Happy Thanksgiving!
I know it’s only August, but there’s a reason Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. It’s not just that I’m thankful Francesca Hong lost the Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin. It’s why she lost. She dissed Thanksgiving (Halloween, too). This told voters in a memorable way that DSA candidates may have high IQs, but they’re awfully dumb sometimes.
Thank God the primary season is nearly over. Tuesday’s mixed results kept this from being a “Summer of Angst” for those of us worried about dopey Democratic Socialists “colonizing” the Democratic Party, as Bill Maher put it. Wisconsin dealt a setback to the suicidal socialist insurgency, which might have some good policy ideas but risks taking the Democrats over the cliff.
The larger problem remains. What to do about the Democratic brand, which is in the crapper?
That’s a long-term project, but let’s start with retiring the term “moderate Democrats.” It misses the moment. Sad to say, we aren’t living in a moderate time. “Moderate” codes as “sellout,” even for independents. Voters of all ideological flavors are pissed and not feeling moderately so. Politicians know this. They know that no candidate campaigns on, “Vote for me! I’m a moderate!” In fact, have you ever seen the word moderate followed by an exclamation point, the most exciting form of punctuation? I haven’t. Because it’s not exciting.
While moderates serve milquetoast, DSA progressives seem determined to make Democrats match Republicans as the stupid party. Abolish borders. Abolish the Senate. Abolish prisons. Sell out Ukraine. Celebrate Hamas. Combine that with Trump’s daily numbskull nattering, and we’re witnessing a stupidity arms race. Mike Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy now plays like a sober documentary.
Republicans too chicken to stand up to Republican stupidity are getting ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars clobbering all Democrats for the dumb things said by a small number of “Dumocrats,” as Trump calls them.
The good news is that there’s an antidote to stupidity: common sense. That’s what David Crowley’s victory over Hong in Wisconsin represents. To unite for November, all Democrats—left, center-left, center, and center-right—should resolve to call themselves “common-sense Democrats.” After all, common sense ideas can be found in all parts of the party, and debating what constitutes it is healthy. It makes people think things through more instead of virtue signaling or taking mindless cover in the center. And it’s a way to avoid unforced errors. If candidates stop for a nanosecond and ask themselves if something makes common sense, they’re less likely to mess up.
The filter of common sense provides truthful and politically salable answers on even the thorniest issues, including trans athletes (condemn discrimination but defer to the NCAA testosterone standards and be fair to women in sports); the border (secure borders but rein in and prosecute ICE); and even Israel (defensive weapons only in aid package but let them buy what they want). Then common sense dictates a quick pivot back to the real issues: Trump’s economy, Trump’s corruption, Trump’s war, Trump’s assault on democracy.
There’s history here. For the 25 years between the 1968 Gun Control Act and the 1994 Crime Bill, the U.S. had no meaningful gun control. Then the Brady Campaign and other groups began to use the term “common-sense gun safety,” and we got background checks, the assault weapons ban (for ten years), and other provisions that weren’t perfect but moved the ball forward. Barack Obama used the phrase“common sense” nearly 500 times as president, on guns, higher taxes on the wealthy, sensible immigration reform, and more.
Common sense isn’t a panacea. The pamphlet of that name that set off the American Revolution didn’t stand on its own. Thomas Paine had to make an argument. But it’s a sturdy platform. And a broad one. Who’s against it?
Some common sense is tactical. It’s common sense to refuse to fill out any yes/no candidate questionnaires like the one from the ACLU that helped cost Kamala Harris the presidency. The rule in the party should be essay questions only. Same for yes/no questions in debates. Candidates should politely say they never express an opinion unless they can explain it. Common sense.
And it’s common sense and good politics for all Democrats to strike a crystal-clear contrast with the DSA. Just pick something stupid—there’s a lot to choose from—in David Remnick or Shannon Bream’s interviews with DSA co-chair Megan Romer, who did Democrats a favor by advertising the craziness of some (not all) DSA ideas.
Or point out that even AOC isn’t far-left enough on Israel to get the DSA endorsement. Or go to the 2025 DSA platform, which called for eliminating USAID because it was a “capitalist” agency. (Tell that to the 600,000 people who have died abroad because Trump took the same position and killed it.) Criticizing DSA (not just a vague “We disagree on some issues”) is a good way to get independent votes.
Progressive candidates and the passionate volunteers who ring doorbells for them are beginning to understand there’s a reason Abdul El-Sayed calls himself a “capitalist,” not a socialist. In any place other than cobalt blue districts, it’s just common sense.
El Sayed is a compelling candidate but not yet a common-sense Democrat. For instance, he supports an arms embargo that would prevent the sale of defensive weapons to Israel. This is not unconditional aid to a rich country that, as he says, might be better used in Michigan schools. It’s private arms sales to Israel. He wants to ban them. Set aside what this might say about his views on Israel’s right to exist. It means that he thinks the 170,000 Americans living in Israel—including about 2,000 Michiganders—shouldn’t have Iron Dome to protect them from thousands of rockets. That issue won’t play well for him when it surfaces—and it will.
El Sayed says he needs to mend fences, but he’s still scuffling with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who said recently that as a Jew she didn’t feel comfortable attending the state Democratic Party Convention on August 29. When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked El-Sayed about this, he said he objects to “using the specter of anti-Semitism and extending it toward protecting a foreign government.”
Bad answer. To show real leadership, El Sayed should urge Nessel to attend and offer to escort her to the convention. Then he should tell the activists in the crowd that he agrees with them on Gaza, but if they try to boo her off the stage, as expected, or otherwise make the attorney general feel unwelcome, they’ll have to boo him, too—the state’s big national star—and these activists will be betraying the free speech values of the decent people of Michigan. Sensible, no? If you want to win, that is.
Many Democrats still think all they need to do this fall is stress affordability and say that Trump stinks. That is necessary but not sufficient. It’s essentially daring people to vote Republican.
I’m not suggesting that Democrats spend a lot of time playing defense against Republican attacks on them as socialists and communists. Offense is better, especially with so much anti-Trump ammo. But they do have to build a better contrast with Republicans on treating extremists within the party. They need, for instance, to denounce Hasan Piker, who said it didn’t matter if women were raped on October 7, just as they reasonably expect that Republicans denounce Nick Fuentes. If El-Sayed puts his friend Piker over party, he’ll lose.
It’s not enough for Democrats to say they’re different from the other side. They have to show it.
Have a happy and common sensical Thanksgiving in August.
