The Case For Hard Truths Told Well

What do we suppose was going through Hakeem Jeffries’s mind when he agreed to meet in secret with Jared Kushner?

Here’s a theory that doesn’t posit any conspiracy theories not in evidence but does draw on recent history. It also matches Democratic Party temperament to a T.

Jeffries says he and Kushner met to “discuss the affordability crisis that exists, that is not a hoax.”

I don’t get the sense that many people find this version of events terribly satisfying. But even if you think it doesn’t wash, you don’t have to assume Jeffries is lying. Things can be true, and still be mostly bullshit.

At the very least, there’s no reason to believe anyone involved contemplated a great brainstorm of ideas, or thinks Jeffries and Trump will become Washington DC’s new Tip and Ronnie.

But it’s very easy to imagine that both Jeffries and Kushner see an upside in a future where Democrats win the House and at least stage negotiations over what they’d each describe as an “affordability agenda.”

To conjure it, you only have to remember as far back as eight years ago. When it became clear Democrats would win control of the House in the 2018 midterms, they changed affect to lower expectations. One day they were promising accountability, the next day Adam Schiff was publishing a New York Times column to head off calls for Trump’s impeachment.

Then, when Democrats took power, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi didn’t kick off the new Congress by rolling out a comprehensive oversight agenda. To the contrary, Pelosi reined in her chairmen, and set up a meeting with Trump to discuss helping him pass a $2 trillion infrastructure bill. They didn’t necessarily believe these negotiations would go anywhere—and of course they went nowhere. The point was to seem constructive, rather than hostile. Focused not on partisan conflict but on Working Families and their Kitchen-Table Concerns. If Trump scuttled the deal, so much the better. No legacy achievement for him, but the unflattering contrast with Democrats would speak for itself. They got exactly what they wanted, and established a political paradigm that has defined their party ever since.

Perhaps Kushner learned from that experience that Democrats can be lured off the scent of accountability with meaningless gestures that allow them to demonstrate that they’re “ready to govern.” And perhaps Jeffries’ willingness to take the meeting—and to keep it secret—suggests Democrats still think that’s a savvy approach.

Regular readers are well familiar with this pathology by now. With the party’s obsession with survey data, which misleads them into believing the public doesn’t care about corruption or the assault on democracy, only home economics. With the swaddling of frontline members, who have much less to worry about when Trump is unpopular, but fear the process of making him unpopular through confrontation, because they represent so many Trump voters.

These contributing factors create a predicament where leading Democrats do not believe they can respond to the emergency of hostile fascist rule with requisite vigor. Whether or not they believe the truth—that Trump, his family, and their inner circle are engaged in a conspiracy to weaken or destroy the country so they can more easily plunder it—they lack confidence that they can win an argument with the public on those terms.

A big majority of Americans disapproves of Trump, and the overwhelming majority of those Americans despise him. But the most reluctant converts—the people who’ve likely voted for him one or more times—won’t accept it. Or so Democratic leaders tell themselves. They can accept that the country faces challenges (affordability!) and that Trump hasn’t resolved them. They can accept he’s made some things worse. But they cannot accept that his reign is fundamentally aberrant—a humiliating failure; a fraud; a threat to our way of life.

There’s a reason Jon Ossoff’s incredibly promising campaign for reelection to the Senate stands out among all the others. It is the exception to this rule. The rule is that Democrats are poor avatars for any message that resembles tough love; that they are unqualified to prescribe strong medicine to the median voter. The rule is that telling swing voters the truth about Trump would be an affront—akin to, say, sending Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg into black communities to tell young men to hike up their pants.

Support Off Message

I don’t mean to suggest there’s nothing to this concern. It’s not always enough that a message be correct or defensible—it often matters how it’s delivered and by whom.

Consider the case of the left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who has now been condemned by approximately every Democratic officeholder in America, for—as Cory Booker put it—his “dangerous and hateful language… [s]uggesting that Jewish Americans bear responsibility for hatred or violence directed against them.”

Booker’s characterization, echoed by many other Democrats, is wrong. Not, as Piker would have it, because AIPAC and Democratic leaders conspired to smear him. But because his own mode of discourse is hostile to mutual comprehension—and politicians (particularly Democratic Party politicians) are inclined to take cover from controversy rather than embroil themselves in it. This has set off a recriminatory cycle: In misrepresenting Piker, in order to hold the center, they’ve encouraged his fans and people who agree with his point to dig in and seek more factional conflict.

But even a fair-minded characterization underscores the importance of calibrating rhetoric to be persuasive rather than inflammatory.

A transcript would unfortunately run thousands