RUY TEIXEIRA: The Mallory McMorrow Fallacy: Or Should We Call It The Popeye Fallacy?

Mallory McMorrow is having a moment. The Michigan legislator made a short speech assailing a fellow legislator who had accused her in a fundraising email of “grooming and sexualizing” kindergartners, which was subsequently viewed millions of times on McMorrow’s Twitter feed. Her message, delivered with some well-chosen personal touches, boiled down to: stand up to hate.

The speech was rapturously received in Democratic circles, particularly among activists and Democratic-leaning pundits. One went so far as to compare McMorrow to Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. And many asserted that here, finally, was a blueprint for an effective Democratic midterm strategy.

Democrats should contain their enthusiasm. When you think about it, what McMorrow is recommending is basically what Democrats have already been doing—calling out their opponents for being hateful, bigoted and/or racist—but doing it more loudly and unequivocally. The idea here seems to be that a message’s effectiveness is directly proportional to the vigor with which it is asserted.

This is a fallacy. If a message has underlying weaknesses and fails to connect to significant and real voter concerns, it will not become more effective by simply increasing the volume. The weaknesses will still be there and voters’ concerns will not magically go away. . . .

This has not worked and is highly unlikely to work for the midterms and beyond. The Democrats cannot escape the necessity of moving to the center on sociocultural issues which does not consist of simply opposing hatred, but rather of making it clear that Democrats have a common sense approach to these issues that is different from the approach pushed by their woke activist wing. Until that is done, the Democrats will continue to be highly vulnerable on all these issues.

The woke activists are a crazy fringe. Most people, even most Democrats, aren’t on board with their agenda.