STIGMA
As Democrats, we have two identities. Our internal identity, the way we see ourselves, is the same one we’ve had for a very long time: a traditional political party, focused intently on winning the next election. We like to view ourselves as enlightened, the good guys, the defenders of democracy, but we spend every ounce of our energy on winning the next election. That makes us a traditional political party.
Our external identity with the American public .. the voting American public .. is the one the Republicans have stuck us with. Forget “baby killers” and the MAGA folks. What counts is that huge swath of Americans who don’t really follow politics .. but decide elections. These are the people the Republicans have gotten to. These are the voters that have come to accept that we’re somehow tainted, some vague amalgam of “Socialist” and “taxaholics” and anti-religion and anti-family .. take your pick. We go crazy over the specifics, the “facts”, but that misses the point. What counts for these people is that, subconsciously, Democrats carry the stigma of “bad”. That’s their gut reaction: Democrats = bad, and they may not even know why. It’s the power of endlessly repeated lies: if there’s smoke, there must be fire.
That’s the reason an entire unseen Republican apparatus has spent so much time and money .. decades and hundreds of millions of dollars .. labeling us, to create a Democratic identity of “bad”, of “un-American”. The fact that we spend so much time fighting that label demonstrates just how successful they have been.
How do we fix it? By fixing our identity, and how we see ourselves as Democrats is our identity, internal or external. And there’s the real rub. As hungry as we are for change, as much as we talk about it, we are so locked into being a traditional political party that real change is hard. For the party establishment .. the state parties and on up .. it’s almost impossible. Their purpose in life is one thing: win the next election. For us, for the grassroots .. the county parties and everyone else associated .. change is not impossible, but it’s difficult. We have been conditioned for decades to function as a local election machine. The work is endless. So is the pressure from above, endless demands for things that “have to be done”. Stepping back and thinking in the middle of all this is hard. And so we fall into wishing for change, acknowledging the need for changes, but ending with “I don’t have time for it right now.”
That is our true enemy, that conditioning and that inertia that have lulled us down the same path, the same way of doing things, over and over and over. And that leads us to where we are today: carrying a stigma and endlessly defending ourselves against Republican attacks, red counties that are written off as “lost causes”, and blue counties that struggle endlessly with turnout, Democrats who label themselves as “Progressives” or “Moderates” instead of just Democrats. Worst of all, it’s led us to accept that struggling endlessly over control of Congress and the White House is normal, the way of things.
It’s time to change the conversation. Of course winning the next election is important. It’s terribly important. Winning the next ten elections is terribly important. But just winning that election is no longer enough. Neither is just being a traditional political party. We need to stand for something bigger, and people need to know exactly what that is .. friend and foe alike. We need to be seen as the party of hope, the party that makes the future work for everybody. We need to inspire. We need to become the recognized moral leaders of this nation, and that starts with a clear statement of identity. Publicly. It starts with the Democratic Creed and the vision of a just society .. as long as it takes. It starts with you.
