But the Democratic leadership understands that this unspoken agenda is unpalatable to the rest of the country. Swing voters may long for institutional checks against Trump, but they are leery of impeachment. Suburbanites may be annoyed by the president's tweets, but they still believe that both sides should "put aside their differences" and "get something done." The Times notices that many of the Democrats running in Republican-held districts "rarely mention the president by name." What these candidates understand is that explicitly making the 2018 election about Trump—which it certainly is—risks motivating Trump supporters to rally to his defense.
Better to keep quiet, have Trump loom in the background, and adapt to local circumstances as much as possible. Or as Nancy Pelosi put it recently, "Do whatever you have to do, just win."
Now, concealing the agenda of obstruction, investigation, and impeachment is one way to address the problem of an anxious middle. But it also creates another problem: Without cohesion, discipline, and guidance from above, the loudest and most extreme figures and ideas are free to capture the public's attention. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer can talk about insurance premiums until they are blue in the face, but the headlines and cable channels will be filled instead with mentions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, Andrew "Never That Great" Cuomo, Elizabeth "Racist From Front to Back" Warren, Cynthia "Let's Just Be Socialists" Nixon, and campaigns to abolish ICE, line items of $32.6 trillion for single-payer health care, and other vagaries of democratic socialism.
Generic candidates may win either the House or both the House and Senate for the Democrats. In so doing, however, they would bring into office radicals empowered by the election returns and unaccountable to party authority. And so a Democratic victory soon would be followed by Democratic infighting. There would be a battle over the future of Pelosi, a squabble over committee assignments, a clash over which single-payer health bill is brought to the floor. All of these struggles would distract from and potentially inhibit the larger campaign against Trump.
https://freebeacon.com/columns/agenda-dare-not-speak-name/
Better to keep quiet, have Trump loom in the background, and adapt to local circumstances as much as possible. Or as Nancy Pelosi put it recently, "Do whatever you have to do, just win."
Now, concealing the agenda of obstruction, investigation, and impeachment is one way to address the problem of an anxious middle. But it also creates another problem: Without cohesion, discipline, and guidance from above, the loudest and most extreme figures and ideas are free to capture the public's attention. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer can talk about insurance premiums until they are blue in the face, but the headlines and cable channels will be filled instead with mentions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, Andrew "Never That Great" Cuomo, Elizabeth "Racist From Front to Back" Warren, Cynthia "Let's Just Be Socialists" Nixon, and campaigns to abolish ICE, line items of $32.6 trillion for single-payer health care, and other vagaries of democratic socialism.
Generic candidates may win either the House or both the House and Senate for the Democrats. In so doing, however, they would bring into office radicals empowered by the election returns and unaccountable to party authority. And so a Democratic victory soon would be followed by Democratic infighting. There would be a battle over the future of Pelosi, a squabble over committee assignments, a clash over which single-payer health bill is brought to the floor. All of these struggles would distract from and potentially inhibit the larger campaign against Trump.
https://freebeacon.com/columns/agenda-dare-not-speak-name/