“If you’re explaining, you’re losing” is an old political adage sometimes attributed to Ronald Reagan, but it probably predates him. The axiom justifies campaign operatives launching harsh attacks on opponents, regardless of veracity, because it forces the accused to either defensively explain themselves or let the charge go unanswered. And for the accused, it argues for choosing the latter tack to stay on offense.
In two separate media appearances on Wednesday, we saw a clear difference in how two Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and James Talarico of Texas, have chosen to handle the toughest attacks lobbed against them.
Talarico participated in a televised town hall sponsored by CNN and the YouTube channel Jubilee. He has been pummeled by Republican attack ads highlighting his past comments supportive of transgender rights. One Republican voter raised some of Talarico’s remarks in a question challenging “the authenticity of your faith,” including “things such as God is non-binary” and “how many genders there really are.”
The candidate, who also happens to be a Presbyterian seminarian, opted to respond with a lot of explaining.
He noted that disagreements over interpreting Scripture are “something that we should be comfortable with” and could be done “with love.” But then—as he has previously in the campaign—Talarico accepted criticism for some of his past statements:
The first comment, about God not being defined by gender, when I said that I was being provocative, and I want to admit that and come clean about that. But I think what I was saying is actually not controversial theologically, the idea that we can’t define God using human categories. Not only did I say that, but the late Charlie Kirk said that. The late Pope Benedict said that. And so, yes, I was doing it maybe in an annoying way. I can admit that … I think that is very fair criticism …
… I’m a seminary student, as you know. My granddad was a Baptist preacher, and I’m following in his footsteps, hopefully going to become a minister one day. And preachers often will say something shocking in a sermon to get your attention. And that’s something I’m still learning how to do in a responsible way. And so I’m always going to take feedback from my fellow Christians, from my constituents, on how to do that in a responsible way where I’m actually communicating what I mean and not muddying the waters.
Talarico’s willingness to share his thinking on such polarizing topics stands in stark contrast to how El-Sayed handled the toughest questioning he has received so far in his campaign.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC, El-Sayed was asked if he or any of his family members had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the century-old international Islamist organization, three chapters of which were designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department last January. El-Sayed gave a flat “no.” But in 2012 his half-sister Eman Abdelhadi had posted on social media about their Egyptian mother’s “activism in the Muslim Brotherhood” while in college, writing that “my family has long been MB.” In 2013, she made several posts expressing concern about the safety of Egyptian family members in the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming that some had been “jailed” previously.
On Wednesday, NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas interviewed El-Sayed and asked him to reconcile his statements with his half-sister’s.
LLAMAS: Can you just explain it?
El-SAYED: Tom, it’s funny to me. I was born in 1984 down the street in Rochester Hills … and you want to ask me about what was happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious?
LLAMAS: I get it, but you were asked a question. You gave an answer —
EL-SAYED: Yeah, I’m telling you, like, I have no ties. We have no ties.
LLAMAS: So your mother had no ties?
EL-SAYED: I never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn’t raised by my mother.
LLAMAS: So you were unaware?
EL-SAYED: But I’m just telling you that, like, you’re using hearsay evidence from a Tweet. [UNINTELLIGBLE] is not serious, it’s not serious—
LLAMAS: But you’ve also gone after the President for truthfulness. So when people ask you a question, they all do expect the truth.
EL-SAYED: And you think—do you think—are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?
LLAMAS: I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.
EL-SAYED: And I’m telling you I was not.
El-Sayed did everything in his power to avoid “explaining” his half-sister’s admission. He dismissed the admission as “hearsay.” He mocked the interviewer for asking questions. He avoided direct answers. He answered questions with questions, trying to put the reporter on the hot seat instead of himself.
Which approach worked better? If you watch each video clip, you will likely give the nod to Talarico. He was relaxed, personable, and showed not just confidence in himself but in his audience’s ability to process a nuanced answer. El-Sayed was defensive, evasive, and agitated, qualities which will likely fail to reassure anyone who might be on the fence.
But that doesn’t fully answer the question of which approach worked better because, in all likelihood, most voters will not see these video clips. If El-Sayed had opted to try to defend himself with convoluted explanations, he may have inadvertently given the story more legs and drawn more voter attention to his family history.
However, we can’t test what would have happened if El-Sayed explained instead of evaded.
El-Sayed could have offered many explanations. He could have pleaded ignorance about his mother’s or other distant relatives’ activities. (He began to go down that path but fell back on challenging the question’s premise). El-Sayed could have pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood is a sprawling political organization with a long, complicated history and that not everyone in it supports violence. (In Abdelhadi’s view, “Any serious student of #MB history knows violence is not their thing.”) He could have underscored that one of his half-sisters’ posts said their family members in the Muslim Brotherhood had “respect for individual liberties & secular state.” When she was expressing concern about their safety, it was in the summer of 2013 when the Egyptian military executed a coup that ousted the elected President Mohamed Morsi, who was in the Muslim Brotherhood, and ended Egypt’s brief fling with democracy. El-Sayed could argue that guilt-by-association attacks are always bunk and whatever his family members may have said or done, he should be judged on his own record.
El-Sayed has faced a months-long barrage of Islamophobic guilt-by-association attacks on the airwaves and on social media, which arguably is part of the reason El-Sayed—while leading his Republican opponent Mike Rogers in polls—isn’t earning as much support as the Democratic nominee for Michigan governor Joyce Benson and hasn’t put Rogers away. Evidence of family members in the Muslim Brotherhood reinforces those often unfair attacks, making explanation especially difficult. It’s reasonable for El-Sayed to conclude that he’s better off deflecting questions about the Muslim Brotherhood so he can focus on cost-of-living concerns that are top of mind for Michigan voters.
What El-Sayed can’t know for sure is whether the disconnect between his total denial of familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and his half-sister’s recollections is too glaring, and will become too well known, to avoid the necessity of explanation.
Talarico clearly made the judgment that the clips of his remarks about transgender rights, amplified in a multi-million-dollar Republican ad blitz, were not something that could be breezily dismissed as out-of-context and had become too well known to ignore. So he leaned in.
Karl Rove, the campaign strategist who masterminded George W. Bush’s political career, is often associated with the “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” mantra. But in a 2012 Wall Street Journal column, Rove added some nuance. “It is said that in politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. That’s not always true,” Rove wrote. “Sometimes when you’re explaining, you’re reassuring voters and undermining your opponent’s credibility.” Considering that he has held a steady lead in polls, even after giving broader context to his past comments about transgender rights, it would appear that Talarico has been successfully reassuring voters. One conservative Catholic participant in the televised town hall said afterward, “I was really impressed with Talarico … I found a more balanced politician. I was surprised at how centrist he was on many of the issues, and I think that has brought me to a deeper understanding.”
El-Sayed is betting that reassurance isn’t necessary, that voters are primarily mad about their depleted bank accounts, and won’t take seriously any notion that he has terrorist sympathies. We have precedent for this. Toward the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, as the economy was tanking, Republicans furiously tried to yoke Barack Obama to Bill Ayers, who had been in the militant Weather Underground during the 1960s and in 1995 held a meet-and-greet event for Obama in his home. A Republican consultant tested a hard-hitting attack ad against Obama and, as Politico reported, one participant reacted with a garbled-yet-charitable understanding of Obama’s past: “I don’t know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy, but I’m sick of paying for health insurance at work, and that’s why I’m supporting Barack.”
However, seven months before that voter’s disinterest in Ayers, Obama delivered one of the all-time great explainer speeches: The “More Perfect Union” address, given during the presidential primary to disassociate himself from the anti-American remarks made by his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright and reassure voters of his own values. Perhaps because of the strength of this speech, Republicans had a much harder time linking Obama to Ayers six months later.
If polls continue to show El-Sayed holding on to an average lead of about three to four points, sticking to a “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” strategy may be a reasonable bet. But if that lead starts to diminish, El-Sayed might think about emulating the man with the middle name Hussein whom he credits for inspiring his entry into politics.
