Don't make a deal

Not losing is a no-win situation

You never really know if these things are true, but there are categories for the ones you’re not sure about. If you’re fairly sure they could be but don’t know if they are, they might be apocryphal. If you have no knowledge of their accuracy but you know they just couldn’t be true, they might be bullshit.

The story was that somebody had asked the mayor of Richmond, a black minister opposed to same-sex marriage, to re-state his support for Barack Obama’s reelection despite their differences on the issue. “Somebody had asked” is what grammarians call passive construction, which means you don’t have an answer to the age-old political deal-making question, “Who’s asking?”

Because deal-making has a bad rap, the process is now called coalition-building by the same sort of language mavens who gave us “Latinx” and “transphobic.” (Latino, a word that describes 750 million or so people, is not inclusive enough.) Coalition-building under whatever name is essential to the Democratic Party because the party has for most of our lifetimes been a coalition. Unions, minorities, women, educators, educated. Not every member of each group, but certainly those who define themselves by their group or who vote based on what they perceive as the needs of the group.

But there’s an old story about a Baptist preacher who went around to visit a family he hadn’t seen on Sunday morning. Turns out they were on hard times, and felt like they didn’t have good clothes to wear to church. So the preacher arranged to buy them some clothes and they returned to church looking spiffy. A month later they disappeared again, and the preacher went to see them again. The father hemmed and hawed and finally admitted, “We looked so good in our new clothes, we decided to start going to the Methodist church.”

The fun thing about religious jokes is you can retell them citing whatever denomination you like. The Methodist looks so good, they go to the Episcopal church. Rinse and repeat.

That’s the story of the modern Democratic Party. The G.I. Bill created a new middle class and support for unions helped make it stronger. So all the union members went over to the Republican Party because that’s where the middle class went, and besides Reagan looked really cool on “Death Valley Days.” They didn’t come back when he started union-busting. Blacks and Latinos are starting to do better, so some are moving to the Republican Party. Never mind the immigration crackdowns and gutting voting rights. Those only apply to poor people.

Rinse and repeat. The party has a base. Pure black coffee. Pour it in the cup and drink it.

The Democratic Party needs sugar and creamer, and its leaders and communicators often forget how many people still take their Folger’s black, unless Maxwell House is on sale. Keep your latte, please. But to strain the metaphor a little, consider the leaf that an experienced barista can draw with the crema. There’s a metal template now that you can use to pour the whipped milk through. It’s no longer done to show customer appreciation and enjoy shared art. It’s done to sell coffee. Water lilies as paint-by-numbers. Money trumps Monet.

If you forget why you’re doing something, it’s easier to forget how. If you forget how to do something, if you’re just going through the motions with a template and diagram of how the last guy did it, you forget why you’re doing it.

The Bill Clinton template or the Barack Obama template fails if you don’t understand why they were coalition-building and how they were doing it.

Ease up on that issue because we can’t lose the gays. Ease up on that issue because we can’t lose the pro-choice people. Ease up on that issue because we can’t lose the academics. Or don’t ease up but let the group in question know why the party has to focus on issues besides theirs. Deal-making. Patience. Compromise.

If you can’t lose anybody, you can’t win.