Playing Chess Not Checkers

It's past time for the Democrats to change their game.

Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash

Issue #89 OpEd July 25, 2022

At the time of this writing, the November 2022 midterm elections are just over two months away. The primary election season is well underway. 

Historically, the party in power loses seats in the midterms, but because the Republicans have turned so extreme, radical, and authoritarian, the Democrats’ chances this year are better than normal. But we will only win if we VOTE, and vote in such huge numbers that the results cannot be questioned.

But will we?

Overturning Roe v Wade didn’t just happen. It was the result of a decades-long timetable with several moving parts. Gerrymandering, destruction of voting rights protections, withholding Supreme Court nominations and then packing the court with radical religious rightwing justices, and most of all, voting at all levels of the government. 

Now that Roe is gone, several other rights based on 14th Amendment right-to-privacy protections are next on the chopping block. Additionally, most social programs, such as Medicare and Social Security are in grave danger. Ignoring climate change and the ACA, as well as reducing or eliminating support for Ukraine are also right-wing policies. 

Instead of working for the good of the people, Republicans concentrate only on cementing their power, especially at the local and state levels, and running on “fear politics” such as elimination of abortion nationwide, CRT, anti-LGBTQA, “replacement theory,” elimination of public schools, ignoring the separation of church and state, and just out-and-out racism, sexism, and nativism. 

Republicans Play Chess While Democrats Play Checkers

Republicans are very good at playing chess—working for and concentrating on the long-term with a dedicated strategy and targeted goal.

Meanwhile, Democrats, for the most part, play checkers. They freak out over what is happening or not happening now, instead of putting in place policies and programs that will ensure victories in the long term.

If a president doesn’t “deliver” in the first six months of the new administration, he is labeled a loser and put into lame-duck status.

Democrats often don’t even vote in the primaries or concentrate more on their state and local elections, thinking only the presidency is the be-all-end-all goal, and if their particular candidate doesn’t win, they pick up their balls and go home.

One notable exception to this was the 2008 presidential campaign of then-Senator Barack Obama. In order to secure the Democratic nomination for president, he knew that the ultimate goal was to have the highest number of pledged delegate votes. He won some primaries and he lost some primaries. He virtually ignored all of the terrible things Hillary and other Democrats said about him and did not attack back. He just kept plugging along, racking up the delegate count, until by the time the last primary held in Puerto Rico ended in early June, he had far more delegate votes than he needed and there was no way Hillary could catch up. 

When Obama was inaugurated in 2009, he had a Democratic majority large enough in both houses of Congress to pass his signature Affordable Care Act. It isn’t “Medicare for All,” but it is much better than what we had. He also pulled us out of the Great Recession. 

But because he didn’t fulfill some other campaign promises in his first year in office, many Democrats abandoned him and the party and didn’t vote in the 2010 midterms. The Tea Party Republicans took over Congress, and the Democrats didn’t have a majority in the House for another eight years, including the last six years of the Obama administration. 

Even now, while on paper the Democrats are in charge in Congress, in reality, with only 48 reliable votes in the Senate, almost all of the bills passed in the House go to the Senate to die. And then everyone blames President Biden for “not doing anything.”

Here is a short list of some of Biden’s major successes in his first 15 months in office.

Here are the actual Senate majorities of former Democratic presidents when they took office:

FDR: 58 (of 96)

Truman: 57 (of 96)

(Alaska and Hawai’i became states in 1959 and we now had 100 senators.)

Kennedy: 64

LBJ: 66

Carter: 61

Clinton: 57

Obama: 58

Biden: 50

Every Dem President of the last 100 years got at least 57 Dem Senators to start with. Except for Biden, who only got 50, and two of them are “DINOS.”

How to Change the Narrative and Protect Our Democracy

I know that I’m sounding like a broken record, but I am truly frightened for our very imperfect republic. I think that you should be frightened too. Voting all up and down the ballot is the only way to reserve our slide into anti-democracy authoritarianism. We cannot afford to be “so mad” at Biden that our inaction destroys our democracy.

That doesn’t mean we don’t hold our elected officials accountable. 

But it does mean that if our democracy is destroyed and all of our rights are taken away, it won’t matter what Biden does or does not do.

We need to hold onto and increase our majorities in each house of Congress.

We also need to watch who is running in our state and local elections.

We can turn this around.

Let us know your thoughts on the Democratic playbook!

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