If Democrats could clash with Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state senator who delivered an acclaimed speech condemning Republican efforts to limit discussions about gender and sexuality in schools, they would.
McMorrow’s big moment, which we wrote about on Monday, instantly made her a political celebrity on the left. Her Twitter following has risen above 220,000. Democrats Raising Money for Legislative Races in the State Have Already Discovered Her as a fundraising powerhouse†
McMorrow’s five minutes of anger were so effective, Democrats said, in part because it was so rare.
It played on a frustration many Democrats feel about their party leaders’ reluctance to participate in these cultural firestorms, said Wendy Davis, a former Texas lawmaker whose filibuster of an abortion bill in 2013 made her a national political figure.
‘What we fight for’
“There comes a time when you just have to get up and fight back,” Davis said.
“The strategy of not meeting the right wing where they are can only take you so far,” she added. “I think people have been really hungry to see the Democrats push back and forcefully push back, like Mallory did.”
Other Democrats are urging candidates to defend their beliefs more aggressively, rather than ignoring or repelling Republicans’ cultural attacks by changing the subject to pocketbooks.
“Democrats are afraid to talk about why we’re fighting about what we’re fighting for,” said Tré Easton, a progressive strategist. “It was exactly the kind of values-oriented rebuttal I want every Democrat to sound like.”
Find the message
Another lesson from McMorrow’s speech, said Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, is that voters look for authenticity and passion rather than ideological agreement.
“Voters want candidates who talk like real people rather than slick, poll-tested performers,” Katz said. “They like candidates that are unfiltered, uncalculated and scripted. And even if they don’t always agree with you, if a candidate is direct and honest, voters tend to respect that.”
Fetterman, who is leading the polls ahead of the May 17 primary, is a progressive party affiliated with the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. His main opponent is Representative Conor Lamb, a centrist from a suburban area outside of Pittsburgh. Fetterman has worked to reassure Democratic Party leaders inside and outside the state that he is not too far left to win a seat critical to their hopes of maintaining their Senate majority.
But the rifts within the party are as much about communication with the public as they are about the traditional quarrels between progressives and moderates.
Party strategists in Washington, led by centrist lawmakers facing tough reelection bids, have put an end to a heavily poll-tested medium-term message highlighting key legislation passed by Democrats in Congress: the $1 economic aid package. .9 trillion known as the American Rescue Plan and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.
It’s an approach that makes some Democrats want a little more Mallory McMorrow.
“I agree that we need to make sure every day that we tell the American people what we are doing to help them and their families,” Davis said, weighing her words carefully. “But we also have to fight fire with fire.”
What to read?
The New York Supreme Court ruled that Democratic leaders had violated the state constitution when signing new congressional and state senate districts, and ordered a court-appointed expert to recruit replacements for this year’s pivotal midterm elections.
Democratic lawmakers released a report alleging that top Trump administration officials had granted a $700 million pandemic relief loan to a struggling truck company in 2020 over objections from Defense Department officials.
The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner returns in person on Saturday after a two-year pandemic absence. It’s got some in Washington calculating the risks. President Biden will be there. Anthony Fauci skips it.
pulse
It’s the gender gap, stupidity
It is arguably the most important divide in American politics: the gender gap between the two major parties. And it gets bigger.
New survey of public opinion by the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank in Washington, examines how far apart Democrats and Republicans are now on a host of issues, including their contrasting approaches to sex and sexuality and their spiritual practices.
The split is largely caused by the steady migration of highly educated women to the Democratic Party. In 1998, the study authors note, only 12 percent of Democrats were women with college degrees. That figure is now 28 percent – making them a dominant bloc in the party. By comparison, men with no college degrees now make up 22 percent of the Republican Party, up from 17 percent in 1998.
That gender gap is a silent driver of political polarization, said Daniel Cox, the director and founder of AEI’s Survey Center on American Life.
He was struck by the great differences of opinion between women with university degrees and men without them, on two topics in particular: climate change and abortion.
Sixty-five percent of highly educated women prefer environmental protection over faster economic growth, AEI found, compared to just 45 percent of men with no college degree. Seventy-two percent of highly educated women say abortion should be legal in most cases, while only 43 percent of men with no college education agree.
The gender gap grew well before Donald Trump, Cox said. But his election has “stepped up” the political activism of millennial women in particular, he said.
It was mostly highly educated women who gathered on the National Mall in 2017 to voice their opposition to Trump, a Republican president who was taken into office by – as he put it – “the less educated.”
College-educated women rallied behind Joe Biden in the 2020 election, repelled by Trump’s brash and aggressive political style.
Those feelings have only grown stronger. Seventy-three percent of highly educated women have an unfavorable view of Trump, AEI found, while 59 percent have an unfavorable view of Trump. all unfavorable view of him. In contrast, 48 percent of men without college degrees view Trump unfavorably.
— Blake
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