Fine, I’ll say it:
Democrats are bad.
But here’s the thing:
Republicans are a million times worse.
Before you get heated and start spamming the Contact form, understand that I am talking about politicians, not partisan voters and civilians. In my experience, most voters genuinely believe the party platform of small government, fiscal responsibility, and a focus on the family. The “playbook” I’m discussing only applies to the legislators and elected officials who run with an (R) or (D) next to their names. This is how they operate and how they’ve been operating for years.
Step 1: Steal from the Poor, Give to the Rich
Most people already know that US politicians work for the ultra-wealthy, not for everyday Americans. To some extent, this has always been true. But the parasite burst through America’s chest when the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United v. FEC (often abbreviated to simply “Citizens United”) that corporations were “people” and “free speech” included campaign spending. This ended centuries of campaign finance regulations so that corporations and ultra-rich individuals could suddenly donate as much money as they want to political campaigns, skyrocketing from about $205 million in 2010 to $1 billion just two years later; now we see over $4 billion in political spending1.
Politicians generally want to promote laws and programs to help the people who vote for them. This is Civics 101: if you want votes, make voters happy so they vote for you. If the majority of people want food, promise them food. If they want jobs, promise them jobs.
This makes sense if voters are going to the voting booth with a comprehensive knowledge of each candidates’ campaign promises and political track records. But that’s rarely the case. In fact, most people only know what they’ve heard from the media, with over half getting it from social media like Facebook2.
Step 2: Distract “the Poor” by Pitting Us Against Each Other
Ever since “The Southern Strategy,” Republicans have preyed on voters’ fears rather than create policies which actually helped their constituents. It makes sense: if you have policies that hurt people, don’t talk about them. Instead, pick a villain to unite everyone against and then promise to help eradicate the villain.
If the majority of your voters are white and have racist biases, make the villain Black folks. If they’re religious, make up rumors about Dungeons & Dragons being Satanic. If they’re largely ignorant on human sexuality, make it “the gay agenda” or “family values” or “gender ideology.” Or, as is always a tried-and-true method, make it foreigners.
If the entire basis for your political ideology is heating up public tension until it reaches a rolling boil, it’s going to boil over. Because these “villains” come from already marginalized groups, they already have sympathy from a certain percent of the population. Heck, they might even have majority support. But that doesn’t matter: the goal isn’t to eradicate the villains, it’s to distract from their policies.
Instead of spotlighting the tax cuts for billionaires, people with friends and family in those marginalized groups are forced to fight for them. Plenty of well-meaning Liberals™ will often say that Democrats can win if they stop playing “identity politics”. Of course, that implies they should throw their friends and family under the bus, which leads to more infighting among left-leaning pundits and activists.
Does that mean that Republicans can throw their loved ones under the bus? Of course they can, and they even smile as they burp pithy epithets like “We’ll just have to agree to disagree” or “Why can’t we all just get along?”
Because, again, the goal isn’t to actually come to any sort of compromise or to actually get anything done, it’s to make money. And as long as “the poors” are fighting with each other, they aren’t fighting the rich.
Step 3: Sow Doubt & Confusion
Brandolini’s Law states that bullshit requires far more energy to disprove than to spew, meaning that Republicans can spend two minutes lying about public schools offering litter boxes to furries (archive) and it will satisfy the media ghouls’ hunger a fortnight.
Not only does conservative media create intentional misinformation (or “disinformation”), they regularly attack the institutions traditionally trusted to wade through the muck and determine what is and isn’t factual. Ever since Bernard Goldberg published his seemingly benign complaint journal Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News in 2001, corporate media has been obsessed with the appearance of “bias” that they have ignored the importance of “credibility”, leading to the public becoming similarly obsessed with something I personally don’t think matters in the slightest if you aren’t concerned with the other.
Yes: media is biased. Also, EVERYONE is biased. The fact you speak English means you are biased towards English-language media. That’s not inherently a bad thing. What matters is examining what that bias means and how it influences your decisions.
When it comes to news media – which is supposed to be reporting on important events after they happen, or even as they are happening – “bias” is far less important than “accuracy.” And when information is broadcast quickly as organizations race each other to be the first one to break the news, the best way to identify “accuracy” isn’t about an organization’s historic “bias” but its reputation for how it procedurally vets information, double-checks their work, and holds themselves accountable when they make mistakes. Altogether, those qualities form an organization’s “credibility”.
As a side effect of attacking “liberal media”, conservatives have not only pushed mainstream corporate media to become more right-leaning, they have siloed conservatives into a an echo chamber, isolating the most fervent ideologues from everyone else.
In addition, these criticisms have caused the general public to care less about credibility and news accuracy than appearing non-biased towards any particular US political party. This means that someone like Tim Pool can call himself a “moderate” or a “milquetoast fence-sitter” and people will believe him despite constantly getting things wrong. “Reputation” means nothing as long as you claim objectivity.
The result is that Republican politicians can steal tax-payer funds and they’ll have enough plausible deniability and obedient defenders that they always get away with it.
The Goal: Steal Our Money
Everything about President Trump’s rise, fall, and resurrection into a second term were predictable and obvious, but only if you understood the Republican Party’s actual goal, which isn’t to help Americans or protect our nation: it’s to make money.
“Citizens United” wasn’t even the first domino but one in an existing line which goes back to Reagan, maybe even Nixon. As a Kentuckian, I’ve had to constantly shake my head as neighbors and family repeatedly elected Mitch McConnell even though his stated goal since his political career started in the 80s was to get as much money into politics as possible. The more money that gets in, the more money he can take out. It’s why he fought unions and helped make Kentucky a “Right to Work” state (which is a phrase that unironically means “You have the right to work without guaranteed protections”.)
Reagan’s Neoliberal policies helped lead to more exploitation of the “Global South”, promising to give tax money to “developing nations” as long as they gave favorable treatment to businesses. This led to sweat shops and the creation of supply chains, both dropping the price of cheap commodities, leading to less manufacturing work in the US. After all, why would I pay $100 for a pair of jeans made in the US when I can get a pair for $30? Did the government spend a bunch of my tax money so that a foreign business could brutalize their workers and pollute their land, all to make this pair of pants a third the price? Sure, but I’m broke and have to look out for my family.
And that’s the thing: even when Republicans have policies which seem good to working class people (like letting waiters keep all of their tips, tax-free), that’s only because there are other policies which are screwing us over (the minimum wage for tipped jobs is $2.13). The tax breaks from Trump’s policies have Americans paying over $1,600 MORE than in previous years but via tariffs and increased fuel costs.
Conclusion: Don’t Vote Republican
And yes: you can make a similar argument about Democrats, seeing as how Citizens United has caused them to take huge checks from negative things like data centers and the for-profit healthcare industry. In fact, this is the main criticism in attack ads of Democrats during this mid-term (2026).
Why, then, are those attack ads funded by AI companies and health insurance providers? Why would a company attack someone who seems to support them? Well, it’s because they know that, no matter how much Democrats receive from special interests, their companies will always be more profitable during Republican administrations.
Whether you want to admit it or not, Democrats – as bad as they are – are still less likely to help the giant mega-corporations who want to destroy this country. And in this case, the “lesser of two evils” is so much less evil.
What do you think?