kids are getting indoctrinated on race while in their offices they must go through increasingly radicalized diversity training.

And that doesn’t even get to redistricting.

Then there are the Republicans. I continue to be surprised by the number of Republicans who publicly praise President Trump and behind the scenes openly criticize him. Like the Democrats who are scared of their social media trolls, so too are these Republicans scared of their own social media horde.

The Republicans will say privately one thing they say in public. Despite Democrats’ best efforts, Republicans are not really worried about being too tied to Donald Trump. Trump, after all, is not on the ballot. Voters will be thinking about Joe Biden, the economy, inflation, crime, CRT, etc. Republicans also understand what Democrats used to understand and have seemingly forgotten — voters will vote against their economic interests if their culture is threatened.

Democrats have concerns and Republicans have hopes that as the Democrats increasingly are guided by rich, white woke professionals and non-white socialist progressive activists, they’ll alienate more and more of their non-white base. This really is a concern for the Democrats.

Take, for example, the eviction moratorium. The objective data shows that 53% of rental properties in the country are owned by distinctly middle class citizens who use the rental income to carry them into the middle class. Of that 53%, slightly less than half are black and Hispanic landlords. To placate the woke white Democrats and socialist-progressive non-white activists, Biden just financially hurt a large number of black and Hispanic voters. But if he had not done it, the progressives would have exploded and sabotaged the Biden agenda as payback for that and for Turner’s loss in Ohio.

The warning sign for Democrats is not that Fox News is now covering the plight of middle class landlords, it’s that the Washington Post Editorial Board is also doing it. “If the Trump administration had ignored a direct warning from the Supreme Court, Democrats would rightfully line up to condemn the president. Mr. Biden does not get a pass on the rule of law because his heart is in the right place,” wrote the Post’s Editorial Board.

One Democrat I talked to acknowledge my point on Wednesday — Turner won the urban white voters. It was the urban black voters who split. The progressive white voters are to the left of black voters, including more and more urban black voters. White progressives are the only people who use Latinx and cannot understand how insulting it is to Hispanic voters.

Republicans do have some concerns though. The prevailing consensus is that Trump won’t run in 2024, but that it does him no good to acknowledge that because he wants vengeance in 2022 and relevancy into 2024. For the party though, they want to start building up for 2024. DeSantis, right now, seems the logical choice after Trump. But Noem, Hawley, Cotton, Cruz, Haley, Pompeo, and more are going to challenge him for it. All of them are sort of frozen with Trump standing large.

Additionally, there are places the GOP is concerned. Georgia is one such place. No one privately believes Georgia was stolen, but a lot of the base does and they want payback. Trump’s involvement could hand Georgia to Stacey Abrams and keep Warnock in place. Navigating it is extremely difficult due to base loyalty for Trump, which is one reason so much effort has been put in to keep Herschel Walker out. No one really believes he could beat Warnock, but they all think he could become the GOP nominee.

Privately, the Republicans are more willing to believe they can take back the Senate in 2022 than Democrats believe. But even the Republicans acknowledge it will be difficult. They fret that Trump’s involvement in candidate selection could hurt them in several states, even as they acknowledge he has the potential to help them in more House districts than the Democrats realize.

The bottom line though is Democrats really do realize they have a problem with progressives that is a bigger problem than the GOP has with Trump. He’s not elected and not on the ballot. Meanwhile, Schumer, Biden, and Pelosi cannot risk alienating the Squad, which elevates them into the public eye. But much of the public abhors their politics.

2022 beckons.