A new book recently caught our attention: It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics by David Faris, an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University in Chicago. We weren’t aware that Democrats needed the advice of the title, having long taken an admittedly perverse pleasure in cataloguing Democratic dirtiness.
Some of our favorite moments: supporters of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend passing out Oreo cookies to mock black Republican candidate Michael Steele; Vermont governor Howard Dean suggesting it was an “interesting theory” that George W. Bush knew about the September 11 attacks before they happened; a pro-Obama television ad holding Mitt Romney responsible for the death of a man’s wife by cancer because the man lost his job after Bain Capital (which Romney didn’t work for at the time) restructured the man’s company.
Nonetheless we wondered if Faris might offer his fellow Dems some useful counsel. We got as far as page xix. What the author wants, he writes, “is not to institute single-party rule for the Democrats in perpetuity.” Golly, we’re glad to hear that! So what is the point? “It is to control the levers of power long enough to permanently alter the political trajectory of the country, to smash the current coalition of misfit Nazi toys, misogynist creeps, and rich nihilists and replace it with a sensible, center-right opposition capable of telling the difference between fake news produced by Macedonian troll farmers and actual facts about the world that we inhabit together.”
We never got to the part where Faris explains how Democrats can win more elections, but we wonder if he advises them to avoid sounding like arrogant jackasses.
It’s Time to Fight Dirty is published by Melville House and may be purchased for $24.99.
