Listen to Michelle Obama

I wish I had written this one. Brilliant. An answer key for how to win the midterms. And, honestly, winning the House at midterms is all that matters politically right now. Brilliant.

I love Samantha Bee. But the party and our candidates cannot “chosen cheap theatrics over the long game, catharsis over cunning.” We do need to mobilize our base, but when we confuse “raising our fist” with “raising a white flag” we feel better on the road to losing yet again.

Following this editorial, we need to be the party of ‘maturity, pragmatism and plain old smarts.’ Our default needs to be modelling being the adult in the room, enacting a calm but tough voice for families and jobs and decency. 

“When you answer name-calling with name-calling and tantrums with tantrums, you’re not resisting him. You’re mirroring him. You’re not diminishing him. You’re demeaning yourselves. Many voters don’t hear your arguments or the facts, which are on your side. They just wince at the din.”

Yes, our Facebook friends cheer, but our responsibility is to speak in ways that make sense to average families…not our own private choir. When we let mobilizing our base become all we do, we “permit them to see us as we see Trump: deranged. Why would any voter choose a different path if it goes to another ugly destination?”

We have already seen some success and I applaud the party (and Sam Bee for mobilizing our base) for focusing on winning.

“Many Democrats voters get it, choosing House candidates whose appeals were tempered and whose profiles make them formidable general-election contenders. They’re the best bets for wooing less fiercely partisan voters and snatching seats currently in Republican hands.”

These candidates strike fear in the hearts of Trump and his basket of enablers.

We cannot get “bogged down in impeachment talk, which can sound to many voters like a promise of ceaseless partisan rancor and never-ending Washington paralysis.” Stop frothing at the mouth about Trump and stop comparing Trump to Hitler, because that only works in our own private echo chamber.

“I’m not urging complacency. But when you invoke the darkest historical analogies, you lose many of the very Americans you’re trying to win over. What you’re saying isn’t what they’re seeing. It’s overreach in their eyes.”

We need average Americans to step up, and I am confident they will. But we also need to help create conditions that make that easier, not harder.

“The more noise, the less discernment. The more fury, the less focus.”

As one of our most important leaders said… “When they go low, we go high,” said Michelle Obama. Let’s heed her call.