All Politics Is Local: The Race To The Bottom

Jay Missouri Ashcroft Declares for Missouri Governor

The leadership of the Democratic Party (DNC, congressional staffers and not for profit leaders, major donors and dark money groups) always seems to believe that political success is defined by winning elections at the national level. Their mantra always seems to be “If only we win the White House, win control the House, or have 60 votes in the Senate, then we can (fill in the blank)!

The party has ignored the old observation from former Democratic Party Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill that “all politics is local.”

While Democratic Party agenda setters and influencers stay in their cocoon (Washington DC, the Northeast, urban areas, and West Coast) and concentrate on the “big picture,” the rest of the country that the party ignores, burns.

Democrats lose winnable state and local elections because they ignore the fact that “all politics is local” and concentrate on policy, position papers, and an agenda set by the “progressives” who drive the party from their salons in D.C. and San Francisco/ Silicon Valley while ignoring issues that matter to most normal and working Americans in the “red” states.

Elections are about emotional attachments (something Trump was, until recently, really good at) and not really about nuanced policy positions. In campaigns, Democrats want to win the intellectual arguments while Republicans want to cut your heart out. Politics is a contact sport, and Democrats come to battle with a butter knife while Republicans come with a machete. That’s how they win.

Believe it or not, the vast majority of people in the “Heartland” who identify as Republicans are not MAGA knuckle draggers. They are tired of the chaos. Unfortunately, in many elections, the choice is the candidate who is the least worst MAGA knuckle dragger because the Democrats have given up contesting these state and local elections.

The latest example of this strategy is Missouri, a state that used to have a strong Democratic Party footprint at all levels of government in both the cities and in rural areas. That is no longer the case as Democratic Party political influence is mostly restricted to Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia while the rest of the state is so “red” that one would think it is bleeding to death. In many, if not most counties in rural Missouri, Democrats no longer run for state and local office. If they do, they are usually defeated by margins of two or three to one.

Which leads us to Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

This morning, Ashcroft declared his not so secret candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination for governor. Ashcroft comes from a prominent Missouri Republican family and his father is former U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and Missouri Governor John Ashcroft. Many who watch Missouri politics consider Ashcroft to be the favorite in the race.

This morning, Ashcroft’s campaign released the following Twitter statement at 4:34 AM (for some strange reason, it was later deleted):

“I’m running for Governor to make Missouri the Frontline of Freedom. Missouri stands at a crossroads- red states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, and Arkansas have become examples of conservative leadership while Missouri Republicans, who control every statewide office and have supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, have failed to deliver. I am running to change that. (ashcroftformissouri.com) (screen shot courtesy of The Hatchet)

At 4:39 AM, a revised statement that omitted the names of the above referenced states was issued:

“Engineering a Stronger Missouri- Missouri is blessed with natural resources, strategic transportation infrastructure, bountiful agricultural land, and the hardest working people in America. But Missouri trails other red states in growing our economy, making our communities safer, and protecting our shared values. As Governor, I will make sure Missouri leads the country!” (Paid for by Ashcroft For Missouri, Gene McNary, Treasurer)

Which Jay Ashcroft are we getting?

“This kind of garbage is why the Democratic Party strategy of focusing on national elections while abandoning the “all politics is local” mantra has been such a failure.”

Given Ashcroft’s record and the fact that he has been a major proponent of controlling content in libraries (book screening and banning) in this state, he is saying the quiet part out loud in his first statement, that he really does want to take the lead in the race to the bottom that is now being led by states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, and Arkansas.

Take him at his word; Ashcroft will use Republican legislative supermajorities and Republican control of statewide offices to accomplish that mission.

If one follows the news, the agenda and mission is quite clear:

• removing political opponents from office for participating in peaceful protests and exercising their First Amendment rights;

• privatizing (gutting) public education;

• discriminating against transgender citizens, especially in sports, up to and including the inspection of genitalia to confirm gender (as of yesterday this is the law in Kansas as the Republican controlled legislature overrode the governor’s veto);

• book banning in schools and public libraries;

• super restrictive abortion laws, including criminalization for procuring, or helping someone procure an abortion, or a physician performing an abortion;

• strict control of school social science curriculum to eliminate discussion of certain “culture war” topics;

• voting rights restrictions.

The list goes on, but the trend is clear. If Ashcroft’s first statement is what he really believes, and his second is political “covering your ass,” he wants to be the new leader in the effort to create the so called “national divorce” that Marjorie Taylor Greene and other super MAGA politicians talk about wanting, a “divorce” that divides the country into a “red” United States and a “blue” United States (if truth be told, people like Greene want to do away with the blue part).

Listen to what Ashcroft is saying. In his first statement, he criticizes the supermajority Republican legislature and Republican statewide office holders for not doing enough in terms of leading the fight to implement the “red” state agenda. Missouri is a state where the legislature and state Attorney General have criminalized abortion, where the state House and Senate have passed severe limits on medical care and sports participation for trans kids, worked to privatize public education through “school choice” legislation, used the budget process to defund DEI programs, and passed a budget that removed state funding for public libraries because of a law suit filed to contest efforts to implement book banning in public libraries, just to name a few.

Missouri is a state where Republican book banners and culture war crazies have been elected to local school boards.

What the hell does Ashcroft want?

“Take him at his word; Ashcroft will use Republican legislative supermajorities and Republican control of statewide offices to accomplish that mission.”

This kind of garbage is why the Democratic Party strategy of focusing on national elections while abandoning the “all politics is local” mantra has been such a failure. In abandoning election competitiveness in the states of the midwest, south and far west sections of the country, the Democrats, in their own weird way, have contributed to the “national divorce” that they so strongly (and rightfully so) condemn.

This is what happens when the two party system breaks down, when political parties retreat to their “safe spaces” (the Republicans follow the same strategy in urban areas and on the West Coast, although they at least make an effort to be competitive in some of these areas). It’s like a military strategy of controlling the cities while abandoning the countryside to the enemy (Vietnam, anybody?)

In order for American democracy to work, both political parties need to be at least marginally competitive in elections at all levels, federal, state, and local. There needs to be contested elections in all races, not just “rubber” stamp contests where incumbents “walk over” to their next term in office or party primaries between candidates who look alike, act alike, and talk alike while trying hard to make themselves just a little more MAGA or “progressive” or whatever in order to stand out and win activist driven primaries that are not representative of what happens in a general election.

In particular, the Democratic Party needs to get back to following the advice that all politics being local and start engaging rather than surrendering. The Republicans, to their credit, understand this and have worked their asses off in order to create the state and local environment that exists in many states today.

This is why we have candidates like Jay Ashcroft.

This is why American politics is in such crisis.