Rachel Bitecofer on Democratic Strategies to Counter Republicans in the 2024 Election

Rachel Bitecofer, author of the new book Hit ’Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game, joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk shop about the election strategies Democrats should implement to combat Republicans and prevent fascism. Bitecofer discusses how Republicans use “negative partisanship” to win elections by slamming Democrats as a whole, and argues that Democrats must turn the tables and attack the GOP’s now-extremist brand, which poses an urgent threat to Americans. Bitecofer reads from a section of Hit ’Em Where it Hurts that describes what it means to “wedge” an issue, and talks about how Democrats can do this.

Check out video excerpts from our interviews at Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website. This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

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From the episode:

V.V. Ganeshananthan: Rachel, you said that “wedging is a tactic that messages a political issue—usually a complicated and controversial one—to divide a coalition, to further divide the electorate, and/or to forcefully frame the opposition party as a potential threat to something voters value or have. Wedge issues are like bunker-buster bombs—the opposite of finding common ground; they split people apart.”

Why are Democrats hesitant to use these techniques, like wedging, that are making up, essentially, Republicans’ entire platforms?

Rachel Bitecofer: It is hard. I knew members of Congress and the Senate, and what have you, would be reading this book. So, it’s written to everyone. It’s written to the layperson—it’s written to them too. And I talk about, “Look, I know why you got into government. I know you want to be good at public policy, and you care about people and you want to do good things.” That’s great, right? But at the end of the day, folks, you are dealing with rough clay—the electorate, people who never have been cultured for civic responsibility. 

As Americans, we’re actually cultured so that people feel almost morally superior by not voting, which is kind of crazy, right? And we run into people all the time like that. And at the end of the day, even though you want everything you say to be factual and accurate and substantive and coalition-building, you’re not going to ever get to build a single thing sitting out because you lost the race. The people in Ohio, the people in Wisconsin, the people in North Carolina, and the people in Florida, the people that you care about, the policies that you wanted to enact, it’s not happening because you didn’t win. 

So, we have to separate communication, politicking, the real politics, from the governing we want to do with the power, and understand that because we are in an environment where the opposition has set up a system that is about narrative and hyperbolic narrative setting, we have to do the same, and that does require that we stop sanitizing our language. 

We want to hit Republicans, even weekly. We sanitize it: “Republicans are stopping progress. So we can’t protect our kids at school.” How about: “Republicans are siding with killers over kids by giving them weapons of war,” right? We have to make it pop. And if you don’t make it pop, and you don’t make an image and in-the-gut message, it’s not going to be effective. And if it’s not effective, you’re not going to win. And if you don’t win, we’re not going to have Congressional majorities. And if we don’t have Congressional majorities at this point, who knows what happens to Latinos, to Muslims, to the press… We have to hold on to power at all costs. So it really is time for people to get out of their comfort zones and do the hard work of winning the narrative.

Whitney Terrell: I live in Kansas City, far away from the Beltway. And Sugi grew up near the Beltway so she’s not totally to be trusted, but she lives in Minnesota now. But one of the more depressing things of my lifetime has been watching Missouri, which was a reliably Democratic state, or at least would vote for Democrats, become a hard red state. And there’s a section in your book about wedging rural issues, which is near and dear to my heart, which I don’t think the Democratic Party does a good job of, and they don’t speak to rural voters well at all. 

You mentioned that, according to Democratic policy, Democrats are the only ones who are having any policy victories in the Midwest and in rural areas, broadband expansion, for instance, being one very good example. But we don’t talk about it very well. I wondered if you could talk about how Democrats could approach wedging the rural issues and getting rural voters to pay attention.

RB: When we talk about what Democrats need to do—some of it has been hampered by the refusal to move off of a base model, a persuasion model, separate universe, because “I can’t attack Republicans and be moderate.” 

Well, interestingly enough, we have five swing state Republicans who won in swing races by not being moderate at all, not in temperament, not in advertising, not in rhetoric. So it’s about getting Democrats to tell the story now. It’s 50 years on into Reaganomics. Republicans have ruled the roost in the Midwest and rural areas for decades, and their record has been an absolute and total catastrophe for rural America. Because when they starve the beast and starve the government, what they’ve been doing is starving their rural communities. If you want to know why your kids can’t live in small-town America today, the answer is the Republican Party. 

But we have never had that conversation or made that effort. And so I’m really hoping this book and mantle gets picked up also by the longshotter, because we don’t have to be losing to these people. But we need to go into rural America. They’re angry, right? People are angry. But we’re not direct. What we’re trying to do is say, “Well, look, we gave you this and that and delivery politics has its limits, guys.” I mean, Biden delivers $138 billion to the progressives because they’re like “student loan reform is their issue.” But now they don’t want to vote for him because of Gaza, you see what I’m saying? So there’s no benefit in that. 

And what we need to do, is we need to get out there and have everyone hammering the Republican brand, big broad brush. If your opponent’s a Republican, he’s part of this party, this party is a MAGA extremist party with crazy policies, you have to tie it all together. And in that process, you have to tell the voters, “Yes, you’re mad, we hear you. And here is who screwed you over.” And if we do that, I think we’re going to see some returns on investment.

VVG: I want to pick up on something you just said, because it has to do with a question that I’ve been wondering about. I mean, I’m seeing a lot of messaging from campaigns, like Abandon Biden, and other things in that vein, that are basically using imagery and rhetoric to point out the similarities between Trump and Biden. Things that are noting that, on this particular issue, they might actually not be that far apart. I mean, I’m saying this as someone who’s in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza, and a free Palestine, and I’m seeing more and more people I know who are progressive, not wanting to vote for Biden. And I’m curious about what advice you would give Democrats on that issue. 

RB: That’s a good question. This is obviously something that keeps coming up. Here’s the thing. Number one, the difference between Trump and Biden is not small on Gaza. If Donald Trump was in office right now—let’s say it was 2025 and he’s in office, then Netanyahu would have a free hand to do whatever he wanted in Gaza. If you guys think Gaza looks bad now, you should imagine it under Donald Trump and Netanyahu unhinged. They would raze the whole thing with the intent of putting a Trump Tower in there. 

And we know it’s true, because what Muslims or anybody who cares about Muslim people abroad or here should know is the Republican Party has a plan. It’s called Project 2025. It’s a 1000-page transition manual that will be handed to the next Republican administration and it is a manual to transition the presidency from a separation of power system into an autocracy, one-party state, and the first people that they want to come for are Muslims. 

Everyone like you, who wants a ceasefire, cares a lot about this issue—in the Republican mind, you are anti-American, you are pro-Hamas, and they are going to come, and they’re going to review everyone’s naturalization. This is out on Steve Miller, who’s no two-bit radio host. He worked in the last administration. He’s the author of the caging kids separation immigration stuff, and he’s coming back in with Trump. They are going to round up Muslim Americans and deport them at big, big numbers. They’re going to do the same thing in the Latino community. 

And I just think it is my obligation—now, I’m not trying to dismiss your concerns or the concerns that people have about Gaza—but I do see it as my obligation to make sure every immigrant community in this country knows they are right in the crosshairs. And it won’t be a small sacrifice, or four years of pain or some small setbacks. What they are promising, in writing and on video, is to decimate American Muslim communities. So I feel like getting that across to those communities is probably the most important thing that we can do.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Madelyn Valento. 

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Rachel Bitecofer:

Hit ’Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game, with Aaron Murphy

Others:

Dobbs | The Supreme Court • State of the Union Address 2023 • Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project • Stephen Miller (Southern Poverty Law Center) • “At CPAC, Stephen Miller Describes His Plan to Round Up Migrants into Camps and Deport Them”| MediaMatters for America • “The Benghazi Timeline, Clinton Edition” by Eugene Kiely, June 30, 2016| factcheck.org • Hur Report | The Justice Department • “Trump vows to end birthright citizenship for children of immigrants in US illegally” by Ted Hesson| Reuterss