By Michael Barone | Washington Examiner
You can’t expect a political party
to be rigorously intellectually honest on any consistent basis. They’re trying
to win elections—and to achieve policy results they genuinely believe to be
desirable, and rigorous honesty sometimes has to take the back seat. And
anyway, their embarrassed members will argue, the other side does it, and you
can’t unilaterally disarm.
That said, it strikes me that the
Democratic Party has been taken this to a self-harming extreme. For if the
voters catch you stretching the truth and exaggerating the other side’s
misdeeds, your credibility will suffer. Even when you state plain truths or
make reasonable arguments, many people won’t, or will be reluctant to, believe
you.
On what issues are Democrats taking
such risks?
(1) Their undisguised faith that
Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to steal
the 2016 election. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think this happened or that it
has or will come anywhere close to being proven.
(2) The Republican tax bill was a
“scam” that was going to take money away from those with modest incomes. A look
at the tax rate schedules in the Republicans’ bill should have told Democrats
that this argument wasn’t sustainable, and perhaps they made it in the
hope—which didn’t seem too far-fetched at the time—that enough Republicans
would waver, the bill would never pass and their characterization, with
predictable help from the mainstream media, would stick. But the bill passed,
modest and low-income people are getting raises and bonuses, and just about
everyone will get a bigger paycheck later this month.
(3) Their claims that the
Republicans were responsible for shutting the government down last month over
DACA. Democrats knew that DACA was widely popular, but overestimated its importance
to voters. It turns out they didn’t want the government shut down to help even
deserving illegal immigrants. It’s hard for the party of more government to
lose an argument over who caused a government shutdown, but they managed to do
it.
(4) Their arguments that release of
the Nunes memo would endanger national security, when it was obvious to anyone
who read the memo that it wouldn’t. And then there's their ludicrous supporting
argument that you should never harm the image of the FBI. Democrats have long
been willing to criticize the FBI and other law enforcement agencies when they
think it will help them politically, or when they think there has genuine
abuse; the first is understandable and the second often commendable. How is
this different?
This looks very much like those who
live in an anti-Trump cocoon have such utter contempt for their fellow citizens
outside that cocoon that they expect them to fall for unsustainable arguments. They have the excuse of knowing that most of the mainstream
media will do so, but they seem not to have learned that a very large
part of the American electorate no longer has respect for or pays heed to the
mainstream media.
Political debate requires
understanding how persuasive—or unpersuasive—arguments are and will prove over
time. I’m surprised that Democrats aren’t doing a better job at this, and I
suspect they’re reducing their credibility with many voters they have been
taking for granted.
