Why this political scientist thinks the Democrats have to fight dirty
“The Republicans are behaving like a party that believes it will never be held accountable.”
By Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com Updated Oct 7, 2018, 9:37am EDT

In September 2016, an anonymous conservative writer published an essay called “The Flight 93 Election.”

The title was a reference to the one hijacked flight on 9/11 that didn’t reach its destination because passengers overwhelmed the hijackers and brought the plane down.

The logic of the essay was simple enough: The prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency was so positively ruinous that conservatives had no choice but to support Donald Trump — no matter how awful or incompetent he appeared to be. The stakes were simply too high.

Until now, there was no left-wing equivalent to the “Flight 93” essay, no rallying cry that urged Democrats and liberals to do whatever is necessary to win. But David Faris’s new book, It’s Time to Fight Dirty, is the closest anyone has come so far.

Faris, a political scientist at Roosevelt University, argues that the Democratic Party must recognize that Republicans aren’t engaged in a policy fight; instead, they’re waging a “procedural war.”

What he means is that Republicans have spent the past two decades exploiting the vagueness of the Constitution to create structural advantages for their side — passing discriminatory voter ID laws, using the census to gerrymander districts, blocking Democratic Supreme Court nominees, and so on.

Faris writes Democrats have to recognize this reality and act accordingly, especially now that the Republicans are poised to conquer the Supreme Court for a generation. I reached out to him to find out what, exactly, he has in mind.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing
Your book feels like the left-wing equivalent of the “Flight 93” essay — an urgent Democratic call to arms. Is that how you see it?

David Faris
Yeah, I think so. We’re at a very dangerous moment in American history. There’s been a massive erosion of trust in public institutions and in the broader electoral process. The Trump administration has been disastrously disruptive to the norms of our political culture.

We’re also in a very dangerous moment for the planet, and I worry that we’re sleepwalking into a series of crises that we’ll have to deal with for a very long time, that our kids will have to deal with for a very long time. So yes, I am sort of sounding the alarm, and I think Democrats have to recognize the urgency of the moment and act accordingly.

Am I in “charge the cockpit or die” mode? I don’t know, but I do think our predicament justifies some serious procedural hardball from the Democrats.

Sean Illing
Well, let’s talk about the Democrats. There are roughly three competing visions within the party about how to move forward: 1) Go the way of Bernie Sanders and appeal to working-class voters with progressive policy ideas; 2) go the centrist route in a bid to grab moderate, suburban independents and Republicans who might have voted for Trump but can be persuaded to jump ship; or 3) double down on the 2008 and 2012 strategies and hope to recreate the Obama coalition of women, minorities, and young people.

You say all these are nonstarters — why?

David Faris
I think Democrats should have this debate, but my point is that no policy platform is going to win three or four consecutive national elections for Democrats because we know policy isn’t what decides elections; that’s not how most voters make decisions.


https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17258866/democratic-party-supreme-court-republicans-trump-election