Are demagoguery, hyperbole, and lies politically necessary?
What if our politicians engaged in substantive debates and discourse about real issues?
I’m not pollyannish about this. From the founding, American political discourse has featured demagoguery, hyperbole, and lies. It was less ubiquitous, but still very much part of our exercises in self-governance.
However, in days of yore, that wasn’t all there was to campaigning. There were also substantive debates and discourse about real issues. Today, substantive debates and discourse about real issues are vanishingly rare.
What is odd is that there is a sort of Gresham’s law taking hold in campaign rhetoric, with the bad stuff driving out the good stuff even when the good stuff would likely produce as good, or better, political results.
Three examples from recent events in Arizona campaigns, beginning with what will seem like a benign example, and comparatively, it is.
Zuhdi Jasser won the GOP primary to take on Democratic incumbent Greg Stanton in CD 4. In response, Jasser issued a press release that said, in part: “AZ-04 deserves better than a radical-left rubber stamp who stands for nothing ….Greg Stanton is happy to cash his special interest paycheck, and he shows up when his party bosses blow the dog whistle.”
Now, I’ve hardly been the chairman of the Greg Stanton fan club over the years. But he’s not a radical-left anything.
The political center of American politics is very broad. It extends from those who want a more expansive welfare state and redistributionist tax policies on the left to those supporting supply-side economics and a leaner welfare state on the right.
What I think defines the center in today’s political world is a commitment to governing, a willingness to engage in pragmatic problem-solving including dialogue and negotiations with political opponents. The true radicals are those in both parties who are more interested in owning the opposition than in getting anything done.
Stanton is a mainstream Democrat within the left portion of this expansive center. He is part of the leadership team of the New Democrat Coalition in the House, who express at least a paper commitment to governing, as defined above. They support a more expansive welfare state, but a lot of it involves reviving programs established during the Biden administration supposedly to ameliorate the economic effects of the Covid pandemic, but which Democrats now want to make permanent.
Stanton was mayor of Phoenix for six years. There were no Mamdani-like proposals to establish government grocery stores during his tenure.
Now, with the growing influence of self-proclaimed democratic socialists in the Democratic Party, there are some true radicals in their ranks. But I don’t understand why Arizona Republicans think putting the radical or socialist tag on mainstream Democrats is a winning tactic. It didn’t work against Kyrsten Sinema, and she actually had a radical past. Stanton’s political past and present are pure vanilla.
CD 4 is thought to be a safe Democratic district. But, in the right circumstances, it could be in play. Republicans actually outnumber Democrats in the district and independents are the plurality.
An election in which dissatisfaction with a Republican president is the predominant political sentiment isn’t the right circumstances. But in a different political season, Jasser would be a worthy challenger. He’s a serious person, with a distinguished record as a doctor and Muslim leader working to reform the religion in accord with the norms of a pluralistic society.
Stanton and Jasser could engage in a substantive campaign about real issues. Both have the depth and chops. And, here’s the irony: The results probably wouldn’t be materially different than what will result from whatever kind of campaign we get instead.
The second example is a case where the bad stuff actually created a worse outcome than the good stuff would have.
Washington Democrats decided that Marlene Galan-Woods would be a better general election candidate in CD 1, the seat being vacated by David Schweikert, than Amish Shah. Shah was the Democratic nominee in 2024, and the view in Washington is that he underperformed.
To favor Galan-Woods, national Democratic groups attacked Shah with misleading and outright false characterizations. One ad sought to create the impression that Shah was a MAGA cultural warrior, which is about as divorced from reality as campaign rhetoric can get.
Shah, of course, won the primary. And now enters the general election having to overcome negative characterizations funded by his own party.
Instead of attacking Shah with mischaracterizations, what if the Washington Democrats had instead conducted an honest campaign explaining why they thought Galan-Woods would make the superior general election candidate, in hopes of swaying some Democratic primary voters inclined to make a tactical choice? It couldn’t have produced a worse outcome from their standpoint. And while such a case would have included criticism of Shah, it would be based on his political skills, not his character or distorting his policy positions. It would be a lesser burden to carry into the general election.
The third example is the first coordinated ad by Katie Hobbs and the Democratic Party against Andy Biggs, claiming that he supports a 23% national sales tax. That’s based on Biggs being a sponsor of what proponents call the Fair Tax while a congressman.
The Fair Tax would impose a 23% sales tax on a broad range of retail purchases. The ad doesn’t mention that it would also abolish all income taxes, including the payroll tax, the most regressive tax of all. The net effect on the price of goods is impossible to project, given that the taxes that would be abolished are, to a large extent, embedded in current prices. There would be downward influences as well as upward influences.
Nor does the ad mention that the Fair Tax includes a universal stipend to cover the estimated tax on the consumption of necessities up to the poverty level.
The Fair Tax has never gotten much political traction. But the view that it would be more economically productive to tax consumption rather than income is hardly an outlier in economic circles.
Now, Biggs’s views about the Fair Tax are relevant to him as a congressman. As a governor, not so much.
But here’s the deceptive part. The ad leaves the impression that Biggs proposed to impose the national sales tax on top of existing taxes, not as replacement revenue for abolishing income taxes. That’s false. But if a national consumption tax is ever adopted as a revenue supplement rather than a replacement, it will be done by Democrats, not Republicans such as Biggs.
The Democratic approach to taxing the affluent won’t pay for the expansive federal government they favor. One alternative to funding the gap, if the bond markets ever insist on it, is the value-added tax prevalent in Europe at an average rate of 22%.
I suspect the Fair Tax attack on Biggs polled well. However, I doubt that it advances Hobbs’s case much. It’s not something relevant to what Biggs might do or not do as governor. And swing voters aren’t going to accept at face value the claim that Biggs wants to increase the price of retail goods by 23%. That sounds too preposterous to be true. And it isn’t true.
The political problem with campaign rhetoric that relies on demagoguery, hyperbole, and lies is that it has no staying power with swing voters. They dismiss much of it out of hand. If Republicans and Democrats describe every opponent as radical or extreme, it loses its effect as a description of an opponent who might actually be radical or extreme. And swing voters have a decent crap detector for attacks that seem implausible, unlikely, or out of context.
The red meat attacks might boost base turnout. But substantive debates and discourse about real issues would have more staying power with swing voters who decide competitive races. And be much better for the political health of our polity.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.