Public Notice is proudly celebrating 5 years of independent journalism. Our coverage is possible thanks for paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️
Long ridiculed as too soft, civil, or politically correct to play hard ball, the Democrats are finally showing some spine.
Listen to the way Abdul El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, Angie Nixon, and Jon Ossoff speak at campaign debates, rallies, and town halls. Among others, this quartet of Senate candidates are demonstrating the ferocity liberals and Democrats have been demanding from the party’s politicians. They are also sending a clear signal that the party’s future belongs to those who will take the fight directly to Donald Trump and his beleaguered MAGA coalition.
Maybe the electoral tailwinds produced by favorable generic ballot data and Trump’s plunging approval numbers have stiffened the backbones of these newly-confident Democrats. Whatever the reasons, their aggressive and unapologetic posture is as refreshing as it is overdue.
Three mantras
Former President Bill Clinton famously warned fellow Democrats that voters prefer “strong and wrong” over “weak but right.” His point was that tough talk resonates so powerfully among voters — especially low-information independents and moderates with weak ties to either major party — that strength can mask and even compensate for bad policies or poor governance.
Clinton’s mantra was a thinly veiled reference to George W. Bush’s governing failures, yet his warning is even more applicable during the Trump era.
In 2015 and 2016, Trump did not separate himself from the 18 other Republican presidential contenders with soaring rhetoric and a visionary platform. Nor was he the first Republican to parlay fear, hatred, xenophobia, and divisive culture war claptrap into support. Trump won the GOP nomination and set both the literal and metaphorical terms of debate for the next decade through sheer bluster and norm shattering.
He mocked “Little Marco” Rubio and “low energy” Jeb Bush, fumed vaguely but incessantly about how China was “killing us,” and told scary stories about Mexican immigrants raping and murdering Americans. During the 2015-2016 primary season his tough talk generated an estimated $2 billion in free media. In just 17 months he conquered and realigned the Republican coalition, then beat Hillary Clinton in the general election.
Trump’s approached worked because he and Republicans scoffed at a different mantra: “good policy is good politics.”
For decades, a core article of faith among party apparatchiks was that if Democrats simply published long, detailed policy platforms and then ran on those policies — or clever bywords like “affordability” or “abundance” — voters would swoon.
Wrong.
The good-policy-equals-good-politics mantra may have applied during the New Deal, when machine politics ruled, unions were strong, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt realigned the American party system. But the New Deal ended six decades ago after Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 win.
Notice that Trump is forever just two weeks away from proposing a healthcare alternative to the Affordable Care Act.
Trump’s mismanagement of covid led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. As we’ve written here, Trump won in 2024 because of nagging inflation, despite the fact that his two major campaign planks were both inflationary: raising the price of domestic goods by terrorizing the immigrant labor pool, and raising the price of imported goods via reckless tariffs. If voters understood policy and voted accordingly, Trump would not have collected a single non-MAGA vote nor amassed more than 200 electors in any of his three presidential bids.
Pick almost any indicator — GDP growth rates, job creation, even the stock market — and the economy over the past three decades has performed better during Democratic than Republican presidencies. Yet Republicans elected Bush and Trump twice each and controlled one or both houses of Congress as often of Democrats did during the same period.
Bottom line: Democrats are delusional if they continue to believe good policy is sufficient to win elections. Republicans correctly realize good policies and effective governance are not even necessary to win.
Which brings us to the third mantra, courtesy of former First Lady Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.” Oh, please. Politics is not patty cake, civility is rarely if ever rewarded, and the good guys often lose.
Pugilistic Democrats must adapt to the new rules of political combat. They need not mirror Trump’s crass, racist, and misogynistic rhetoric. But they should attack more fiercely, fight a bit dirtier, and be less apologetic. When Republicans go low, Democrats should step on them.
If they abandon the failed lessons of the latter two mantras and embrace Clinton’s wise counsel, a new generation of “strong and right” Democrats can repel modern conservatism’s Trump-led, strong-but-wrong approach.
Sharper images
Given the existential threat Trump poses to the survival of both small-d democracy and the capital-D Democratic Party, the days of Democrats bringing knives to political gun fights is over. Ossoff, El-Sayed, Nixon, and even the mild-mannered Jackson seem to get it.
Ossoff has sharp political elbows and sharper rhetorical claws. At a recent campaign event, the Georgia senator needed just two sentences to mock Trump’s coherence, cluelessness, and — dagger of daggers — shrinking crowd sizes.
Trump is “oblivious to the collapse of his presidency,” said Ossoff, who previously caused political paroxysms within the White House and across right-wing media with his “travel with Natalie” dig. “A crowd smaller than this one enduring two hours of senile babbling while the price of oil hit its five-month high.”
El-Sayed avoids personal barbs, with cause. Unlike the wide berth given to white pols — especially Trump, who routinely uses fascist language to dehumanize opponents as “scum” and “vermin” — AES cannot risk being portrayed as Angry Brown Muslim Man.
Instead, El-Sayed calmly buried political plant Tommy Teepell, a white male white Christian nationalist and former staffer for Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, when Teepell tried to trip up AES by asking the Senate candidate if he supported the Muslim Brotherhood. In a methodical yet forceful tone, AES excommunicated Teepell with a divine lecture on the Constitution’s prohibitions against blurring church with state.
Don’t mess with Nixon, either. An African American woman running in a solidly red state, the fearless Nixon recently blistered her Republican counterpart, Ashley Moody.
During a Face the Nation appearance last weekend, Nixon called Moody a “lying, cheating [and] thieving” crook who should investigated by the Department of Justice and “locked up” for mishandling state funds that were supposed to go a children’s charity.
Nixon deftly yoked Trump around Moody’s neck, too, adding: “[T]his is Donald Trump 2.0 here in the state of Florida … I’m wondering how many kids are going to die because $10 million was taken from Medicaid that was supposed to make sure that those sick kids had the treatment that they needed.”
The soft-spoken Jackson is the least pugilistic of this quartet, which is precisely why his refusal to apologize to Susan Collins after telling her to “shut up” during their most recent televised debate succeeded.
It’s a bit rude to tell anyone to shut their trap, especially when a man shushes a woman. But pearl-clutching Republicans and “civility” pundits like David Brooks can issue their complaints directly with finger-pointing Donald “quiet piggy” Trump and his Roy Cohn-inspired “never apologize” standards.
Fight, fight, fight
American politics has always been vicious. In campaign season especially, civility and decorum quickly yield to name-calling and personal assaults. But even by historical standards, American politics today is unusually rough. Before but especially since Donald Trump’s rise a decade ago, Republicans changed the political-electoral rules of engagement.
Successful Democrats understand the new realities. Because pundits would rather avoid writing or talking about yawn-inducing policy platforms or governing performance, they know that the best way to gain attention, attract donors, and inspire voters is to trigger Trump, Republican politicians, and the MAGA media.
A small but growing number of Democrats grasp these new realities. To meet this perilous moment, they are showing the will and skill to attack Donald Trump and Republican candidates with a mix of ferocity and flair — and without apology. It’s about time they realized that being right matters only if you’re strong, too.
That’s it for now
We’ll be back with a new episode of the PN Pod at 1 p.m. Eastern today, then again with special editions of the newsletter Saturday and Sunday.
If you appreciate today’s PN, please do your part to keep us free by signing up for a paid subscription.
Thanks for reading.
Please continue with the must-read commentaries. PN is worth every cent it takes to support it. When enough people decouple from MSM, I'll know we have begun the journey on the long road to a better future.
I agree that US politics is a rough business and Democrats need to learn to fight. Though when dealing with Trump it seems that the Democrats have thrown a lot of punches but don’t seem to have learned how to effectively land them.
Perhaps the 4 Democratic Senate candidates mentioned, Ossoff (Georgia), El Sayed (Michigan), Jackson (Maine) and Nixon (Florida) are better at hitting home and if so all power to them. But at present only Ossoff seems to be doing well. He’s taken a state that Trump won narrowly and has a commanding 8.5% lead in the Real Clear Politics polling averages.
I wish El-Sayed well but in a state that Trump also won narrowly, he only leads by 2.0%. That’s not great in the current national environment (Democrats lead the generic ballot by 8.1). Troy Jackson is up against a candidate who has always over-performed but leading by 1.4% when the state actually voted Democrat in 2024 is no great shakes. Nixon is fighting in a state Trump won by 13% and is presently polling at 7% behind.
In contrast in Iowa, Alaska and Kansas (Trump won all by double digits) the Democrat candidates are ahead in Alaska and have the other two as toss up states with the Democrats under 2% behind.
Things will become clearer after the election and how well a Senate candidate went can then be compared to how the average Democrat performance in the House seats. But present indications point strongly to Democrats being better advised taking lessons from its candidates in Iowa, Kansas, Alaska (and indeed Texas) than the 3 candidates held up as examples here.