Michelle Obama once famously said, “When they go low, we go high.”
Unfortunately, it’s become clear that taking the high road hasn’t had much effect; Trump won 2 presidential elections by going as low as can be. So some guys like Newsom are now embracing the “Sure, we’ll go low too.” Plus, there’d be nothing funnier than seeing Trumpers/MAGA get trolled by Democrats using their own playbook against them. But with both sides going low, then the entire U.S. political discourse may end up looking like elementary school.
On top of that, Republicans have a lot more experience going low than Democrats, and so Democrats may find that wrestling a pig in the mud is a game that is tilted heavily in favor of the experienced hog. Furthermore, many Democratic voters still prefer a high-road approach, so if the D leadership goes low, it may alienate many of its own voters while not winning over any centrists.
The democrats are wrong about “the high road.” They seem to think that believing that the republicans are acting in good faith, and dealing with them as though they are, is the “high road.” And that not (accurately) calling out the evil they do is “the high road.” They think that maintaining decorum above all else is the high road. Basically, they think the high road is just rolling over and pretend nothing is happening while the republicans steamroll them.
Speaking the truth is the high road even if the truth is harsh or the thing they’re describing is unsavory. Fighting evil is the high road. The (national) democrats are pathetic and weak, they are not noble by doing what they’re doing.
I don’t think the democrats should take the “low road” like republicans and lie or emotionally manipulate their audience or appeal to their lowest base desires, generally. But they should absolutely attack them at every opportunity. And I do think mockery and satire is a valid form of this, so long as it’s a good-faith effort at getting at an underlying truth.
I’m not sure if what Newsome is doing is really “the low road”, he’s giving a good-faith impression of how Trump speaks (if he was significantly misrepresenting it to the point of being deceptive, you might consider that the low road) and he’s basically forcing republicans to face the fact that they give Trump absurdly special treatment and that if anyone else talked or acted like him we’d all think they were an insane demented person, but somehow Trump gets a pass. I think holding up a mirror in this way is trying to get at the truth overall. In another context, this sort of thing might seem childish, but I think it’s a valid and effective weapon that forces truth to the surface.
This. Oh, in some situations I can also see the value in “low road” tactics, but being a doormat is not the high road.
I do recall a real world example of effective “low road” tactics. When Bill Clinton was running agaisnt Bush he made a point of assuming that Bush would be willing to stoop to any level to win, being a Republican. Therefore he prevented Bush from bringing up his extramarital affairs by contacting him and telling Bush that if he brought the subject up, Clinton would bring up Bush’s affairs in retaliation. And it worked.
Which would still be better than the direction we are heading of having no discourse at all, just dogma handed down from on high and enforced at gunpoint.
I have no problem with “going low” when it’s deserved. How long do you continue to turn the other cheek? I learned early in school that allowing yourself to be pushed around just leads to more abuse. So my motto has always been “Treat me like you want to be treated.” My message to the Dems is to sling shit like a pro until the other side decides they’ve had enough.
I don’t think that’s what this is about. Nobody is saying evil shouldn’t be fought. They’re asking how evil should be fought.
By analogy, nobody was saying the Japanese shouldn’t be fought against in WWII. But there is debate about whether napalming Tokyo civilians was the right approach.
Maybe now. There wasn’t at the time. Total war meant total war.
Only for Democrats who don’t understand how the world works. /s
Think how awful this sounds on the day that the California legislature voted to counter Texas’ loathsome redistricting with a similar redistricting to zero out their plan to kill democracy.
As a democrat I don’t give a fuck about high or low. I only care about effective. what works. Going high doesn’t seem to work. I don’t know if going low will work, but if it does, have at it.
I am unconvinced that national democratic leadership is actually making a real effort to fight, with only very few exceptions. It’s hard to believe that people who have spent their lives in politics would be so incredibly inept at it if they actually wanted to put up a fight.
Dems never learned taking the high road leads to failure in politics. When Harry Reid lied about Mitt Romney’s taxes, what happened? It wasn’t OMG Reid is a bad man, let’s vote him out.
It obviously depends on what is meant by high and low.
When they nominate a rapist, I hope we do not. It not only would be wrong morally – it would be a political mistake, on top of a moral one.
Voters who want a strongman are going to vote GOP. Competing in that lane, we will lose.
Gerrymandering is middle ground here. It presumably is legal, at least in most states. There probably are cases where Democrats are wise to indulge. However, Democrats would be better off with an enforced nationwide gerrymandering ban. One reason is that no matter how theoretically committed to gerrymandering Democrats are, they will be worse at it than Republicans.
Here’s why. Republicans have a simple single goal in gerrymandering – get as many GOP seats in the state and federal legislatures as possible. Democrats have a combination goal – increase the number of Democratic seats while keeping the number of non-white officeholders high. The latter requires having a few majority minority districts, And a district that is, say, 56 percent Democratic while an ideal gerrymander, is very unlikely to be majority minority.
I have no desire to fight fair with Fascists! They will play every dirty trick in the book and turnabout is fair play. We should fight them in terms they understand. The time for being their doormat is long gone. Their disrespect should be met with equal disrespect. When the war ends we can play nice again, but until then-go low!
Since Romney was refusing to release his tax returns, it was a reasonable supposition. Then Romney did release his tax returns, and proved he was paying taxes.
In theory, a lot of Democrats want to match Trump on going low. But when it comes to actually throwing an unpopular group under the bus — say, trans kids — they forget about going low and start saying stuff like that it would be morally wrong.
Where were go-low Democrats on January 6, 2025? Why didn’t they learn from the tactical mistakes of the January 6, 2021 Trumpers and attack the Capitol with more firepower than the Republicans had used?
Truth is, the Democrats are not good at bringing guns to a gunfight. Try it, and Democrats will be outgunned. I think this is true with both literal guns and with most metaphors for gun fighting, including lying.
This!