MCCANDLESS, Pa. — Every Wednesday of late a handful of people, sometimes more, stands along the wall of 6000 Babcock Blvd. squarely in front of Pretty’s Beauty Salon and the office of Republican congressman Keith Rothfus.
They carry signs ranging from “Restore Humanity“ to “Kids in Cages is Child Abuse” to “Trump will destroy America we will triumph OVER YOU,” encouraging motorists and shoppers heading to the mall directly behind them to share their ire.
They are part of an independent grass-roots organization not affiliated with the Democratic Party, one of many that has sprung up across the country and which feed off the daily agitations from either news organizations or social media.
Their motivation? Get Republicans out of office. Their oxygen? Indignation.
“In American politics, rage works,” says Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist working on races in Pennsylvania.
And for Democrats it is the central strategy to keep their base highly agitated all the way into November.
“The more outrage you manufacture the more you turn out your base,” explained Mike Mikus. “And the thing right now good, bad, or indifferent — both parties are all about turning out their base.”
Mikus points to Trump doing it, as well. “He has no message to expand voters. It’s all about getting his people out,” he explained.
Since the day Trump won the presidential election in 2016, the dial has been set at 11 every day on every single thing he says, does, or does not do. Same for every member of his family, same for every member of congress who supported him, same for all of his Cabinet picks.
And even the same for anyone who voted for him.
It’s gotten to the point where members of his administration are refused service or mobbed when they try to have a break from public service either at home or heading to a restaurant with their families. Many people have applauded that type of in-your-face activism, including Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post blogger. Rubin said that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee “has no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press — after inciting against the press. These people should be made uncomfortable, and I think that’s a life sentence, frankly.”
This rage is getting the Democratic base excited, as Mikus predicts. They tweet it, they place videos of this on their Facebook pages, but they have also turned out to vote in primaries and special elections in record numbers, underscoring the point that Democratic strategists will run with rage in ads and on social media and make sure their trackers catch any misstep or dangling participle they can exploit to outrage proportions on their Republican opponents or challengers.
“I think sustaining that agitation can be a quite successful this year for the Democrats, and they are doing everything they can to maintain that energy. Honestly, rage has been an organizing principle for some time now on both sides,” he said.
But that organizing principle has gone too far.
Why? Because it doesn’t stop with an opposing political candidate. It is not enough to try to destroy their lives. Now people are targeted who work on a staff or in an administration, on their campaigns, or even private citizens who happen to support an opposing candidate.
Their campaign trackers aren’t just looking for the candidate to mess up, they are looking for oddities in their volunteers, their staff, their events. It’s now OK to harass them, just ask Rubin or the thousands of people who liked her position on social media or the thousands of people who hold her views.
Mikus correctly explains that pushing agitation has been the permanent part of American politics since Karl Rove designed it in 2004. Since then, with the exception of the first election of Barack Obama, every presidential and midterm election has been designed to stick a fire under the base to make sure they run towards the voting booth.
But this year feels different. The rallying cry has gone from lets agitate the base with some raw meat to lets dig into the raw sewer by trying to destroy their lives for holding different values than we do.
Last week when Judge Brett Kavanaugh was announced as President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, predictably the Democratic rage machine was ready to go against him and conservatives, sometimes hilariously. For instance, the Women’s March organizers put out a statement condemning Trump’s nominee with a silly but telling error — a picture of a different federal judge — revealing what everyone already knew, Democrats planned to blindly oppose anyone who Trump nominated.
But in a twist of fate, Democrats were also ready to go against each other: Brian Fallon, Hillary Clinton’s former presidential campaign press secretary, launched a new group called Demand Justice, with the intention to drop a $5 million ad campaign “demanding” that red-state Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana oppose Kavanaugh, or else.
You get the picture: Even if you are a Democrat, if you are not loyal to your party’s preferences, rather than the sentiments of your constituents, you’ve got a little political hell to pay until you bend.
So Democrats agitate their base and target the personal lives of Trump’s allies. That, in turn, agitates Trump, who, in turn, agitates his base. Everyone looks like an angry base voter.
You have to wonder where do the independents go in 2018? Typically they are the ones who swing midterm elections. They did for the Democrats who ran and won in 2006, and they did for Republicans who ran and won in 2010 and 2014.
With a campaign of 100 percent rage, it seems Democrats this year are counting on winning by driving independents to stay home. They need the summer of rage to become the autumn of rage and burn until until Election Day.
