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Given that we live in an age where real governance is secondary to strategizing for the next campaign, much of the political talk for months has been about the 2022 election and the contrasting messages that our two political parties are likely to project over the next year.
Currently, criticism from the expert class is aimed at the Democrats’ perceived failure to ditch jargon about the budget reconciliation process and Senate obstructionist rules and make a clear pitch to voters extolling the various benefits of the grand scheme. infrastructure law they just sent to the president. Joe Biden’s office and the Build Back Better package they plan to go through soon. Part of the messaging problem, of course, is that it took so long for this law to pass. So far, the news has been dominated by the mess of the political process, and not by the benefits at the end of all quarrels.
But, in much of the commentary on the need for Democrats to focus their storytelling, there is an underlying assumption that may prove to be misleading. This assumption is that voters will be receptive to a message about all the good stuff in the Democrats’ legislative product and reward the party accordingly. Is this really true?
Republicans have had quite a bit of success by forgoing any coherent legislative agenda. They run on red meat issues like abortion, immigration fears, Christmas wars, creeping socialism, antifa fantasies and stolen elections. The most relevant current example is the success of the Republican gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, where female suburban voters were frightened by Democrats by GOP rants about racial propaganda being forced on schoolchildren.
Elections are decided by about 10% of citizens from the middle of the political spectrum who do not pay much attention to the details of the legislation. Polls show a surprisingly large number of Americans are unaware of the hundreds of billions of dollars the Biden administration pumped into the economy last year to keep businesses afloat and keep the creditworthiness of many. people who have lost their jobs due to pandemic shutdowns. It is highly likely that next year Democrats will not get the credit they deserve for the important and potentially transformative legislation they are passing now, no matter how smart their messaging campaign is.
The real lesson is this: Democrats need to do whatever they can now while they control Congress, not because it will help them win in 2022, but because it’s the right thing to do.
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