Republicans Happily Watch Democrats Destroy Themselves

A couple of recent studies by experts who examine what makes us Americans tick politically have found that conservatives are happier than liberals. My response, why shouldn’t they be?

More than a century ago, Ambrose Bierce was moved in his classic “Devil’s Dictionary” to define the conservative as, “A statesman who is enamored of existing evils as distinguished from the liberal who wishes to replace them with others.”

That well describes the Democrats’ current fix as polls show President Joe Biden slipping badly.

Even among Black voters, polls from the Pew Research Center, Quinnipiac University and Morning Consult all found Biden’s approval rating slipping into the low 70s or 60s, which is weak for any Democrat in these times.

It is not obvious why his ratings among Black voters have fallen so far, although some researchers say it could be part of a backlash against vaccine mandates and a steeper decline in Biden’s ratings among unvaccinated Black voters.

Fortunately for our public health, at least, a late-September survey by Kaiser Family Foundation found the racial-ethnic vaccination gap to be closing, with 70% of black adults, 73% of Hispanic adults and 71% of white adults having received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

But Black voters also have been widely disappointed with the inability of Democrats to stop the Grand Old Party’s lawmakers from undercutting voting rights in what Biden himself has called a “21st-century Jim Crow assault” and “the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”

A compromise Freedom to Vote Act that would have expanded vote by mail, made Election Day a holiday and established automatic voter registration failed even to come to a vote because of solid Republican resistance.

Most of the president’s news lately seems not to be much better.

Among Democrats, the hope has been a recovery in approval ratings on the heels of Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda of economic and infrastructure benefits. But it already is being trimmed back in Senate negotiations, with Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the two centrist Democrats pushing for cuts that have not pleased the party’s progressive wing.

Republicans, to paraphrase Machiavelli, don’t need to interfere while their opponents are so busily destroying themselves.

Democrats have been arguing about policy proposals that could make pre-K universal, lower the cost of child care, expand Medicare, create the nation’s first paid family and medical leave program and help the nation brace for the effects of climate change. In the meantime, Republicans have been able to sit back like Bierce’s caricature and complain about how the Democratic proposals cost too much money.

Never mind deficit’s growth by more than a trillion dollars under President Donald Trump.

Instead, Republican campaigns for the midterms and beyond have increasingly focused on cultural issues that excite the party’s base and more than a few swing voters with cultural issues, particularly “critical race theory” and supposed voter fraud that repeatedly proves to be nonexistent.

So is “critical race theory” in public schools, but that hasn’t stopped red state politicians from using the term to condemn just about any discussion of the nation’s fraught history with race and racism as unacceptably divisive.

What are embattled Democrats to do? First they need to recognize that there is a battle going on, whether they want to fight it at this time or not.

But I’m not surprised to hear sounds of disappointment, confusion and simple exhaustion coming from many Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents. They don’t have candidate Trump to kick around anymore — and unify them in their opposition.

For all the tense and passionate debates that have surrounded Biden’s agenda, how many Americans of either party know what’s in the legislation? As Democrats should have learned from their prolonged battle to pass the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, all the benefits of BBB have been poll-tested as popular among voters. But first, they have to know that’s what’s in the bill.

You have to say this for Trump — and I don’t say much for him — the man is an expert salesman. In civilian and political life he knows how to boil complex issues down into simple slogans that kick up your pulse rate, one way or another.

Whether we’re talking about BBB or ACA or a host of other current issues, the most important initials for a successful sales job, political or civilian, are the ones an old journalism teacher drilled into our brains: KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Or make Republicans even happier.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)