How the Far Left Feeds the Republican Narrative

Orwell forecasted why Democrats are losing the middle-class and young voters

Editor’s note: Our Wrap proofreader is under the weather. This means we are even more prone than usual to typos, missing words, perilous punctuation, asinine alliteration, excessive self adulation and a myriad of other literary crimes and misdemeanors.

Not to mention more generally poor judgement, politically incorrect humor, unsubstantiated innuendo and compromised literary taste.

If that doesn’t whet your appetite, we don’t know what does.

“As with the Christian religion, the worst argument for Socialism is its adherents.”

- George Orwell

Orwell suggests how the far left undoes the mainstream left

The Wrap suggests how this in turn fuels current polls predicting Republican gains in the House and Senate in the upcoming midterm elections

In a Politico article today entitled, How Orwell Diagnosed Democrats’ Culture War Problem Decades Ago, Jeff Greenfield, a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author, turns to the same author we at the Wrap turned to in one of our earliest efforts to explain the divergent political narratives that currently divide our nation’s electorate.

In only our second Wrap, “Orwell Shows us How Bullies Win the Day,” we recount the chapter in Animal Farm called the “Battle of the Cowshed,” where that battle’s narrative of how the farmers were defeated by the animals got commandeered by wanna-be pig autocrats, Napolean and Squealer, and turned it against our one decent, pro-democracy pig, Snowball.

Greenfield looks to Orwell as we did, chiefly to suggest that Orwell back in 1936 may have foretold why the Democratic party today is losing so many of its traditional supporters, especially blue collar workers and young voters under 30. Black, Hispanic and Asian registered voters historically also lean Democratic, but that “lean” in the most recent Joe Biden approval polls is reduced to something more like a very slight, incremental tilt.

When you consider that non-white eligible voters accounted for more than three-quarters of total U.S. electorate growth since 2000, you’d think more would be swinging Joe’s way, right? Well yes, you would. But no. Not happening. Nuh uh. Strike that. Fuhgetaboutit.

With only a nudge and not a solid “lean” to the democratic party, the growth of demographic groups typically blue across the country is not translating into nearly as many votes as it should. This is why democrats are quite possibly losing both House and Senate majorities in the upcoming midterm elections.

Orwell’s problem with his era’s progressive left

Green recounts from Orwell’s 1936 book, The Road to Wigan Pier, that Orwell considered himself a socialist philosophically and politically, but he didn’t much care for the socialists he actually met who were advocating for socialism. Orwell cites “the early prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together.”

He continues:

“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw toward them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearing, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.”

Now, speaking as a fruit-juice drinker, occasional though not frequent nudist, sandal-wearing, quack pacifist, we take this to suggest that when it comes to a political philosophy, it’s not enough to have the right message. You also need the right messenger.

Do note we have left alone the “sex-maniac” allegation. We’ll neither deny nor confirm.

Crank history forward 85 years and we wonder if today’s “super progressives” on the left side of the left wing of the democratic party may in some manner resemble the “cranks” Orwell observed among the ranks of the 1930’s socialist movement. Figuratively, if not literally.

Cranks to the left of us, more cranks to the right - here we are stuck in the middle with you

Read any of the Trumpian, alt-right or even mainstream Republican memes out there and you will come to appreciate how this now very dominant wing of the Republican party is successfully demonizing the likes of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. We could throw in Independent New Hampshire Sen. Bernie Sanders just for fun.

And please admit it, Wrap-ees, we beg you. Bernie excites, but he is more than a tad “cranky.”

The point is that super progressives get painted by a very disingenuous Republican broad brush as representative of ALL democrats, regardless of how different the political agendas of mainstream democrats are from the super progressives. A vote for Joe (according to Republican operatives) is a vote for Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie. It’s a vote for socialized medicine, a vote for the “nanny state” that tells you when to vaccinate, what your children should and shouldn’t learn in school and what new social programs your tax dollars should be allocated for.

The super progressives do indeed maintain that most of the Democratic Party is too centrist and too cautious. Hence they push for very liberal policies on economics like single-payer-Medicare for all, student debt forgiveness, extension of unemployment benefits and child tax credits.

But unlike the majority of elected Democratic party officials, they also push for very liberal stands on issues around identity and race, and for things like abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which has never been vetted by the Democratic National Committee.

When you paint the majority of democrats as supporting a tiny block of left-most democrats, you begin to sow fear - especially in white Americans across the south and Central Plains. Buy into that narrative and a vote for Joe Biden is really a vote for defunding the police. It’s a vote against Christian values. It’s a vote against the government takeover of damn near everything.

And maybe, suddenly, some of the ideas of the far right don’t sound so wacky.

Blue collar dude: “Hey what is this ‘Critical Race Theory?’ You can’t be teaching my kids to feel bad about their whiteness just because of slavery, discrimination, John Crow or separate but equal desegregation of our past. And how dare you (government) say tax dollars can only go for public schools, and not for the religious school of my choice, where the proper 7-day creation of the world is properly instructed!”

Sen. Rick Scott’s 11-Point Plan to Rescue America

Inflicting pain by painting with broad stroke is the yellow journalist’s stock and trade. The technique fuels what’s shared by InfoWars, Breitbart, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and the rest of that creed. The point is, from where does the right wing of the right wing of the Republican Party find it’s broad brush?

From the far left, of course.

We close today’s admittedly less funny Wrap with a look at Florida Senator Rick Scott’s “11-Point Plan to Rescue America.” It represents what far-right principles would look like should Americans buy into the fears being stirred up regarding the Super Progressive policy platform.

This version of the “11 points” happens to include a few well-considered snide and snarky comments added by Orlando Weekly contributor Jeffrey Billman, who summarizes the platform as “a manifesto that mixes Newt Gingrich’s kick-the-poor ’90s with Trumpian authoritarianism, white Christian nationalism, overt attacks on voting rights, economic and constitutional illiteracy and a Mack truck full of gaslighting.”

Check out what this manifesto suggests:  

• Turn schools into patriotism factories where kids are forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance and teachers can get fired for making white children uncomfortable (i.e., “critical race theory”). Then again, none of that will matter after they close the Department of Education and implement a voucher program that ghettoizes public schools and routes billions of tax dollars to unregulated religious institutions.

• End diversity training “or any woke ideological indoctrination” in the military cut off funding for universities that try to diversify their student bodies, and proclaim as a point of fact that the nation is colorblind (because the last 400 years never happened).

• Impose more draconian sentences for violent and nonviolent crimes, and expand qualified immunity so that cops can even more easily abuse their authority with impunity. Blue lives matter, etc.

• “We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.”

• Give the president a line-item veto (not only unconstitutional, but also would render Congress irrelevant), prohibit debt ceiling increases (calamitous), tax poor and retired people (everyone should have “skin in the game”) and whatever “Socialism will be treated as a foreign combatant” means.

• Enact term limits for members of Congress and civil servants (unconstitutional and will empower lobbyists), move government agencies out of Washington and “into the real world” (expensive), and cut IRS funding in half (presumably so Scott’s pals can get away with tax fraud).

• Ban same-day and automatic voter registration (because fraud, or whatever), unmanned collection boxes and public campaign financing (“No serious person would ever favor this,” says the billionaire), and don’t count absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day. But voter ID will be mandatory, of course.

• Ban abortion, ban porn, give tax breaks to “nuclear families” and allow faith-based groups to discriminate against whomever they like.

• Ban doctors from treating trans children and ban trans men from women’s sports because God says trans people aren’t real. Also, “no government forms will include questions about ‘gender identity’ or ‘sexual preference.’”

• Ban Facebook and Twitter from banning users for hate speech or spreading misinformation (unconstitutional), “reject both the roots and the adherents of cancel culture in America,” and “stop investing federal retirement dollars with ‘woke’ fund managers and companies that put left-wing politics ahead of profits” (‘woke’ means clean energy, we presume).

• Stop participating in peacekeeping missions, end imports from China (only $435 billion a year), “take climate change seriously but not hysterically” (i.e., do nothing) and “treat our enemies like enemies.”

That’s your Wrap.