Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow opened her now famous speech on the floor of the Michigan senate by calling out the reason her Republican senate colleague chose to target her in a fundraising email that is part of a party-wide effort to brand Democrats as child groomers (proof positive of QANON’s continued influence in the modern Republican Party).
McMorrow knew why she was personally targeted, saying it is “because I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme because you can’t claim you’re targeting marginalized kids in the name of quote ‘parental rights’ if another parent is standing up to say no.”
Sadly, McMorrow is right that it matters she is a “straight, white, Christian, suburban mom” because above all else in 2022, Democrats must convince white suburbia that the modern Republican Party is not fit to govern a democracy and disqualify their structural predisposition to ‘change’ which is the mechanism that drives the midterm effect among swing voters.
To win in 2022, Democrats need to drive their own coalition of voters to the polls to dominate the turnout game, while simultaneously pushing the small, but critical, pool of swing voters away from casting ballots for Republicans-any Republican. If Democrats fail to do so, control of Congress will flip to an anti-democratic, fascist-curious Republican Party who as of today, intends to use that power to help reinstall an insurrectionist into the most powerful office on Earth.
What McMorrow then dished out to her Michigan Republican colleagues was precisely the kind of offensive, matrix-breaking, moral outrage messaging Democrats up and down ballots and across America must bring to bear in their own campaigns if they hope to defeat a radicalized, frankly dangerous, Republican Party this fall.
Though “the speech” is well known, what is lesser known is the story behind the woman who gave it. Activated by the election of Trump Mallory McMorrow rode her “incandescent rage” from being a postcard-writing grass-roots activist, to flipping a Republican-held state senate seat in 2018. I love her story so much because it could easily be yours. We need 1,000 Mallory McMorrows out there on the stump. If we had them, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Redistricted into a safe seat, McMorrow is now lending her considerable political talents and her small, but mighty, war chest to one of the most important offensive efforts for Democrats at the state legislative level in the 2022 cycle: flipping both chambers of the Michigan state legislature.
Thanks to the ballot initiative process and Michigan’s voters, Republicans must face free and fair districts for the first time in decades in Michigan leaving them uniquely vulnerable to defeat this cycle. SO
Editors note: “Democrats are child groomers” emerged as one of the most often cited rationales by Trump supporters for their “anything goes” tolerance to the boss’s behavior. It is designed to win elections, of course. But it is also serves to dehumanize Democrats in order to justify past and potentially future acts of political violence.
It is critical for everyone working for democracy to understand what will be coming at Democratic candidates already running against hostile in-party fundamentals this fall, and why the GOP has settled on such a noxious line of attack. Whatever strategy Democrats ultimately settle on, it will have to compete against the Republicans’ no-holds-barred approach to 2022.
Please consider supporting my efforts with this substack with a subscription, paid or for free (and PLEASE do not do paid if you are broke!) Paid subscriptions allow me the time and resources to devote to this project. Another fantastic way for you to support this effort is by sharing it on your social media accounts.
"Hate Will Only Win If People Like Me Stand By And Let It Happen."