Shaving the margins

Created
Fri, 06/10/2023 - 01:30
Updated
Fri, 06/10/2023 - 01:30
Did Lincoln lose his soul or save a nation? And you don’t need to win over 100 percent of the people on the other side or on any side. In a democracy, what you need is a majority. — NPR’s Steve Inskeep to Anand Giridharadas at The.Ink Aggressive gerrymandering by GOP-led legislatures means in many places it takes much more than a simple majority to win power. Otherwise, Inskeep is correct. What Democrats must do in such places is shave the other side’s vote margins. That’s doable. Non-Democrats are not monolithic, nor are Trump supporters, as John Russell of The Holler found in Erie, Pennnsylvania. Democrats campaigning conservatively by avoiding all contact with such voters won’t cut it. Nor will giving potential allies the side-eye when they move in our direction. The left is too liberal with sticks and way too stingy with carrots. Inskeep (“Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America“) makes a case for political frenemies in conversation with Giridharadas: I don’t know if you’ve read Frank Foer’s new book on the Biden presidency. It’s called The Last Politician, and it struck me that, on a completely different topic, it was presenting this idea that’s kind of similar to yours. The idea is that Biden, in Foer’s telling, is someone whose gift is this now despised art of politics, of making deals, of talking to people you don’t like, of being able to hold your nose with ugly compromises. And that idea has gotten demeaned in our time.…