With the 2018 elections only a few months away and with the 2020 election season about to commence, concerned citizens should begin devising strategies for wresting back control of the House, the Senate, the White House, and many blocks of affordable housing in Washington DC back from the feckless Republicans dunking the American republic in the Trump swamp. Fortunately for Democratic voters, liberals, progressives, members of the ‘hard left,’ and sundry other disaffected Americans, a winning strategy has already been devised by those who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections. The simplicity of this strategy is bracing; it requires little to implement, and can be carried out all day from home, while traveling or commuting, or in-between breaks at work.
Here is how it goes: on social media and indeed, on all available media outlets, blame the loss of the 2016 election not on those who voted for Donald Trump but rather on those who did not vote for Hillary Clinton. (This strategy does require the person doing the blaming to overlook the fact that a large-scale political event like a once in four years presidential election is massively overdetermined with multiple factors playing significant causal roles–like the design of the American electoral system or campaign strategies of choice. Be that as it may, such considerations are mere distractions to decisive action in these times.)
This blaming can proceed along several axes: an easy one is to pick one out of the long list of political, social, economic, and legal disasters that have befallen the Republic since that fateful November 9th in 2016, and to say “This is on you <Bernie bros, doctrinaire leftists, Marxists, postmodernists, or whatever>!” A variant of this is “Well, I hope you are happy, Bernie-Jill Stein voter-bro, you got what you wanted!” or to mutter “But, but, her emails!” (The latter, however, suffers from a simple confusion; the ’emails’ were of great concern to Trump voters–well known for being sticklers for security in all matters pertaining to internet communications–so the liberal scold here runs the risk of not directly addressing the demographic he or she would like to castigate.)
The success of this strategy is all but foretold. After all, not only did this sort of premptive scolding work to great effect in the lead up to the 2016 election, but as a vast literature on political and community organizing shows, shaming, blaming, and scolding are proven strategies for building broad political coalitions. Such imprecations always make their target eager to build alliances with those doing the blaming; their moral and political faults so clearly identified and laid out for all to see, they can now return to the fold with their tails tucked between their legs, all the more enthusiastic about the education they are to receive in how to correctly exercise their adult electoral franchise.
Readers will be happy to know that the implementation of this tactic is well under way. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement appears to have been the flag drop, and we’re off. Time to sit back and dream about impeachment, veto-proof legislation, and a huge, massive, bomb of a blue wave.
Samir Chopra 