THIS WEEK INSIDE THE BIG TENT:

Now that we agree all ultra-MAGA Republicans are semi-fascist (ok, now that 58 percent of Americans, including a quarter of Republicans, believe Trump and the MAGA movement are an existential threat to American democracy) we turn to the question of how to ostracize them from American politics—in the midterm elections and beyond.

I have specific ideas for different actors across the Democratic firmament, but generally speaking my intuition (and theirs, I hope) is: Don’t let up. 

My main fear since President Biden’s speech in Philadelphia last week has been that Democrats will respond to a tut-tutting media establishment by deciding this confrontation was a misbegotten exercise, and retreat to the safety of conventional ideas that weren’t working. That the lasers shooting out of Dark Brandon’s eyes will dim, until they are invisible.

This poll should be all the evidence they need that they (more than cable-news hosts and focus-group attendees) are great arbiters of how the public will perceive things. Just as impeaching Donald Trump was a losing proposition (reflecting Democratic Party irresolution) until the moment Dem leaders announced his pending impeachment, so too is the public perception of Republican fascism deeply tied to how unflinching Biden and other party elites are when warning of the threat to America. 

Here’s something I don’t know for sure, but believe is true: Ask focus groups for their views on fascism, they will generally answer how you’d hope they’d answer—fascism is abhorrent, dangerous, un-American, etc etc. Ask focus groups to choose between various political appeals, including one in which Democrats say ultra-MAGA Republicans are semi-fascists, the general preference will be for gentler messages (reflecting common human distaste for conflict). Recite for them various antics—threatening the lives of judges, law-enforcement officers, and election officials; trying to steal elections; fomenting insurrection—and ask them which are reminiscent of fascism, and they’ll answer correctly almost every time. 

Democratic strategists tend to be obsessed with the middle phenomenon, but it's the bookends that ought to drive Democratic politics now. They have the goods on the GOP, the GOP’s defining endeavors in 2022 are fascistic, so let it be known, and people will sort themselves between good and evil. The fact that, deep down, most people wish politics could be a kinder sport is irrelevant.

A similar dynamic afflicts the traditional media, and Democrats shouldn’t be cowed by it. The multi-day fainting-couch routine we've witnessed doesn't reflect anything organic bubbling up from the public; it’s a reflection of events that have forced media figures into a situation they aren’t familiar or comfortable with. They are reacting the way they think they’re supposed to react to maintain “neutral” bona fides—by policing norms and obsessing over how it’ll affect the horserace; by neither validating or invalidating the critique. That’s not to say their reaction is unimportant, if it persists unanswered or successfully drives Democrats into retreat, the idea that Democrats overplayed some ill-defined “hand” will crystalize into public opinion. As we learned during the Trump presidency, the best way to normalize the critique, to get journalists to accept that it is just part of our discourse now, is to just plow ahead with it, over their sniffing, until it no longer seems extraordinary even to them.

In practice, this means different things for different Democrats, with different roles in the political system. But all of them should want GOP extremism and criminality to remain the thematic center of politics at least between now and the election.

You know who doesn’t want Trump and his fascist m.o. to dominate headlines? Mitch McConnell is who. Asked for the first time on Capitol Hill this week about the propriety of Trump stealing scores of classified documents, McConnell got people’s hackles up by refusing to comment, as if Trump were some nobody rather than the leader of McConnell’s party. But he didn’t just say, “no comment.” What he said was, “I don’t really have any comment on this whole investigation that’s been dominating the news for the last month.” 

Seems like he wishes the news were about other things! Speaking only for myself, I do not believe we should oblige him.

Fortunately keeping MAGA in the news should be pretty easy, and Dems already have some good things planned. Among the lowest-hanging fruit:

• The House January 6 committee will reconvene with new hearings this month.
   
• Likewise, DOJ’s insurrection investigations continue to generate stories as high-level Trump-world witnesses testify to grand juries and talk to the press.
   
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised a vote on legislation to codify same-sex marriage, to the dismay of MAGA incumbents like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).
   
• A bipartisan group of senators has reportedly rounded up enough votes to reform the Electoral Count Act, to shore up the transfer of power process against certain MAGA threats.    

That’s all good stuff; It’s even better against a continuing drumbeat of warnings about fascism! Knowing Republicans as I do, there’s a good chance they’ll stage a hissy fit about Biden’s new rhetoric, and hold any further legislation like ECA reform hostage to bad-faith demands for civility. Democrats shouldn’t respond to these threats or ref-working plays by softening their criticisms; they should let Republicans decide whether they want to validate Biden’s warnings by filibustering anti-insurrection legislation just ahead of the midterms. 

As to the stolen documents scandal specifically, Democrats will have to think outside the box if they want to control the way voters perceive it and keep it at the front of their minds. Trump has managed to exploit aspects of the criminal investigation for his personal benefit (fundraising, base-consolidation in the GOP primary). But he’s also drawn the entire GOP into his defense against a horrific scandal, and Democrats should thus do whatever they can to deepen GOP complicity in an enormous national-security corruption scandal, and hasten the moment when full truth is revealed. 

For all his bravado, Trump clearly knows he’s in trouble; if he thought the full truth would vindicate him, he’d simply come out with it. Instead, he shopped around for a judge who might throw a wrench in the criminal investigation, and found Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed hack who didn’t just slow things down for him; she issued an order effectively forbidding the Justice Department from continuing its investigation.

DOJ has announced its intent to appeal, which is perfectly appropriate, but both Biden administration officials and elected Dems should think of novel ways to put the screws to Cannon, to make her and Trump regret their egregious corruption. For Dems in Congress, one option would be to initiate impeachment proceedings against her, or at least haul her up to the Hill to testify about her abuse of power. She has shown contempt for the separation of powers, and should thus not be allowed to rely on the separation of powers to insulate her from scrutiny. Ask her basic questions about national security and the procedures DOJ uses in cases like these. Ask her if there has been any ex parte communication between her patron, Donald Trump (or anyone in Trump’s orbit) and herself (or anyone on her staff). Remind her that she’s under oath.

For Merrick Garland, the imperative should be to leapfrog Cannon’s illegitimate order by securing an indictment as quickly as possible. For all of DOJ’s more recent liveliness, Garland’s original sin remains his initial inclination to sweep as much Trump Stuff as possible under the rug, let statutes of limitations on Trump’s crimes begin to lapse, let state-level prosecutors take the lead on plain-as-day federal offenses like Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger. Those were wasted opportunities; they also wasted time. I’m not sure Garland and the rest of DOJ leadership combined could’ve imagined a federal judge, even a Trump appointee, essentially ordering the department to freeze a Trump investigation in amber. But if they didn’t know Trump would shop for his own MAGA judges who would pump the brakes on their work, they should find new jobs. Presumably they did anticipate some shenanigans, though, and they should be prepared to respond to those shenanigans by changing facts on the ground. 

That means indicting Trump as soon as possible, even in October if necessary. They should ignore the unwritten DOJ rule against taking overt investigative steps that might affect specific races in the 60-days before the election. Trump isn’t a candidate anyhow, and if Republicans complain, too bad. “We’ve covered ourselves in the persona of a criminal, and now consequences for him rub off on us” is very much Your Problem not Our Problem.

The point of all these ideas is less to vanquish ultra-MAGA semi-fascists once and for all than to make them an anchor around the necks of Republicans in this election; to keep memories sharp so attention doesn’t drift to other, less-existential stakes. 

In the new year, if Democrats can lock down their majorities, there will be time to think through how to drive MAGA out of power more permanently. Even if Trump goes to prison (big if!) America will still be in trouble with judges like Aileen Cannon on the bench and imitators like Ron DeSantis eager to promote them to the stolen Supreme Court. That's a problem that can and should be fixed.

But until then, repetition and agenda-setting will have to suffice. 

Biden’s invocation of the F-word has kicked off a debate over whether the term itself is meaningful and emotionally resonant enough to mobilize voters on its own, or whether voters need Democrats to connect rising fascism in the GOP to their material interests. 

My suspicion is that a big majority of Americans think fascism is quite bad enough, and don’t need to be reminded that fascists squelch liberty, civic life, rule of law, and economic prosperity; if they can be made to understand that Trump and his loyalists are fascists in control of the GOP, that will do most of the work on its own. 

But my driving concern is for Dems to be creative about finding any way to hold this damning truth about the GOP aloft. If that means racing to the cameras every time Trump calls for the 2020 election to be overturned, or one of his redhats threatens to blow up courthouse, so be it. If a more material opportunity arises, seize it. 

For instance: Thanks to GOP neglect, the citizens of Jackson, MS, have struggled without potable water since late August, and will probably not be able to trust their water supply again without completely overhauling the system, with a big assist from the feds. Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS) asked Biden to declare a state of emergency, and Biden rightly obliged. 

But Biden could also have made a big public point of reminding the country how this worked under his predecessor, who would attack states that didn’t vote for him, threaten to withhold federal aid to out-party governors, and extort them for political favors. There's your materiality right there: MAGA fascism means abusing Americans—including Trump-loving Americans—when natural or man-made disasters strike, based purely on the political leanings of their states, and it’s repugnant, and should never happen again.

A similar opportunity arose when Trump boasted that GOP gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl would rule Massachusetts “with an iron fist.” Likewise, when a Trump-led MAGA rally made a martyr out of a Hitler-loving Nazi who was arrested for his role in the insurrection. Yet more when Republicans start pretending to care about caravans again in October. If Democrats are creative and determined they will find opportunities to illustrate the threat the country faces daily until the election. At that point, it’ll be up to voters, but unlike in many recent elections they’ll will know what the real stakes are, what they’re voting for, and what they’re voting against.