I was thinking about how two alderman won their seats in Branson in a landslide, with 21 % of the voters participating. Is that a landslide of voters or of the few indignant?

Then I read about Michigan Senator Marjory McMorrow taking it to another Michigan Senator, Lana Theis, for calling her a sexual “groomer” of children, because she spoke out against Florida legislation controlling the gender content of the elementary curriculum.  McMorrow had also argued against the alleged “critical race theory” applied to public school curricula.

the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining, or systematic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense.

There you have the stakes of the 2022 midterms: voter participation and hate speech. For many Republicans the plan is to motivate independent voters to go out and vote for them by making them angry about alleged policies they attempt to pin on Democrats. That is certainly what Senator Theis was up to in Michigan.

What will it take to get independents to go out and vote for any candidate that supports the autonomy of teachers and public health administrators, an issue that brought the anti-maskers out in Branson?  The issue in Branson went beyond mask-wearing to the belief that the aldermen were not listening to the citizens. True or false? Those were the stakes in Branson. MO.

Perception is reality in elections from the vote for aldermen to Congressional representatives.  If you are running for local or national office how do you get attention of voters and launch them out of their seats to the polls in November?   Do you have to lie louder than your opponent? Do you have to slander or malign candidates from the other side?  Is anger the only motive to vote?

As we have been endlessly lectured, politics is local.  That is why Republicans have been stirring the gender and race pot in local schools. That is why Senator McMorrow’s head-on defense of the entire history of race makes sense. She calls out the claim that filling in the gaps of racial history makes white children feel bad, describing it as “absolute nonsense.” That is pure indignation rather than hate speech.

Do voters care about the war in the Ukraine? Sure, but not enough to get out and vote about it. Do they care about voting rights? Sure, but not unless their district just got squeezed out by gerrymandering.  Do they care about drilling in formerly protected lands? Not so much, but if there has been an oil spill in their county, they will get up and vote for better protection of private property.

Clearly the Republican Party has always understood what the bread and butter issues are. Their misleading campaign about “critical race theory” has blanketed the nation, without any but a muted response from Democrats. Senator McMorrow is the first one to make national headlines by arguing that “slavery or redlining or systematic racism” was not critical race theory.  Why are we not learning how the Tulsa riots of 1918 crushed Black business or how White Supremacy extended to a White House viewing and commendation of the racist film “Birth of a Nation” in 1915?  How the Ku Klux Klan dominated the state legislatures of Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma and Oregon in this same period of time?  History books have neglected stories that reflect poorly on our society. The only shame is that we continue to censor those stories by calling them “critical race theory.”

That is one issue that dominates local politics. Another is gun safety, which affects every district that has suffered too many killings by gangs or terrorists. Are there any that have not been affected?  Are we going to accept “defund the police” as the only cause of mass killings? Didn’t we have terrorism before the call for “defunding the police” and long after the assault of 2001? Can we explain it purely by blaming people we don’t like?

What about the absurd number of guns circulating around this country? What about Universal Background checks of owners of firearms?

What are “Universal Background checks”? According to “gunsandamerica.org“

Universal background checks would require most private purchases to run through the same background check process required for licensed dealers. Private transactions at gun shows or through websites like Armslist would still be possible, but more complicated. Citizens could still buy and sell guns, but they would likely have to transfer the weapon to a licensed dealer to run a background check before completing the transaction. Most universal background check proposals include exemptions for transferring guns between family members, and for borrowing guns. https://gunsandamerica.org/story/19/01/08/what-are-universal-background-checks-here-is-a-breakdown/

It is essential that candidates running on this platform emphasize that this is not “confiscation” but “registration,” because that is what most gun owners support. It is a winning issue, if only gun safety advocates don’t succumb to the NRA’s lies about what UBC actually is.

There is no reason to cave in to Republican or Libertarian arguments about curriculum, climate or gun control, as long as there are local issues at stake.  There should be strong counter arguments to the predictable slogans of “critical race theory,” “government overreach,” and “confiscation,” which blind voters to vote against their own interests.  How about “Curriculum-the rest of the story,” or “Guard our Clean [soil, water air],”  “Registration–not Confiscation”?  Voters need to understand what their best interests are.

It is clear the next election will be won by the party that gets the most voters out to the polls. In 2020 voters were motivated to remove President Trump from contention for the Presidency, but there is no obvious threat in 2022 except the ones Republicans have already raised.  Democrats have winning issues if they can play a comparable ground game, but they need to play it with the indignation of a Marjory McMorrow and the resilient argument of a Liz Cheney.  There is no reason for the loudest deceptions to make the biggest impact.