It’s not often that I read a New York Times column by the aggressive left-winger Michelle Cottle twice; hard to remember if I ever did. But her July 3 entry for The Paper Of Clicks, headlined “This Pathetic Groveling Is No Way to Rebuild a Party,” was an accurate shot to the head. It doesn’t matter that it was a fruitless plea to the onetime machers of her Democratic Party, and peppered with sarcasm, or that she’s plainly scared the Dems will blow the November midterms and perhaps the 2028 presidential election.
Cottle’s beef, which applies to both parties, is that fundraising solicitations (email, text or even USPS) begging for money has run its course. She thinks the Democrats’ consultants are out of gas; even worse, embarrassing themselves. After a few examples (“Sorry to reach out on a Sunday,” “Please,”) she writes: [M]y point is that, right up front, these messages telegraph insecurity, pleading, chagrin. Hardly the vibe of a confident political team trying to fight the good fight. My overriding impulse is not to give the party campaign cash but to offer to pay for group therapy.”
I excused her use of “vibe” and “fighting the good fight” because she’s correct about the abundance of political come-ons, not to mention television advertising. I can’t remember when Democrats’ commandeered that latter cliché—it’s in The Nation every time that magazine publishes; tangentially, I wonder if Cottle has ever traveled to Cuba, after a solicitation, with The Nation’s survivors—and maybe they invented it. I believe that advocating smaller government, limited federal interference and a reduction of economically-crippling regulations is “fighting the good fight,” although I’ve never typed those words. (Until now!)
Cottle doesn’t say whether or not she’s ever contributed to a political campaign, on a national or local level. I’m on the bottom rung of what Dobie Gray sang about in “The In Crowd” in 1964 and receive relatively little in the way of political junk. Sometimes by mail, my address sold by a magazine I subscribe to (or once did) and very occasionally in my spam folder. I’ve never given a cent to a candidate, even though there are politicians I’ve supported; they don’t need my $50. In the 1990s and early-2000s I did, by routine, annually give $100 to my alma mater, but finally got fed up with receiving phone calls from eager-beaver students telling me why it’s so vital I contribute. After six months of firm, sometimes rude, refusals, I guess they got the drift. (Besides, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore’s largest employer—which, ahem, doesn’t pay taxes—and a construction/buying machine, hardly needs a paltry gesture from me.
Cottle doesn’t explicitly say it, but I’d guess she’s root, root, rooting for the DSA-backed Democratic candidates across the county. You’d expect nothing less—and her excoriation of Trump and MAGA (in fundraising and social media) is boiler-plate, but she correctly says the “Trump years have been hard on Democrats’ psyches.”
Then, as The American Conservative’s smart Curt Mills (and others) annoyingly tweet, “the hard stuff.” She continues: "[E]nough with the hand-wringing and self-flagellation, especially when it comes to asking people for money. Fund-raising requests are plenty annoying even when they aren’t pitiable. The blue team needs to claw back some self-respect and reassure voters that they aren’t being asked to back a bunch of losers.”
She’s not wrong, and although I have no patience for the “blue team,” the 1979 Tom Petty lyric, “Even the losers get lucky sometimes” makes sense when considering Lindsey Graham, Richard Blumenthal, (probably) Ken Paxton, Mayor Peter and journalists like Jonathan Chait and “I’d Rather Live in Norway” Nicholas Kristoff. But never Beto O’Rourke; he never gets lucky, at least when running for office.
Cottle’s column stood out last week in the Times, considering the paper’s worse-than-usual drivel. The Pulitzer Prize winning fashion writer Robin Givhan (she won that circle-jerk award in 2006 while at The Washington Post) writes on occasion for the Times, and her July 3rd “Opinion” was a dilly, so daft that I didn’t see any of her compatriots defend it on Twitter. Headlined “Trump Ruined the Fourth of July for Me,” the me-myself-and-I Givhan says, “It used to be that the holiday brought out dad jeans and cropped tops and everyone looked slightly embarrassing, but the atmosphere was good-hearted and welcoming. Everyone could delight in wearing Old Glory to the national cookout.”
I’m an Independence Day (and fireworks) fan, but never received an invite to the “national cookout.” And “dad jeans”? Never owned a pair.
The formerly Old Glory-clad Givhan says, “This year, I can barely tolerate the sight of red, white and blue. When combined into a maximalist display of nationalist cheerleading, the colors make my heart ache.”
Poor, poor pitiful Robin.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023