Dumbing Down the Dems

Americans can and should understand the meaning of oligarchy.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. (Photo by Chris duMond/Getty Images)

The Democrats now have a war plan to stop Donald Trump. It involves getting “weak and woke” Democrats to “fucking retake the flag,” channel the “goddamn alpha energy” of an NFL coach, and most importantly avoid using multisyllabic words like “oligarchy.” While this war plan sounds like something concocted by a 14-year-old Andrew Tate fanboy let loose on ChatGPT, it was actually created by Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and laid out during her most recent interview with Politico.

Considered a rising star by her party’s centrist wing, Slotkin is best known for delivering the official Democratic response to President Trump’s March 4th address to Congress. In her high-profile speech, Slotkin waxed nostalgic about supposedly decent Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Given her warm feelings for Republicans who delivered reckless tax cuts to the rich that hyper-charged the rise of the billionaire class, it isn’t a surprise that Slotkin is tired of the oligarchy talk. Slotkin’s call for Democrats to dial down the sophistication of their rhetoric also functions as a not-so-veiled slight against Bernie Sanders and his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. In a time when the Democratic Party should be welcoming resistance against Trump on all fronts, it is a bit of a shock that Slotkin’s war plan would launch its first strikes against the intelligence of the American people and the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, which has drawn record crowds over the past few months. In response to Slotkin’s call for Democrats to scrub “oligarchy” from their messaging, Sanders noted, “the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are.”

Slotkin and Sanders present contrasting strategies for how the Democrats can overcome the stigma of being branded out-of-touch elitists. For all the talk of Sanders being “a populist” in the pejorative sense, he wins the adoration of the people not by dumbing down his message but by lifting up the collective consciousness of his followers, giving them the vocabulary to understand and fight the root causes of their discontent. From Sanders’ perspective, if Americans do not understand the concept of “oligarchy,” it is all the more important to teach them about it, as it explains the wealth inequality and political chaos that helped fuel Trump’s return to power. Those on Bernie Sanders’ side of the debate feel the best way for Democrats to stop being seen as elitists is to get out in the streets with the people and help them fight the elites.

For Slotkin, and most of the Party, the best way for Democrats to shake the “elitist” label is to tweak their branding, adjust their messaging, and alter their speech habits. It is a style over substance approach that tells Democrats to dumb themselves down to the perceived level of idiocy of the marginal swing voter whose support is needed to win the next election. This is how professionals with multiple Ivy League degrees like Elissa Slotkin end up saying things like “retake the fucking flag,” sounding more like she’s composing a profane remake of Iraq War Era Toby Keith songs than crafting a thoughtful policy platform. The problem is, the American people know the Democrats are the party of the highly educated, professional managerial class. When Democrats change the style rather than the substance of their messaging, Americans can see through the facade. Slotkin parroting the speaking style of an MMA fighter will not be any more successful than John Kerry’s hunting trip, Liz Warren’s live-streamed beer sipping, or Kamala’s Glock talk.

To make matters worse, Slotkin gives the entire game away by admitting to the media that her dumbed-down schtick is premeditated and politically motivated, telling Politico that Democrats should use the word “king” when talking about misbehaved billionaires because words like oligarchy “don’t resonate beyond coastal institutions.” Could there be a more out-of-touch elitist move than going to the press and openly talking about reducing the sophistication of your messaging to dupe Americans into voting for your party? Rather than a respectful representative talking directly to the American people, Slotkin talks about them to the press, as though she and her journalist interlocutor are parents who just put their toddlers to bed or primatologists observing chimpanzees behind glass. Even if Slotkin could pull off her new hard ass persona convincingly, the fact she told Politico it is all part of a macho Democratic rebranding campaign renders her anti-Trump strategy all but useless. We have enough Signalgate Republicans leaking actual war plans to the press, we don’t need Democrats with Pete Hesgeth levels of impulse control blabbing to the press about the war plan they have to defeat Trump while letting it slip that their strategy is grounded in condescending assumptions about the stupidity of American voters.

Democrats reach the flawed conclusion that dumbing down is the key to victory because of a lack of connection to average Americans coupled with a fixation on the biggest bozos in MAGA-Land like Hesgeth, Kid Rock, and Hulk Hogan. By Slotkin’s line of reasoning, Americans voted for Trump because they are dumb, and if Democrats want these dumb Americans to vote for them, Democrats have to act as dumb as possible to set suspicions of elitism aside.

But Slotkin and her sympathizers overlook the uncomfortable fact that conservatives have gained great cultural traction over the past 75 years not by acting like unread idiots but by projecting personas of superior intelligence while flattering their followers for being smart enough to share their insights into the intellectual and moral failings of the liberals. From William F. Buckley to Rush Limbaugh to Tucker Carlson, conservative cultural figures have captured mass followings by acting like the smartest guy in the room. While Elissa Slotkin wants to banish “oligarchy” from the Democratic lexicon, arrogant See I Told You So Rush Limbaugh sold vocabulary-building tapes to his diehard “dittohead” followers so they could sound smarter than liberals. Contemporary heirs to Limbaugh, like Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, fueled their rise to fame by posting videos of them “owning the libs” during on-campus debates. Shapiro is not shy about being an insufferable know-it-all who is fond of referencing Kant, Hume, and other philosophers whose writings are comprised of words far more difficult than “oligarchy.” Trump-supporting Silicon Valley moguls also do not hesitate to reference arcane philosophers in their popular writings. Mark Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto draws inspiration from Nick Land, whose dense accelerationist writings are almost as incomprehensible as Land’s primary philosophical influence, French post-structuralist Gilles Deleuze. Peter Thiel often cites Renee Girard’s theory of mimetic desire as a guiding influence in his investment decisions (e.g. venture funding Facebook) and his shift toward the political right. Both Andreessen and Thiel have amplified the dark enlightenment writings of Curtis Yarvin, who went from an obscure “neo-monarchist” blogger with the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug to becoming the philosophical svengali of Vice President J.D. Vance. As an entire bizarre ecosystem of alt-right thought has grown in parallel with and at times intersected with the rise of MAGA, it's apparent that pretensions of intellectual superiority have been a pipeline to conservative conversion far more often than the dumbed-down towel-snapping jock-speak promoted by the likes of Elissa Slotkin.

Whether these conservative thought leaders are genuine intellectuals or just pseudo-intellectual grifters is beside the point. What matters is that they have gained broad cultural influence by acting as though they are brilliant and treating their audience as brilliant for being their followers. If Democrats want to reverse the supposed rightward “vibe shift” that sent Trump back to the White House, treating voters like they are too dumb to understand the word “oligarchy” is not the way to go. Even Joe Rogan, the everyman podcaster who Democrats regard as a pivotal figure in Trump’s 2024 victory, recently told his listeners, “Bernie Sanders is right in that you should be scared of oligarchs.” Joe Rogan doesn’t think his 14 million monthly listeners are too stupid to understand what oligarchy means. Maybe that’s why Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2020, a fact often overlooked by the throngs of Democratic Party consultants claiming that finding a “liberal Joe Rogan” is a key to reclaiming the White House in 2028.

Both Joe Rogan and Bernie Sanders engage enough with the people to know that the average American can and should understand the meaning of oligarchy. I’m sure Elissa Slotkin also knows this is the case, as she can see the tens of thousands of passionate supporters showing up at every stop on the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Her call for Democrats to dumb down their rhetoric and talk about kings rather than oligarchs cannot be inspired by Sanders’ lack of popular success, but more likely because Bernie’s anti-oligarchy messaging has become too effective for the liking of the corporate coddling wing of the Democratic Party. Talking about kings rather than oligarchs pins the problem on a few bad actors like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, rather than addressing a perverse political-economic system that allowed these billionaires to seize control of our government in the first place. The fight for American democracy is a fight against oligarchy. Americans are smart enough to understand what is at stake in this struggle, with more and more rallying to the cause with each stop on Bernie Sanders’ tour. They are smart enough to know when they are being talked down to and when politicians like Elissa Slotkin are altering their messaging and mannerisms to fit a vulgar caricature of Middle America. If the Democratic Party is to survive the Second Trump Administration, we need leaders who will lift up the people and respect them, not those who dumb down the rhetoric and insult their intelligence.