Date: 2024-12-26 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00023357
PDA / RALPH NADER ELECTION SUPPORT
11. After Trump’s Fascism, Voters Must Crush the GOP
Written by Ralph Nader
11. After Trump’s Fascism, Voters Must Crush the GOP
Written by Ralph Nader
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Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
Ralph Nader
The Democratic Party must make it vibrantly clear that they own the answer to the perennial voters’ question – “Whose Side Are They On?” Here are some substantive and tactical ways to do that:
1. Democrats must describe in the sharpest possible terms how Republicans refuse to protect the safety and lives of the American people.
The GOP, for example, says NO to expanding the tiny budget and authority of OSHA (60,000 work-related deaths from trauma and diseases a year). The GOP says NO to expanding the budget and regulations of EPA against lethal toxics (cancer, respiratory illness, 65,000 air pollution deaths a year). The GOP says NO similarly to stronger auto safety, food safety, water pollution prevention and drug standards, aviation and chemical plant safety, protection of children from pesticides. And, despite nightly news of wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, and rising sea level risings, not one GOP senator supported the climate mitigation efforts within President Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act.” Under Trump, even the phrase “Climate Change” was banned at the CDC. “Don’t Look Up” was both a movie and the reality.
More. The GOP blocks full health insurance that would save over 100,000 lives per year, is against elevating Medicaid in Republican states even when paid for by the federal government, and denied the seriousness of the COVID Pandemic in early 2021 causing a huge number of preventable deaths. What do you call a political party so dangerously extreme to all the people? A Death Cult? At the least, this is a brutish party which despoils “patriotism” while trying to repeal the enlightenment of the American Revolution.
2. Corruption is in the news and on the minds of many voters
Democratic candidates can use this to turn the tables on the GOP. As many as 80 percent of Republican voters oppose the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on unlimited campaign contributions by corporations. The Obama Administration over eight years hardly had any public political corruption scandals. Yet for the four years of the Trump regime, corruption was a regular occurrence, with a record number of resignations and regulatory violations, all with the concurrence of the White House and Justice Department.
Trump’s obsession with self-enrichment, along with those of his nominees, set historical records. Serial law violations, such as constantly using federal property to promote his reelection violated the Hatch Act, a federal criminal statute. The GOP generally has no problem with disobeying laws, whether they are regulatory laws, civil service laws, or election laws. Trump’s 2019 monarchical declaration – “With Article I I can do whatever I want as President” – would have disgusted our Founding Fathers.
3. Displaying a morbid consistency, the GOP also wants to destroy the social safety net.
The Republican Party has blocked the Democrats’ legislation to upgrade Social Security and expand benefits frozen for over forty years, to expand Medicare and neonatal care, and renew the $300 a month support for 60 million children in poverty that expired in January 2022…despite having reduced childhood poverty by one-third! The GOP cruelly opposed paid child care, paid family leave (accorded by just about every country in the world), paid maternity leave, and just about everything else now provided people in other western democracies.
But then, this GOP historically has been the bastion for the super-rich and corporate powers – virulently opposing FDR’s social security, unemployment compensation, consumer and labor protections, minimum wage and crucial public works programs in the 1930s Depression.
Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a former corporate felon, heads the Senate Re-election Campaign Committee this year. He issued a 50-page report so vicious that his boss Senator Mitch McConnell backed away from it. Scott refused to withdraw it. The Democrats every day should use Scott’s repulsively cruel positions – including five-year time limits on Medicare and Social Security as Exhibit One.
4. The GOP has never been so anti-labor.
They oppose any increase in the federal minimum wage, now at $7.25 an hour – the same as 2009; some GOP politicians want to repeal the minimum wage entirely, as they block the $15 minimum wage earlier passed by the Democrats in the House. This overdue bill would raise the wages of over 25 million workers and should be daily discussed on the hustings. That’s why Democrats should exhort them, “Vote Yourself a Raise – You’ve Earned it.”
When Trump Republicans took power, they turned the National Labor Relations Board into a pro-corporate shill. The party backs the notorious Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 – the most anti-worker law in the western world – and is today blocking House-passed legislation to give workers a decent chance to organize unions and protect their workplace rights. They are blocking pay equity for women and the ERA. Their overall war on women is not surprising since most GOPers still pay tribute to the worst serial sexual predator and disrespector of women ever to reside in the White House, and have refused to call him out on these crimes.
The GOP has no problem giving huge tax breaks to CEOs who make anywhere from $12,000 an hour (on a forty-hour week) to over $833 a MINUTE (Tim Cook of Apple), while the party makes sure that these corporations’ capitalist owners – the shareholders – continue to be stripped of their authority to hold accountable their out-of-control hired bosses.
5. Whose values? Unable to run on their record, the GOP runs on “Texas values” or “Kentucky values” or “Missouri values.”
Democrats should take this manipulative phoniness head on! In my article in the Louisville Courier Journal on October 24, 2014, I showed how Senator Mitch McConnell’s positions were directly contrary to ten Kentucky values – “Rewarding Hard Work, Honoring Your Elders, Practicality Addressing Problems, Respecting Women, Being Forthright, Responsibility, Love Thy Neighbor, No One is Above the Law, Defending the Constitution and Patriotism.”
This approach of politically flipping the power of values can be applied in essentially any Red or Blue state.
6. Do not buy into the polarized voters’ trap.
Strongly emphasize that many reforms are favored by both conservative and liberal voters – reaching over 70 percent in the polls. They include raising minimum wage; finally enacting universal health insurance; upgrading public facilities – roads, schools, public transit, drinking water safety, community health clinics; cracking down on business crooks; reducing corporate welfare – subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts; expanding the right of taxpayers to sue the government for corruption with their corporate buddies; legislating pro-democracy clean elections; protecting consumers; children from commercial exploitation via direct marketing and the Internet Gulag; revising trade agreements bad for American workers; protecting pension rights; extending civil liberties; and – when explained – ending corporate personhood and having the people actually control more of what they own – the Commons (public lands, public airwaves, pension and mutual funds, etc.) (See, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance To Dismantle the Corporate State by Ralph Nader).
While the GOP gears toward its extreme “base,” it’s essential that Democrats come across as working for all the people under the motto “We all bleed the same color.” These policies can be assembled under umbrella names such as Freedom for Women, Platform to Protect Our Children, etc.
As mentioned above by Mark Green, for too long the GOP has won the war of words. They took away from liberals – regardless of their unctuous hypocrisy – the Bible, the Flag, blue-collar workers, the trade issue, the very words “populism,” “freedom,” and “liberty.” They haven’t managed to take away the word “justice” – yet. (Nor do they appear to want to.)
The GOP has been better at slogans, nicknames, lawn sign placements, and labeling (remember the Party of “Acid, Abortion and Amnesty”). They prevail in part because Democrats have hardly contended – a big mistake. Indeed, when Trump had fun with his sticky pejorative nicknames repeated everyday verbatim by the mainstream media without even allowing rebuttals, they created a one man mass media machine without having to take his own medicine, despite the many openings for such.
7. Democrats have to make the GOP voting record and proposals in Congress front and center.
Representative Jamie Raskin issued a “Roundup of 20 Outrageous Things the GOP House Majority did in My First Term” (before the November 2018 election). The House and Senate Democratic party structures need to immediately compile these terrible GOP votes and proposals right after Labor Day and end a drought on conveying such an obviously powerful campaign message to the people affected.
8. Democrats must confront the mass production lying machine that has overtaken most Republicans as a daily practice.
The GOP lies about election fraud as it seeks to win elections by fraud. It lies about history, lies about the natural world, lies about the laws of the land and, of course, lies about the Democrats. Voters must understand that they would not tolerate their co-workers or neighbors lying daily and still associate with them. It would be too unstable. The GOP has far more power over their lives.
This is what fascism is built on: perilous scapegoating, racism, bigotry…and then to reliance on masters of the “Big Lies” to impose their own supremacy over their indentured followers. Ignoring these “believers,” or dismissing them as “ignorant” only intensifies the liars’ takeover of these voters, driving them into ever more extreme beliefs and behavior.
This is just what has been happening in recent years. Remember that fascist regimes often start with elections, with minority footholds overtaking the naive majority. The GOP extremists have far more messianic energy than their Democratic opponents of all stripes. Derision and haughty aspersions are traps to be assiduously avoided by the Democrats.
9. Democrats could use more ground troops and less air power.
Given the record of avoidable election losses and close calls (less than 100,000 votes in 2020 in several swing states would have given Trump four more years, and not many more would have lost the Congress to the GOP), candidates and their staff have to think more independently of their present outsourcing to political and media consultants. This “permanent government” is conflicted with corporate clients and a 15 percent commission of electronic media ads.
Such Beltway consultants are often inexperienced or averse to installing a decisive ground plan for GOTV since resources will have to be redirected away from consultants’ sweet spots – expensive TV ads. Budgets have to be shifted to GOTV in neighborhoods, projects and other distinct low turnout communities through highly personal gatherings, motivational mobilizations, and respected “influencers” in these locales. Consulting with and understanding voters and non-voters in specific self-explanatory ways will also tether regular political advertising to be more memorable and less repetitiously irritating to targeted audiences. Here are just a few specifics:
- Produce in volume a simple two-sided Voters Guide Card, with one side polling the voter with six issues “yes or no,” and on the other side place the “yes or no” positions of the candidate and your opponent. The voter first registers his/her position by checking the box yes or no and then turns the card to find out on whose side the candidates are on.
- Make transporting voters to polls a festive occasion by having lunch or dinner afterward and nearby, as they do in Australia. Food trucks are perfectly legal. Indeed, corporate lawyer Lloyd N. Cutler, who was White House counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton, said lottery tickets handed out to exiting voters as an inducement to vote is perfectly legal as well. A supportive car dealer or popular restaurant can issue these lotteries.
- Be attentive to the many workers on the midnight shift who almost never receive contact from candidates. As workers in hospitals, nursing homes, hotels, all-night drugstores, eateries, factories, police, fire, etc., they keep the country going while we are asleep. Announcing several “midnight campaigns” in front of the midnight shift change of a large hospital can reap good word of mouth and elicit respect by these stalwart staffers.
- Convert Labor Day and beyond into gatherings of workers to unite them as a working class with similar interests for their families, their economic security, health and safety, regardless of their political labels. Abstract ideologies and their word games fade when you get down to where workers live, work and raise their families, take care of their elders, and want less GOP inspired anxiety, dread, and fear in their lives. These meetings can find volunteers and enhance voter registration.
- How do you show that you identify with ethnic and racial groups who feel they are being taken for granted by the Democrats? Announce, with their representatives, Ethnic Days where you get to know each other more personally and they display their traditions in music, food, customs, and achievements for a more tolerant society. It is an important way to listen to and consult with people of different identities and learn about their common necessities and aspirations.
- Pay rigorous attention to language – words and phrases. Look what Trump did with his mouth – what else did he have? The GOP paid Frank Luntz – their wordsmith – to come up with “death tax” to better excite anti-tax sentiment and with “climate change” to replace the more alarming “global warming” or “climate crisis.”
- Inject some new words and issues to avoid the rut of repetition. For examples, embrace words that the GOP almost never uses such as “justice,” “fair play,” or “billing theft” – at least $1 billion a day just in the healthcare industry – or “wage theft” estimated at $60 billion a year, or “harmful junk food/drink and other dangerous products” pitched directly to our children radically bypassing parental control and guidance.
- Some other suggestions – don’t use “white collar crime” when you are referring to “prosecuting corporate crooks” (poll ratings very high). Don’t use the word “provider” when you’re referring to gouging drug companies and hospital chains. They are “vendors” or “sellers.” “Providers” sounds philanthropic. Never use “entitlements” to describe Medicare and Social Security which are paid into by the people. “Entitlements” should replace “incentives,” which is used to describe corporate bailouts, subsidies, and handouts into which the companies have paid nothing.
- The driving force in all societies is unbridled profiteering greed seeking maximum power over the people. Every major religion warned its adherents not to give much power to the merchant class because its driving commercial motive destroys other crucial values.
- “Socialists!” – All your political career you’ve been pushing socialism for the rich and unregulated capitalism for the poor. Didn’t the GOP always bail out Wall Street crooks? The GOP supported many billions of dollars down the U.S.’s biggest corporate rat hole for the unfinished nuclear power plants whose reckless owners are demanding more taxpayer dollars. “Socialism?” Maybe that is why you have Social Security, Medicare, the Postal Service, public drinking water systems, the VA, all of which you want to have corporations control.
- “Defund the Police” – Name one Democratic candidate in a serious contest who has supported that. You’re defunding the federal cops on the corporate crime and violence beat. Since 2011, your GOP has starved the IRS budget, aiding and abetting tax evasion by your tax super-rich buddies and giant corporations. Some of these big tax evading profitable corporations pay zero federal income tax, which means just one of their workers sends more dollars to support our public services and infrastructure than the entire company does.
- “Critical Race Theory” – Name me any school that teaches that. Another GOP lie. Why do you repeat this falsehood? Because you want to cover-up parts of American history just as you are covering up your own party’s crimes and wrongdoing right up to Generalissimo Trump. Republicans always push corporate control theory to indoctrinate these youngsters.
- “Open Borders” – Only Wall Streeters want open borders for holding down wages. We want borders that stop smuggling, pollution, gun trafficking, child trafficking, yet allow longtime U.S. laws of asylum and legal immigration to continue. Perhaps If the U.S. had stopped backing dictatorship and oligarchs in these countries, impoverished and oppressed people would not have had to flee their native lands.
Remember: winning elections is about authenticity, empathy, and deep energy levels to get people’s attention, excite them to register to vote and actually vote for their own legitimate interests and for the country and world that their descendants will inherit.
NADER NOTES
- Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All by Mark Green and Ralph Nader.
https://winningamerica.net/wreckingamerica/ - Kentucky Values vs. McConnell by Ralph Nader, Louisville Courier-Journal, October 24, 2014, (These can be values in every state).
https://winningamerica.net/kentuckyvalues/ - For policies and messages that resonate with both liberal and conservative voters, see my book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State (2014), especially pp.65-66 for many examples to which you can add.
nader.org/2014/04/27/unstoppable-25-proposals/ - Excerpts from a January 2018 memorandum, which I wrote titled “An Invitation to a Conversation” about neighborhood-by-neighborhood socializing, registering, transporting to get non-voters out to vote. You can pick and choose what seems reasonable for your campaign requirements for 2022.
https://winningamerica.net/an-invitation-to-a-conversation/ - Rep. Jamie Raskin’s Roundup of 20 “Outrageous Things the GOP House Majority Did in My First Term.” Such a list must promptly be compiled by the House Democratic Caucus, as it did in 2014, together with a comparative side-by-side list of what the Democrats Did Do.
https://winningamerica.net/raskinsroundup/ - Rebuttal to the on-going use of “socialists” to describe all Democrats by the GOP. This attack is ludicrous when the Democrats present the vast “Corporate Socialism” giveaways and bailouts supported by the GOP.
https://winningamerica.net/democraticsocialism/ - One-page Candidate News Release on Midnight Campaigning.
https://winningamerica.net/midnightcampaigning/ - For state elective office, an excellent timely refund owed most owners of motor vehicles is described by actuary and former Texas Insurance Commissioner, Robert Hunter. Injecting a fresh issue like this into campaigns is a good idea. Hunter also explains how California reformed its auto insurance laws (Prop 103) and saved consumers $154 billion since 1988. This is a model for other
states.https://winningamerica.net/autoinsurance/ - Suggestions for Successful Elections in 2020 at All Levels.
https://winningamerica.net/suggestions-for-successful-elections-in-2020-at-all-levels/
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