Sen. McMorrow did something essential for Democrats—called out Republicans' politics of distraction

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The most effective weapon Republicans currently have in the midterm messaging war isn’t individual terms such as “groomer,” or “pedophile,” or “cancel culture.” Nor is it the wave of legislation they are pushing through chambers across the country to supposedly “protect” parental rights from so-called “woke” liberal policies.

Rather, it’s the fact that they have trained GOP and conservative-leaning voters to think of everything Democrats do as a threat to their way of life. Supporting LGBTQ rights, supposedly sexualizing children, purportedly importing immigrants, infringing on personal freedoms with mask mandates—it’s all of a piece. It’s shorthand for Democrats being scary because they want to destroy everything you hold dear.

Democrats often call this out as examples of the GOP using dog whistles or fearmongering to convey their message. That’s true, and it is particularly compelling for the racist contingent of their base. But fearmongering isn’t actually the point in and of itself. Republicans’ real endgame is to get voters so incensed about change, about their loss of status or way of life, that they don’t actually pay attention to the real GOP agenda.

And what exactly are Republicans up to? They are making sure all of America’s financial spoils continue to accumulate at the top. Under Donald Trump, Republicans passed tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit wealthy individuals and corporations to this day. Now, they are promising to raise taxes on 100 million working families across America if they regain control of the Senate.

Yet, they have articulated no plans to help struggling Americans, bring down gas/food prices, lower health care costs, etc. None of it.

Instead, Republicans are just constantly jingling their culture-war keys, enraging their base, and hoping no one catches on to the trick.

Democrats need to start naming the trick. Moral outrage is good, and Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow channeled her righteous rage to great effect in her viral speech defending marginalized people. But moral outrage isn’t enough to lay the groundwork for November. Because even though liberals are sickened by GOP scapegoating of gay and transgender Americans, Black and brown Americans, undocumented immigrants, and others, not every voter—even some of the ones Democrats need this fall—is inherently outraged by it.

In short, moral outrage works with progressives but it lets Republicans off the hook with other voters who could prove critical to Democratic success at the ballot box.

If Democrats really want Republicans to pay at the polls for their reprehensible targeting of marginalized groups, they must take a page from the playbook of Sen. McMorrow. Yes, McMorrow took an impassioned stand against GOP hate, but she also very clearly named the trick Republicans are playing on voters.

“People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape after decades of disinvestment, or that health care costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession,” McMorrow explained, touching on several of voters’ key concerns.

“We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives,” she later added.

Go ahead and answer for that, Michigan Republicans. Why are the roads crap? Why are health care costs soaring? Why is there a teacher crisis? Why—particularly when Republicans have dominated control of the state legislature for the past 20 years.

Nationwide, Republicans are practicing the art of distraction, and they’ve created a shorthand for it that is one size fits all. It allows them to move seamlessly from outrage to outrage. Once “cancel culture” loses its edge, they can move to “pedophiles,” and then scrap that for “groomers” because it’s stickier.

So when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis takes on Disney and explains, “I’m just not comfortable having that type of agenda get special treatment in my state,” Republican voters know “that type of agenda” is coming for their way of life. And they are immediately riled about it.

In fact, that’s precisely why Republicans think they can do something as politically fraught as target Disney, which has spent nearly a century bringing joy to kids the world over. GOP voters don’t need to think critically about anything anymore—they merely react to the latest input.

If Democrats want to have any chance of competing with Republicans on equal footing in 2022 and 2024, they must offer voters a similar framework through which they can process the GOP’s endless stream of outrages.

That way, the next time swing voters hear about the latest Democratic outrage, they can stop and think, why are Republicans telling me this?

But it’s a process of repetition—it must become the automatic next question. Democrats have got to couple their indignation with an immediate question, “Why do you think Republicans are doing or saying such an outrageous thing?” And then they can tell voters why, which is really quite beautiful since Republicans haven’t had a fresh idea among them since the ‘80s.