False Equivalencies

Dispelling the "both sides" do it myth

While listening to a “democratic strategist” begin an assessment of Donald Trump by stating that “Joe Biden wasn’t perfect, but…” my immediate thought was that no Republicans would ever begin a sentence with “Donald Trump wasn’t perfect, but…” and for me it is indicative of why so many people in this country fall into the “both sides do it” narrative. When we have a Mainstream Media that has has always tried to appear “fair and balanced” by deferring to the Republicans in their coverage of politics as the feckless host of fill in the blank Sunday Morning Talk Shows let Republican guests off easy with softball questions and the predictable “well we will have to leave it right there” end of an “interview” after their Republican guests gish gallop and filibuster, rather than answer what should be an easy question. The pattern has always been that Republicans seem to be briefed and supplied with talking points, so that every media appearance, regardless of who the Republican mouthpiece is, is a carbon copy. Meanwhile, the MSM has always asked hard ball questions of every Democrat which they should, and the Democratic guest whether politician or strategist seems to qualify statements by first saying “while not perfect…”. Given the place that we are in and with the Republican grift being exposed, that needs to be a thing of the past. It is a bad habit that far too many of the good guys can’t seem to break. Far more essential in this moment is to, if we are speaking of past Democratic administrations not being able to get everything passed, is to educate the public as to why that was so.

I am old enough to remember the time when we elected our first black president on after being lied to by the Bush/Cheney Administration into two wars and after they squandered a surplus left to them by their democratic predecessor. When President Obama was celebrating his inauguration, the Republican Party met to plot on how to “make him a one term president” and vowed to obstruct every policy aimed to help Americans who were experiencing the effects of a rapidly collapsing economic, job and housing market. Instead of rolling up their sleeves, they opted to obstruct. Think an out that! While President Obama tried to deliver affordable healthcare and aid Americans who were having their 401K’s depleted, the Republicans stuck to their modus operandi of obstructing. And then, the media framed the narrative that “Obama wasn’t perfect” and that despite his and the democratic minority in congress (see low voter turnout in the 2010 midterms) trying to stop the bleeding, his administration was sold the narrative that “the economy didn’t recover fast enough under President Obama. And so it goes with what we are witnessing now. While our corporate run media is propping up a mad king through capitulation, the last thing we need here on the left is the quantification of what President Biden wasn’t able to get done or what he was able to get done. What he did get is a long list of great policies, so great that Trump and the Republicans didn’t hesitate to shamelessly take credit for them, despite railing and voting against them. Whether the Infrastructure bill, the child tax credits or breaking OPEC’s stranglehold to make us more energy independent, President Biden and Kamala Harris did that all the while having a feckless media downplay the accomplishments with lazy headlines like “the US post pandemic economy is the envy of the world, but why aren’t people ‘feeling it’”? or the “Biden is old” five alarm fire narrative. To say that “Biden wasn’t perfect” is completely missing the mark. The reality is that far too many voters simply did not understand the moment that we were in. Far too many voters simply chose to forget the peril that our country was in under the Trump 1.0 regime where over 1M Americans died alone in hospital beds due to Trump’s trashing of the Pandemic Response Handbook and elimination of the team tasked with stopping the spread of what he knew was a deadly virus because it “was Obama’s”. They simply forgot or didn’t care that Trump met behind closed doors and had regular conversations with Vladimir Putin while also insisting that his campaign didn’t conspire with Russia to steal the 2016 election. They simply did not care that Donald Trump went through two impeachments, one of which was for the violent attack on our Capitol and therefore our country to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Partly because of the corporate media, but also because of the over-quantification by some on our side!

We need to break the habit of starting our statements with “Although not perfect…”! We all know that “not everyone is perfect”, but that is not the “why” when we speak about why Democrats can’t deliver everything that impatient voters who don’t understand the process of politics and democracy demand. The reason that Democratic Administrations can’t, is in part because we have been apathetic when we “don’t do politics” or “I only vote in presidential elections, but then stay home in the midterms” and at least part of that is to blame on strategists and pundits qualifying, quantifying and restricting messaging. The kind of messaging that shines a light on why Democrats offer better lives to Americans while Republicans offer better lives and bank accounts only to the Epstein Class. This didn’t start with Trump and it won’t end with Trump if we do not speak plainly about history and the consequences of Republican run government whether at the municipal, state or federal level.