Michigan state senator Mally McMarrow, libeled and called a groomer for supporting LGBT rights, which seems to be in vogue among the GOP nowadays, delivered a fiery, passionate speech on the Senate floor. I wish she would run for national office so I could vote for her. Why aren’t national Democrats doing this?
They aren’t doing it because they think they have a better chance at winning re-election with their current strategies. Why they think that, however, is a different question, and I have no idea what the answer to that is. IMHO Senator McMorrows’s approach seems like a good one, and one I think all Democrats should be taking on multiple issues. I’ve made posts about this in the past, referring to it as the “calling a spade a spade” strategy. I’m glad to see someone finally doing it.
BTW, there are a few posts on this topic in the “Will we ever fight back?” thread over in the Pit, at about Posts 70 to 75 or so.
I saw the speech in its entirety last night and I think she struck a deep chord. I’ve seen it at least 5 more times today from a variety of sources.
It even sparked a discussion about how poor the mainstream media is, struggling so hard to maintain “neutrality,” they’re no longer willing to do the hard work of calling a lie a lie.
With Senator McMorrow leading the way, I expect (hope?) to see more Democrats taking this approach. I know I intend to speak up more often and speak forthrightly. In my opinion, it has never been more important to speak the blunt truth as she has done.
Why should they? The D senator is already in office after being voted in by their constituents and the R senator is already in office after being voted in by their constituents. Absent a political party shift in the demographics of their districts, there’s really not much keeping them from being re-elected. This particular D senator was speaking out for the benefit of a twitter following. The twitter following of her ire’s target does not care about and will not pay attention to anything she says.
They aren’t doing it because their view - which I support - is that people is weird.
Every mention of social issues of this nature is a win for right, and a loss for the left, because there is a large body of working class people who are socially conservative and are wedged off from supporting the left every time these issues come up.
That’s true (the part about the social conservatives being wedged off, possibly not the part of this being a losing strategy), but the popular vote in presidential election years vs. midterms suggests that there’s an even larger number of people who would vote Democratic if the people running showed this kind of spirit. Instead they stay home when the politicians run generic campaigns.
Are they not afraid to get their “base” too fired up against pedo’s?
The record is quite clear which party has most of them. Every accusation is a confession with these guys.
How are the media not making hay with this stuff?
right wing religious nut jobs only dig in harder with this approach. So, do the calculation. Do more people turn out for your cause vs less people hitting the polls against your cause.
Fundie’s really don’t want to hear about how they are hypocrites and shit, especially by those whom the fundies view as heathens or apostates, which is pretty much everyone outside of their cult.
This “groomer” bullshit is scary and is going to get people killed. I’ve been thinking about starting a thread about it, but I don’t even know how to do it without doing it in the Pit. So, I’ll stop there.
I’m happy someone in the Democratic party is putting up a fuss. When Biden was calling out everything Putin was up to in Ukraine before the war started, it worked to get the world ready for the sanctions and arms supplies that came later. I don’t really understand why other Democrats aren’t calling out this absolute insanity that the Republicans are up to. They are already looking at major losses in the midterms – shake things up! It won’t get worse, and might get better.
I mostly agree. Democrats should be calling this shit out. IMHO they’re in a street fight while limiting themselves to boxing using the Queensberry rules and hoping to shame the other side into behaving rather than retaliating effectively. The Democrats are fortunate that they are the bigger / stronger fighter, which is why they are still in the game.
I disagree that Democrats are looking at major losses. This isn’t going to be 1994 or 2010. On the other hand, a minor loss is enough to hand the House and Senate to the Republicans, so in the end it’s just quibbling over semantics.
That’s my position, too. Right now they’re expected to lose the House. And this is a midterm election, where firing up the base is often the best option, due to how few people vote. If they could get a small fraction of the progressives out to vote, they could likely win. So many see the Democrats as not really caring. They’ll point the lack of movement towards progressive goals in the current Congress, and not realize this is because they needed at least two more Senators. And then there are the moderates who just don’t tend to vote in midterms out of apathy.
I think there are enough people at this point that see these current moves as going too far that they could leverage that. I think they could leverage pointing out that these laws make kids more likely to get molested. They can remind the public that only the Republicans have known child molesters still in office. The Republicans want to stir that up, then show how fragile their house of cards really is.
And we have the ability to heavily target ads now. Target those who would be more receptive.