Republicans Still Hunting Where The Ducks Are

Why Democrats cannot, and should not, emulate the Republican Playbook.

Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once stated, “The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, they’re the one who asks the right questions.” 

Regarding our modern political structure, there are a lot of questions to ask. We should be specific in those questions if we want to find better answers to fix what ails our democracy. 

What is the modern Democratic party? What is its overarching narrative and infrastructure? Who do they serve and what are their goals? How does the modern Democratic Party differ from the modern Republican Party? What is their overarching narrative and infrastructure? Who do they serve and what are their goals? Finally, What function or role do we, or can we, play in conjunction with these institutions? 

Note that I specifically stated, the modern Democratic Party and the modern Republican Party. Whilst Republicans currently occupying Congress still love to claim they are The Party of Lincoln, in that they are “the emancipation party”, not only has that not been true since Lincoln, but the Modern Republican Party, in part, could trace its roots back to the anti-immigrant anti-emancipation The Know Nothing Party of the 1850s. In a letter dated August 24, 1855, to Joshua Fry Speed, President Abraham Lincoln wrote: 

“I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.”

The modern Republican party of today was, at that time, in its infancy. Unbeknown then, they were already building generationally entrenched power, and the infrastructure to sustain it. 

The Infancy of the American Right Wing

Even before emancipation Black men and women were organizing, demanding suffrage, and the end of chattel slavery. The Reconstruction Amendments allowed, for the first time, Black men to vote and run for office. The vast majority of these men ran on the Republican ticket during reconstruction. As the over 2,000 Black office holders showed exemplary leadership in advocating for autonomy, Civil Rights, and free public education. White grievance, already soaked into the fabric of our democracy, boiled over. 

While neither political party* had a monopoly on white resentment or grievance, after Lincoln’s assassination, white male grievance in the southern Democratic party swung into overdrive codifying racism (e.g. poll taxes, grandfather clauses, segregation, etc.) in state constitutions and local laws. 

Those same white conservative southerners knew they needed more than codifying Jim Crow laws. They needed to rewrite the history of why the Civil War was fought and shift the cultural narrative around it.  They did this by rewriting history in school textbooks downplaying the role of slavery and the Civil War, and swapping it out for the more palatable but fabricated “States Right” Lost Cause mythology. These textbooks would be used by almost 70 million southern Americans between the years 1889 to 1968, generations indoctrinated to a fable. 

In addition to installing Confederate monuments, not for remembrance but for intimidation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation celluloid would reinvent a fictional Klanman’s image. Fashioning the KKK members from violent white supremacists to American patriots, while falsely reframing the Congressional Black men who served during reconstruction as incompetent-lazy-morally-bankrupt-degenerates. 

Conservative southern Democratic President Woodrow Wilson (1913 - 1921) screened Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915 declaring,  “It's like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” 

Southern textbooks, confederate monuments, and a propagandist film would not be the only elements in service of white entrenched power. SCOTUS would hand down some of its most detrimental decisions: Dred Scott v. Sanford 1857 (Black people were not considered citizens, freed or not); Buck v. Bell 1927 (Eugenics was not unconstitutional); Korematsu v. United States 1944 (Internment of Japanese Americans during WW2); Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 (Separate but equal).

The Building of the Right Wing Infrastructure

Corporate America would also play a major role in making sure Social Programs and policies that could alleviate poverty and create equality were cut back in service of their own profits. 

Northern Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt championed social programs like The New Deal (1933-1939), The Social Security Act (1935), and the Lanham Act (which provided Universal childcare in 1943 for the first time in the U.S.). Most of these social programs aided white Americans and disproportionately excluded Black Americans. Black southern voters stayed loyal to The Republican Party while Black northerners saw the potential in these new expansive Social programs, and in spite of them not directly aiding them, moved towards the party of FDR. 

These social programs exasperated corporate America, specifically advertisers. They vehemently objected to the regulations that came with the federal works programs. Corporate America viewed them as an existential threat to the system of free enterprise. In 1941 James W. Young, marketing guru, and an ad executive at J. Walter Thompson, wanted to triangulate with the conservatives in government, corporate America, and the media machine (Hollywood, Legacy media, Film/TV, Advertising) stating, “Let's ask ourselves whether we as an industry do not have a great contribution to make in the effort to be gained for business, the leadership of our economy, we have within our hands the greatest aggregate means of mass education and persuasion the world as ever seen, namely, the channels of advertising communication, we have the power, why do we not use it?”  

Conservative southern Democrats distanced themselves from FDR and thanks to corporate America began to have a strong financial infrastructure in place, solidifying their goals: rail against government regulation and social programs that cut into profits but justify taking kickbacks and subsidies themselves; harness white grievance to stymie progress; codify bigotry to galvanize support. These white Southern Democrats were already entrenched in power, had a SCOTUS ruling in their favor, and corporate America in their back pocket. What they did not know was a Texas Democrat was about to dismantle much of Jim Crow and finish the political party the realignment that had begun under FDR.

The Great Realignment 

A shift occurred in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Brown V Board of Education, spectacularly argued by future Justice, Thurgood Marshall, SCOTUS ruled unanimously that public schools should be racially integrated with their 1954 decision. While this moved our nation one small step toward equality, northern states’ de facto segregation wasn’t easy to untangle nor were the white male elected officials particularly motivated to do so. In the south, the Brown ruling was met with a swift violent backlash from white southerners who had implemented intentional or de jure segregation and had no desire to integrate.

In 1958 after Southern Democrat George Wallace lost a bruising governor's campaign to a pro-segregationist man who had the endorsement of the KKK, Wallace vowed not to be “Well, boys… no other son-of-a-bitch will ever out n—--- me again.” Wallace saw the opportunity to acquire power and become an entrenched elected official by fully embracing the racism of dog-whistle politics. 

Professor of race and the constitution, Ian Haney López breaks down dog-whistling into several elements, 1. Punch race (gender, sexual orientation, etc.) into the political conversation using coded language to stir voters' racial anxieties 2. Use terms to trigger racial resentment 3. Dog whistles allow plausible deniability in racist subtlety and not-so-subtlety 4. When accused of provoking racial resentment issue an outraged denial 5. Hit back by accusing your critics of being the real bigots. Dog-whistle politics with gaslighting built-in.

In 1961 Republican Barry Goldwater also saw the opportunity dog-whistle politics offered him. Like Wallace, Goldwater was once a supporter of the NAACP. Goldwater saw which way the winds were blowing, “We’re not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 and 1968, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are.” 

The ducks? White voters whose racial grievances were easily stoked. Upon clinching the 1964 Republican nomination, Goldwater spoke as if confederate flags were falling out of his mouth, and his eyes were firmly fixed on a burning cross, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Black Voters, like the baseball Hall of Famer, Jackie Robinson, who had stayed loyal to the Republican party, heard Goldwater’s dog whistle as loud as an air horn, writing, “A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP… It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind—the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy.” A lifelong Republican who had campaigned with Richard Nixon in 1960, Jackie Robinson no longer felt he had a home in The GOP. 

With the defeat of Goldwater, the election of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the signing of the Civil Rights Act (1964), and the Voting Rights Act (1956) southern and northern Black voters got into formation, realigned, and created the foundation of the modern Democratic Party. Conservative Southern white voters and politicians would move over in mass to form the modern Republican party, and never look back.

“We have lost the South for a Generation.”

U.S. President Lyndon Johnson passes out some of the 72 pens he used to sign the civil rights bill in Washington D.C. on July 2, 1964. (AP Photo)

Lyndon Baines Johnson said those prophetic words to a White House aid after signing in The Civil Rights Act. LBJ underestimated how much white resentment had been stoked, fed, and bred. The modern Democratic Party has yet to win the majority of white votes since. 

Republican Richard Nixon, who was known for falsely accusing his political rivals of being communist adjacent (thus the nickname “Tricky Dicky”), and who had previously supported school desegregation, switched tactics and decided he too would go “duck hunting.” Richard Nixon rode his dog-whistle “Law and Order” campaign all the way to the White House.

A Right-Wing Revolution Planned through Memos

On the evening of August 23, 1971, Louis F. Powell Jr. wrote a memo that would be received as one of the most influential blueprints of how the modern Republican party would operate over the next five decades. Powell was just months away from being confirmed as a new Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court when he was commissioned by his friend, Eugene B. Sidner, Jr, the education director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to write a directive to counter what they perceived as a growing threat to free enterprise in America. The memo lashed out at what they assessed was a left-wing anti-business sentiment growing in the United States.

Nixon was president during the height of the counter-culture movement in America: second-wave feminism, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the anti-war movement. Nixon oversaw the implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Activist Ralph Nader had planted the seeds of a burgeoning consumer advocacy movement, which would hold business leaders accountable for faulty products. All of this would lead to new laws and regulations, much to the exasperation, once again, of corporate America.

Power advocated in his 37-page memo step-by-step instructions to purge left-wing elements out of American culture through constant surveillance of television content, media, literary journals, school textbooks, arts and sciences, law schools, politicians, and universities. Powell advocated infiltrating those institutions and replacing left-wing ideas with conservative pro-business, anti-regulations, and anti-safety net programs. The Powell memo is largely credited for the proliferation of conservative think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, and Federalist Society that would help shape the modern Republican party's narratives, policy, and federal judgeships.

While Powell's memo railed against policies that aided America's poor in getting back on their feet through it conveniently left out that corporate America had greatly benefited from large subsidies, tax breaks, and defense contracts from the government. Powell knew he’d need to win “a war of ideas” to get the majority of the public on their side. 

Nixon's media advisor and future founder of Fox News, Roger Ailes, understood that intimately. Outlined in his 1970s memo entitled, A Plan for Putting The GOP on TV News. Ailes asserted The GOP could easily win over one Conservative household at a time now that more people were watching television than any other form of communication. The reason Roger gave? “People are lazy. With television, you just sit, watch, listen, the thinking is done for you.”

The Right-Wing Simple Suppressive Goals 

The Modern Republican Party are the beneficiary of a long lineage of entrenched politicians and judges supporting white supremacist idealogy (e.g. the former southern Democratic Party). The GOP has had the financial support of Corporate America which early on invested in the messaging apparatuses of Conservative think tanks, and promulgated those ideas through media conglomerates, and elected-Republican politicians. The goals of the modern Republican Party are simple: weaponize white grievance through dog-whistle politics to protect Right-Wing entrenched power and the profits of donors (corporate America). To use a phrase coined by political theorist Amoja Three Rivers, “whiteness as a political alliance.” You didn’t have to be a wealthy white man to be a part of the Modern GOP, you could be poor and white, Black or a person of color, but you’re still in service of whiteness as a political alliance, and that alliance was in service of cruelty and wealthy white corporate elites. The Modern Republican playbook was now cemented, its infrastructure solidified, its goals clear and straightforward. 

The Modern Democratic Party's goals are not as simple, nor do they benefit from a singular narrative lineage. Today’s Democratic party was born the day Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 leading to a record number of Black registered voters. Buoyed by the new growing base, the modern Democratic party leaned into Civil Rights, but it still didn’t know how far. Democrats were in denial about “losing the South for a generation”. They still wanted to appeal to them and Northern white voters, so they also leaned into appeasing white voters, many times at the expense of Black Voters. The Modern Democratic Party wasn’t necessarily starting from scratch but it didn’t have the same trajectory of goals, built-in infrastructure, or messaging apparatus as the Modern Republican party. In the 1970s Black voters saw the GOP had mostly abandoned them, and the Democratic party still had not fully committed itself to being the party of Civil Rights. Black Voters, especially those who had worked on getting Civil Rights legislation passed, intimately understood the reality of our two-party plurality system and went to work on improving the Modern Democratic Party, its goals, and representation.

Representation, Inclusion, and the Cost to Run for Congress 

The current 117th Congress is the most diverse Congress we’ve ever had. Yet women still only make up a negligible portion at 27%. Congress is still overwhelmingly white 77%; cisgender male 73%; and Christian 88%. 

Historically these white Christian cisgender men mostly came from middle-class or upper-class backgrounds. They had the financial and family infrastructure that allowed them to run for office. They garnered media coverage that wasn’t laden with sexism or racism. They have the privilege of being taken seriously as candidates at the moment they launched their campaigns. 

Policy that would create equity definitely has not been the concern of the modern Republican party but hasn’t always been in the purview of policy priorities for the overwhelming amount of middle-aged white Christian Democratic men either. They mostly represented or centered their white constituents, and drafted legislation that prioritized them.

As representation within the modern Democratic policy grew just within the last 25 years, priorities and goals not only began to shift but come into focus. That is only because Black voters moved, in mass, into the party, Black Representatives and Representatives of Color were elected, many times, in spite of campaigns that lacked financial infrastructure. Legacy media rarely if ever recognizes that Black voters are the base and face of the growing multiracial and multicultural modern Democratic Party. 

White party leaders in the Modern Democratic also need to stop worrying about alienating white voters. It’s fear, based on fiction. The Modern Democratic party not only needs to embrace being the Civil Rights Party but also the “Curb Cut Party” and center the most vulnerable in legislative policy. 

White Democratic voters, for the most part, want and support the policies Black and POC legislators are introducing. Policies that aid abortion access, modernize SSI, universal pre-K, address Black women’s maternal mortality rate,  environmental racism, and policy that closes the gender, race, and sexuality pay gaps, have all been introduced in Congress mostly by Black and POC members.

After 1965 the modern Democratic Party didn’t have a cogent plan because it didn’t know where it was heading. It went from leaning into Civil Rights to becoming the Party of Civil Rights, not purposefully, but because of our two-party system, Black voters, voters of Color, Disabled voters, and LGBTQ+ voters, and the intersection of all made the Democratic party their home and demanded that. 

As much as we want Democrats to be slick communicators, like former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who neatly outlined his Contract for America, we should recognize a few things: Contract for America was codifying racism under the smoke screen of ‘ending corruption in the government. Newt might have had a House majority and a Republican Senate majority, but because there was a Democratic moderate president, Newt, and his House Republicans only got 3 out of 10 policy goals met, and of those three they were much lesser versions than what he wanted. This is why if Democrats want legislative policy goals met they must hold the presidency and have solid majorities in the House and Senate, enough to end or overcome a filibuster.

There must be recognition that civic participation begins at the ballot box, it does not end there. There is a myriad of ways to participate. We can run for one of the 500,000 elected offices in America. We can be on a local neighborhood board that allocates federal block grants. We can start and participate in Mutual Aid for our communities. We can call and write our representatives or schedule an appointment to meet with them or go to a town hall to listen and speak with them. We can even suggest a bill for our representative to introduce at the local, state, or federal level. We can go to Congress.gov and see what bills our representative has or has not introduced.  We can phone bank, door knock, or donate to a campaign. 

Campaigns are expensive. It cost an average of $2 million dollars to run and win a Congression campaign. It shouldn’t. It means a lot of people with a lot of great ideas who are from low-income backgrounds will have a much harder time running for office. It also means most of our incumbents spend most of their time raising money. This takes time away from constituent services and legislation. Yes, that’s why you get fundraising emails after mass shootings, and when Roe was overturned, it might feel craven, but it’s because those Democrats want to keep their seats in Congress and expand their majorities. It’s hard to plan legislation you want to pass or long-term goals without those majorities. Majorities that can end or reform the filibuster are essential, as is having enough votes to pass legislation into law. What to stop getting those annoying fundraising emails with such frequency? Get Democrats majorities so they can pass For The People Act and End Citizens United. This will get big money out of politics and those fundraising emails out of your inbox.

The modern Democratic party must become the united Democratic party and move forward with purpose and a plan that all of us understand. The Democratic party isn’t just those who are elected to Congress on the Democratic ticket, it’s also all of us who are registered, Democrats. We can’t just demand a plan, we have to participate in that plan. Representatives are elected to represent our interests but they still need to hear from us, regularly, by calling their office, not just angry tweets. We must let them know we support or do not support the legislation they’re introducing. Most importantly we need to understand what all three branches of our Federal government can and cannot do. Not everyone can be a federal policy expert, but I’ll give you some advice right now – not everything can be fixed with an executive order, and the president, thankfully, is not a monarch or a dictator. They’ve can’t fold their arms like Mussolini and get everything they want. Mussolini didn’t even get that and his head ended up on a pike. The government has procedures, laws, and protocols. There’s a myth that Trump got a lot of the legislation he wanted passed into law. That’s simply not true, and it’s because of the way our government functions. The most devastating thing Trump was able to do, was to get three Right-Wing Justices appointed to SCOTUS, and honestly, most of that was the work of the “Grim Reaper.” 

This is why elections matter.

We are just a few months away from midterms. I will implore all of you, whether you’re an abolitionist who would like to see the end of incarceration and policing or a progressive who wants to see student loan cancellation, or a moderate who wants to see more being done about inflation (actually I think we all care about that), then you’ll want to protect democracy. 

No matter what economic system you want, be it capitalism or socialism, our best option for that is under a democracy. We’ve already been declared a backsliding democracy, and with abortion access shattered and LGBTQ+ rights eroding, our democracy is crumbling into our oceans that are heating up due to the climate crisis.

This means we must recognize that the path forward is narrowing and so we must work together. First by keeping and expanding the House and Senate. Then with the votes in hand, demanding the 118th reform or end the filibuster and then pass the slate of policies Democrats have already introduced in the 117th Congress, that we’ll demand they reintroduce in the 118th Congress. 

This is the moment where we must form an alliance even if we perceive to want different outcomes. I believe we have more in common than not. We are up against entrenched white supremacy whose main goal is to protect it, no matter what the cost, be it violence or death to us and our democracy.