The Disease Of Magical Cynicism

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Political psychology is a remarkable thing. So often we associate the dueling forces of public discourse as a two-sided coin, that we neglect the very different routes each side took to being brandished.

I like to think of "both sides" (insofar as American politics is dominated by two umbrellas of ideology) not as two sides of a coin of set value, but two identically shaped coins of radically different values, issued by separate treasuries with dissimilar monetary policies.

Or, to put it simpler, Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X. Both are unique products that essentially provide the same service to their users, but do so in much different ways, and were created with different guiding philosophies, by a team of developers who themselves have differing viewpoints on the work they do, but must come together to finish the product, inside a company with an overall culture that is completely unlike that of their rival company.

Democrats and Republicans are the operating systems of American political ideology. They are produced by Left and Right wing ideological umbrellas, in this case represented as companies. The workers are the ideologues, working in company divisions that represent political party organizations, and the end-users are the population.

Some end-users are hardcore enthusiasts of a product, others are hardcore about everything the company has to offer. And some end-users are just average Janes and Joes who switch between products on a whim. They even have multiple devices made by both companies. Sort of like the person who believes in second amendment rights, supports gay marriage, thinks tax cuts trickle down to benefit lower income families, but sees the merit in universal healthcare.

That type of end-user, let's call them the "Centrist", prides themselves on not caring about who makes their products, so long as the damn thing does its job. But the Centrist, in celebration of their perceived independence, neglects to see that the company anticipated his or her route to that purchase, and set the table in such a way that you were swayed to buy their product without even realizing it.

The Centrist may not be a hardcore Apple enthusiast, but they read reports on the buzz created by the enthusiast trade show where the product debuted, then read reviews written by other enthusiasts, and saw a social media share of their friend, also an Apple enthusiast, unpacking the product, sniffing the cellophane and all that. Each brick on their path to a purchase was laid by an enthusiast. So the Centrist buys, turns to the enthusiast and says, "Unlike you, I think for myself."

So it is with political parties, the products of left/right ideological culture and the enthusiasts it produces. When those enthusiasts, let's call them "volunteers", combine their powers and work together, the product has a chance to win market share. When they splinter and decide to work on separate products made by different company divisions, nothing sells.

Great product makers know how to leverage enthusiasts to create culture, buzz, and excitement for their wares. Enthusiasts make up a minority of end-users, but Centrists look to them for cues. Enthusiastic ideologues crave belonging, identity, which the Centrist mocks them for. But the Centrist is equally mocked for always hitching a ride to the next best thing. They're here for a good time, not a long time.

My own experience is unique, as I've spent considerable time beneath both ideological umbrellas as an enthusiast, with some time in-between as a Centrist while I made my political metamorphosis. Make of that what you will. People change their minds. Some people change their minds even when it means walking away from opportunity.

I can tell you, from this vantage point, that Left and Right wing enthusiasts, though they probably all sound the same to you noble Centrists, have come to this political moment on far different paths. In private, they are not identical, though they do rhyme. As a Left wing enthusiast, I hear certain things that drive my former Right wing enthusiast self insane.

Here's one, usually heard when a candidate for office is speaking with activists and potential supporters on the Left:

"I agree, but how are we going to appeal to [segment of population that sympathizes with the Right on an issue]?"

You would never hear this on the Right, because they generally believe themselves to be the majority. Even in this case of some truly fringe right wingers, who think that deep down, you all agree but won't admit it. (Sometimes I think former Republicans turned Progressive, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are the best messengers on the Left because they deeply understand this principle)

The Left is plagued by what I call Magical Cynicism, a belief that the opposition is everywhere and unstoppable, and requires the finest of planning, the slickest of strategy, to overcome. There's no greater evidence than comparing the historical reaction of the Left to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush's combined four terms in office, to the Right's response to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

For starters, the Left, contrary to opinion, represents a wider coalition of people and beliefs, which is why they are quicker to splinter and rejoin and splinter again from the Democrats, while the Right, a comparably smaller coalition, co-opts the Republican Party at every turn. Co-opting party mechanisms leads to voter registration, coordinated activism, and better voting patterns. Hence, why Democrats do much better in larger turnout models but fare worse in off-year and mid-term elections when party structure and discipline becomes vital.

So if some on the Left read this and immediately disagree about my accusation of weak responses, keep in mind that the political Left is rarely unified. Thus, "Left Response to President XYZ" could be more accurately stated as "the Democratic Party's Response" as so many leftists abdicate their power at the ballot box, compared to the Right which uses the Republican Party as their sock puppet.

When Reagan was in office, there was one, and only one Democrat on the national stage who projected strength and stood for seismic culture change in the face of dominant Conservatism, and that was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a two-time candidate for President who came up short in primaries.

Perhaps the timing wasn't right, or not enough people on the Left shared his confidence in the Rainbow Coalition platform. Regardless, he was only attempting to reproduce for his Leftist brethren what Ronald Reagan did for the Right in his 1976 primary challenge and eventual 1980 general election victory. Reagan ran as if the country was behind him, and it became reality.

Consistently, the response from the Left has been a combination of Democrats deciding that they needed to moderate to appeal to average Americans, and activists becoming frustrated and taking their ball home. In defense of the Democratic Party, sometimes moderation really was the right call. See 1992, 1996, and 2006. Bill Clinton won two terms in the 1990s as a New Democrat - a softer, poverty-concerned Reagan.

In 2006, Democrats capitalized on G.W. Bush's ill-advised attempt to reform entitlements, and the blunders of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, while running candidates for Congress on a center-left platform.

Barack Obama's 2008 victory was the biggest victory for the political Left since Lyndon Johnson cruised to re-election on his Great Society platform, and it took a meltdown on Wall Street combined with arguably the most charismatic politician in modern American history to earn that victory.

You can't blame Democrats for using safe strategies. Besides Obama, moderating has been the only method of victory for the Left in decades. The problem is that it does nothing for the type of brand building needed to produce seismic victories and achieve landmark legislation. You're essentially selling voters on the fact that the other guys are slipping, and you've got a product just like theirs that works a little better.

Like in the marketplace, consumers will buy your safe alternative only for as long as it takes your opposition to get their quality control back in order. Then, it's right back to the trusted brand.

Republicans understand that you can temporarily sell people a Whopper when the Big Mac is on a downturn, but if you want to win big, you open up a Chipotle across the street and tell voters that Ronald McDonald and his undocumented brown burgers are trying to take your guns away.

Reagan understood this when he assailed Jimmy Carter and "big government" with a coalition of Christian Conservatives, foreign policy hawks, and supply-side intellectuals.

Newt Gingrich understood it when he countered tax increases and Hillary Care with a Reagan revivalist "Contract With America."

The Tea Party helped usher in Republican majorities in a 2010 mid-term avalanche by going far to Obama's right, and promising to obstruct his every move (which they did!).

And Donald Trump delivered a Pyrrhic victory in 2016 by creating his own base of enthusiasts, partially constructed from the Tea Party, on an expressly anti-Obama, anti-Hillary, anti-everything the Left stands for, campaign.

Now the Left finds itself in a weird position. It's in the midst of revival, with record number of resistance groups popping up all over the nation...while still being nearly shut out of power at the federal, state, and local levels of government.

The Left is in a better place than it's been in a while. It is more confident, more engaged with the Democratic party and in the midst of co-opting it on a wider scale, and more active at the polls during off-year elections.

But I find, in my own observations, that because there has not yet been a great resistance victory on the scale of Congress or the Presidency, that the Left is still apprehensive to assert itself with full confidence.

Sure, we'll protest, hold signs, make phone calls, Facebook posts, etc. But will we run campaigns on a nationwide scale that put forth a real alternative? Can we hit back on a deeper level than mere frustration with Trump?

Some of us still fear that there is a majority out there who "secretly" sides with Trump, and will snuff out our candidates at the last hour. Some have bought into Trump World's invincibility aura that he has postured on for years now, because a portion of us still don't understand how he won the election.

So let me help you out. I'll explain, in the most necessary of details, how Donald Trump became President of the United States.

James Comey wrote a letter, and Hillary Clinton is unlikable.

That's it. There is some more nuance, if you're really that much of a political geek and enjoy endless campaign strategy breakdown, but every piece of available data points to these two factors as the reason for President Trump. Hillary's low approvals kept Trump in the game, and James Comey's last-minute letter alluding to new details in the investigation of Hillary's e-mail server scandal (combined with a second, later statement clearing her again) cut her insurmountable polling leads to a virtual tie.

In spite of third party voters backing Jill Stein, and some Bernie voters either staying home or in many cases supporting Trump himself, Hillary still had the election won by October, pre-Comey letter. And even after the letter, the election itself came down to just short of 80,000 voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which delivered Trump the electoral college while losing the popular vote by over 3 million votes. Never mind the Comey letter, a routine weather change could have altered the election results, much less the atomic bomb of October surprises.

So let's stop treating 2016 like it was 1980 all over again. Sometimes you have to look at a bullet wound and conclude that it was the gunman who committed the murder, instead of inquiring about the victim's diet regimen. Trump supporters will never allow that it was some incredible circumstances and sheer luck that swept him into office, nor should they. If I closed my eyes and made a shot from half-court, I would tell the audience I planned it that way, too.

The Republican brand has suffered a series of crushing losses in local, state, and special elections since Trump won office. And where they've won, they have severely under-performed compared to years past. All expectations point to a tidal wave year for Democrats in 2018. There are no guarantees, especially in politics, but if you were asking a dispassionate investor where to place his money, they would have to conclude that the Democratic brand is a far healthier long-term investment than the Republican brand.

But to be a healthy, sustainable, winning brand, the Left must corral and differentiate the Democratic platform and marketing beyond basic optics. They must offer a competing vision that is unapologetically unique.

It shouldn't be that hard, considering that for the first time in decades, the majority of Americans don't need much convincing to back a Left platform.

Most Americans support single-payer healthcare.

An overwhelming majority of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

The majority also supports stricter gun control laws.

They are with us on climate change, too.

And hey, they even support marijuana legalization nationwide.

I haven't even mentioned yet that the sitting President's approval ratings hover between 38-42% in most polls.

Here in Suffolk County, party registration is nearly even, and the 1st Congressional District is firmly a swing seat that was held by a Democrat for 12 yeas until 2014. The district, and the county, has voted a Democrat for President in 4 of the last 6 elections. Population demographics continue to shift in a direction that are favorable to Left politics.

What are we afraid of, then?

There is no magic trick to the opposition. Reagan is gone. The grand coalition that choked Left lawmakers out of elected office for decades, virtually dead. The public has moved away from supply side mythos and hardline social conservatism. But the Left, under the Democratic banner, still has to go out, build their brand district by district, with respect for region, and win.

If Democrats will not put forth a confident, mainstream progressive agenda, voters will see no stark choice and continue to vote based on which personality they find more suitable that year. It won't be long before the Right figures out how to package Trumpism inside candidates who aren't mentally deranged.

Democrats and Republicans are not the same. Two different versions of Windows are not the same either. But when Microsoft puts out another Windows OS, it does so based on the assumption that people mostly liked the last version, they just want change in certain areas. Apple OS X and Linux do not make such assumptions. They offer a completely different operating system, guided by separate assumptions and culture. People didn't switch over to OS X because they wanted similar but different - they wanted a new experience.

The Democratic platform should not be sold to the public based on political assumptions that were more accurate 10-15 years ago.

Yes, there are regional differences. We can forgive Doug Jones over in Alabama for posturing as a bit pro-life. Perhaps the rhetoric in coal country Pennsylvania needs to be softer. But there is no excuse here on Long Island.

The question we should be asking our candidates isn't, "How are we going to appeal to Republican sympathizers?"

The question should be, "How are they going to stop us when we don't?"